Chapter 10

Mindfulness, Awareness, and the Sovereign Self

THE “MINDFUL” PART of Mindful Focusing derives from the Buddhist meditation tradition. The first exercise in this book—Grounded Aware Presence, or GAP—has its roots in my own years of practice and study with the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In this chapter, we will explore some of the principles behind grounded aware presence.

Mindfulness

Following in the footsteps of Eastern mind-body practices like judo, karate, and hatha yoga that became popular in the West during the twentieth century, Asian-derived techniques for developing mindfulness are now becoming known and practiced globally as we enter the twenty-first century. In part this phenomenon is driven by extraordinary developments in the field of cognitive neuroscience. With the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other new technologies for exploring the brain in real time, scientific evidence for the efficacy of these practices is accumulating rapidly. The Mindful Brain and Mindsight by Daniel Siegel, M.D., are two excellent examples of recent books describing and interpreting the newly emerging understanding of how the brain and nervous system function and the ways in which mindfulness-awareness practices can enhance their functioning.

In colloquial usage, mindfulness means paying attention, staying focused on a task, not getting distracted. In the context of meditation, or mindfulness practice, it denotes a particular quality of moment-to-moment attention. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the leading proponent of mindfulness in health care, defines it as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” ¹

Mindfulness practice involves periods of sitting still and training one’s mind to stay on a particular object, typically one’s own breathing. When thoughts, sensations, memories, emotions, and so forth arise in the mind, as they inevitably will, the practice is simply to make note of them without judgment and return one’s attention to the breath. As the practitioner does this over a period of days, weeks, and more, the mind’s natural tendency to become engrossed in a particular subject, or to jump impulsively from one object of attention to another, gradually subsides. The mind becomes unusually calm, at first intermittently but with regular practice in a more sustained way. At the same time, it becomes clearer, like muddy water that settles when left undisturbed. Mental contents are perceived more accurately, and concentration improves.

An important component of mindfulness is body awareness, really noticing the different parts, movements, and textures of our physical bodies and experiencing them from the inside. The first step in GAP, grounded, refers to the body’s earthiness, its substance and weight, and its felt connection to the external world as it rests on the earth anchored and supported by the force of gravity. Being grounded is the experiential foundation for feelings of stability, balance, ease, and uprightness.

Awareness

The kind of mindfulness that is cultivated in Buddhist meditation is frequently referred to as mindfulness-awareness or mindful awareness. Whereas the word mindfulness suggests the element of effort involved in deliberately placing and sustaining attention on a chosen object, awareness has more to do with the quality of consciousness itself.

Although awareness is present whenever we are conscious, there can be awareness with no mindfulness, as in the experience of driving a car “on automatic.” Even though we don’t notice what we’re doing—turning the wheel on a curve, stepping on the brakes at a red light—clearly some awareness is operating. We may not be able to recollect these actions after the fact, but in the moment our awareness functions quite precisely.

At the next level there is ordinary mindful awareness, deliberately paying attention to a particular object or situation. When we drive mindfully, we pay attention to the road conditions, traffic, and our route; our minds are on the job.

Then there is a further level, known as meta-awareness, in which we are aware that we are aware. This doubled awareness enhances mental clarity and gives rise to more vivid perceptions and penetrating insights into the true nature of things. Even beyond that is a kind of meta-meta-awareness, or “panoramic awareness,” that is like a vast open space of consciousness in which endless thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and sensations keep appearing and disappearing while the space itself remains continuous and ever present.

