Mindfulness: The Universal Solvent to Psychological Suffering

Introduction

“The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Before I begin, I wish to start with the acknowledgment that for many of us, the word ‘mindfulness’ has become diluted. It’s plastered on social media sites, lifestyle magazines; there are now countless mobile apps dedicated to it, corporate wellness programmes, and the list goes on. Suffice to say, it’s a topic that’s hard to avoid. The widespread adoption is testament to its profound benefits, but it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, the exploration of this concept is now very accessible. On the other hand, because it has now become entangled with the complexity of modern-day consumerism, it also falls into the trap of appearing to be, in some sense, just another trend. But it isn’t, and despite these challenges, the essence of mindfulness—a practice that goes back thousands of years—retains its profound capacity to impact all our lives. In this article, I hope to avoid contributing to the superficial clutter and instead concisely touch on what mindfulness is, the detrimental effects mind-wandering has, why the deliberate practice of mindfulness is essential to a well-lived life, and I’ll point you to resources that, if inspired to learn more, will pave the path towards a deeper understanding and application of mindfulness practices. Practices that, when deliberately applied, ensure that states of peace, appreciation, and fulfilment become far more attainable—regardless of what life throws your way.

The Basics and Timeline

There are many iterations as it relates to the definition of mindfulness, though for simplicity I shall just refer to one, loosely speaking: Mindfulness is the practice of intentionally bringing one’s awareness to the present moment without judgment.

The basic philosophy of mindfulness, specifically the emphasis on self-awareness and meditation, first appeared in the Hindu scriptures as far back as 3500 years ago. Teachings on yoga were also introduced during this period. It wasn’t until the emergence of Buddhism, approximately 2500 years ago, that we saw an explicit formalisation of the practice of mindfulness. Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, introduced teachings, which, using the essence of mindfulness, outlined explicit instructions for its practice within an Eightfold Path. This marked a clear shift to a more structured approach, which not only provided a systematic methodology for cultivating mindfulness but also integrated it into a broader framework for ethical living and spiritual awakening—establishing it as the central element in the pursuit of enlightenment.

Buddhism flourished in India for the next 400 years, before its expansion across Asia. From Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and then eventually to the regions in the East, in countries like China, Korea, and Japan. Each of these cultures assimilated mindfulness into their own unique spiritual practices.

Parallel to its development in the East, mindfulness-like concepts originating in the West became apparent. The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece around 2,300 years ago often advocated for an awareness of the present moment and control over one's responses to life's challenges.

Slightly later on, some 1700 years ago, Christian monasticism, a religious movement, began to develop. This would include communities of monks and nuns dedicating their lives to prayer, work, and the pursuit of spiritual goals. Monasticism emphasised living a life apart from worldly distractions, to focus on spiritual growth and communion with God. It was a distinct religious movement within Christianity which involved the seclusion or withdrawal from society, as well as the structured religious orders seen in secular settings. One of the key practices within Christian monasticism is contemplative prayer or meditation, which involves a deep, reflective silence and the cultivation of a mindful awareness of God's presence. Both Stoicism and early Christian monasticism, despite their differing contexts and aims, shared with Eastern practices like Buddhism a profound appreciation for the value of present-moment awareness and the disciplined regulation of the mind and emotions.

If we then fast forward to the 20th century, another chapter in its incorporation can be best attributed to its introduction into Western medicine and psychology by Jon Kabat-Zinn, in 1979, with the establishment of the mindfulness-based stress reduction programme. This would see the application of mindfulness in therapeutic practice, and most significantly its application became free from its religious forms.

And it isn’t until the 21st century that we now witness the global popularisation of mindfulness. It's integrated into healthcare, education, and corporate wellness, supported by a wealth of resources like books, apps, and online courses. This is where we are at now, with the majority of us coming into acquaintance with the concepts of mindfulness, most likely via one of these outlets. And obviously this is for us in developed countries in the West. I very much doubt the Tibetan monk, in a secluded cave in the Himalayas, is listening to Headspace on his iPhone 15. Anyway, I digress, that was a very brief timeline from the roots of mindfulness to where it is today. I shall now spend some time highlighting its importance.

Mind-Wandering: Stimulus-Independent Thought

When investigating the benefits that mindfulness practice has on an individual, it’s helpful to first examine the effects of the only alternative: mind-wandering.

Stimulus-independent thought (less formally known as mind-wandering) is the brain’s default mode of operation. It’s obvious to see how this particular characteristic of our minds served to be an evolutionary advantage. However, these complex abstractions we form on almost a continual basis come at an emotional cost. Interesting statistics from a 2010 study of over 2000 participants showed that:

- The average person has 6200 thoughts per day.

- The average person spent 47% of their time mind-wandering.

- The study also found that people’s minds were more likely to wander to pleasant topics (43 percent of the time) or neutral topics (31 percent) than unhappy topics (26 percent). But people were considerably less happy when thinking about neutral or unhappy topics and were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than when fully engaged in what they were doing.

