Lent 2026: day 20 – music, physics and metaphysics

One note, plucked on an acoustic guitar. A single chord, strummed. Three chords in quick succession. Another three. A bass guitar joins in, and percussion provides a beat. Add a piano, woodwind, density, variety... We have music, it resonates with us emotionally. 

But why? We all recognise a minor key in music (sad). And a major key (happy). Why do we  respond this way, rather than the other way around?

Science tells us that the way our brains process music is all about dopamine activated by the mesolimbic reward pathway, the activation of structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex, and our cultural expectations. 

I'd say this this physicalist explanation overlooks the metaphysical mystery at the heart of our emotional response to music.

Earlier this year, I posited the possibility that music operates on the same substrate as our consciousness. We experience music rather than think about it (unless we are trained musicians). The notion of music literally belonging to the ages. I would guess that the conscious response to a Mozart minuet in a human is the same today as it was when it was first played. (I might have to add 'to a European human', conditioned to Western tonalities.)

Familiarity is important; you may hear a piece for the first time and like it – this may be because it's derivative, sounding similar to another piece you know and love, or it may use familiar musical devices or tropes that work on you emotionally such as a crescendo, choir entry, shift from major into minor etc. (Somehow, this doesn't happen with AI-generated music.)  

But then there is that 'click' of instant familiarity when you 'know' a tune you've never heard before. Was it there in the background while you were in your earliest infancy? Do you associate it the tune with childhood? Or some vague time before you were born – how could that be? Two months ago, I had the insight that maybe music plays some role in assigning consciousness to its biological container.

Two and half thousand years ago, Pythagoras posited that the Cosmos is structured according to harmonic ratios analogous to musical intervals, and that the motion of heavenly bodies form a cosmic harmony, inaudible, yet fundamental to the structure of reality. Plato developed this idea further. He suggested that the World Soul is built from harmonic mathematics. according to musical ratios which structure the Cosmos. 

These ancient intuitions resonate with our current understanding of the physical substrate of reality.

Modern physics has uncovered parallels to the Pythagorean view of 'the music of the spheres': stable structures, from atoms all the way up to galaxies, emerge as resonant patterns in dynamic systems. In this profound sense, the universe does indeed behave like an enormous hierarchy of vibrating systems across countless frequencies. 

Vibration may be a fundamental organising principle of reality, maybe even bridging the divide between the realms of matter and consciousness. Maybe.  

Lent 2025: day 20
Why I keep blogging these Lenten posts

Lent 2024: day 20
Do we have Free Will? (Pt IV)

Lent 2023, day 20
Practical uses of intuition

Lent 2022: day 20
Free will, consciousness and determinism

Lent 2021: day 20
No, but who are you really?

Lent 2020: day 20
Applying Occam's Razor to your religion 

Lent 2026: day 19 – dreams, and how the Universe functions.

Since childhood, I have been blessed with vivid dreams. Even nightmares – powerful enough to wake me up – when they come, which is rarely, are interesting (here's a good one!). 

Yet I dream those Big Dreams less frequently than I once did.  For me, those increasingly rare 'past life dreams' that inform me of my consciousness having experienced life from within a different biological container at a different time and a different place, are fundamental to my identity. I have catalogued these dreams here. They are qualitatively different to the run-of-the-mill dreams, having no cognitive disjunctions, that is, following the classical unities of time, place and action. This category of dream has served to convince me that consciousness is non-local and immortal, passing through myriad biological containers on its eternal journey from Zero to One. 

This rare class of dream co-exists with those humdrum, regular dreams. These are full of cognitive disjunctions (people and places interweave – for example my brother and my son frequently appear as a single character), the narrative switches – illogical plot twists – or the location jumps, from, say London or Warsaw. Then there are the regular tropes (losing my wallet or rucksack, squeezing through tight passages, nice things turning ugly and broken). 

