"Without awareness of anger or of self-absorption, or ennui, or any other mind state that can take us over when it arises, we reinforce those synaptic networks within the nervous system that underlie our conditioned behaviors and mindless habits, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle
ourselves, if we are even aware of what is happening at all.
(...)
But, and this is a huge "but," there is simultaneously a potential opening available here as well, a chance not to fall into the contraction -- or to recover more quickly from it -- if we can bring awareness to it.
(...)
Every time we are able to know a desire as desire, anger as anger, a habit as habit, an opinion as an opinion, a thought as a thought, a mind-spasm as a mind-spasm, or an intense sensation in the body as an intense sensation, we are correspondingly liberated. Nothing else has to happen. We don't even have to give up the desire or whatever it is. To see it and know it as desire, as whatever it is, is enough. In any given moment, we are either practicing mindfulness or, de facto, we are practicing mindlessness. When framed this way, we might want to take more responsibility for how we meet the world, inwardly and outwardly in any and every moment -- especially given that there just aren't any "in-between moments"
in our lives."
from Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn
