Meta-Cognitive Awareness

We learned how to think when we were children, and most of the time we still think that way. Some schools of thought distinguish between the primitive mentality of childhood and more advanced cognitive strategies. Problems with anger, anxiety, depression, as well as addictive disorders such as substance use, overeating, and the compulsive use of sex, games, or money can be ameliorated by dissociating from experience.

An important developmental milestone is the appreciation that subjective experience, including cravings, negative thoughts, and anxious feelings is merely a temporary, state-dependent phenomena, which exists only in one's mind. The objective world is populated with events. It is only in our subjective experience that beliefs, emotional reactions, and the story that gives it meaning exist. The technical name for this realization is: Meta-Cognitive Awareness.

It is often easier to see the solution to another person's problems than to your own, because subjective reality is biased by our local fears and desires. It is easier to appreciate the big picture and put things in a realistic perspective when we are detached from temporary emotional states. Meta-cognitive awareness involves dissociating from local experience so you can observe it dispassionately. Becoming aware that your current beliefs and emotional reactions are merely your experiences at the moment - not necessarily an accurate representation of objective truth - can free you, at least for a time, from the Soul Illusion!

Mindfulness Promotes Meta-Cognitive Awareness

Thought Experiment: Mindfulness Meditation ─ Focus your attention on the sensation of the air as it passes in and out of your nostrils with each breath. Each time a thought or feeling arises, notice it, but don't analyze it or judge it, and return your attention to the breathing. Don’t approach this exercise with the expectation that anything special will happen (that is the very trap we seek to escape through this exercise). As you follow your breath you will notice that all sorts of thoughts, images and sensations arise in your consciousness, to which you will react. Your task is to intentionally suspend the impulse to characterize or evaluate what you are experiencing and instead to experience the here and now directly without filtering it in any way.

Awareness of the continual shifting of your emotional state from moment to moment and from situation to situation gives you the opportunity to develop the skill to disengage from bad trances and intentionally change your perspective. Developing Meta-Cognitive Awareness takes effort because it requires that you pay attention, rather than gradually fall. . .

Asleep at the Wheel

Consider a time when you were driving your vehicle along a familiar route, and you were so absorbed in your thoughts that you didn't notice passing a certain landmark along the way, the music from the vehicle's sound system, or the feel of the steering wheel in your hands. And even though your conscious mind was so completely preoccupied that it didn't notice all these things, a part of you was driving the vehicle, and operating it perfectly safely.

Since your conscious mind was preoccupied with its thoughts, who was operating the vehicle? It must have been a part of you of which you are not conscious. The unconscious experiential processing system is capable of guiding complex performance while making little demand on your finite conscious resources. Indeed, most of the time you are not consciously operating the bio-psycho-social vehicle you inhabit because your attention is focused elsewhere or not at all.

By contrast, "mindful" driving means being fully present in each moment, consciously aware of sights, sounds, thoughts, and bodily sensations as they arise. In other words, it mens being awake so you can respond intentionally rather than follow the path of least resistance. When mindful, you can behave in harmony with your interests and principles despite the influence of local stressors and temptations that would promote relapse.

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After his enlightenment Prince Gautama, the man who would become the Buddha, was asked if he were God. 
“No,” the prince replied. 
“Well then, who are you?”
The Buddha replied: “I am awake.”
[The word “Buddha” means, literally: To be awake.]