Awareness and Self Awareness

In the last few weeks I've engaged in several conversations with a good friend of mine about awareness or "mindfulness." We've used these terms to name one of the goals of meditation, and we might say that we both strive to be more mindful. But one of my brothers pointed out to me that this language can be empty. While we are awake, we are conscious. To be conscious is to be aware. We are only completely unaware (if at all) when we sleep. We are mindful of something all the time.

Does being "mindful" mean being mindful of everything that there is? – or of as much of that as one can be? Or should we perhaps specify the things of which we think we ought to be mindful as often or as continuously as possible?

I am with Stephanie in advocating a greater mindfulness of the pleasures available to us. Today was my birthday, and I took a variety of pleasures: I had a sense of accomplishment; I took pleasure in the company I kept; I took gustatory pleasure (paying special attention to the smells of my food and drink); I noted with pleasure the changing colors of the sky as the sun went away; and I marked a certain freedom that I felt (linked both to the day's accomplishments and to the pleasure I took in my good company) as I walked out into the evening air.

I advocate not only knowing and noting one's pleasures, but identifying and holding onto the pleasures that one imagines, whether one aims ever to achieve them or whether they are fantasy purely. In fact, I have been keeping a kind of journal of my pleasures, specifically erotic ones. This document doesn't seem especially interesting to me now, but if I reread it in a year or more, I expect to learn myself better.