As the leading Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield understands it, we learn to alter the relationship between our consciousness and our experience.

Or as Dr. Maclean characterizes it, we submit ourselves to a situation of "exposure," which we "prolong until the scary things aren't so scary anymore."

It's like Fear Factor for the mind, a contest few of us likely have any interest in entering upon first thought. The authors of the Justus Liebig-Harvard report recognize that "people who are new to meditation often initially find this process counterintuitive," but many find that the feelings of unpleasantness eventually dissipate, leading to either a situation of reappraisal (seeing something in a new light) or extinction (getting rid of our habitual response all together).

For Deb, "It meant taking a thought of anger or fear, and 'dropping it like a boulder.'" It meant learning how to stop living her life "in earnest and clawing for each day, but just to take it in."

It meant being able to sit back and be in a moment without the fear of losing it.

Three years cancer-free, the practice is still with her. "Ultimately what meditation has taught me is that my thoughts are not who I am. It's interesting to hold them up and to look at them, but I only have to hold onto those that serve me. I can let go of all the things that would put me right back on the hamster wheel. "

***

The disassociation between our thoughts and our identity is the final mechanism through which mindfulness meditation is said to function (one which is believed to become more apparent the deeper in practice we become). In a culture that continually emphasizes the cultivation of the self, this may be the most profound lesson that mindfulness meditation has to offer, and certainly the most bewildering.

According to the Justus Liebig-University and Harvard Medical School report, upon achieving a strong sense of internal awareness and the ability to "observe our mental processes with increasing clarity," we begin to see the self as something that is continually arising, rather than fixed. Dr. MacLean describes it as a continuum of the letting go process we experience while observing our emotional responses. "Eventually all you have to let go of is this sense of a fixed identity ... And then you can begin to deconstruct the self."

But why, exactly, would anyone want to do such a thing? It sounds abstract, overly existential, disorienting, and frankly terrifying. But, as Dr. MacLean stresses, it sounds more severe as a concept than it is in practice. Once understood, she says, it can eventually become remarkably useful, and in many cases, incredibly comforting.

By beginning to understand identity as impermanent, "there isn't this sense that you have to defend yourself anymore," she says. It's an act of "decentering," allowing us to expel the attachment and hostility that arises when we perceive our inner-selves to be static. This then "burns up the fuel which runs our repetitive habits," ultimately giving way to a more transitory understanding of existence. From there, she says, we can begin to develop a greater sense of compassion and a more genuine way of being.