Active Mindfulnes

What is active mindfulness?

Active mindfulness using Cognitive Principle Matrix mindfulness occurs when you are concentrating on nothing, but are doing something. Active mindfulness is a way of achieving goals using optimum flow.
Active mindfulness is based on the two-component model of mindfulness, but then changing the definition of the second component.
Bishop, Lau, et al. (2004) proposed a two-component model of mindfulness:
The first component involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment.

The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance. [refer wikipedia] In the Cognitive Principle Matrix the second component is changed to:
The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s goals in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by unconditional acceptance and unconditional giving to achieve the goal.

How to create active mindfulness

Create active mindfulness using the 5 levels of active mindfulness. These levels are based on an adaptation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
To be mindful of one’s goal without consciously thinking about it is to understand and rise above the first 4 levels.
At the basic level we have needs and wants. This is built into our human nature and drives our comparative thinking. When we achieve our wants and needs, we want more. However, if we consistently fail to get our needs and wants met then we develop negative comparative thinking.
To control our human nature we have a conscience which controls how we get our needs and wants met. Out of our conscience grows our principles of trust, respect, acceptance, etc. Therefore, at the basic level of human behavior there are two opposing forces at work in negative situations, namely, comparative thinking and principle thinking.
In the cognitive principle matrix the two highest principles are unconditional acceptance and unconditional giving, which are the direct opposites of comparative thinking related to achieving goals.

Goals are based on a comparison between “where I am” and “where I want to be”. Goals are driven by fear of a bad goal and greed for a good goal. Unconditional acceptance is self acceptance of strengths and weaknesses and there is no goal. Unconditional giving is where you give without wanting anything back and there is no goal.
The CPM rule is that when negative comparative thinking rises, then principles fall.
For example,
* If a person thinks in a jealous way about a situation, then the principle of trust falls.
• If a person is abusive towards another person, they get angry and their respect for that person falls.
Therefore, by giving into negative thinking you weaken yourself.
Spiritual principles are available to us to overcome our human nature weakness.
Before we delve into spiritual principles to understand active mindfulness you need to ask yourself these questions, so you can rise above the first 4 levels.

What level of control am I facing?

If you are under the influence of the first four types of control then you will struggle to do active mindfulness.
(i). External control by others.
Allowing others to control you without resistance.
Example: Being a victim. I have no control over this.
Reason: Lack of self worth, self-control and feelings of fear.
(ii) Manipulative control.
Controlling others to get your own needs met, without considering the needs of others.
Example: Lying to others to keep them destablise.
Reason: Fear of loosing control and being exposed as a fraud or grossly inadequate.
(iii). Habitual control by negative feelings.
Use of defense mechanisms to offset weakened principles.
Example: Bad habits. Wanting to stop those but can’t.
Reason: Past life experiences have weakened principles, such as trust, respect or acceptance, which prevent self-control by the conscious mind. Repeated negative comparative thinking has generated defense mechanisms such as avoidance.

(iv) Habitual control to gain positive feelings.
Going outside oneself to gain positive principles.
Example: People pleasing. Trying to earn acceptance by pleasing others.
Reason: Person lacks the particular principle within themselves and their sub-conscious mind forces the person to go outside themselves to find it.
You will need the 5th type of control, that is Assertive Control.
Using control to get a positive outcome.
Example: Speaking out in favor of something you believe in.
Enforcing rules, boundaries and consequences to ensure that behavior is adhered to.
Reason: The person believes in fairness, consistency, justice and is committed to their truth and is prepared to act on it.

Do I waste my time thinking “if only” or “what if”.

The past is only used to gain knowledge, not to repeatedly go over negative situations, otherwise you become a “If Only” person. Your sub-conscious brain works in emotional order, not in time order, therefore if you repeatedly go over negative situations with negative emotions, then the sub-conscious brain will keep trying to fix the problem.

The future is only for planning. Plans can be as simple as a future idea in your head. If you don’t have a plan then you a re like a cork in the ocean, it goes with the wind and the tide and you could end up anywhere. However, once you have a plan you don’t become a “what if” person continually going over all the possible negative outcomes in the future. This causes the sub-conscious to overload and you becomes anxious.

