Sometimes you "know" thing for a long time before it finally clicks. For me, the thing I knew is that in mindfulness practice we learn to distinguish, as we go, between awareness and our thoughts about what we are aware of - then we continually move out of our thoughts and back to awareness.
Let's say I am aware that a dog is mooching along the street. As soon as I become aware my thoughts start up. These can include memories of dogs I have owned, wondering where the owner of the dog is, an opinion that people who have fierce dogs ought to muzzle them in public as the law requires, and so on. If I practice mindfulness, then when I spot these thoughts buzzing around like flies I return to awareness which is simply awareness of the dog.
So you begin with awareness, move automatically into thoughts and then move deliberately back to awareness again. You would be surprised at how much unnecessary stress this simple practice can remove from your life. Yesterday I drove to the wrong terminal at Dublin airport. The error would mean leaving the airport and coming back again to get to the right terminal. While staying with the awareness of what had happened and of what I needed to do next, I was able to spend only microseconds in thoughts about how inconvenient it was, how unfair it was, blah blah. Even when I discovered along the way, but too late, that I could still have got to the correct terminal without leaving the airport, I was able to stay with the awareness of that, including awareness of the fact that I didn't like having missed that particular turnoff. But I stayed out of the storm of thoughts that my mind wanted to kick off so badly it was practically jumping up and down. I was quite surprised by the complete absence of stress in the whole experience thanks to that simple mindfulness practice.
So the method is awareness, realising that you have moved from awareness into thoughts and then returning to awareness again. You could think of it as awareness-thoughts-awareness. Or ATA.
As I said, this is something I always knew or at least always knew since I began to practice mindfulness a long time ago but it really clicked for me when I read about the distinction between awareness and thoughts in Dan Harris's book 10% Happier, a witty and very useful look at his journey into mindfulness and Buddhism.
