Why Mindfulness? Hijacking the Mind's Default Mode and Instead Living Alive

Ontological Mode of Being is all about being. Being, itself is not a philosophy but a practice. You simply can't experience it through words. Accordingly, in order to fully step into ontological being in my daily life, as opposed to Everyday Mode of Being, I need to cultivate it routinely by practicing. Mindfulness Meditation is a viable means (in addition to frequent informal practice in what ever I am doing in my daily life).

In a seminal research study called "Self-referential Modes of Knowing," Norman Farb asked participants to lay down in an MRI brain scanner and instructed them to "do nothing." He found out that we don't just do nothing. Not even a chance! The majority of participants started to think and narrate.  The mind just ceaselessly generates thought after thought, problem-solving, day-dreaming, planning, worrying, fantasizing, obsessing etc. When our minds are in this "default mode," we can say that we are in Everyday Mode of Being.  The region of the midline cerebral cortex called the "narrative network" lights up. It turns of that this "default mode," this autopilot of endless chatter, interpretation, judgment, analysis and second-guessing consumes copious energy! According to the publication, this is the same type of thinking that keeps people up at night, such as "I hope I will have time to go to the store tomorrow," or "why didn't professor smith give us clear direction on the homework," or "I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow." Dr. Farb calls this our "story of me," which when examined, tends to be obsessed with fault-finding, exceptionally skilled at complaining, self-centered, obsessed with the future and past, focused more on negatives than positives, excessively repetitive, boring, negative and often just plain wrong! We often, by default, talk to ourselves (or should I say berate ourselves) in ways we would never talk to others. By contrast, when participants trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, in other words, versed in Ontological Mode of Being, are told to lay down and do nothing, a lateral network and the insula light up, called the experiential network, which rarely gets airtime, unless we are trained in it. They don't report much of the default story-telling, and instead physical sensory unfolding of the present moment, now, which is closely associated with Ontological Mode of Being. Simply put, it is merely being, not obsessive, aimless, self-deprecating, future and past oriented thinking.

I've struggled with my own default narrative network, and it is what often keeps me up, when need to be sleeping. With my loved ones, I have been snappy or reactive. Practicing mindfulness meditation entails noticing my impulse toward anger for a time without acting on it, launching me into Ontological Mode of Being.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the man largely responsible for bringing mindfulness meditation into medicine and to the west, encourages us to recognize that "it's anger-ing" instead of saying "I'm angry." This way it doesn't have to be personal, as it usually comes from years of habits, conditioning that don't necessarily have to do with me. I'll know when I'm in Ontological Mode of Being if I pause to notice anger surfacing, instead of blindly reacting to it. I also tend to rush when I eat, so when I'm more in Ontological Mode of Being, I will slow down, taste the food and enjoy each bite, embracing that eating is a privilege, that sadly many people die everyday from starvation. Similarly, in Ontological Mode of Being, I will be feeling my teeth when I brush, instead of thinking about what I will do the next day as I brush. In my morning shower, I will be feeling the warm water instead of bringing my homework, readings, assistantship and social activities into the bathroom with me. This begins to generalize to all the actions of my daily life, like tuning into my step when I walk, and feeling the air when I breathe.

This alive, present moment awareness is Ontological Mode of Being. Want to practice? Try this 12 minute introduction to mindfulness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKTxp193MC8