Other than going to the past for knowledge and the future for planning, then stay in the present and use influence not concern. Influence means that I can do something about it and concern means I can’t.
In the present, use your influence to focus on “Nothing”

How deep is your awareness of “Nothing”?

There are 5 levels of awareness and you need to be able to get to level 5 to achieve active mindfulness.
Level 1 - Aware of your behavior and that you have made a comparative choice based on fear or greed.
Level 2- Aware of your behavior and the principles, such as trust, respect, etc either supporting or not supporting the behavior
Level 3- Aware and can control the behavior using the supportive principles behind the behavior
Level 4- Aware of your spiritual principles such as love, hope, suffering, peace, unconditional acceptance, unconditional giving.
Level 5- Aware and can use the spiritual principles of unconditional giving to overcome greed in behavior and unconditional acceptance to overcome fear.

Once you can reach level 5 you use unconditional giving to create positive energy, but not do anything with it. Also, you can use unconditional acceptance to overcome negative energy, but not do anything with it. If you combine these two states, then you get nothing, that is, the conscious mind is not thinking about your goal. This frees up the sub-conscious mind to act on your goal.

The next step is to overcome your subconscious mind using your spiritual intelligence.

Do I have any unresolved issues?

Your belief system must be based on Inside first, then Outside.
We have an internal drive to rise above our human nature by controlling fear and greed. It is not a moral decision of what is fear or greed, but how to control that in order to get what we want.
By controlling fear through unconditional acceptance (peace) and controlling greed though unconditional giving (love), then joy is achieved.
LOVE-PEACE-JOY then becomes an inside process not an external goal to be achieved through materialism, relationships, knowledge or religion [focusing on external rules, rituals or your own good works, rather than your belief] Our human nature is based on greed to achieve more goals, it is external.
We also have an internal drive for love. In the Cognitive Principle Matrix the key elements of love are trust, respect, acceptance and commitment. Love is achieved through secure attachment. Insecure attachment arises through lack of trust, respect, acceptance and commitment and will cause unresolved issues. The subconscious mind will continue to work on resolving the unresolved issues by recreating a similar set of circumstances to those which caused the unresolved issue.
If we have a weakened principle of trust, respect, acceptance, commitment etc, and we are tested on those, we can often develop negative emotions of fear, anger, guilt or anxiousness and can’t accept that feeling without going outside ourselves to either avoid or fix the weakened principle.

Do you know how to find intuition?

In Cognitive Principle Matrix [CPM], intuition is a form of knowing. It comes about when an outside trigger or conscious thought focuses on a topic and doesn’t trigger a logical thought or a habit, but goes to intuition to find the answer.
A logical thought is controlled by the conscious mind.
A habit is a thought controlled by the sub-conscious mind and is either negative or positive. A habit is rigid and difficult to change because the subconscious mind stores things in emotional order and the strongest habits are the ones with the higher emotions, which are mostly negative.
A person with limiting or fixed beliefs which have been developed out of negative emotions will most likely be stuck in the same habit or thinking pattern. They won’t have access to free information available through intuition.
The information necessary for understanding is held in implicit memory and is not available to the conscious mind. Thinking about it consciously will only trigger the bad habit in the subconscious mind and prevent the subconscious from revealing the knowledge which causes the emotional response.

Understanding the difference between a Goal and Hope.

If a person continually fails to reach their goal they may get anxiety, which may lead to depression. They will develop negative comparative thinking about their inability to reach the goal, which will be accompanied by strong negative feelings.
By focusing on the goal, the negative emotion will be aroused and the bad habit [thoughts, feelings and images] will be activated and the person will be stuck in the habit and never achieve their goal.
Hope is a spiritual principle. In CPM a spiritual principle means that it is not materialistic and doesn’t involve any form of comparison, either positive or negative, it is neutral in regards to comparisons, but positive in regards to change and growth.
Hope is knowing that the desired outcome will be achieved without knowing the pathway to achieve that outcome. A goal is a conscious target with a pathway to it, where as hope is a target with a subconscious pathway which is not known to the conscious mind. It is the pathway through intuition. In intuition the answer is known.
The key to achieving intuition is to have hope and stop rumination [continually going over a problem] between the conscious and subconscious mind. When rumination has stopped and all your senses are open and you are not using logic or activating habits, then intuition is available to draw on your free thoughts, feelings and images in your subconscious.
Intuition provides the knowledge to achieve the goal, but only to the degree of your knowledge and experience.

