Mindfulness meditation is a great tool, and I would happily see everyone in the world practicing it. As Bob Cergol said “It is a prerequisite for going within. One cannot explore the questions ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What am I?’ if one is not mindful.’” Yet, Cergol pushes further by elegantly asking, “Can a dreamer be mindful of dreaming? Would such mindfulness be part of the dream?”
It’s a question I rarely see addressed in mindfulness literature. Surprisingly, the academic article “Overcoming Automaticity Through Meditation” reveals the answer. After concluding that their study showed mindfulness meditation had an effect in reducing some types of automatic responses, the authors made a seemingly off-hand comment that struck at the core of Cergol’s question:
“Taken together, practice in meditation may resemble situations of learned automaticity more closely than it does situations of instructed automaticity.”
Dryly stated I know, but in other words, meditation practice resembles an automated response stored in long-term memory moreso than an automated response held in short-term memory. This brings to mind (automatically!) Richard Rose’s comment that, “I maintain that Will is nothing more than a reaction to react in a fixed, planned reaction.”
Yet, the authors ignore the question that if meditation itself becomes an automaticity, then where are “we” amongst these webs of responses and reactions?
Such things are better left unsaid, so they may be felt instead….
“The thought ‘Who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.” ~Ramana Maharshi