But even these are becoming less frequent and less memorable. I'll wake once or twice in the night for a wee and focus on that dream I've just had; typically it will be so confusing and so vague, and I'd have nothing worthy of jotting down in my bedside notebook. Two years ago, I'd have three or four dreams a month that I'd enter into the book. Now it's down to an average of one a month. Is this an age-related phenomenon? Or maybe the cardiology drugs I've been on for the past 11 months are taking the edge off my dreams?

On the other hand, over the past couple of years, I have become much more aware of the experience known as hypnagogia (hallucinations experienced between wakefulness and sleep) and hypnopompia (hallucinations experienced between sleep and wakefulness). I can now tell that I am about to drop off when my brain, unbidden, starts generating imagery of unknown human faces, fleeting shapes, landscapes, symbols etc. And waking up with a few bars of new music (nothing I've heard before) or unusual names on my mind.

Images left from Google Gemini, right, from ChatGPT

Our human stories, our tales, the narratives that have been telling ourselves for millennia, speak of great prophecies coming to people in dreams; premonitions of fortunes, of catastrophes; yet this is not our daily experience with dreaming. Rather, what comes to us in the night are nudges, small warnings, signals, signs worth noticing. Which is why I rather like Michael Palin's portrayal of the boring prophet in Monty Python's Life of Brian. "There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before..." [Michael Palin, who coincidentally, appears in the BBC comedy series Small Prophets, out now.] That, dear reader, is now the Universe functions.

Lent 2025: day 19
Wisdom and the future

Lent 2024: day 19
Do we have Free Will (Pt III)

Lent 2023, day 19
Intuition and Superstition

Lent 2022: day 19
Between Randomness and Cause

Lent 2021: day 19
Pleasure and Self-Denial

Lent 2020: day 19
Balancing the Spiritual with the Material

Lent 2026: day 18 – timeslip

A break with the planned Lenten posts, a new one has come to light. I have awoken from a profound dream, a time-travel dream; back to May 1979, the last weeks before my undergraduate final exams at Warwick University. I wake in the ground-floor room of the house I shared as a student. Beaconsfield Cottage, corner of Moor St and Clarendon St, Earlsdon, Coventry. I wake up as me, my consciousness ageless, though bearing the experience acquired over the intervening decades. 

'Morning stroll in Earlsdon, Coventry, 1979.' ChatGPT.

I realise that I have the Chance To Do It All Again. But this time, in wisdom.

My first thought, sitting on the end of my bed, was for my children. They do not exist. But will they? The second thought is how the world has changed; the digital revolution and the end of the Cold War, a free Poland in NATO and a part of a European union. I suddenly realise I have nothing to record any of this other than a ballpoint pen and notebook, or a voice-note dictated into a blank C90 cassette. 

What to say, where to start?

The mind of a 68-year-old trapped within a 21-year-old body. Do I want this to be happening to me? I feel knowledge , the physical knowledge of things, events, slipping away, though not my consciousness. Those companies that created the digital world I knew... what were they called? ... I'd invest heavily in their stocks... But this materialist thought quickly slips away. No, it's not about that, it's absolutely not about money-making. It's about a life better lived, a chance to be more thoughtful, kinder, more empathic, better behaved. I should call my parents. Give my mother a big hug. I understand her now like never before.

A fresh dawn, full of every possibility. Will the world unfold along the same path as the one I stepped out of in that long dream leading up to 2026? Other than the digitalisation, the geopolitics and the pervasiveness of stuff (so many more things than in 1979!) the world is still familiar. But whatever happened to 2026? Had it gone on to unfold into 2027 and beyond, but without me? 

What to do with the rest of 1979? Easy. Pass those final exams and lead a good life. Take nothing and no one for granted; don't slip into complacency; stay aware, rein in the ego; observe more; ask the right questions. Read more – more broadly, more deeply. Engage in sincere conversations, listen more, ask the Big Questions, draw the right conclusions. Stay true to your wise self, shun the foolish self. Procrastinate less. Get On With It. Settle down sooner? Don't waste time chasing ephemeral pleasures. Avoid the pinball machines in the Students' Union. But listen to more jazz. Discover Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis at an earlier age. Read  Plato's Republic. Read Alan Watts, tap into Eastern mysticism. Engage with and protect nature.

