Welcome to your Mind.
We all experience an endless variety of mental states. Some feel pleasant: joy, calm, clarity, or kindness. Others are unpleasant: anger, fear, jealousy, or distress. Certain states are deeply wholesome and support both our own well-being and how we treat others. These include generosity, compassion, and insight. Many others are unwholesome, such as greed, aversion, and delusion, and they tend to cause harm to ourselves and those around us.
The Illusion of Direct Control
Here is a simple question: Do you actually control which mental states arise?
When anger flares up after someone cuts you off in traffic or speaks harshly, do you choose the emergence of that anger? When fear tightens your chest in a moment of uncertainty, do you decide to feel afraid? No. These states appear suddenly, triggered by conditions outside your immediate command, including fatigue, an old memory, a perceived threat, or ingrained habit.
Consider your favorite band in the same way. If I ask you to name one right now, a specific band likely pops into mind, perhaps after a quick scan of a few others. Why that one? Because it is your favorite, of course. But dig deeper: Did you consciously decide one day to make it your favorite? Did you sit down and declare, “From this moment on, this band will be the one I love most”? No. The preference grew slowly through repeated listening, concerts, emotional connections, and shared experiences with friends. These were conditions you did not fully orchestrate.
Mental states, like preferences, arise dependently. They happen to us.
Are We Powerless?
This realization does not mean we are powerless. While we cannot command a mental state to appear or disappear in the exact moment it arises, we can shape the conditions that make certain states more or less likely.
We do this by cultivating supportive habits, relationships, environments, and practices. Over time, wholesome states such as kindness, calm, and clarity become more frequent visitors. Unwholesome ones such as anger, craving, and confusion arise less often and with less intensity.
Life remains unpredictable, however. No amount of preparation will prevent a flash of irritation when you stub your toe in the dark. The initial reaction will still come.
The wise person, in other words, does not seek to choose joy, choose gratitude, or choose contentment. Rather, they spend the time cultivating the conditions in which gratitude, contentment, or joy are more probable to arise.
What, then, is the Path Toward Cultivating the Conditions?
The Foundation of Awareness
The foundation for any real influence over our mental life is awareness. Without awareness, we remain caught in whatever state arises. We react automatically, strengthen old patterns, and plant seeds for similar states in the future. Yet, the moment awareness arrives (“Ah, anger is here” or “A sense of calm is present”), something shifts. A small gap opens between the state and our response. That gap is where initial influence is found.
Attention: The One Lever We Can Move
Within that gap, then, lies something you truly can direct, at least to a meaningful degree: our attention.
Consider the following: You probably were not experiencing your big toe a moment ago. Now place your attention there, perhaps by wiggling it slightly, and sensation immediately appears. The feeling of the big toe emerges into your mind. Nothing about the toe itself changed. Only the placement of attention did.
Meaning, by directing your attention to felt sensation, you break out of whatever mental state you were in. It moves to the background, and the feeling of the big toe becomes salient.
A way to put this together is to think of your mind like a radio: The antenna is awareness, it receives all the signals, and your attention is your radio dial, which you tune to the particular signal you desire to foreground and experience.
So, at any given moment, there are nearly an infinite amount of signals. There is the sensation of breath, the feeling of your shoulders, the emotional state you are in, and the story or drama playing out in thought. These are all happening simultaneously.
Now, what mental state takes priority in the mind? The one where your attention is placed. Wherever your attention is located will be the primary content you experience. Yes, there is a country music station playing, a rock station playing, and a talk radio station playing. Where you tune the dial is what you will experience.
Certainly, in old analog radios, you can tune the dial right in between signals where you seem to be hearing a bit of both. But if you position the dial to the exact station, it will come through.
When you become aware that you have the dial, your attention, everything can start to shift. You now are in contact with the mechanism that does not decide which mental states are playing, but rather which ones will take priority.
The incredible thing is that when you tune your attention, the radio dial or your mind, to your breath, for example, while you are sad, it does not eliminate the sadness. Rather, it allows the sadness to run in the back, move through its process, which it needs to do, all the while you are not identified with it. So, this is not about the suppression of unwanted stations or pretending they are silent. We simply stop lingering on them. Over time, they recede into the background. Meanwhile, when a wholesome station appears, even faintly, we can tune in fully and give it sustained attention. Those stations grow clearer and stronger, becoming easier to find again.
This skillful direction of attention is the heart of mindfulness.
So, What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is not the same as thoughtfulness or consideration. It is not a belief you adopt or a feeling you chase. Mindfulness is the simple capacity to know what is happening while it is happening, to recognize that a radio station is playing, without being absorbed into it.
I will always remember my first encounter with mindfulness. I was six years old. My father took me to see Ernest Scared Stupid. I was completely absorbed, terrified, and frozen in my seat. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the glowing exit sign. In that instant, I realized: I am sitting in a theater. This is only a movie. The troll on screen cannot reach me. That small recognition changed everything.
That recognition is mindfulness.
Cultivating Mindfulness
The primary way we strengthen this awareness and refine our attention is through meditation.
Different practices serve different purposes:
Samatha meditation stabilizes and strengthens attention.
Vipassana meditation deepens clear seeing into the nature of experience.
Metta meditation cultivates kindness and a charitable interpretation of events.
Embodiment practices keep us grounded in the body and present in the moment, such as yoga.
Meditation is the training ground. Mindfulness is the capacity that develops there and carries into daily life.
An Invitation to Practice
Understanding the nature of mental states can feel both liberating and sobering. We are not the authors of every feeling or thought that passes through us, yet we are not helpless either. Through steady awareness and wise attention, we gradually tilt the balance toward greater ease, kindness, and clarity.
This, fundamentally, is a primary skill that we teach at Lynden Yoga Collective. Whether it is in yoga or pilates classes, meditation sits, or yoga therapy, come join us and learn how to use your mind.
