Mindlessness

 

Photo Credit: Dreamstime.com

Mindlessness

We have all heard of life-coaches telling us to be mindful, live in awareness, but how many such coaches tell us to live mindlessly? The very concept of mindlessness would make a normal person think that this person is full of nonsense. How can one ever be mindless – our whole life is focused on thinking, learning, and applying our knowledge which involves the full functionality of the mind! So, why mindlessness?

Based on a limited understanding of true awareness of body, mind and energy, many coaches use the term mindfulness to describe awareness. In turn, people misconstrue this concept as the ‘here and now’ experience of say placing a chocolate in the mouth, then tasting, feeling and perhaps hearing, smelling, and seeing it as well.

The way I see it – true awareness lies in mindlessness, not mindfulness.

There is this story of the pompous professor who went to meet a Zen Master to learn and then began lecturing the Master. The Zen master poured him tea in a cup as he politely listened. “Stop” cried the Professor, “can’t you see the cup is full and overflowing?” The Master replied, “So is your mind!”

The new age concept of mindfulness benefits practitioners, without imparting awareness to their students. The mindless concept is ancient and was birthed and evolved from the teachings of the Hindu Upanishads and Buddha – this concept has been practiced and perfected by the ancient masters as the concept of shunya or emptiness, the void, or mindlessness.

The state of no-mind or mindlessness is just the opposite of stilling the mind -- it is getting beyond the mind. It is creating such a distance between ourself and the mind that the mind becomes the farthest star, millions of light years away, and we are just watchers. When the mind is stilled we are the controllers.

Mindlessness transcends time and space. Through mindlessness one can create one’s future and transform one’s underlying beliefs. When one becomes thoughtless in meditation, that is the beginning of mindlessness – the first step of going into the state of samadhi in meditation.