“Oftentimes people relate to ‘mindfulness’ as a head-centered quality, and it gets a bit cramped.” Ajahn Amaro
Citta is a word for mind in the Pali language, but it includes a much wider understanding of mind than is common in western culture. Citta is often translated as heart/mind and includes many ways of knowing including body and sensations.
As people speak about and explore mindfulness it is easy to slip into the understanding of consciousness and mindfulness as the mind that thinks and knows things. But in doing so the meaning of mindfulness, of mind, and of consciousness is greatly diminished. Thinking and knowing things are certainly a part of mind and consciousness, but limiting mind to thought concepts and other conceptual models, leaves out more immediate ways of knowing, ways of knowing that arise before or beside these more developed constructions of mind.
More immediate ways of knowing.
By moving into a more embodied consciousness, you can begin to expand your understanding of mind to include more than concepts and thoughts. For example, as you begin to notice perceptions in any of the sense spheres, you have a greater possibility of opening to the spacious mind, mind and awareness within which all the concepts and perceptions arise. By exploring beyond the thinking mind you can experientially ‘get it’ that all experience is constructions built with and upon concepts and perceptions.
You can step off the wheel of constructions, pull the card or pin that is holding everything together. This idea may cause fear to arise in the personality, but you are not ending life, but opening to the possibility of not only seeing things clearly, freshly, but acting differently, breaking old patterns and habits. This is the opportunity of freedom from our conditioning – a chance to open to the very interesting processes that are unfolding in every moment instead of being thrown off-balance by the content of experience or your history.
Influence the processes or ride the waves of change and dance life!
There is a time and place to explore content, of course; especially in organizational development, in a personal healing processes, or in intentional creating. But you can do any of this more skillfully if you are not trapped in the stories of your culture or personality, when you can observe with awareness, outside of the efficient though prejudiced ego functions.
The greater adventure available in work with consciousness is in learning to see beyond conditioning. You can see the processes unfolding before you and, if you wish, you can use our own mind to form the unfolding personality. Or you can just ride the waves of the processes, ‘greeting destiny as it comes to meet you.’* Fear will disappear when you realize that awareness does not change. It is cool, still, and spacious – a shelter in the midst of the truth of constant change.
* “When the mind is as wide as the horizon, you can greet your destiny as it comes to meet you.”