Mindfulness is the Opposite of Neediness

And your phone battery lasts longer, because not many moments make you want to turn away from them and look at a tiny screen instead.

The side-effects of this kind of basic respect appear in unexpected places, and depend on your own personal quirks and hangups. Work ethic improves because you’re willing to work through tough spots and ugly dilemmas. Social interactions improve because you’re willing to accept that you may be judged or misunderstood.

Think of it as developing a certain respect for the character of the present moment just as it is, the same way we learn to respect a person despite their faults and imperfections. Essentially, your whole life is a progression of such meetings: a moment will present itself, warts and all, and you can either respect and welcome it as the imperfect t... See more

This is not something we do automatically. We’re highly reactive creatures, still calibrated for the savannah. We can experience a fight-or-flight adrenaline reaction over a dot of mustard on a shirt cuff. Non-reactivity and non-neediness have to be practiced, and there’s no safer and easier a time to do that than when you’re sitting on a cushion i... See more

This fearing and hoping we attach to many experiences is a kind of visceral neediness—a demand for the present moment to be easier, safer, or more comforting than it actually is. Developing mindfulness means practicing a kind of unconditional courage. You are always willing to experience reality exactly as it is when it arrives.

The basic idea is to gently observe some part of this sea of experience, usually the breath at first, and whenever you notice the mind has wandered, you return it back to the present. The most important part is of this attention-paying is to do it mindfully—that is, to simply notice what it is currently like, suspending any intention to change it. ... See more

Mindfulness is a basic respect for the present moment

I’ve known for a long time that life gets easier the more frequently I sit and meditate, but this time the principle behind it is very clear: mindfulness is the opposite of neediness.

When I’m meditating consistently, I simply have fewer impulses to entertain and comfort myself, because ordinary moments feel more than good enough, most of the time. The smart phone is good barometer of this impulse, because it’s used as an instrument of escape much of the time—escape from boredom, escape from making the next decision, escape from... See more