Sharpen attention, reduce stress, stimulate our brain, promote oxygenation of the body, strengthen our immune system, improve the quality of our sleep, we can no longer count the so-called numerous benefits on mental and physical health of meditation. mindfulness (or mindfulness), touted and welcomed by a growing number of people and businesses. Mindfulness, we need to be reminded, consists of bringing our attention back to the present moment and observing, without judgment, sensations and thoughts as they appear or disappear. While mindfulness meditation comes from ancestral Buddhist and Hindu traditions, it remains a significant trend within our contemporary society.
Its supporters consider its practice all the more essential at a time when the permanent dispersion linked to digital tools, among others, leaves less and less peace for the mind. The current craze for mindfulness, however, seems less circumstantial than structural. It is only a symptom, that of a more global movement of individualization, this groundswell which crosses our society making the “me” of each person the supreme interest and the coincidence with oneself the objective of care , attention and ever more numerous practices. Mindfulness, positive visualization, body scan, reiki, meditation, personal development, sophrology, EFT… The diversity of these multiple approaches should not, however, mask their common point, that of an introspective movement, a return on oneself, a reflexivity, a reversal on yourself that these steps follow, so to speak, all of them.
Without denigrating the absolute necessity of reflective consciousness (since the responsibility of life requires turning inward), and without denigrating the incontestable benefits of introspective approaches, we can nevertheless question the systematic use of them. Because does coincidence with oneself necessarily involve an interior and autarkic approach? Does it not, on the contrary, presuppose a setting in motion? A projection towards the outside? An exit from oneself?
Have we sufficiently noticed that we never adhere so fully to ourselves as absorbed in an activity, a sport, a job, an art, a leisure activity, a natural element, an emotion, a relationship…, in short, in another presence? Immersion in somewhere else provides a feeling of coincidence that is often much stronger than that provided by introspective approaches, which separate us from ourselves by objectifying us. Because reflective consciousness puts us at a distance, makes us spectators, and in this sense distances us from ourselves.
Certain qualities, warns the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, are even destroyed by our awareness of them. Take charm: you just need to think yourself charming to become a charmer and lose all charm. Humor: you just need to think you’re funny to turn into a pathetic clown. Modesty: you just need to confess your modesty to evolve into a subtle conceit. You just need to know that you are beautiful and play on it to make yourself ugly with pretension. There is nothing less impactful than a speaker listening to himself speak, nothing more risky for a pianist than watching himself play, nothing more unfortunate than a happy man who, aware of his happiness, ends up no longer being for fear of no longer being… Certain moments therefore require us not to see them in order to experience them better.
Certain qualities require not being aware of them in order to possess them. Certain virtues only occur in ignorance of oneself. Being without knowing that we are, doing without watching ourselves do, living without watching ourselves live takes us away from ourselves but brings us back to the world. This presence in the world makes our own presence tangible. This is why we never feel our being so well as when we are away from us. Self-experience proceeds, so to speak, from this passing form of unconsciousness, carelessness or absence from oneself that Jankélévitch calls “nescience”. Full consciousness without nescience is only self-ruining.
Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy.
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