We sit and remember intentionally to be in the present moment again and again. Awareness is our consciousness of being in the present moment. Mindfulness helps us to remember to watch the mind as it stays present or drifts away. It is our mechanism to sustain the continuity of awareness- to remember again and again from where we stand. It is this quality of repetitiveness- this positive tendency to be open, curious, and kind in our attending that has the inherent power to transform our negative tendencies. We are training and learning to be the wiser… to uncover our unwholesome conditioning and habitual patterns simply through the repetitive act of self-observation.

With awareness and mindfulness, we are cultivating a quality of attention that is refined, precise, and clear. The mechanism we awaken with this quality of attention is our mindsight– our inherent capacity to witness and to illuminate the workings or activities of the mind. With this lens onto our experiences of mind, we tend not to take our thoughts and emotions too personally or seriously. They are simply mental phenomena arising and passing in awareness. We can witness and note our observations without the obscurity of identification. It’s not what we see that’s the root of our problem, it’s how we see it.

With mindfulness and awareness, we come to realize that we are capable of becoming our own guide- who better to know our own habitual patterns? To remain focused with intent in the present moment, we begin to clearly understand the relationship of cause and effect, and how it functions in our life. We recognize the natural cause(s) of our suffering and happiness- how our minds condition suffering, and how to use the inherent power of our minds to penetrate and dissolve the seeds of our relative torment. In cultivating our natural and mindful intelligence, we inquire deeper into these tendencies that enslave our wakeful attention- to fully awaken, see, know, and break free of these cycles.

In sustaining our mindful Way of being, the light becomes brighter as we open deeper into our process and into the expansiveness of our minds. We explore and examine with curiosity and inquisitiveness like psychonauts excavating unchartered territories of our own interiority. We are motivated to free ourselves from the ignorance and confusion that obscures our minds and disconnects our direct experience with the mind-body process.

Cultivating this Way toward liberation requires significant effort in the beginning as old habits do not die easily. However, cultivating a mindful Way will ultimately become reflexive and effortless as refinement and precision in free attention and open awareness continue to evolve and transform the impulse and energy of our resistance to cling to a sense of self that is narrowly and rigidly defined. With calm stability, we directly, objectively, and compassionately embrace our experiences with relaxed alertness in new and adaptive ways. It is this spaciousness of mind and heart- and this mindfulness of being that ultimately serves to liberate us.

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