ABSTRACT
The metaphor that Robert Bly (1988) puts forth for becoming aware of one's blind impresses and changing one's patterns in light of this awareness is 'eating one's shadow'. This chapter explores the 2013 Provoking Curriculum conference theme that extent to which one becomes aware of the blind impresses from which "all our behavings bear". It examines the degree to which mindfulness practices serve to either sooth lived existence through stress management, the common focus of mindfulness-based research versus mobilize a transformative, emancipated existence. A practice of mindfulness has the potential to open oneself up to one's blind impresses/shadows. At its essence, mindfulness from a Heideggerian perspective is a metaphysical state of existence, a way of being that brings experience of being into awareness. According to Heidegger, an existentialist who interpreted Nietzsche's philosophy as 'inverted Platonism' and in turn, influenced Rorty's thinking about 'self-overcoming' and the possibilities for "giving birth to oneself", the experience of becoming mindful has a transformative potential.