Imagine you are reading this book while flying in an airplane. If your mind wanders, you may still be following the words, but you’re not really getting the meaning: this would be the level of automatic awareness without mindfulness. If you are absorbed in the book, taking in the meaning of the words, you are in a state of ordinary mindful awareness: your attention is focused on the matter at hand. Beyond that, you can notice the fact that you are reading the book as you read it: now you are being self-aware, or meta-aware, of the activity of reading. You could also be aware that you are reading the book while seated in an airplane. Expanding awareness even further, you can have all those levels plus the realization that “me-reading-a-book-while-sitting-here-in-an-airplane” is itself moving through the vast open space of the sky. This is an experience of panoramic awareness—big mind that can accommodate anything. Like the blue sky, it is open, clear, and undisturbed: occasional birds or puffs of cloud may be vividly seen, but they don’t interrupt the vastness of the sky. The second step of GAP, awareness, aims to open us to this deeper, more panoramic level of consciousness.

Mindfulness-awareness meditation cultivates these three levels of awareness: clear concentration, self-aware situational insight, and panoramic awareness. Over time the three become integrated into a strong, supple, alive-in-the-moment quality of ongoing consciousness. As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche put it: “[One is] not living in the future but living in the present. The present situation is open—you could almost say solid—and real, definite, and healthy. There is an appreciation of the richness in the present.” ²

“Living in the present” brings us to the third step of GAP. Presence is a sense of basic existence, mindfully and awarely being who you are right here and right now. When you experience the quality of presence, you are simply here, at this moment, being present—in yourself and to yourself. Ideally, this is an experience of utter simplicity. At the same time, it raises a central question: Who is the one who is being present? Who is being mindful, being aware? Who is doing or having these experiences? Who are you?

The Sovereign Self

Who am I? is an enormous question that has engaged and baffled theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary people for thousands of years. René Descartes asserted proof of his own existence with the famous formula “I think, therefore I am.” The Buddha, on the other hand, taught anatman, nonself—the insubstantiality of what we call I. Fortunately, for the purposes of this book, we don’t need to worry about the philosophical or existential status of the I; rather, we are interested in the lived experiences that are being referenced when we use the word I.

We can think of “I” or “myself” as the central source of our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. It is “where we’re coming from.” However, if we examine our experience carefully and candidly, we notice that where we’re coming from can be very different at different times. The “self” we are operating from at any given time is more like a partial self, a certain version of “me” that shows up in response to a particular set of circumstances. In the case of multiple personality disorder, these different I’s can manifest as totally separate personalities. Most of us don’t evidence such an extreme of inner disconnectedness, but all of us show up in different ways at different times, and all of us experience inner conflicts: “Part of me wants to go out, but another part of me wants to stay home.”

A healthy, whole, centered self is able to recognize and coordinate the functioning of the many partial selves. A helpful way of visualizing this is by means of the mandala, the circular structure that appears in different forms in many world wisdom traditions. In Tibetan Buddhism, a typical mandala depicts a deity as a sovereign king or queen seated at the center of a palace in the center of a walled city at the center of the world. Surrounding the central figure are the different halls and courtyards of the palace, then a series of neighborhoods where the subjects of the kingdom reside, then the countryside, mountain chains, and finally the ocean. From his or her throne at the center of the mandala, the sovereign surveys the whole of existence and empowers and protects all of the subjects so they can perform their different roles in society. The sovereign, who is understood to be a genuinely enlightened leader, embodies qualities of vision, authority, responsibility, beneficence, and skillful action.

Likewise, each of us possesses an inner sovereign, a sovereign I, capable of manifesting these same positive qualities. When we are being our sovereign I, it is like occupying a throne that sits at the center of our self, our life, and our world. We are in a state of grounded aware presence that is in touch with and responsive to our total environment.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote a poem called “You Might Be Tired of the Seat That You Deserve.” We each deserve to manifest as our sovereign self, to occupy our central being, but doing so takes courage, self-awareness, self-mastery, and self-empathy. As we cultivate our felt sense as a vital inner resource, we are at the same time strengthening the sovereign I as our central seat of awareness and response-ability. This inner sovereign is both the seat of our consciousness and the source of right action—actions that feel wholly and deeply right. As you use the exercises in this book to cultivate your capacity for self-awareness, self-empathy, and personal growth, you are also developing your sovereign I, your capacity to act in the world with clarity, confidence, accountability, caring, and skill.