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Navigating the unfolding present tense through questions
My take on mindfulness is that the present is a constant question. We filter our perception of our surroundings through implicit questions. Like a spotlight, a focused beam of light of a certain kind, we direct these questions at whatever enters our awareness from the perceived world.
We see a fellow pedestrian that draws our attention, if only for a few seconds. She is dressed in a certain way, walks with a particular gait. Inevitably, we perceive her through a question, whether we are conscious of it or not: Where is she headed? Where has she come from? What might she do next? And if she doesn’t, why not? What does her home look like? Her friends? What is her role in society?
The questions are endless, and these are only a few very simple ones. We can ask questions to gain a more intricate understanding of what’s happening around us just as we can query our surroundings as mirrors of our own subjectivity: what do I feel when I see this kind of person, and why? Why does this draw my attention more than something else? How does this event fit into my personal way of categorising things?
Above all, questions direct our attention. Just as we might for one reason or another decide to notice every red object that we encounter throughout the day, a question, wielded as a spotlight, frames perception, shaping our interpretations of what surrounds us. Think about how by deciding to give cognitive precedence to all appearances of the colour red would make you pay attention to things that you would not have in your default, routinary state. It would invite unexpected, possibly enlightening guests into your consciousness.
The beauty of being aware of this psychological phenomenon is that we can intentionally choose our questions to break free from the monotony of daily living structured by the cyclical fulfilment of necessary routines. Note that when I say “monotony of daily living”, I mean resigning oneself to the idea that if the sequence of environments that succeed each other as the backdrop of your daily life are fixed -the same city, same buildings, the same unspoken rules playing out like a choreography- then this life setting is intrinsically monotonous.
To cultivate presence through questions is to acknowledge that we navigate the world through only a few chosen filters, even though many more are available. This abundance suggests that a reality as dynamic as our modern world is so richly layered that, if we flung open the doors of our perception, it would overwhelm us entirely.1
When we choose not to perceive with a variety of questions, we risk casting preconceptions onto our fellow pedestrian. And should that preconception not be an attempt at mobilising whatever purely neutral concepts we possess to make sense of the world, then we may find ourselves judging, adding an emotional weight to it.
And here comes my second point about mindfulness, which is underpinned by the principle of non-judgmental perception.
Judgemental thinking
Emotional valence refers to positioning experiences on a spectrum between what feels good and feels bad. It is a phenomenon that is easy recognisable in daily life: we see someone doing something and we disapprove of it. We are perceiving, conceptualising that action and the person carrying it out through this negative judgement, which clouds other interpretations, hindering a more detailed awareness of what is happening.
This emotional charge is contained in words themselves. When calling something “annoying”, “pretentious”, or other qualifiers of valence (positive or negative value), we are engaging in judgement.
I suspect that emotional charge in words and expressions leads to some predefined paths of assumptions. They are paths that more or less apply very similarly to anything to which the emotionally charged word is assigned. These paths involve aspects of the thing to pay attention to, implications and consequences of their staying in their bad ways, assigning responsibility for other bad things, and so on. These paths become vividly illuminated and signposted, while the rest of possible assumptions or observations are left shrouded in darkness and mist.
Judgemental is also thinking that something should or should not be a certain way, and letting that inform our attitude towards it: “I should be doing this, they should not be doing this, this should not happen this way, this should not look like this, it should look like that”. Prescriptions are made, almost like instruction manuals on how to perceive something. And again, some paths are illuminated and others obscured.
Common language and common action are greatly impoverished when judgemental language eats up the rest, as it not only circulates in people’s minds through communication, but it informs our perception of things as we cling to words to interpret through our inner monologues. If we cannot find the proper word, the inadequate word that we have at reach will greatly influence the tone of our thought.
The greater consequence of the impoverishment of common language lies in how using qualifying words on things in the world is like proposing an instruction manual on how to think that thing and what to do about that thing. As I said above, the predefined paths or instruction manuals that judgemental words offer are usually much more repetitive across different cases than more descriptive language. They primarily rely on a derivative of the basic actions of rejection or attraction, of determining something as deserving of energy or undeserving of it. In essence, these prescriptions are much less about curious and open understanding than about assuming a possession of enough knowledge and driving us straight into actions of cultivation or cancellation.
Non-judgemental perception
The principle of non-judgemental perception begins with meditation, where we watch our passing thoughts as they are, without identifying ourselves with the emotion they might carry. Ideally, we simply view them, first and foremost, as thoughts. When we extend this to perceiving daily occurrences in our life in society, we observe what others are doing descriptively, so to speak. We are not necessarily driven by sheer curiosity, but we assimilate the situation without hauling along our thoughts all of the a priori assumptions and prescriptions that judgemental perception brings.
Non-judgemental perception is likely a more reliably healthy way to view society, as it promotes a more balanced emotional state. Treating the present moment as an ongoing question allows us to explore this non-judgmental perception and frees us from the habitual mental shortcuts we often rely on when interpreting social behaviour.
Nonetheless, judgemental thought – that is, thought marked with emotional valence, assigning positive or negative value and all its implications – does not need to be written off as an inferior, less rational way to navigate the social world. It is a fundamental part of our moral makeup. By weighing the positive and negative aspects of events around us, we decide on an elemental level what to avoid, ignore, reject, condemn, protest, and so on, and, equally, what to praise, perpetuate, celebrate, protect, support, and so on. That is, we decide on what deserves to receive energy and attention from the world, and what we think should have less of them.
When we consider what judgemental thought actually is for, the role it plays in influencing the decisions we make and the attitudes we form and radiate towards others, we gain the ability to invoke it with more agency. We become conscious of using it as one way of perceiving, and we remain vigilant for when it inadvertently slips into our default state, leading us to mistake it for ‘thinking’ as a whole. The same holds for non-judgmental thinking, which sharpens our perception of subtle, unexpected details, the fine-lines, and our ability to develop empathetic attitudes and a richer mental impression of the world. This said, its role remains mostly descriptive.
However, perhaps “non-judgemental” or “descriptive” is slightly misleading. There is always a source of motion: an emotion, something that propels the psychological, the bodily, the spirit, you name it, forward into movement. In this case it is an emotion that precedes judgement. It is curiosity, a certain opening of the valves of the senses, a welcoming of impressions and the associations they evoke, and fosters an appreciation that yet remains distanced enough from moral investment to not quite be neither positive nor negative.
With a clear sense of each mode’s usefulness, we gain the ability to select the one that best serves the moment. It is a delicate dance between the two: one cannot flourish without the other, and as the tune shifts in mood and melody, they trade places between leading and following. I believe that bringing to surface, being aware, and exercising more agency in choosing the questions that we formulate as we navigate the present moment is a way to set the right mood for the tune.
- As Aldous Huxley famously put it in his 1954 book The Doors of Perception. ↩︎
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