Mindfulness and Mental Homeostasis: Observing Without Attachment

This reflective essay explores mindfulness as the event manager of mental homeostasis—the natural balancing process through which consciousness restores equilibrium after contact with the world.

Building on the conceptual foundation introduced in Turning Off Autopilot (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17445792), it extends the analysis from behavioral reactivity to the inner mechanics of balance and attachment.

Drawing from both classical Buddhist insight and modern systems thinking, it distinguishes three interdependent domains of regulation:

• Endohomeostasis: the mind’s balance in relation to external stimuli;

• Parahomeostasis: the equilibrium of bodily sensations and affect;

• Autohomeostasis: the self-regulating flow of internal mental formations.

The essay shows how attachment—whether to pleasure or pain—disturbs these feedback loops, generating local perturbations that radiate outward through personal, familial, and societal cause-and-effect networks.
It then situates this model within the modern attention economy, where algorithmic design perpetually reopens these loops, leading to what the author calls cognitive obesity—a chronic inability to complete the cycle of perception, satisfaction, and release.

Ultimately, the essay argues that mindfulness neither suppresses nor manipulates these processes but allows them to complete naturally, restoring both individual and collective balance.
It concludes that mindful observation—rather than resistance or indulgence—is the foundation of sustainable equilibrium in both the inner and digital worlds.