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Is mindfulness practice, which involves cultivating a bright and wakeful mind, relevant to getting a good night’s sleep – a state which, by contrast, requires no awareness?
Thinking is a primitive form of action which, like any kind of action, has consequences. Occasional thoughts can repeat to become habitual. Habitual thoughts shape mental traits and, in so doing, subtly shape character. This happens quietly, gradually, moment by moment, day by day, via the innumerable judgements of the ever-active, thinking mind.
Mindfulness has a certain modesty about it. People who practise diligently develop a taste for that. They find themselves appreciating the company of other modest beings. There is no ‘big talk’ about one’s practice. Such behaviours are a hallmark of equanimity, a key ally to mindfulness. If reports of meditatively expanded egos and statistically significant self-enhancement scores amongst meditators are true then they indicate that there are varieties of ‘junk mindfulness’ – conceptually slack, functionally pointless, ethically sterile – operating at large.
Many people who learn mindfulness on courses such as MBCT and MBSR derive sufficient benefits to continue practising long after their basic training. Some go more deeply into phenomenological enquiry through meditation. Some channel mindfulness into creative and compassionate engagement with the world. Some do both. But others do neither, instead getting stuck in cul-de-sacs of aloof passivity and self-absorption.
The story of Headspace is analogous to the story of secular mindfulness. Both sprouted in the Nineties, budded in the Noughties and blossomed in the Tens. Both took their cue from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn et al. and Buddhist source materials. Both achieved a rapid advance in popularity. Both have not always dealt gracefully with their fame and, at times, have suffered from a kind of identity crisis.
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February 2025
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