This is the start of a thread - how does the mind be mindful?
I notice that the default view of thinking is that it happens within a single brain, I am starting with a simple idea. If the mind has several thoughts, A and B. that are not aware of each other, but A sees, (through the complex process of thought and perception) , an object C, a box of cereal and so does B. being aware of the cereal that might connect A and B through the common interaction with C . Going to the grocery store and being reminded I want a box of cereal connecting the A of the grocery store with the unconnected C, cereal One possible conclusion is that the mind of the owner of A and B requires interaction outside itself to experience the potential of integrating A and B. Moreover the health and development of the person requires, for growth, interaction between self and environment, what Piaget called Assimilation, Taking in, and Accomodation’rebuilding structures). The mind does not think by itself but in community.
Note that we have highly detailed models of perception in digitized images and computers but, by comparison much impoverished models of thinking and mindfulness. This is in part due to our taking math and logic as paradigmatic examples of thinking rather than poetry, love, and narrative.
Another clue is that the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne (from which we get memory and mnemonics) is the mother of the nine muses, one each for each of the nine arts. That is, memory is key to creativity.