Many years ago, in a conversation with a few of my friends, I recall having discussed with some pride and satisfaction the apparent human capacity to carry out certain tasks -- such as driving one’s car on a familiar route -- while day dreaming, planning, or thinking about past or future events.  It seemed convenient that one could be doing a habitual task while one’s mind was occupied elsewhere.  Then I had an experience that changed my attitude.  It happened one day, many years ago, when I was walking a familiar route from my office to a destination about a mile and a half away.  I locked the door to my office and started out.  About four blocks from my starting point, I abruptly stopped short feeling shocked.  It was as if I were startled awake from a deep sleep.  Where was I? (I wondered.)  Looking around, I observed that I was on the correct route to my destination, but I could not recall anything from the moment I shut the door to my office.  I could not recall any of my movements or sensations, nor could I recall any feelings or where my mind was.  If I thought, dreamt, or pondered on anything, I knew nothing of it.  The sudden transition to awareness was rather frightening, especially since I realized I had to have crossed several major, heavily trafficked intersections to get to where I found myself.  I think it was in that moment that I made the firm decision to pay closer attention to what was going on in my life at the time when I was living it, namely RIGHT NOW.  I no longer felt self-satisfied or complacent about doing things automatically.

            My work on becoming mindful – i.e., attending to what’s going on while it’s going on -- began in the bathroom, oddly enough.  Every morning I go through a ritual, which includes brushing my teeth, fluffing my hair and shaving, among other activities.  Those activities, which I had previously tended to do in a robot-like fashion, became the focus of my effort to pay attention to what I was doing.  I put my electric shaver to my face and made the conscious effort to focus on where the shaver was at every instant as well as how it felt and sounded as I moved it across my face and neck.  I listened to the blades whirr and cut the hairs.  At the same time, I also focused on the movements of my arms and the position of my body as I shaved.  When I brushed my teeth, I felt the bristles on my gums and teeth and deliberately moved the brush to attack every nook and cranny.  Meanwhile, I could taste the toothpaste and feel its slight foaming action in my mouth, again simultaneously attending to my arms and body.  It has been thus ever since I began that exercise – at least most of the time.

            As a psychologist, I consider listening to be a primary activity – not only listening to clients’ words and sentiments as well as for their hidden messages, but also listening to the constant activity within my own psyche.  While functioning as a therapist, mindfulness to me means attending to the entire drama of complexes within my psyche: those which I identify as “close to home” and those which – stimulated by the unique contact -- I project into my client. Such an intensity of attention takes a great deal of concentration and effort.

            There are advantages to mindfulness.  A memory comes to mind: I recall a moment of insight I had when I was about 19 years old.  I was a junior at U.C.L.A. living in a co-op (the building had been designed by Neutra, incidentally).  I was feeling somewhat depressed and an inner voice (I didn't really separate from and ‘hear’ the voice until years later) was telling me that I would be depressed forever.  Somehow, a more constructive part of me was operating, and I started reviewing the past, recalling many alternating episodes of depression and elation.  I realized that whenever I felt down, the inner voice would convince me that that would be my condition for the rest of my life.  And whenever I felt up, that same inner voice would reassure me that everything was going to be great “from now on.”  A different, more solid part of me told me that perhaps neither was correct and that ups and downs were likely to be cyclical, though probably not regularly so.  Consequently, I developed an awareness of these mood swings that made it possible for me to live patiently with depression, knowing that in the past, the down feelings passed eventually.  And when I was feeling up, I strove to enjoy the moments as much as possible, recalling that in the past the ebullience also passed in time.

Mindfulness has its down sides as well as its advantages.  Enjoying that one is enjoying can be very enjoyable.  But sometimes, attentiveness during involvement interferes with that involvement and even can prevent enjoyment.  For example, I would rather not be immediately attentive to (witnessing) what I'm doing when I melt into music or into union with my beloved.  The experience can be pleasurably reflected upon at a later time.

            Another difficulty with mindfulness is its complexity. When I described my activities in the bathroom, I mentioned only a few of the experiences I attended – a very small percentage of all the possible experiences that might have reached my consciousness.  So much goes on within us all the time, it seems impossible to me that we can be aware of all the activity.  And, concerning the multitude of activities on which we are able to focus, I wonder whether we perceive them all simultaneously or if we rapidly scan through them sequentially.  Based on my observations of focusing, I suspect we do the latter.

            Pondering on mindfulness has led me to the realization of another factor that complicates the concept.  It seems that mindfulness is a consciousness of patterns, rather than the details of the patterns.  Consciousness of shaving is not consciousness of every muscle that is contracting and relaxing contributing the overall experience.  Nor is it an awareness of each individual nerve receptor in the face.  We feel the shaver, not the individual nerves being stimulated.  Playing music on the piano (or any other musical instrument) is only possible if the musician is mindful of the music that is being produced, rather than each of the notes that make up the music.  If a musician were to try to attend to each of the notes s/he produced, s/he would most likely stumble badly and have to stop playing.  When we talk to one another, expressing ideas to one another, we rattle off a stream of words.  Efforts to communicate meaning would fail, if we simply focused on the individual words used to express that meaning.

            So, mindfulness appears to be an intentional but limited awareness of one’s unique circumstances in the immediate present.  That awareness has the quality of focusing -- to as great an extent as possible -- on patterns or meanings of occurrences experienced as originating both from within and from outside the psyche.  The value of mindfulness lies in the conscious savoring of each moment in life.  (See my paper on the "Now Time.")