How to practice mindfulness? With power Law

This blog's primary focus is mindfulness, there is no doubt about that. However, as you can see I deviate from the main topic, quite often. How boring it could be to listen to mindfulness all day, which is inherently dull task, which doesn't make you feel like progress, like your bank account. And that is correct! If you understand the mindfulness is about not expecting an outwordly experience but be submerged in current experience, in the moment until intution arises within, You re having the right attitude about mindfulness. If you have right attitude, you will progress anyway, even if you do not want to. Just like an avalanche starts from a tiny snowflake.

Everest

I was watching the Redbull Challange the other day, when Alveraz decided to ski down the mount Everest. It was a half an hour long vid, with nothing but breathtaking views of mount everest. With a guy solo sking down its slopes. And ooops, his footsteps created small avalanche. It not mount to a huge scale, but like every forest fire, every seed of every plant on earth, they had the potential to become one. This is an important concept to understand.

If you do not know, some things in life are ment to be not normal. They follow different laws, than a "normal distribution pattern". There is something called power law, which describes these skewed events. You can see them as Fractal patterns in nature. Fundementally the idea is when a system is complex enough, triggers of a tiny event can escalate massively into a large event that has ripple effects through the entire system. Consider, a country with a poor economic condition, and political tension. A tiny event which can pass another day as just "news" can make a movement of people, and quickly can escalate into toppling the rulers. If you trace such revolutions, we can see exactly this, as seemingly insignificant spark can ignite into a fire and burn down everything.

I can list you some other places where power laws govern. Following is not a full list.

1. Earthquakes – small ones are common, big ones are extremely rare.

2. City populations – a few huge cities, many small towns (Zipf’s law).

3. Word frequencies – a few words used a lot, most words used rarely.

4. Wealth distribution – a small number of very rich people, many with average incomes.

5. Internet network connections – a few websites have massive links (Google, Facebook), most have few.

6. Volcano eruption sizes – many tiny eruptions, very few massive ones.

7. Forest fire sizes – lots of small fires, few catastrophic ones.

8. Stock market price changes – most changes are small, rare crashes are huge.

9. File sizes on the internet – many small files, a few extremely large ones.

10. War or conflict casualty sizes – many small conflicts, few very large ones.

Systems of Power law

But how can we understand and apply this to our mindfulness practise. Mind is a complex system. I would say even more than the ChatGPT nowdays. Generally the outcomes we see, daily are the result of underlying thoughts. But throught the day, there will be average thoughts. Yet, what you consider average without investigation, can be the spark to transform entire future, for you and others around you. A tiny observation can create enourmous impact of your understanding of big questions. Big questions, which are labelled as insane to answer by some experts of philosophy, without proper investigation of phenomena of life.

Avalanche - Lucas Leonel

As you are still reading this I consider you are a mindfulness enthusiast thinking. And you value the truth more than anyone else. So, why are you waiting? Let's practice mindfulness, observe our thoughts and reactions, so we can reach some understanding one day. Maybe your mind is already primed for this and even this tiny blogpost can generate a spark for you to investigate more.