In today’s column, I examine the nature of meta-mindfulness and showcase how generative AI and large language models (LLMs) can be of use in spurring mindfulness about mindfulness. Meta-mindfulness is considered a second-order form of mindfulness. First-order is everyday or regular mindfulness.

The purpose of second-order mindfulness, aka meta-mindfulness, is to guide and monitor the use of mindfulness. It provides a macroscopic perspective. In addition, meta-mindfulness aids in keeping tabs on mindlessness. The aim is to keep mindlessness in check while simultaneously aiming to optimize and enhance mindfulness. AI can be helpful in building the psychological wherewithal underlying meta-mindfulness.

Let’s talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here ).

Intertwining AI And Psychology

As a quick background, I’ve been extensively covering and analyzing a myriad of psychological facets regarding the advent of modern-era AI that produces mental health advice and performs AI-driven therapy. This rising use of AI has principally been spurred by the evolving advances and widespread adoption of generative AI and LLMs such as ChatGPT, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and others. For a recap of my two hundred analyses and postings about AI and mental health, see the link here and the link here . I frequently speak up about these pressing matters, including in an appearance on an episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes ; see the link here .

My efforts are intended to inform and engage in thoughtful dialogue on the pressing issues at hand. There are some that focus only on the upbeat side of AI and others that concentrate solely on the downbeat side of AI. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition, namely that AI is the best thing since sliced bread or the worst monstrosity ever devised. I don’t find those extreme views to provide clarity, nor do they offer a semblance of balance. Let’s be upfront and cover the ins and outs, which allow for cogent discussions and can aid policymakers, lawmakers, researchers, scholars, practitioners, and the like in discovering sensible and suitable paths forward. AI is not going away. AI is here to stay and will increasingly become ubiquitous.

I adopt the Langerian characterization of mindfulness, which is that a mindful perspective tends to avoid automatic behaviors and enlists a process of actively identifying new distinctions associated with the present situation (per my coverage at the link here ). I have shown that generative AI can aid mindfulness in many vital ways; see the link here . Indeed, there are five key prompts you can use to aid in bolstering mindfulness; see my explanation at the link here .

  • (1) Thinking anew: AI gets a person to reflect thoughtfully on the decisions they make and stirs them toward reviewing their personal preconceptions and staked-out viewpoints in new ways.
  • (2) Metacognition-inspiring: AI can stimulate people to think in a big-picture way about how they think.
  • (3) Multiple perspectives: People can interact with AI to become more aware of alternative perspectives that they otherwise had not envisioned, such as by invoking the use of AI personas.
  • (4) Intellectual curiosity: AI can foster intellectual interests and spur a person toward enhanced intellectual curiosity and mental openness.
  • (5) Attention stimulus: AI can get a person to escape from routine thinking and aid them in becoming more attentive to the world around them.

This suggests that a mentally uplifting cycle can ensue. A person may become increasingly mindful as they use AI to train their mind to be expansive. AI is serving as a psycho-educational mechanism that improves mental capacity. Furthermore, ongoing use of AI keeps them on their toes and mitigates potential backsliding into prior dour mental patterns.

A potential downside is that AI can become a dependency. Someone might only be achieving mindfulness by relying on AI as a crutch that continually nudges them toward mindfulness. The prudent and proper aim of employing AI would be to do so as a cognitive-building approach and explicitly steer clear of a persistent reliance on AI for this purpose.

Let’s look at the flip side of mindfulness and consider mindlessness. A casual glance at the world around us might suggest that people are commonly in the throes of mindlessness. It is a relatively inactive state of mind and easy to come by. You can sense that someone is acting mindlessly when they seem to be preoccupied with past mental distinctions, fail to see their environment in new ways, and appear to be proceeding in a highly regimented or routinized fashion.

Whereas we want AI to spur mindfulness, we would equally want AI to aid in reducing or mitigating mindlessness. The looming danger is that AI will promote mindlessness.

Mindlessness could regrettably be fueled by AI via these mechanisms:

  • (1) Cognitive offloading: Why engage your own mind when you can lazily allow AI to look around and figure things out for you?
  • (2) Reduced deliberation: No need to strain your mind to identify the pros and cons of something; just let AI do that hard deliberative work for you.
  • (3) Intellectual passivity: AI gets things right most of the time, and thus there is little need to mentally challenge what AI advises.
  • (4) Metacognitive atrophy: Lessening human decision-making is bound to undercut the mental capacity to think in a larger big-picture way.
  • (5) And so on.

There is a societal concern that the pervasive use of AI is going to dull our minds. We are gradually outsourcing our thinking to AI. It might be an inch at a time. Perhaps, over a lengthy period of months or years, our mental capacity to think could be demonstrably undermined.

In any case, the upside to AI is that it can serve a helpful purpose by aiding people in escaping from mindlessness. A person who is in a mindless state of mind might be notified by AI that they have fallen into a mental rut. They could use that notification to shift into a mindful state. If they have trouble making that swing, AI can further assist in inspiring mindfulness.

Meta-Mindfulness Big Picture

There is an ongoing tussle between mindfulness and mindlessness. You probably have experienced this internal battle. One moment, you seem to be keenly aware of your surroundings and pay attention to the latest newness, but a few moments later you find yourself floating into a mental sea of emptiness as mindlessness takes hold of you.

