Mental Discipline: Awareness — Non-conceptual

[Explor­ing Life] When we become entrenched in our con­cep­tual ori­en­ta­tion to the world we limit our abil­ity to per­ceive and appre­hend it from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. All con­cepts are, at best, assump­tions about real­ity. Any con­cept is there­fore some­thing less than real­ity itself. At the same time, we use con­cepts to con­struct mean­ing. If our minds habit­u­ally inter­pret expe­ri­ence through a lim­ited con­cep­tual frame­work, we live in a mind­less man­ner. The idea of non-conceptual aware­ness invites us to con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity of being in the world in way that seeks to chal­lenge our own con­cep­tual addic­tions and assump­tions in order to cul­ti­vate new per­spec­tives and pos­si­bil­i­ties for expe­ri­ence.

Mark Cole­man describes non-conceptual aware­ness in the fol­low­ing way:

The nat­ural world invites us out of our world of fixed con­cepts and into a closer prox­im­ity with reality—what Bud­dhist teach­ings call “non­con­cep­tual aware­ness.” …Instead of encoun­ter­ing the world through a fil­ter of ideas, mem­o­ries, and labels, we con­nect deeply with the unfil­tered and vital pulse of life in that moment. If we’re not mind­ful, intel­lec­tual knowl­edge can eas­ily cloud our direct expe­ri­ence. When we’re guided through life solely by our intel­lect, by our ideas of what we know, we’re robbed of a sense of dis­cov­ery. A non-conceptual aware­ness allows us to approach each moment as fresh and new. A depth of wis­dom can arise from such imme­di­acy, and lead to greater won­der about the mys­te­ri­ous­ness of life; we may real­ize just how lit­tle we can ever know.

The key aspects of non-conceptual aware­ness, or mind­ful­ness, are:

• Pres­ence: Our atten­tion is dis­tinctly focused on the present moment. This means we are not con­fined in habit­ual thought pat­terns, review­ing past events, or pro­ject­ing future events. The under­ly­ing assump­tion is the thought can be addic­tive, habit­ual, lim­it­ing, con­fin­ing, and painful. In other words, thought can lit­er­ally become suf­fer­ing; we can become the vic­tims of our own chaotic and out of con­trol thought pat­terns. Pres­ence means we become observers and wit­nesses of our own experience.
• Per­cep­tual Vital­ity: Our expe­ri­ence of the present moment is, as much as pos­si­ble, not lim­ited to our habit­ual ideas, mem­o­ries, labels, and intel­lec­tual knowl­edge. Allow­ing the absence of thought to occur opens up the pos­si­bil­ity of dis­cov­ery. In this state bore­dom is an impos­si­bil­ity, even if the gen­eral char­ac­ter­is­tics of our overt expe­ri­ences are sim­i­lar. Our inter­nal ori­en­ta­tion to our expe­ri­ences have fun­da­men­tally changed cre­at­ing a sense of new­ness and imme­di­acy in our inter­pre­ta­tion of experience.
• Inti­macy With The Mys­tery: All wis­dom orig­i­nates in mys­tery. Infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge do not lead to wis­dom; per­cep­tual clar­ity fos­ters the pos­si­bil­ity of wis­dom. The escape from con­cep­tual addic­tions leads the the pos­si­bil­ity of wis­dom and, in turn, wis­dom leads to a deep sense of equa­nim­ity in the face of the mys­tery that is life and death.

One of the most impor­tant ben­e­fits of non-conceptual aware­ness, or mind­ful­ness, is the real­iza­tion of how lim­ited and often shal­low our assump­tions, ideas, thoughts, and knowl­edge about the world around us really is. The real­iza­tion of lim­i­ta­tions is an immensely pow­er­ful trans­for­ma­tional qual­ity. The ini­tial sense of dis­ap­point­ment and defla­tion of ego are cru­cial events in escap­ing the con­fines of mind­less­ness. Humil­ity fos­ters grat­i­tude; not know­ing inspires the imag­i­na­tion and rean­i­mates the world. We cre­ate a new sense of vital­ity in our expe­ri­ence of the world, as if we are see­ing things for the first time.

Is it really pos­si­ble to per­ceive our own expe­ri­ence in the com­plete absence of con­cepts? I have had peri­ods of time when it seemed as if there was a com­plete absence of thought and time. Most of the time, how­ever, it seems I spend a great deal of time watch­ing the nature of my own pre­con­cep­tions and how they shape and often limit my appre­hen­sion of expe­ri­ence. This at least ele­vates the aware­ness of my own assump­tions. Lan­guage is the stuff of thought and the basis for con­cept for­ma­tion. A non-conceptual aware­ness there­fore implies a state in which lan­guage is absent in thought, that is, a state in which we are not thinking.

At the very least mind­ful­ness and the quest toward non-conceptual aware­ness is immensely prac­ti­cal. On the sur­face, it is sim­ply a way to turn inward in order to explore the inte­rior world of the mind, body and spirit. Relax­ation is a pre­req­ui­site for mind­ful­ness; stress and ten­sion are the com­pan­ions of mind­less­ness. Our habit­ual thought pat­terns can be con­struc­tive or destruc­tive. The brain and body have very sim­i­lar reac­tions to an imag­ined expe­ri­ence ver­sus an expe­ri­ence that actu­ally occurs. There­fore, the con­tent of the mind directly influ­ences the qual­ity of our phys­i­cal health. A toxic mind lit­er­ally cre­ates a toxic body.

A non-conceptual aware­ness of the present moment is, at the very least, a use­ful learn­ing strat­egy to relax the mind and give our­selves a break from from the more toxic and vir­u­lent aspects of our own thought pat­terns. The most pow­er­ful form of addic­tion is men­tal, and it is entirely pos­si­ble for our minds to com­pletely work against our own best inter­ests in life.

Thoughts are mer­cu­r­ial phe­nom­e­non, and though human kind tends to revel in its own intel­lec­tual supe­ri­or­ity on the planet, it is clear that human intel­li­gence is quite a bit “dumber” than we would like to admit. Though we may have the largest con­cep­tual reper­toire of any species, we are per­cep­tu­ally infe­rior. Chang­ing our minds is pos­si­ble but it requires sig­nif­i­cant effort, ded­i­ca­tion and rep­e­ti­tion. Pur­su­ing the prac­tice of non-conceptual aware­ness is one tech­nique that can help reduce the suf­fer­ing we inevitably expe­ri­ence in life and free the mind to per­ceive with an open sense of vital­ity. Per­haps this is where that illu­sive ideal known as truth is ulti­mately found.

Spend­ing time engag­ing our own pre­con­cep­tions of the world is at the very least a good and pro­duc­tive thing to do. A non-conceptual sense of aware­ness requires us to sus­pend, inter­rupt, and exam­ine our own lim­i­ta­tions of mind. This, in itself is a wor­thy out­come. If we are able to under­stand how our own pre­con­cep­tions of the world limit our pres­ence in it we place our­selves in a posi­tion to chal­lenge our own per­sonal lim­i­ta­tions and per­haps per­ceive our expe­ri­ence in new and unex­pected ways.