As a human being, you are a self-aware fractal of intelligence. The most obvious expression of this intelligence is the cognitive intelligence of your mind. This intelligence is an extension of the somatic intelligence of your body. Which in turn is an expression of the Spiritual Intelligence of Consciousness.
Mindfulness and meditation involve a recalibration of this spectrum of the intelligence that you are. The volatile and restless intelligence of mind grounding through the stable intelligence of your body into the peaceful Intelligence of Consciousness. This is why the roots of mindfulness and yogic meditation lie in a somatic approach to meditation.
The concept of Mindfulness originates in the teachings of the Buddha, specifically the Satipattana Sutta and the Anapanasati Sutta. These core teachings of the Buddhist approach to meditation describe how to become intimate with your immediate experience by way of breath, body, mind, feelings and perceptions. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali breaks this intimacy, or mindfulness, down into three elements: engaging-with-the-object, merging-with-the-object and seeing-through-the-object.
Engaging-with-the-object, is becoming attentive to what is apparently happening. This is mindfulness. Awareness becomes engaged with the form or appearance of the meditative object, as mind becomes undistracted, present. As mind becomes more present it quietens, and awareness opens through the obvious into the subtle. This opening of awareness reveals the subtleties of the object’s form and nature. As this opening ripens it becomes ‘merging-with-the-object’. This is the opening of the meditative mind, the initiation of meditation.
Merging-with-the-object is when the sense of the perceiving subject, or sense of separate self, dissolves into the perceived object, or the ‘other’. This happens only when mind becomes fully present, completely quiet. This is meditation. Within this deepening of intimacy awareness is uncoloured by thinking or thoughts, self or other. Finally intimacy blossoms into seeing-through-the-object.
Seeing-through-the-object is the fulfilment of intimacy within which the form, origins and implications of the object are clearly, and non-discursively, revealed. Seeing-through the form of an object shows you its depths and subtleties. Seeing-through the origins of an object shows you the interconnected nature of its relationship to other objects. Seeing-through the implications of an object shows you how it impacts on your behaviour.
Seeing-through-the-object reveals the ‘true nature’ of both subject and object as being empty (shunyata) of any individual substance or identity. This is the non-dual ground of awakening and enlightenment. An object can be a situation, emotion, behavioural tendency, image, memory or any artefact of mental activity, not only physical objects.
The intimacy that deepens mindfulness into meditation, then, is multilayered. It begins with attentiveness in and to the moment. It blossoms as a nondual intimacy within which there are neither subject nor object, perceiver nor perceived, self nor other. This does not mean that there are on longer objects and actions. Rather individuated objects and discrete actions are experienced as being inextricably interlinked in an indivisible matrix with neither end nor beginning, centre nor periphery. Directly experiencing the singularity of existence pacifies the anxieties of mind, eventually into its unconscious roots, and allows awareness to function without neurotic distortion, in an awakened, enlightened state.
The awakening of intelligence to its enlightened expression takes place through an infolding of awareness. Intelligence, as awareness, infolds from the objects and actions generated by and in the mind, through the dynamics of perception into the inclusive luminosity of Consciousness. Intelligence turns in on itself by way of its activity, regardless of its content. However, the most fruitful content for this infolding is that provided by the intelligent presence of the body.
It is only through the practice of meditation that this infolding takes place, and ongoing mindfulness in daily life become a genuine possibility. The practice of meditation deconstructs mind and releases awareness from its learned constraints. This has a direct impact on everyday experience by way of the dissolution of learned pathways of neurotic perception, reaction and behaviour. As neurotic habits dissolve intelligence functions in everyday life with a directness and immediacy in and as the meditative mind, the surface of which is attentiveness to what is happening in the moment, or mindfulness.
It is only sustained practice of meditation that undermines the habits of mind that obstruct mindfulness. Without a supporting practice of meditation mindfulness is reduced to applied attentiveness in the moment and offer no grist to the mill of awakening. A dedicated meditation practice eventually establishes the mediative mind as an ongoing everyday state, with mindfulness as its natural and spontaneous expression.