- This same data demonstrates that the nature of an activity explained only 4.6% of an individual's self-reported variance of happiness, whereas, mind-wandering accounted for 10.8% of the variance.

In other words, as it relates to our subjective well-being: it’s not just the experience of distressing thoughts that should be avoided, but actually any thought that is not related to the task being performed at the time.

With that being said—mind-wandering, even in the modern world, still serves many crucial processes—perhaps innovation being the most obvious. I’m not dismissing its utility to exist at all, I’m instead highlighting the problem with its pervasiveness—a problem that requires a deliberate practice to address. This best comes in the form of mindfulness meditation practices. Present moment awareness can be deliberately practised throughout the day, regardless of the activity being carried out—specific meditation practices do not have a monopoly on this. With that being said, I still strongly recommend a daily meditation practice. Mainly because these sessions are the only reliable way to secure a consistent, dedicated period each day, regardless of daily schedules or commitments, solely aimed at developing this skill.

Exploration of Mindfulness

So when being introduced to mindfulness, and say starting a regular practice of mindfulness meditation—for the purpose of illustration, let's say this involves sitting down and paying attention to the sensation of your breath. Well at first, the thing that becomes apparent is truly how much you think. But what you begin to work on is usually the ability to notice these thoughts and feelings as being exactly that, and only that. They spontaneously arose, and you need not identify with them. As you become more accomplished, your ability to remain anchored in a state of objective awareness of the present moment improves. You become less enticed into getting swept by whatever arises in the present moment, whether it be a thought (which would have led to a narrative of other associated thoughts), a feeling (which would have led to the amplification of that feeling, or thoughts associated with the feeling), sensations and so on. In other words, your objective awareness of the present moment improves, for the sole reason that previously that awareness was often skewed by the fact a large proportion of the attention allocated at any given time, was on something that wasn’t actually happening, and instead a running narrative in your head. So we get to a stage where this ability to remain present becomes refined. We become more adept at remaining in a state of objective awareness for what is (i.e. our field of conscious experience) as opposed to being swept away by our subjective judgement of what arises.

As this practice deepens, a more profound realisation emerges: the observer itself—the sense of an observing "self" that seems to stand apart from these thoughts and feelings—is also part of the illusion. This is what in Buddhism is often referred to as ‘enlightenment’, the direct experience that the self too is an illusion. I’ll try to briefly explain this concept through the lived experience of most of us as human beings in relation to our relationship with body and mind. As it pertains to our bodies, most of us don’t feel identical to our bodies, instead we feel that we have bodies. We live by the assumption that there is an ‘I’ somewhere, most likely located in the head or behind the eyes, and it is that ‘I’, or to rephrase, that subject that is somehow the centre of experience, or even the source of our identity. Because of this, rarely do any of us feel identical to experience, we feel like we are having an experience. We feel like there is some point, for most of us at some point in our heads, that is the witness—the thinker of thoughts, the director of attention, the recipient of external events, and in the preliminary stages of mindfulness meditation—the thing that is aware and observing those thoughts, feelings and environment. It doesn’t matter where exactly that point is felt to be located, the point is that there is this feeling that all of us share, of being an inner subject, separate from the world of objects. The assumptions of self I think stem from the fact that we can identify things as they arise in their environment. Regardless of what arises in our stream of consciousness, whether it is the sounds arising in our environment, thoughts that spontaneously arise, emotions that flavour our experience—things come noticeable for the very reason that they are different from us. And so because we can identify them, as opposed to the other way around (i.e. the thoughts in themselves don’t identify you) it also somehow proves that we must be the subject, and the particular phenomena that arose is the object. We are the subject directing our attention towards whatever object we decide to focus on.

