Meaning is created through five dimensions of neural processing: associations, beliefs, cognitions, developmental phases, and emotions. Integration, truth, and coherence overlap in that integration is a way of organizing experiences so that they are coherent, and what is coherent is true. Being able to discern our truth is to be able to distinguish a cohesive whole apart from distorted perceptions.

Being able to do this requires awareness. It requires us to be able to disidentify with mental activities so that we are not confusing who we are with what we are feeling or what we are thinking. This requires discernment, so that we can keep what is true and cohesive and release what is untrue and maladaptive.

Thus, we need to be able to be open to what is, to be able to receive our truth, without judgment, criticism, or reactivity. Mindfulness allows us this possibility. Since adolescence, we have been dominated by top-down processing characterized by prior experience, such that expectation and categorization dictate the way in which we perceive the world. Bottom-up processing is characterized by the here and now, such that sensory information in the present moment is how we perceive the world. Top-down processing is more cognitive, involving the more executive regions of the brain, while bottom-up processing is more sensory, involving the sensory experience of body and mind. Awareness, a component of mindfulness, is a state of open, receptive equilibrium, where we are able to integrate sensation with our thoughts and experiences. Cultivating a state of mindfulness allows us to be freed from the limitations of our thoughts and rest in the sensory experience of the present moment.

Mindfulness allows us to be in a state of receptivity where we can receive our reality. It allows us to be open. If we are open, we can let go of our thinking mind and live freely in the present moment. We are able to see that everything is transitory, that we are not our thoughts and emotions, but that these are mental processes that flow along the river of life.

Being able to live our truth also requires that we be objective, so that we can differentiate what is within our awareness, and even our awareness itself: our awareness of awareness. Objectivity allows us to discern what fits into a cohesive whole of our reality and what was constructed from a narrative of past experiences, misconceptions, and maladaptive thought patterns.

This is why mindfulness-based practices such as TCTSY, body scans, breathing, and walking meditations are so powerful. They allow us to immerse ourselves in present-moment sensation. These practices direct our attention to specific parts of our body within the umbrella of awareness. We are practicing being open and objective at the same time. Thus we are strengthening our ability to be able to realize the truth of our reality.

These mindfulness-based practices allow us to develop the capacity of observation: to bear witness, to become the narrator of our experiences. This allows us to realize an integrated whole: our vital being, the Self within our self, our essence.

Being able to observe makes it possible for us to be nonreactive, to be nonjudgmental, to act with awareness, and to be able to label and describe our internal world with words. These are traits associated with the left hemisphere of our brains. Without mindfulness training, we are typically dominated by right-hemisphere characteristics, which is where the self preoccupied, imagery-based representations of memories of the self reside. Mindfulness training lets us take more of an observational, witness approach, where we tend to move toward a challenge, rather than to withdrawal, or turn away from it. This is resilience.

It is our ability to be able to be aware of our truth, to be open to what is, to be able to objectively distinguish what is real in the present moment from what is a projection of our past, and to be able to observe these processes as a whole that allows us to be able to be aware of our needs and how to communicate them. Cultivating the qualities of mindfulness can strengthen the relationships we have with ourselves, and each other.

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