Universality & Uniqueness of Human Experience

Experiences are unique and universal all at once. We all breathe, think, have emotions, feel anger, fear, love, hear sounds, experience physical and psychological pain. Yet each of these experiences in the moment is unique to that moment. No experience is repeated the exact same way, i.e. “you cannot put your toe in the same river twice”!

The universality of human experiences helps in the practice of mindfulness. It helps to detach from experiences as “I, me, my, mine” and increases the ability to become a mindful observer of one's own experiences. When focused on the breath as an anchor in meditation, experiment with viewing it as “a breath” rather than “my breath”. When attending to the sensations in the body, consider them “sensations in the body” not “sensations in my body”. When attending to thoughts or feelings, consider labeling them as “thoughts” or “worry thoughts” or “busy thoughts” or… in the area of feelings consider “this is anger” or “this is sadness” …instead of “I am angry” or “I am sad”…In the area of physical pain or discomfort consider “this is pain in the knee--this is what pain in the knee feels like…” in place of “this is my pain”.

The ability to disentangle and detach from identification with experiences is the essence of mindfulness and diminishes the human suffering.