What is Mindfulness
Mindfulness is simply awareness of what is here now. Being aware of what you see, hear, of the feeling of sitting or standing, of the wind on your body if you are outside, of how warm it is, of comfort or discomfort… and your thoughts and feelings.
Mindfulness is non-judgemental, unconditional awareness.
The state of mindfulness is not concentrating on one object, it is allowing into awareness everything in my vision equally. Allowing all sounds equally. All physical sensations equally. All thoughts equally. All emotions equally.
Being more mindful means being more aware. Can I increase awareness? Yes I can. I can let go of ‘looking at’ and begin to see. I can let go of ‘hearing’ and begin to listen. I can let go of ‘separating’ and begin to include. In fact I can let go into awareness itself.
What it feels like
When one is really ‘in’ it, mindfulness is floating in an extraordinary 3D spaciousness of colour, sound, movement and sensation that feels perfectly right, as is. I let go of ‘me’ as separate, and am immersed and intimately connected with the space around me, and everything in that space. I somehow experience it all as ‘me’. Perfect as is.
When I am immersed in spacious awareness my experience is rich, spacious, poignant, full of moment-by-moment meaning, vibrant, shimmering, alive.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Sounds enticing? Maybe even quite wonderful?
And from just about everything you have read in books and on the web, it doesn’t take much to learn and get into, maybe just an 8 week course….
But it isn’t quite as simple as that….. There is another issue…… A rather large not-so-simple issue…….
That isn’t talked about so much….
The Issue
The issue is Me.
When I become more aware of what’s there, that includes me.
When I become more aware, bits of me that I wasn’t very aware of before come into awareness. And these “bits” may not be 
very pleasant. In fact they may feel rather awful.
These bits have been given a name… my subconscious. And the more aware/mindful I get, the more my subconscious will heave into view. And then I begin to realise that it is rather large. And frightening.
So mindfulness can begin feeling like a struggle. A fight to be more mindful. No matter hard I try, the thoughts don’t seem to stop.. and maybe I’m not feeling better in my life at all, maybe in fact I’m feeling worse, if truth be told…
What can we do with the subconscious?
What to do if I find myself battling with myself… beginning to feel like I am falling apart?
We begin to look at what to do in this battle to awaken here