Vajra Blue

Mindfulness and Compassion. Understanding trauma in young people.

Tag Archives: cognition


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Conscious attention: looking after our inner world.

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If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future. ― Eckhart Tolle

Our brains have a very narrow bandwidth for the conscious processing of information.  This means that we spend a lot of time letting autopilot run our lives, based on how the unconscious mind processes incoming information.  The unconscious processes information rapidly while the conscious mind is much slower.  This has important consequences for our survival but can create difficulties in the modern world.

The unconscious mind is not able to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined.  The same pathways in the brain can be triggered by either of them.  This means that we may respond to our internal thought processes or our current emotional tone, as if they were a response to real events in the outside world. Continue reading →


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Mindfulness: why living ain’t easy!

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What prevents us from doing things?

Especially the things that we would like to do, and know are in our best interests?

What causes us to fall short?

In traditional Buddhist writings the causes are called Hindrances.

Unlike the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they are five in number, and we all have our favourites.

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Mindfulness: where does the research stand?

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aglet, aiglet
ag·let  (ăg′lĭt)
n.

1. A tag or sheath, as of plastic, on the end of a lace, cord, or ribbon to facilitate its passing through eyelet holes.
2. A similar device used for an ornament.
[Middle English, from Old French aguillette, diminutive of aguille,needle, from Vulgar Latin *acūcula, from Late Latin acucula, diminutive of Latin acus, needle; see ak- in Indo-European roots.]

Mindfulness and meditation have been around for thousands of years.  It is only relatively recently that they have started to appear on the radar as potential treatments for physical and mental health difficulties.

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Thinking: the fault lies in our logic – not in our stars

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Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.

Alan Alda

Thinking is a three-step process.
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