The Limitation of Mindfulness To Create True Transformation

And the Missing Piece to True Transformation

Awareness!

Without consciously cultivating it we live a life largely on auto-pilot, oblivious to our behaviors and actions, and fail to recognize our own suffering and all the ways we contribute to it. We unknowingly remain addicted to the same habitual emotional states, and attached to the stories from our past, filtering everything through the lens of our ego. In the wake of all life’s turbulent storms, awareness becomes our salvation, offering us a path to awakening, healing, and detaching ourselves from the grip of the small self.

This is what the gift of mindfulness practice offers us.

Through classic mindfulness practice, we become aware of our unpleasant state, investigate the emotions, how they feel in our bodies, and where and when they originate. In the process, we uncover our limiting beliefs, confront our deepest fears, and shine a loving light on past traumas. It’s an ongoing journey where in each step, we layer on acceptance, muster compassion for ourselves and others, and ultimately find refuge and peace within ourselves.

Mindfulness is how we walk ourselves back home.

This is the first step to awakening and eradicating our suffering. But, it doesn’t end there. Here’s what often goes overlooked and not talked about nearly enough:

After we come back home to ourselves through mindful awareness, we have to take the next step and consciously take control in redefining who we want to become and the life we desire to have. We have to wire in a new way of being.

While mindfulness is the all-important first step, the best way to remove any undesired habit or behavior is to replace it with a new one. The best way to stop being a certain way is to start embodying a new state of being. We must empower ourselves to consciously create our reality.

So, yes, we need to do the deep work of shedding the loving light of awareness on who we are now in this moment, but we also need to take charge of our lives and create who we want to be in the future.

There’s More Work To Be Done

Let’s use me as an example. I grew up in a dysfunctional household where my parents always fought and rarely showed kindness to each other. This led to issues with anger, shame, and social anxiety. I spent much of my younger years uncomfortable and scared of social gatherings, avoiding them as much as possible, and worried that others would put me down or reject me.

For a long time, I assumed this angry, ashamed, and anti-social self was who I was.

However, through mindfulness practice, I was able to investigate this pattern and get to the root of these emotions and limiting behaviors. I was able to see that anger, shame, and social anxiety didn’t define who I was. Instead, they were the qualities modeled to me that my subconscious mind memorized as a way of being. It also helped me realize that many of my habitual behaviors and choices were ways to compensate for these deep-seated feelings. These behaviors would show up as dating one woman after the next without committing for too long, trying to achieve my way to self-worth, and quickly breaking away from people as soon as any sign of conflict would show up in the relationship.

But this alone didn’t create true change in my life.

The next steps were up to me: to make new choices and show my subconscious mind a new way of being beyond my limitations. I had to be willing to finish the job, so to speak. I needed to take on a whole new set of psychospiritual work beyond just cultivating mindful awareness — which involved rewiring my past conditioning into a new future default state of joy, confidence, and authenticity.

Essentially, I had to teach my neurophysiology something new.

The Limitation of Solely Focusing on Mindfulness

The problem with stopping at mindfulness without taking conscious action is that we can inadvertently bind ourselves to past stories. We can spend so much time analyzing and reanalyzing the roots of our limitations and suffering that they become the new story we tell ourselves about why we can’t create the change we want in our lives. For example: “My parents were dysfunctional and angry all the time, so I’m conditioned to lose my temper and snap at my girlfriend when we disagree.”

These narratives can keep us as victims, attributing the current state of our lives to our past experiences and perpetually repeating the same old behaviors that keep us stuck. Instead, you have to learn to shift your identity.

From Investigation to Conscious Creation

Let’s break this down in practical terms.

If we feel stuck in the basement of life, we first need to recognize and acknowledge that we are indeed in the basement. Then, we need to allow ourselves to fully be there. We need to experience what it’s like to be in the basement. This is not something we do purely cognitively. We have to experience it viscerally, in a way that can’t be described by words.

Once we accept our experience as it is, we can start investigating. We can go within and ask basic questions like:

Why am I here?
What do I most need right now?
What is this experience trying to teach me?
Where would I like to go?

If you do this type of inquiry often and sincerely, you’ll find more space opens up in the basement. You start to understand yourself more deeply and accept where you are and what has happened to lead you here. You become clear on what you want and who you want to be, and you begin to nurture what you discover.

The love begins to flow, and you shine it brightly on these insights and desires.

You feel grateful for them and eventually, you start to love the basement and what it has brought you: awareness, clarity, and now empowerment — and when combined, these are a potent spiritual force. Now, you are ready to crawl out of the basement, into the light, and use your energy to create the path ahead. Going inward and shining this light of awareness starts to feel more natural, and your spiritual practice deepens.

You begin to go from classic mindfulness meditation to dynamic meditation.

Meaning, not only do you continue to strengthen your awareness, but now stillness becomes your inner creative playground; a sanctuary to birth insights, uncover answers to life’s challenges, and explore the depths of the very life force within you. This gives you the courage and inspiration to move forward in this physical dimension with greater purpose and meaning behind your choices and with peace, joy, and love in your heart.

I beg you, don’t stop at awareness.

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