Living Without Insider Information
Mindfulness isn’t learning not to think. It’s learning to live more comfortably with what you can't know.
We’re all great mind-readers—at least, we pretend to be. Every day, we act as if we have a backstage pass to other people’s inner worlds.
A smile? They must be happy. A faraway gaze? Probably bored. Someone meditating? Surely, they’re feeling peaceful inside. A bold opinion? That must be confidence, right? We leap to conclusions based on surface signals, mistaking them for truth.
The reality: we’re flying blind. Our judgments are guesses, not facts. We speculate by habit, unaware of the rich, messy complexity inside anyone else.
And when it comes to our own minds, we fall into another trap: believing that mindfulness means quieting our thoughts. This myth leaves us feeling like we’re failing whenever our minds are busy. But mindfulness doesn’t demand silence; it invites you to notice what’s actually there, moment by moment.
When you see someone meditating, it may appear calm or mysterious, but the only thing you can know for sure about their mental state is that something is happening. They might be remembering the past, imagining the future, focusing intently, or drifting between thoughts.
You don’t get access to the live feed, so you never truly know what’s happening inside another person’s mind, no matter what you’re picking up on from surface clues.
And we're not just blind to what someone is thinking. We're also blind to how their thinking is happening. They might be thinking in words, imagining pictures, doing both, or moving back and forth between them.
Not only is it impossible to know what’s happening in someone else’s mind, but most of us aren’t fully aware of our own thoughts and emotions, either.
And by default, we’re completely caught up in what we’re thinking about rather than observing how our thinking works its magic.
We know the story. We miss the mechanics.
This really popped for me during the closing talking circle of a silent retreat several years ago. During one of the longer sits that week, I struggled and opened my eyes, breaking my posture for some relief. I noticed a woman sitting more still than I’d ever seen anyone sit before. It was the first time I can remember realizing that stillness exists on a continuum, and I could only guess that her composure was the result of lots of practice—and that she was experiencing deep, pervasive serenity on the inside.
When we broke the silence to share observations and reflections, however, she apologized for distracting others with her restlessness. She told us she’d recently lost her father and was grieving. I couldn’t believe it and had trouble reconciling her subjective report with what I’d observed. It left me with a question I've been playing with ever since: Could it be possible to maintain a high degree of external composure regardless of what the heart and mind are processing?
Recognizing and tracking your own mental state in real time is a subtle skill—one that takes patience and repeated effort to cultivate. We usually focus on what we’re thinking rather than on how our thinking is put together.
An underappreciated aspect of mindfulness is that it can be practiced to get intimately familiar with the raw ingredients of experience.
Over time, this nudges us away from our constant craving for certainty and into the vibrant, messy complexities of being human.
You can know for certain that a meditator’s mental state will shift from moment to moment.
It’s also safe to assume that their thoughts will be impacted by what came before they sat down to practice, what’s going on around them, and by any emotions they’re feeling. All of these elements tend to be in flux, too.
Try this
When you see someone meditating—whether in person, in a photograph, or in a live online practice session—imagine their mind being full of thoughts.
Instead of wondering what it must be like to not have thoughts, imagine what it would be like to develop skills for responding to whatever arises in your mind and to wrestle less with your thoughts as they play out.
Embrace not knowing. There’s a quiet yet profound freedom—and a doorway to genuine mindfulness—in accepting the mysteries that live within yourself and others.
It isn’t gaining access to hidden answers.
It’s becoming more comfortable living without them.
Exercise Attentional Agency
Most mindfulness instruction, the kind that sells a lot of app subscriptions, is built around a single strategy. Find the perfect conditions, and try to feel something you don’t currently feel.
Note: The header image was inspired by Ann Hamilton's reflection (1999).