I have woken up in 1979 with a massive expansion of my awareness of What Life Is About. What a fine gift! It is mind-blowing. How to react? My first reaction is to share all this with someone, to tell them everything about the long journey from 1979 to 2026, how things turned out, the big things, the personal things, the changing flavour of reality, the milestones, the turning points, the crossroads, the discoveries... Will they listen? Take me seriously? How much can I remember? Details are slipping from my grasp...

My thoughts turn again to my children. Do they still exist in the future? Or was the future/will the future be/ unfold along a different timeline? Their consciousnesses abide, but held in different biological containers, different parents but the same in spirit?

I open my eyes and slowly they focus on the digital clock. It is (and I'm not making this up!) 5:55. Back in 2026. Time to get out of bed, feed the cats and listen to the news headlines.

If we live in a block universe where past and future coexist simultaneously, and entropy is balanced by syntropy, could this be possible? Would I want it to be possible? [see Possibilianism post, coincidentally below] Are intuitions of the future a gift or a curse?

I wake at the interface between the material and the realm of consciousness. 

{{ 'Shindoku' }} pops unbidden into my mind just now. I look up what I presume to be a Japanese word. It is.. "Shindoku (しんどく): the adverbial form of the adjective shindoi (しんどい), meaning 'tiring', 'draining' or 'bothersome'. It describes a state of being exhausted or finding something burdensome."

Not my state of mind at present!

Lent 2025: day 18
Science, Spirituality and Religion (Pt II)

Lent 2024: day 18
Do we have Free Will? (Pt II)

Lent 2023, day 18
Intuition, Consciousness and the Physical Universe

Lent 2022: day 18
Zen in the Art of Meditation

Lent 2021: day 18
Possibilianism

Lent 2020: day 18
Teetering on the Edge of Chaos

Lent 2026: day 17 – Do we need to invoke spiritual explanations to fully describe reality?

Scene: the present. A secret military intelligence facility, somewhere in the continental USA. In the centre of a room with blank walls, a desk and sitting behind it, a man; he is finely balanced between total relaxation and maximum concentration. A voice from a speaker tells him he may begin. On the desk, a blank piece of paper. He starts to doodle. Lines. A mountain ridge. A road ending in a circular flat space – like, a car park – some 70, 80 meters across... ringed on three sides by rock; in the north-west of this, a tunnel entrance. Down into the tunnel, men moving equipment, long tubes – missiles.

[Image by Google Gemini, prompted by the above paragraph]

"I got it!" The man dictates an alphanumeric sequence. Coordinates. "Four-Zero-Romeo-Uniform-November-Zero-Six-Six-Three-Seven-Niner-One-Two-Two-Five."

The latest satellite imagery for the area is brought up on big screens in the adjacent room, along with geological maps. The rock formations look right. Older satellite photos confirm that the road was built sometime in the last two years. Bingo. Another question from the control booth.

"December Twelfth, 2027. How does the place look now?"

"Ruins, debris, no signs of a clear-up. Dust. Blast damage. Blackened tubes, twisted pipes. No one around. No signs of recent human activity. No footprints. Charred posters on the wall – the Ayatollah."

The Stargate Project into military applications of remote viewing was initiated by the U.S. Army in 1977, and officially terminated in 1995. However, many believe that the project wasn't really cancelled; it just 'went dark', having been moved from the military into private defence contractors, away from Congressional oversight. Remote viewers might well be putting their psychic skills into practice right now, scouring Iran for hidden ballistic missile launchers and factories making rocket components.

An intriguing point of view is espoused by Dr Edwin C. May, who headed the Stargate Project from 1991 to 1995. Dr May continues to believes in the existence of psi phenomena, pointing to proven successes of Stargate Project in uncovering Soviet secrets. And yet, he holds that the explanation for these mysterious powers lies entirely in rational – though as yet undiscovered – material causes. Dr May dismisses supernatural or metaphysical explanations. In interviews, he claims to be a rational atheist with an interest in phenomena at the edges of scientific knowledge. For Dr May, anomalous phenomena such as remote viewing and precognition are absolutely, undeniably real – and yet there's no need to seek answers in the metaphysical realm. No need for divine intervention.

