Mindfulness is meditation in action and involves a "be here now" approach that allows life to unfold without the limitation of prejudgment. It means being open to an awareness of the moment as it is and to what the moment could hold. It is a relaxed state of attentiveness to both the inner world of thoughts and feelings and the outer world of actions and perceptions.
Insight and fresh vision inevitably depend on our ability to free ourselves from the prejudices and stereotypes that we have inherited, along with everyone else. Merton believed that silence and solitude could play a crucial role in this respect. For example, once, in the middle of the shopping district, he had what for want of better words we must call a mystical experience. There "at the corner of Fourth and Walnut" he was "suddenly overwhelmed with realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness." In that ordinary, everyday, unremarkable setting he suddenly saw and felt God's love for each person, and the deep solidarity that exists between each member of the human race despite their illusions of separateness. It was a unity with each other that, if only they themselves could see it, would banish war, hatred, cruelty and greed. Reflecting on the experience afterwards, Merton linked it with his solitude and silence, feeling that these had made it possible for him to have this experience.