Mindfulness meditation
deconditioning and changing view
pp. 195-206
in: Harald Walach, Stefan Schmidt, Wayne B. Jonas (eds), Neuroscience, consciousness and spirituality, Berlin, Springer, 2011Abstract
Mindfulness interventions and meditation form a mental training towards deconditioning. This paper outlines the mental development during long term mindfulness meditation (vipassanā). It is intended to give researchers in the neurosciences and practitioners of mindfulness based interventions an idea of the phenomenological side of this form of meditation. Mindfulness acts as a separator between the perceived actor in us and the things we cognize and act upon. This makes us more flexible. At the same time our view of self will change: no longer is our "agency" seen as a fixed "thing" or "being" that acts in the world, but as a process of sensory input, appraisal, thinking, acting, depending on various mental states.