So. Another of my recurring Lenten questions is – how far can the physicalist position be pushed before it becomes idealism? At what point does a spiritual explanation need to be invoked? Here we run into the God of the Gaps argument, the 'gap' in this case being psi phenomena. Most rational physicalists would dismiss serious studies into the paranormal as pseudoscience. Yet there are those who, having studied psi effects such as precognition and remote viewing, conclude without a shadow of a doubt that while weak and rare, such phenomena are real – beyond chance, more than random. The evidence, they say, is statistically significant, the only thing missing is a solid scientific theory to underpin the observations.

But while science is our preferred language to describe reality, some philosophers are prepared to accept that psi phenomena are the result of people tapping into a cosmic consciousness.

And if we do accept a Big-C Cosmic Consciousness, a Universal mind, an Eternal Purpose – can that be ultimately explained in physical terms? Can God be boiled down to a formula that can fit onto a T-shirt? Will we ever be able to describe qualia of conscious experience through a mathematical formula? Will we ever be able to define the human spirit in scientific terms? My intuition suggests to me "probably not".

Lent 2025: day 17
Science, spirituality and religion (Pt I)

Lent 2024: day 17
Do we have Free Will (Pt I)

Lent 2023, day 17
Intuition, Precognition, Divination

Lent 2022: day 17
Defining God

Lent 2021: day 17
Karma – more than just social control?

Lent 2020: day 17
Religion and Feeling Good

Lent 2026: day 16 – synchronicity and coincidence

These two related concepts should be seen in the context of the unfolding – the personal unfolding – of your Cosmos as you see it, as it befalls you. Coincidence and synchronicity are also very much connected to mindfulness. 

'Coincidence' comes from the Latin coincidere, meaning 'to fall together'. 'Synchronicity', in the Jungian sense, refers to coincidences that seem to be meaningfully related – supposedly the result of "universal forces.

We notice coincidences around us, some of us noticing more coincidences than others. But making sense of them? We should see coincidences as warnings, as harbingers, signals to be heeded. 

I remember, decades ago, walking past West Ealing station and seeing a woman wearing a black eye-patch. Later that day, I saw another woman on the Central Line also wearing a black eye-patch. One such sighting is unusual. But seeing two in a day – is it a sign? Let's imagine that I didn't consciously note this to myself at the time. And then two days later, I scratch my eye deeply on a low-hanging branch of a rosebush and end up in hospital. As I wait to be seen, I now remember those two women with eye-patches. I had ignored the warning...

Or is this seeing too much into it? 

Being aware of the possibility of things going wrong is an important part of guarding against ill-fate, forestalling or precluding misfortunes of all kinds. As you walk your daily life along the edge of chaos. Seeing two magpies does not mean sorrow – it means it's time to reflect on the possibility of things going wrong and leading to a sorrowful outcome. But just being aware of that is enough to lift that cloud. But if you  understand this, I believe that you can use synchronicities or observed coincidences to ward off bad luck – random events that have a negative outcome on your life., 

To do so, you need to do two things:

1) Accept that coincidences do can contain meaning. This means stepping above the materialist reductionist mindset that would dismiss synchronicities as meaningless. 

2) Act consciously upon observed coincidences. If you consciously observe two people on crutches within a short space of time, it doesn't mean you will have an accident that results in you walking on crutches; rather it is a suggestion offered to you to be aware of the possibility of an accident occurring to you. And a prompt to switch on heightened levels of mindfulness.

There is a balance, between obsessively over-reacting to every possible manifestation of coincidence - and just outright ignoring this phenomenon. Seeking coincidences where there are none is as dangerous as dismissing coincidences that you do become conscious of. So don't go out of your way to look for coincidences; but when you do notice them – don't ignore them!"

