In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

by Gabor Maté

“Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the person or situation that triggers them,” Eckhart Tolle advises. In a mindful state one can choose to be aware of the ebb and flow of emotions and thought patterns instead of brooding on their content. Not “he did this to me and therefore I’m suffering” but “I notice that feelings of resentment and a desire for vengeance keep flooding my mind.” Although bare attention was developed as a meditative practice, its use is not limited to formal meditation. It is the conscious attending to what occurs in the mind as it takes in physical or emotional stimuli from within and outside the body. “Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception,” write the authors of the Philosophical Transactions article. “It is called ‘Bare’ because it attends just to the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind without reacting to them.”