The realisation that in fact there is no subject, no self, comes from repeatedly observing the arising and passing of mental events and noticing that, the act of observation itself does not require a stable, unchanging entity to oversee it. The thoughts, feelings, and the observing of these thoughts and feelings all happen within the same field of awareness, without a central ‘I’ directing the process. This transition reflects a shift from dualistic thinking (the observer and the observed) to a non-dual awareness, where the distinction between observer and observed dissolves. The sense of a separate, observing self is understood to be just another thought or mental formation, not the essence of who we are. Through mindfulness, we come to recognise that what we considered to be the observing self is just as transient and subject to change as the thoughts and feelings it observes. This insight into the illusory nature of the self is a pivotal moment in mindfulness practice, leading to a deeper understanding of the mind and a more liberating way of experiencing life. The reason it’s so liberating is because, with this understanding comes the recognition that much of our needless suffering can be brought to a halt, suffering that is only ever made possible by our default state of identifying with the self-assigned subject to the body. So that is to say, you can represent your body and mind in the world, but you can cease to construct a subject internal to the body. What happens when this occurs, well I shall say, what happens when experiencing this illusion of self, is the expansion of awareness. It’s very much the acknowledgment that the mind is more expansive than it is whilst in its default state of thinking. This is a direct consequence of the fact that it is no longer confined to the assumption that there is a principal thinker in an undefined location, which is some kind of orchestrator of the inner workings of our mind—but instead the acknowledgment that thoughts, feelings and sensations arise spontaneously, with the central nervous system just being the apparatus which makes that possible. And it is to be in this state, which is to be identified with experience, as opposed to being a vulnerable subject having an experience. The feeling of the separation between subject (you) and object (experience) dissolves, and instead there is just experience. This realisation and the experience of it, is indeed the very thing that serves to halt psychological suffering. And so with mindfulness, when it comes into day-to-day life, it’s not a claim that we should all just cease to play our role, or even a mystical claim that we are somehow all physically connected, but it’s instead the recognition that as a matter of experience, there is just experience, and there truly is no such thing as a subject being the experiencer of it. These are not wild claims here, they are objective claims about the nature of reality. Most of us can most probably relate to this unity with experience, not as a consequence of meditation, but instead work or exposure to events that peak our interest. The kind of experiences in which our own automated self-absorption, or even incessant rumination of how we may be representing ourselves, even just momentarily comes to a halt. These can be as the now recognised flow state (when say in meaningful pursuit of something you hold dear), or even the state of awe when experiencing something profound. To take the example of awe, when you look up at a clear night sky, you don’t need to think about how amazing it is, it just is. The awe you experience is not a consequence of the thoughts you tell yourself about how incredible it is, but instead just merely a consequence of you experiencing it. This is precisely the feeling that arises when, take this example, we cease to feel as if we are a subject in our experience, but instead we feel a unity with it.

Gratitude Prevents Progress: A False Notion

Now for many of us, there is a dissonance that can sometimes come with the notion of gratitude, or even the cultivation of contentment with our current situation. This assumption is predicated on the assumption that progress in life is somehow contingent on the fact that we don’t adopt this selfless state of presence of mind. That is, the motivation to go from A (where you currently are) to B (the goal you want to accomplish), is largely a consequence of the fact that you are not content with your current situation, and it’s that dissatisfaction that is a large motivator towards change and the progress you want to make.

For those that are driven by pathological drives of insecurity, or a feeling of incompleteness—this may well be the case. But in these examples, unfortunately these drives are, without exception, a self-defeating prophecy—in that inevitably what follows will be the stark realisation that it was never enough. There are wider issues at play here in these cases, which most likely warrant an active exploration—this is largely outside the scope of this particular topic.

However, for those who are not driven by the search for a remedy for their sense of inadequacy, but still grapple with this concept, that is—change is only ever made when one is dissatisfied with their current situation, and therefore the adoption of a selfless state of objective awareness and the state of gratitude for what is, hinders the very thing motivating the individual to progress to a state of something different. This notion, although understandable, is inherently flawed. An assumption we often make as to why we actually do anything. The assumption is flawed for the very reason that it discounts the inherent satisfaction we feel whilst progressing. We now know, through the numerous studies performed on dopamine release and reward prediction error, that the vast majority of our satisfaction comes from the feeling of progressing, not the outcome at the end. Hence, in actuality, the motivation for progress isn’t derived from our dissatisfaction with our current situation, the act of progressing in itself provides the motivation. The prompt to want to change may well come from dissatisfaction, but it doesn’t need to, and certainly isn’t the reason for the motivation needed whilst changing—that comes from the act of changing itself. So there truly is no contradiction between harnessing the state of satisfaction for what is, and the motivation needed to progress to what could be.

Summary

So, in acknowledging the information above, what mindfulness practices essentially do is train the mind to more easily revert to the state previously described, being this selfless state of objective awareness. A state in which one is aware that everything, including the feeling of being a subject, is arising all by itself. This begins to allow for a much greater awareness of the stream of consciousness, a state in which we are more impartial to any one phenomenon that may have otherwise resulted in excessive attention due to the potentially emotional state it evokes.

And the dedicated practice of this skill involves a path which varies considerably for each individual. However, these paths all end at the same point—the inevitable discovery of the absence of self. And it’s this discovery which is the ‘universal solvent to psychological suffering’.

Recommended Resource

We’ve gone into a fair bit of depth exploring mindfulness, touching on the illusion of self and the nature of consciousness. From a practical perspective, for those of you who want to know a bit more on where to start with the incorporation of mindful meditation practices into daily life—I recommend this book to everyone, from beginner to advanced practitioners: ‘The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide’ by John Yates. It's both inspiring, humbling and most importantly practical. It’s not a book that you are expected to read in its entirety straight away, but instead presented as a series of developmental stages—which are read individually.

Anyway, I hope this article has been of some help. And as always, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding the concepts covered.