The effect is weak but noticeable over the long term. But it will grow in strength as we evolve spiritually. Consciously observed coincidences can be a powerful set of signals to point daily life in the right direction.

"Everything is connected in Time" by ChatGPT

Just as there is the mycelial network of fungus under a forest floor connecting colonies of mushrooms, there is a similar unseen network of coincidence that holds events together.

Lent 2025: day 16
Intuition, the secret power of your consciousness

Lent 2024: day 16
Do we tend to get more spiritual as we get older?

Lent 2023: day 16
Intuition – is it magical?

Lent 2022: day 16
The difficulties of focusing on the spiritual

Lent 2021: day 16
This planet is my home, today and tomorrow

Lent 2020: day 16
My metaphysical journey, as I see it

Lent 2026: day 15 – the luck you will yourself

Controversial, but mine. If you overlook the chance of misfortune befalling you, it will befall you. But if you consider the possibility of it occurring, you can forestall it. I sincerely believe this. Some might think me naive, yet it's something I've observed since childhood. It's usually the unexpected that creeps up on you. From big things like heart attacks to small things like delayed trains.

In an uncertain world, outcomes are random. A solar flare could knock out all electrical power on earth. A supervolcano could plunge us into a seven-year-long winter. An asteroid strike could lead to a mass-extinction event. A plague could sweep the earth. Nuclear holocaust could be unleashed. To date, we have sidestepped these. But for how long? As long as it aligns with the Purpose for us to do so...

Nudging outcomes, but only if they align. Wishful thinking? Yes? Whyever not? 

The Purpose of the universe is not for you to live a life of luxury and high status. But then neither is it for you to suffer in discomfort. Align your wishes with this, and be mindful of what can go wrong along the way. 

Mindfulness and prayer merge. "May I not slip up on the ice" becomes not just a petition to the Lord but an instruction to self; "be careful out there". Sceptics may argue that effect = not slipping over on the ice is caused by attention's triumph over inattention. But a metaphysical 'guardian angel' effect may also be involved.

If we look at luck through the prism of quantum mechanics, the observer effect and the possibility of willing outcomes at the subatomic level – could we not train ourselves to do this at the macro level? To alter classical-mechanical outcomes with our will? Highly speculative, a matter of belief and personal observation. But if it works out in 51% or more of cases in your life over many decades, well, hey – it works for me. Call it pseudoscience, I have no idea how it works, but it is practical. It's just that you have to cover so many bases. "May the shit not hit the fan." But which shit, and which fan?

When I step out and lock the front door, I make that conscious prayer that I may return safely home, my  tasks achieved, the day fulfilled in its promise. And on returning home, the cats all well, I give thanks. 

Take care. Look after yourself. With mindfulness. Look after our planet, too.

Postscript: I prompted ChatGPT and Google Gemini to produce an illustration for the theme "willing yourself good luck". Both images were predictably full of horseshoes, four-leafed clovers and dice. Not the point.

Lent 2025: day 15
The Ego's journey through life

Lent 2024: Day 15
Aligning Prayer with Cosmic Purpose

Lent 2023, Day 15
Intuition and instinct

Lent 2022: Day 15

Religious belief, practice, inquiry and experience

Lent 2021: Day 15
The Afterlife – Faith and Doubt

Lent 2020: Day 15
Rites and Ritual

Lent 2026: day 14 – intuition vs. intellect

The human brain – what a powerful tool! Deduction, calculation, logic, inference, conclusion; putting two and two together – the cognitive process, churning away inside your skull. Until recently unassisted by computer power, human brains have been able to manage fire, invent the wheel, erect magnificent cathedrals, devise the steam engine, and indeed invent the computer. Bioelectric signals jumping across the synapses of the brain's neural networks, all the while reasoning, processing data and information, sifting through the possibilities of probable outcomes – and all the while managing behaviour and self-image.

