Aware summary

Okay, so you know all about the benefits of regular mindfulness practice, but what exactly is it? Well, it’s basically all about training your mind to work in ways it usually doesn’t in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Let’s break it down into three key cognitive skills – think of them as the pillars of mindfulness.

The first pillar is focused attention, the ability to maintain concentration on a specific task or object and block out background noise. You’ll have experienced this the last time you found yourself immersed in your work or if you’ve ever practiced playing an instrument.

Picture the display of a digital camera. When you point your lens at an object or landscape, you can bring different parts of the image into focus, highlighting some aspects and blurring others. Attention is just like that: it can be directed and “focused” on particular things.

Indeed, there’s even a name for this deliberate focus – it’s called focal attention. All you need to do to experience it is to take a walk around the room you’re reading this in. Pay close attention to the objects around you, noting their colors, shapes and details. That’s focal awareness – a deliberate, conscious registering of your surroundings.

Maps are essential when it comes to finding your way around unfamiliar places. They don’t just tell you how to get from point A to point Z; they also tell you what to look out for along the way. That means it might be a good idea to create a map to guide you on your next journey – the discovery of awareness.

Let’s start with a definition. Awareness is about being receptive to the world.

We all want to feel a sense of meaningful connection to others, but we often go wrong when trying to establish that. The reason? Well, it’s all too easy to confuse empathy with compassion. While closely related, they aren’t quite the same thing. Let’s have a closer look at why that’s the case.

A good place to start understanding compassion is by looking at how religious traditions define it. Compassion is a central value for most major faiths, many of which hold that it makes both individuals happier and benefits the entire community. It’s not hard to see why. As they see it, compassion is all about identifying yourself with another’s suffering, asking what you can do to help and – most importantly – taking steps to relieve that suffering.

More than two millennia ago, the Greek physician Hippocrates claimed that the brain was the source of all human experience. That ancient idea is now being revised as the latest scientific research uncovers a startling truth: it’s not only that the body serves the brain, but the brain also serves the body.

As the physician and neurologist Antonio Damasio regularly points out in his books and lectures, the earth has been inhabited by organisms without nervous systems for most of its history. The nervous system and the brain, in other words, are relatively recent developments in the history of life on our planet. Before the brain, then, there was the body; and it’s only because we have bodies that interact with our brains that we experience the life of the mind.

We’ve all worried about whether or not we’re truly likable, and everyone, at some point, has feared that reaching out to others might end in rejection. But once such thoughts start whirring through your mind, it’s easy to retreat and concentrate on nothing but yourself and your own life. In the end, everything becomes about you.

This is natural enough – the latest neuroscientific research even suggests it’s hardwired into the human brain. But it can get out of control and lead to self-obsession.

Addiction can make you feel powerless. If you’ve ever struggled with addiction, then you know it makes you feel as though you have no choice in the matter – you simply need the thing, be it cigarettes, television or a sugary snack. But that’s not how it really works. In fact, addiction is nothing more than an illusion created by your brain.

Before we move on to how meditation can help you break your addiction cycle, let’s take a closer look at addiction itself.