Awareness Without Comment

“Mindfulness is awareness without comment, without discrimination, without judgment.”

-Steven Harrison

 

I once read a book called “The Noticer”.  I cannot remember the author at this moment but the book was about how much we can learn just by paying attention and noticing things.  When I walk around the office my antennae are on full alert.  I notice all the people and all the activity.  Most of the people I don’t know personally and it is not always easy to tell if people are conversing about work or just goofing off.  I try not to judge anything I see.  One of my favorite quotes is “Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see”.  Mindfulness at its core is just paying attention and noticing things.  Some of the challenges of mindfulness are actually paying attention, actually noticing things, and doing all of this without the emotional reaction of judging things as good or bad, a.k.a. dualistic thinking, and not reacting to what you notice.  We all tend to be judgmental about most things so it is very challenging to simply observe and move on.  Almost nothing in life is as it seems.  The seemingly good is not always good and the seemingly bad is not always bad.