Intuition is different to thought or cognition. It has metaphysical qualities. Thought is a process; intuitions come instantaneously. Intuition is a sense of knowing something without the act of reasoning. Intuition involves accessing information or insights not immediately apparent deducible from the process of logical thought. Intellect is wedded to the physical number-crunching power of a given human brain. Intuition, I would argue, is closer to the pure experience of consciousness, unmediated by the thought process. Intuitions are often reported as 'gut feelings' – usually ones that turn out correct.

I see intuition as the result of tapping into the Flow, the cosmic purpose; it offers insights, answers and new creativity. Intuitions tend to be positive, optimistic and uplifting; aligned.

Our current scientific paradigm is based on the notion that everything in the Cosmos is based on matter. Our brain is matter; thoughts are the result of electricity moving through that matter. Consciousness, however, splits the scientific consensus (the Hard problem). The majority view is that consciousness is nothing more than the experience of brain activity, an epiphenomenon resulting from evolution. Experiencing the taste of coffee or the sight of bright sunlight on virgin snow requires no cognitive effort. Others state that consciousness is an illusion and doesn't really exist (hence, there's no hard problem). Idealists, however, see consciousness as being fundamental, and this view is closest to mine. From there, the leap to metaphysics.

As well as differentiating intuition from intellect, it is important not to mistake intuition for instinct. The latter is set of behaviours, innate and learned, that an organism carries out unconsciously in response to external conditions. Recoiling away from an object headed for your face. Instinct, not intuition. Instinct I witnessed in my cat, Wenusia, who knew how to give birth and mother five healthy kittens, without access to lectures, advice from her mother or guidebooks.

And now it's time to dive into the speculative: is intuition proof of non-local consciousness? It implies a interconnectedness of minds and potentially access to information that's not limited by space and time. And this implies magic; intending a physical effect without a physical cause. Precognition – 'seeing' into the future, or remote viewing – 'seeing' distant places.

Intuition can be given a theological spin; the Holy Spirit, who inspires believers, allowing for them to interpret all the sacred scripture, and indeed entering the Conclave that chooses the next Pope.

Now, is intuition something that we can tap into if we are open to it? Are some people gifted with greater intuitive powers than others? Or can we develop our intuition through practice and exercise?

I return to my analogy about laptops. It's a useful analogy. One laptop is fully-featured, has huge processing power and a vast hard drive, but it stands alone. The other has a weaker processor and little read-only memory, but unlike the first, it is connected to the internet via wi-fi. Which laptop is more useful?

And further questions... As humanity makes the leap to being a technological species, are our intuitive powers losing out to our highly trained cognitive skills? Has our intuition atrophied during our evolution from hunter-gatherers?

Imagine two musicians. Both have trained intensively, putting in thousands of hours of practice. Both have mastered their instruments. Both can be relied on to perform without errors, without hitting bum notes. But one is a competent, seasoned session musician. The other has the gift of being able to put successions of notes into a novel order, creating new musical quality. A Mozart, a Gershwin, a Bowie. These guys had something above and beyond technical excellence; they had a metaphysical touch; they could tap into the Flow.

Imagine two theoretical scientists. One strains away at the mathematical underpinnings of the subatomic or the galactic scale, working away at formulae, double-checking them and cross-checking them with observational data. The other has an innate grasp of how things work and can come up with dazzling new insights that lead to new theories. 

In every field of human endeavour, there's the plodding donkey, patiently getting on with it, but lacking that spark of creativity, and there's the genius. I would posit that many of humanity's greatest minds had their 'eureka!' moments; a sudden flash of inspiration rather than a final deduction. This is not to say that they haven't put in the donkey work, but that it was an inspired intuition got them to that moment.

Sometimes it is a moment – a flash, and you're there. But creative genius is about how long you can remain 'in the Flow', how much you can download from Big 'C' Consciousness before – for whatever reason – that direct contact is interrupted. You return to your former status as pedestrian writer, musician or artist.

The ability to tap into the Flow and stay there long enough to complete something new, imaginative, creative – and to return to that state time and time again – is what differentiates genius from the merely competent.