Do you have clear Rules, Boundaries and Consequences (RBC), built around principles?

In CPM, RBC are built around principles, rather than goals or behaviors.
The purpose of having very clear rules, boundaries and consequences built around principles is that they can be easily adapted to various situations and goals. They then become habitual and support the finding of intuition which requires no conscious thought. They become the internal guidance system to your goal, Whereas RBC built around behaviors require a combination of logic and habit to respond to each type of behavior.

Can you put yourself first?

In personal grow situations always put your self first [internally only], by asking yourself questions in the following order:
WHO am I?
WHAT do I want?
HOW do I get it?
When facing situations most people want to know how to fix the problem, without knowing who they are or what they want. You must know “Who am I?” based on your principles, before you ask “What do I Want?” otherwise an internal conflict is created if the two aren’t aligned.
With dysfunction, when the question of “Who am I” is asked the person may not know or give an answer that feels uncomfortable. This is because the explicit “Who am I” and the implicit “Who am I” are different. The implicit answer is within the subconscious mind and is not available as a thought, but only as a feeling to the conscious mind. The implicit “who am I” can be adversely affected by unresolved issues from the past.
Once you have assertive control then you can focus on the “how”, create the awareness of “nothing”, be present in the “now”, and rely on your intuition.
Your subconscious mind operates using either of two systems, namely, the predictive system or the comparative system. With active mindfulness you only use the predictive system combined with the spiritual principles. When rising through levels 1 to 4 spiritual principles which are used with comparative thinking.

The spiritual principles are:

• Hope is knowing that you will successfully achieve in the goal, but do not necessarily know how to do it. Hope takes the place of goals when they become blocked due to frustration, etc, or when the pathway to the goal is lost.
• Forgiveness is being able to forgive either yourself or your relationship person. Forgiveness is the ability to split the person from their behavior and forgive the person, while letting God, karma or whatever else you believe in, judge their behavior.
• Peace is being able to sit with negative principles of fear, anger, anxiousness, guilt and accept those by not reacting to those.
• Suffering follows peace, when you sit with your negative principles and then grow influencing principles such as courage, assertiveness, patience, persistence and self-control, rather than blame yourself, somebody else or life’s circumstances.
• Giving is where you give trust, respect, acceptance and commitment to your relationship partner. Here you use rules, boundaries and consequences which are agreed and acted upon.
Once you have risen to level 5, you can then detach from your human nature ego, driven by fear and greed, which is based on comparative thinking in four areas of life:
• Materialistically, you want a better house, car, job, etc.
• Relationship, you want better friendships and intimate relationships.
• Ego wise, you want to learn and grow and feel of value when compared to others.
• Spiritually, you want to believe in a power higher than yourself.

ACTIVE MINDFULNESS

You can give up your comparative thinking of the ego and use your predictive thinking and your spiritual principles to achieve your goal.

The four spiritual principles are:

• Hope. Here hope develops into knowing the outcome before it happens. It feels like the goal has already been achieved. It is like the ultimate confidence in the outcome. It is called optimum flow, where you perceive to have transcended time. That is, time passed so quickly that you didn’t realise that it had passed. The same experience is when you are in the meditative state of “now” where it feels like there is no past or future time.
• Unconditional acceptance. When you pass through the state of hope you can unconditionally accept anything. You no longer think about rules, boundaries and consequences to feel safe. You have transcended your fear.
• Unconditional giving. Once fear has gone, you can give unconditional love, trust and respect and transcend your greed of wanting the goal.
• Love. You now love life and feel as though you are one with life because you have transcended your human nature as defined by your ego.
You are now using active mindfulness and operating in optimum flow.