One theory is that humans possess a metacognitive capability that can aid in being a traffic cop associated with mindfulness and mindlessness. This meta-awareness can discern whether you are veering into mindfulness or mindlessness. Furthermore, if well-tuned, the meta-awareness can drive your mind toward mindfulness. This includes steering away from mindlessness.

A name given to this metacognition is that it is meta-mindfulness. Consider this to be mindfulness about mindfulness. Everyday mindfulness is focused on being ordinarily mindful (known as first-order mindfulness). Meta-mindfulness provides a big-picture perspective on how your mindfulness is doing, along with watching over your mindlessness too. It is a second-order level of mindfulness.

Clarifying The Distinction

An informative way to construe the difference between conventional mindfulness and meta-mindfulness is to ruminate on how AI can assist in boosting either or both of your mindfulness and meta-mindfulness.

First, a pathway of using AI is this:

  • On AI and mindfulness: “AI helps me become more mindful.”

Secondly, another pathway of using AI is this:

  • On AI and meta-mindfulness: “AI helps me become aware of how my mind is allocating mindfulness and mindlessness, and helps me to cognitively improve that allocation myself.”

Notice that the use of AI is intended as a helper or assistant. You use AI to increase your mindfulness and meta-mindfulness. Do so carefully, since you should avoid becoming dependent on AI for either one. AI ought not to be how you are mindful, nor how you are meta-mindful. Instead, AI is simply a tool that assists in the discovery of self-monitoring and strengthens your mind to be a mindfulness switchboard.

Prompting For Mindfulness

I’ve previously covered five essential prompts that can be used to spur mindfulness; see the link here . Here is an example of such a prompt:

  • User prompt for mindfulness assistance: “Help me become more mindful in my everyday life. Encourage me to pay attention to what I am experiencing, notice things that are new or easily overlooked, and engage thoughtfully with what is happening rather than simply operating on habit.”

An important aspect is that you can’t undertake this on a one-and-done basis. After you’ve used the above prompt, the AI will interactively assist you over time. During your chats, the AI will be providing suggestions on whether you are being mindful and whether you are shifting into mindlessness.

Ultimately, you want to remove AI from that loop. The pursuit is to build up your own sense of awareness to gauge your mindfulness versus mindlessness. Thus, the crux is that you should seek to bolster your meta-mindfulness. Let’s see how you can give AI directions to focus on that level of metacognition.

Prompting For Meta-Mindfulness

Besides boosting mindfulness, the additional goal needs to be to build meta-mindfulness. Here is an example of an AI prompt to help do so:

  • User prompt for meta-mindfulness building: “ Help me become more aware of when I am being mindful and when I am operating mindlessly. Help me recognize which situations call for greater attention and which can appropriately remain automatic, so that I can become better at regulating the balance myself.”

Observe the subtle but significant difference between the AI prompt for everyday mindfulness and the prompt for seeking meta-mindfulness. The first-order prompt emphasizes day-to-day mindfulness. This second-order prompt intends to improve your meta-mindfulness.

Again, the goal should ultimately be to remove AI from this loop. The AI can get you started and guide you accordingly, but do not become dependent on the AI. Your meta-mindfulness has to be your meta-mindfulness. It cannot be AI serving as your meta-mindfulness. Do not fall into that mental trap.

A common question is whether you should proceed on a sequential basis when it comes to mindfulness and meta-mindfulness. Allow me to explain this.

Some contend that a person must first boost their mindfulness and not worry about meta-mindfulness. Get the basics or fundamentals of being mindful and do so without the distraction of meta-mindfulness. Once you’ve turned the corner on being mindful, you can opt to pursue meta-mindfulness.

Others insist that this is not a one-two formulation of mental maturation. You don’t have to wait to get going with meta-mindfulness. The belief is that you can walk and chew gum at the same time. Improve mindfulness and simultaneously build meta-mindfulness. They are well suited to each other, and both can be developed at the same time.

There is an additional twist to this. One cogent argument is that there isn’t a distinction between mindfulness and meta-mindfulness. They are one and the same. They are the same psychological construct. Thus, the act of boosting one is automatically going to boost the other. Indeed, a worry is that if a person believes that those are two different capacities, they will falsely treat them as though they are weak on one and strong on the other. The preferred suggestion is to see them as two coupled train cars that are heading in the same direction, acting as one, whether upward or downward.

An analogy that can be used about mindfulness and meta-mindfulness is to think about what happens when a person is driving a car. Assume that a person wants to be a better driver. They will consider ways to get better at driving, perhaps opting to take longer drives and learning how to best use the controls of the car, and so on. If they then extend to the meta-level, they will imbue a big-picture perspective and consider how to get better at getting better at driving. Are the ways they are opting to be a better driver the right ways, or can they improve on this?

A person seeking to be mindful will typically be heads-down focused on increasing mindfulness (akin to the driver in the driving analogy). If that person also seeks to be meta-mindful, they will mull over the big picture of how to enhance their mindfulness, including activating their mindfulness and reducing their mindlessness. Some people might opt to do those one at a time; others will prefer to do both at the same time.

A final thought for now. The famous philosopher John Locke made this remark: “The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object.” A mindful person won’t necessarily be observant of their own mindfulness, nor mindlessness. It takes an uplift to your meta-mindfulness to have that macroscopic capacity. Whether you opt to use AI to get there or decide to pursue some other means, garnering meta-mindfulness is abundantly worthwhile.