Q. - What is the mind full of in mindfulness?
A. – It is full of awareness.
When I began to explore mindfulness, noticing-where-I-am, I noticed there were many times when I wasn’t actually aware of where I am. Where was I when I wasn’t aware? I asked myself. Aren’t I always here?...
...But it seemed that I was coming back to being here by asking myself, Where am I? So, where could I have gone off to when I was away from here?
Where I was was lost in thought. What can bring me back to here is touching in with “the body” (perception with the five senses) rather than going off into thought (which in Buddhism is understand as a sixth sense). This recognition of how frequently I can be lost in thought can lead those of us interested in knowing “here” to mistrust thinking. But thinking is just another place I can be. Thinking is such a compelling “place” to be that I can lose awareness of where I am. Mindfulness can be a means for discovering where I go off to in my thinking. And this becoming aware can help so much with our suffering. (We'll explore this much more later).
Let me give you one (in a series) of images I’ve come up with to help me understand the power of choosing to be mindful, choosing to be aware. By choosing to pay attention in the present moment without judgment, mindfulness allows the veil between what is conscious and what is unconscious to get thinner and to back away (as it were), so that we glimpse more of what had been unconscious. Picture a large ocean liner anchored off a coast. All that we can see of the boat from a distance (let’s imagine standing on the shore) is the conscious mind. From that distance, there seems to be a sharp division between the visible part of the big boat, and the invisible parts below the water line. Mindfulness, in this analogy, would be approaching the big boat in a small craft that we can propel with a little effort. Making only minimal effort allows the water around our small boat to not be too stirred up. Still, some effort needs to be made. That effort is the sincere desire to know our self truthfully and fully. As we approach the big vessel and allow our self to coast in the water, we notice that we can see a lot of the boat that is below the water line. What we now see is neither perfectly clear nor completely hidden. Much of our unfolding and awakening occurs through our curiosity about that perception of what is there, between the conscious and the unconscious. We are entering the twilight zone!