Mindfulness and meditation involve a recalibration of this spectrum of the intelligence that you are. The volatile and restless intelligence of mind grounding through the stable intelligence of your body into the peaceful Intelligence of Consciousness. This is why the roots of mindfulness and yogic meditation lie in a somatic approach to meditation.
The concept of Mindfulness originates in the teachings of the Buddha, specifically the Satipattana Sutta and the Anapanasati Sutta. These core teachings of the Buddhist approach to meditation describe how to become intimate with your immediate experience by way of breath, body, mind, feelings and perceptions. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali breaks this intimacy, or mindfulness, down into three elements: engaging-with-the-object, merging-with-the-object and seeing-through-the-object.
Engaging-with-the-object, is becoming attentive to what is apparently happening. This is mindfulness. Awareness becomes engaged with the form or appearance of the meditative object, as mind becomes undistracted, present. As mind becomes more present it quietens, and awareness opens through the obvious into the subtle. This opening of awareness reveals the subtleties of the object’s form and nature. As this opening ripens it becomes ‘merging-with-the-object’. This is the opening of the meditative mind, the initiation of meditation.
Merging-with-the-object is when the sense of the perceiving subject, or sense of separate self, dissolves into the perceived object, or the ‘other’. This happens only when mind becomes fully present, completely quiet. This is meditation. Within this deepening of intimacy awareness is uncoloured by thinking or thoughts, self or other. Finally intimacy blossoms into seeing-through-the-object.
Seeing-through-the-object is the fulfilment of intimacy within which the form, origins and implications of the object are clearly, and non-discursively, revealed. Seeing-through the form of an object shows you its depths and subtleties. Seeing-through the origins of an object shows you the interconnected nature of its relationship to other objects. Seeing-through the implications of an object shows you how it impacts on your behaviour.
Seeing-through-the-object reveals the ‘true nature’ of both subject and object as being empty (shunyata) of any individual substance or identity. This is the non-dual ground of awakening and enlightenment. An object can be a situation, emotion, behavioural tendency, image, memory or any artefact of mental activity, not only physical objects.
The intimacy that deepens mindfulness into meditation, then, is multilayered. It begins with attentiveness in and to the moment. It blossoms as a nondual intimacy within which there are neither subject nor object, perceiver nor perceived, self nor other. This does not mean that there are on longer objects and actions. Rather individuated objects and discrete actions are experienced as being inextricably interlinked in an indivisible matrix with neither end nor beginning, centre nor periphery. Directly experiencing the singularity of existence pacifies the anxieties of mind, eventually into its unconscious roots, and allows awareness to function without neurotic distortion, in an awakened, enlightened state.
The awakening of intelligence to its enlightened expression takes place through an infolding of awareness. Intelligence, as awareness, infolds from the objects and actions generated by and in the mind, through the dynamics of perception into the inclusive luminosity of Consciousness. Intelligence turns in on itself by way of its activity, regardless of its content. However, the most fruitful content for this infolding is that provided by the intelligent presence of the body.
It is only through the practice of meditation that this infolding takes place, and ongoing mindfulness in daily life become a genuine possibility. The practice of meditation deconstructs mind and releases awareness from its learned constraints. This has a direct impact on everyday experience by way of the dissolution of learned pathways of neurotic perception, reaction and behaviour. As neurotic habits dissolve intelligence functions in everyday life with a directness and immediacy in and as the meditative mind, the surface of which is attentiveness to what is happening in the moment, or mindfulness.
It is only sustained practice of meditation that undermines the habits of mind that obstruct mindfulness. Without a supporting practice of meditation mindfulness is reduced to applied attentiveness in the moment and offer no grist to the mill of awakening. A dedicated meditation practice eventually establishes the mediative mind as an ongoing everyday state, with mindfulness as its natural and spontaneous expression.