What does mindfulness mean to me?
"Mindfulness has many facets. For me, the most significant is the ability to perceive myself and my environment ever more finely. As a - preferably constant - observer, to register myself (i.e. my thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations) and also the events around me in their subtlety. Preferably without having to evaluate them immediately. Consequently, this also means - and this is probably the real benefit here - that I can adopt a distanced attitude to what is happening and thus do not have to react to everything that happens.
There is this small space between a stimulus and my reaction to it. If I am able to recognize this, I have the choice to react or not to react. Or to react differently than usual. This is an enormous inner freedom, which can provide a lot of inner peace and serenity and as a result also a better physical condition. I am then no longer at the mercy of my own innumerable thoughts, nor of the evaluations or manipulations of my environment, nor of unexpected events.
I do not want to claim here that I always succeed in all this. But I have made the wonderful experience that one can indeed acquire a mindful attitude and thereby gain a lot of quality of life. As a consequence, this can no longer be separated from a more loving way of dealing with oneself and also with other people, with animals, with nature, etc.. For me, mindfulness and compassion are basically quite natural qualities - small children show us how. We adults have unfortunately lost this actually so simple state in most cases in the course of our lives and then have to attend courses and practice later to recall it again. In my eyes, it is very worthwhile and makes us and, in sum, the world more beautiful, healthier and more peaceful."