Continuing with an exploration of mindfulness as a discourse....
Awareness is acknowledging that you had a particular thought or feeling. What is Mindfulness?
I like this simple definition of “awareness” – not the standard dictionary definition, but at least easily distinguishable from “attention”. Compare with Wikipedia’s definition:
Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. … Awareness is a relative concept. An animal may be partially aware, may be subconsciously aware, or may be acutely unaware of an event.
According to both the What is Mindfulness? website and Wikipedia, ‘awareness’ does not imply understanding; it is more an observer's acknowledgement of mental activity, e.g., “I am aware of angry thoughts”. Just watching and registering. In the academic literature, this would be considered a type of metacognition.
It’s also interesting that the Mindfulness website makes mental activity (“thoughts and feelings”) the object of awareness, rather than sensory or somatic information. Is there something problematic about mental activity unattended by awareness, whereas sensory/somatic information doesn’t need to be supplemented with awareness? Why would this be the case?