p.220 Being mindful is the simple act of drawing novel distinctions. It leads us to greater sensitivity to context and perspective, and ultimately to greater control over our lives.

p.220 learning requires mindful engagement with the material in question.

p.220 When we believe we are encountering something novel, we approach it mindfully. When we believe we know something well, we tend to view it mindlessly. As will become clear, there is power in uncertainty, yet most of us mistakenly seek certainty.

p.220 There are two ways mindlessness comes about: repetition and single exposure.... If we repeat something over and over, we come to rely on our mind-set for how to accomplish the goal... The second way mindlessness occurs is on initial exposure to information. If when first given information we process it without questioning alternative ways the information could be understood, we take it in mindlessly.

p.221 Once we consider how information looks different from different perspectives, we become aware of the uncertainty inherent in our "context-free" facts. When we ignore perspective, we tend to confuse the stability of our mind-sets with the stability of the underlying phenomenon: All the while things are changing and at any one moment they are different from different perspectives, yet we hold them still in our minds as if they were constant.

p.221 Virtually all of our facts depend on context... one wad of chewing gum plus one wad of chewing gum equals one wad of chewing gum, not two.

p.222 we are typically unaware of when we are not in the present and when our minds are virtually closed.