To forget the self does not refer to the elimination of personal qualities or self-experience. It is also certainly not to eliminate a sense of self, which has wonderful capacities and can give us that strength that allows us to hang in there, let go, tolerate pain, and encounter suffering. To forget the self is to drop our cravings, learn to see through our reactive patterns of behaviour and judgements as many time these are the causes of our own suffering.
When practising mindfulness , we cultivate and strengthen awareness enough to take a step back and not merely react. With mindful awareness , we can insert a gap or a pause between us and what we experience so that we are no longer carried away by our reactive patterns. In that little gap, there exist the freedom to respond in a fresh and less predetermined way.
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