One Mindfulness Tip That Can Change Everything

notes from an online meditation retreat

Photo by Ben Lowe on Unsplash

Good morning, and welcome to Mindful Mondays.

Today, I’m writing to you from the lofty vantage of a spiritual retreat, nestled high among the peaks of the Himalayas, where the scent of incense mingles with the vapor of clouds, and the high-pitched calls of eagles ring out above the chanting of crimson-robed monks.

Just kidding.

Although I have been to the Himalayas, this weekend I’m sitting at home on my couch, doing an online meditation retreat that runs 9-12 Saturday and Sunday.

But I do have something important to share with you from my retreat notes, something that can legitimately change your life if you grok it: the difference between attention and awareness.

In most forms of mindfulness practice, you direct your attention to an object like the breath, body sensations, or a mantra. When your attention inevitably wanders away, you bring it back to your object, thus gradually strengthening the muscle of attention. Not unlike lifting weights, every time you do a ‘rep’ of bringing your attention back to your focus, your attention or ‘concentration power’ gets stronger.

It’s a valuable process, one that has proven benefits for not only our attention spans, but reducing symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression.

But a lot of people, including me, have struggled with deliberate mindfulness practice. As non-monastics living in the modern world, we don’t have hours a day to meditate. We have jobs to do, kids to raise, and taxes to pay (too soon?). Some of us also have ADHD (or as I like to call it, “poet brain”).

Not only that, but our attentional capacities are currently under massive assault by the largest uncontrolled behavioral science experiment in history (I’m talking about smartphones and social media).

But what if there was another way of experiencing life, right now, in this moment, that didn’t rely on the deliberate effort of our attentional muscles?

There is, and it’s as simple as the awareness that is looking out from behind your eyes, right now. The awareness that hears the sounds in the room around you. The awareness in which your thoughts come and go.

So what’s the difference between attention and awareness?

While attention is like a flashlight, awareness is like daylight. Attention can illuminate one thing at a time, clearly and brightly. Like a flashlight, then, it’s a useful tool.

Daylight, on the other hand, is pervasive. It’s everywhere you look. It illuminates everything.

(Also, you don’t usually need a flashlight during the day. What that means for mindfulness practice, I’ll leave you to ponder).

Effortless or nondual mindfulness practices are about recognizing that you already are this daylight awareness.

You don’t have to try to be aware.

In fact, try not to be aware.

Right now. I dare you.

Unless you’re a particularly talented narcoleptic, you can’t do it. You’re always already aware.

Right now, these words are appearing in your field of vision. Sounds in the room around you are coming and going. You don’t have try to hear them—unless you plug your ears (or are hearing impaired), you can’t not hear them. You can’t not be aware.

And so, in nondual mindfulness practice, you simply recognize the awareness that’s already present, the awareness that you already are, and relax into that. There’s nothing you need to do.

You’re already it.

It’s a radically different approach to mindfulness practice, one that I’ve been exploring more and more over the last few years. If it resonates with you (or if you’re confused and have questions) let me know in the comments, and be sure to check out these previous posts:

• The Headless Way: A Short Introduction

• You Are The Happiness You Seek: A Mindful Mondays Book Review

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By the way, last week, I had a number of you write in to tell me you didn’t get your Mindful Mondays. I’m not sure what happened—it doesn’t seem to have gone to people’s spam folders, so I’m guessing it was a glitch with Substack. (Either that, or it was because I sent the post out during a solar eclipse in the middle of Mercury retrograde 🤔). In any case, here it is:

How To Make Mindfulness Effortless, Find Your True Self, and Heal from Trauma

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Thanks for reading,

Chris Cordry, LMFT

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