Jon Kabat-Zinn

forgetting momentarily that we are here

lose touch with ourselves and with the full extent of our possibilities

break contact with what is deepest in ourselves and affords us perhaps our greatest opportunities for creativity, learning, and growing

or instance, we usually fall, quite unawares, into assuming that what we are thinking—the ideas and opinions that we harbor at any given time—are "the truth" about what is "out there" in the world and "in here" in our minds. Most of the time, it just isn't so.

For instance, we usually fall, quite unawares, into assuming that what we are thinking—the ideas and opinions that we harbor at any given time—are "the truth" about what is "out there" in the world and "in here" in our minds. Most of the time, it just isn't so

knowing that you are even in such a dream is what the Buddhists call "ignorance," or mindlessness. Being in touch with this not knowing is called "mindfulness." The work of waking up from these dreams is the work of meditation, the systematic cultivation of wakefulness, of present-moment awareness.

ourselves into a personal fiction that we already know who we are, that we know where we are and where we are going, that we know what is happening—all the while remaining enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies, and impulses, mostly about the past and about the future, about what we want and like, and what we fear and don't like, which spin out continuously, veiling our direction and the very ground we are standing on.

Not knowing that you are even in such a dream is wha

editation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.

f you do so, maybe you will be m a better position to chart a course for yourself that is truer to your inner being—a soul path, a path with heart, your path with a capital P. If not, the sheer momentum of your unconsciousness in this moment just colors the next moment. The days, months, and years quickly go by unnoticed, unused, unappreciated.