But intuition isn't just about the inspiration that stands behind creativity. It is also about tapping into non-local consciousness for the sake of avoiding mishaps or disasters. Intuition can be seen as that 'guardian angel' that out of the blue sends you a go/no-go signal. I shall post tomorrow about intuition and luck.

Lent 2025: day 14
Ego, consciousness and time

Lent 2024: day 14
Emergence and Complexity vs. Entropy and Chaos: Good vs. Evil?

Lent 2023, day 14
The appeal of mystic traditions

Lent 2022: day 14
Between Serendipity and Proactiveness

Lent 2021: day 14
Prayer

Lent 2020: day 14
Choose the music for your religion

Lent 2026: day 13 – mindfulness and meditation

Are meditation and mindfulness the same? Both are spiritual practices engaged in by many secular people – indeed, by atheists even. And yet both verge on the metaphysical in terms of how they engage consciousness

Though often associated with each other, they are different. In today's post, I present how I see the difference between meditating and being mindful.

Let's start with definitions: mindfulness is easy; it means the state of being full of mind. Being alert, heedful, attentive; being aware of consequences; being in the flow, latching on to intuition, having presence of mind. Paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. Mindfulness is being aware of being aware ('metacognition'); it is the cognitive skill of sustaining that metacognitive awareness towards the contents of one's own mind and bodily sensations in the present moment. This involves monitoring and regulating one's attention. Mindful awareness can be focused on internal phenomena such as thoughts and emotions, as well as external phenomena, such as speech or movement. 

Meditation requires more explanation, so before the definitions, the etymology. The word comes from the Latin meditatus (to meditate, to think over, consider), from the Proto-Indo-European med- (to measure, limit, consider, advise). Meditation is defined as "A devotional exercise of contemplation, or achieving an altered state of consciousness, such as vacancy of mind, through relaxed or focused mental activity of a non-substance-induced nature". 

The two are different, and which you are more likely to practice boils down, I think, a great deal to personality. Meditation requires more discipline; allocating time for it – at the expense of any other activity – is tough. People on the ADHD spectrum find it harder to meditate; staying focused is difficult. But mindfulness requires the occasional nudge to get back on track.

I have prompted Google Gemini and ChatGPT to come up with illustrations that highlight the difference between the two. First Gemini (to whom I'd say: "Don't pick the flowers! Let them live and bring joy to others!)

And then ChatGPT (to whom I'd say: "Don't waste money on takeaway coffee!").

Interesting how both AIs have gone for the same visual comparisons.

I see mindfulness as being consciousness at the interface with matter. Will I catch that train? Yes, if I don't lose track of the time. Will I catch flu when in town tomorrow? No, not if I'm aware of people around me coughing and sneezing and keep a healthy distance from them. Will I have a car crash? No, not if I drive with total situational awareness for the entire duration of my drive. 

Mindfulness should be taught to children before they hit adolescence, when normal thinking gets switched off by hormonal rush. My mother taught me the saying quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem as a child; it was only in middle age that I really got the importance of this piece of wisdom. Essentially, it says, whatever you do, do it mindfully. 

Mindfulness – whether it's when stepping off a bus or knowing that you have switched off the iron before leaving home – should be ever-present at our interface between the material world and consciousness. In a way, the point of the cross where the spiritual crosses the material.

Meditation – on the other hand, is purposefully cutting the inner world of consciousness and the mind off from the noisy, distracting material world. Meditation is about calming oneself into a trance and entering the Flow from within an altered state.

I try to be mindful of the need to be mindful (metamindfulness) as often as I can!

Lent 2025: day 13
You, your consciousness and Time

Lent 2024: day 13 
Aesthetics, metaphysics and ethics

Lent 2023, day 13
High Church and Low: Religious Styles and Personality

Lent 2022: day 13
Comfort and Luxury, Consciousness and Ego

Lent 2021: day 13
Comfort and Luxury – knowing when to stop

Lent 2020: Day 13
Holy buildings and the sense of the mystical