Mindfulness is practiced whenever the most unconscious symptoms or ailments of our day-to-day psychological experience are brought into consciousness and are not dissolved but instead into complexes
1. Tell us about your background and journey.
My name is Steven Dunn and I was born into a military family in Savannah, Georgia. Before the age of 10, I was already well-traveled by having been to Hawaii, Germany, and various European countries and eventually settling in South Florida (Tampa) where I resided between 2004 and 2023. As far as my professional background, once I turned 18 I started to pursue two degrees with a Specialization in Philosophy and Theoretical Physics from St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida.
My initial goal was to attend Oxford University (Black Friars College) and become a professor in philosophy with the intention to publish my writing(s), however, I came to ‘accidentally’ steer a course away from this path and develop a career as a wine service professional. At the age of 21 through the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS), I became a level-II Certified Sommelier and have been more or less in Restaurant Management ever since.
I embark on those passions in a micro-cosmic sort of way through my Philosophy of Religion page entitled The Instant, which is based on and inspired by the writings of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). I started this page in May of 2021 and have extended it to a podcast of the same name as well as a storefront where ‘Instant merch’ is available. Aside from this, I currently work full-time in Times Square, New York City as an Assistant General Manager of an upscale rooftop lounge.
2. When did you first decide that you wanted to create content and how did you start?
In a nutshell, the content I started with would take scenes taken from my favorite artists (eg, Gustav Dore or Albrecht Durer), strip them of their color to give the scene a noir palate (ie. make them black and white), and somewhere on the image I would place blood splatter. On the surface, this was my reach for a personalized aesthetic that I could call my own. However, I was more so concerned with its symbolic significance: distorting images that could and have been considered ‘timeless’ was to bring emphasis to ‘The Instant’ or to ‘The Moment’ that these paintings pointed to.
For example, all paintings by their nature capture a still moment in time. Even when paintings give us the illusion of movement - such as when Judith draws her sword to cut off the head of Holofernes - the onlooking conscious observer is still able to derive from this ‘Moment’ all of its existential significance that can impact them the emotional, moral or especially spiritual level.
3. What impact do you want to make in the world?
The best summary I could give for the impact that I want to make on the world is to share the Good that God has done for my life. When I first became a Christian, I expressed this initially by flaunting the gifts that God had given me. Spiritually speaking, I always wore my best set of pearls and never wore them in those environments where it was most fitting to do so: balls, galas, banquets, or etc. I chose instead to go to supermarkets, schools, and post offices. With the common man, I always brought great discomfort because I was sharing with them (or regurgitating) exactly that which I had received from God in private.
Hence, my interest for impact lies with the world of communication. What I receive in private from the inward recesses of contemplative prayer is translated in many different ways (eg, writing, content, videos, etc). Sometimes these are translated in what I call specifically ‘ridiculous’ ways because that’s what they can be whenever we try to bridge the idea (mental) with the real (physical). Much like the set up of a punch line whereby the conclusion of a joke we see where the narrative ‘breaks’ and thus can accrue laughter from us, so too can people’s whole lives be set up as a grand punchline whereby the physical world ‘breaks’ from the idea(s) they have of themselves - thus eliciting laughter from the people, but also sighs from the angels.
4. How can people practice mindfullness?
By ‘mindfulness’ I understand this at its core to mean ‘bringing to consciousness.’ Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) once spoke about complexes being the primary key to the unconscious, whereas Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) famously maintained that dreams were instead the primary key to the unconscious.
The term ‘complex’ initially at length was coined as ‘feeling-toned complex,’ which was a way of saying that our psyche can develop these ‘composite structures’ that have emotional or affective import (fear, anxiety, anger, etc). Jung writes: “The entire mass of memories [of a person] has a definite feeling tone, a lively feeling [of irritation, anger, etc]. Every molecule [of the complex] participates in this feeling tone, so that, whether it appears by itself or in conjunction with others, it always carries this feeling tone with it, and it does this with the greater distinctness the more we can see its connection with the complex-situation as a whole.”
To answer to your question, then, mindfulness is practiced whenever the most unconscious symptoms or ailments of our day-to-day psychological experience is brought into consciousness and are not dissolved instead into complexes (ie., splits/divisions in the psyche) which can potentially swallow up and snuff out the ego. The further these complexes have sunken their teeth into the psyche of the person, the greater the liberating means will be required of the person (dialectical therapy, rehabilitation, etc).
5. What does your typical day look like?
The demands of a full-time restaurant operation can vary depending on business needs and personal responsibilities, so it’s hard to say (especially in Times Square, NY) what ‘typical’ elements string together my days. I work primarily in the evenings and close my nights out around 1AM or 2AM. This means that I am usually in bed between 4AM and 5AM and awake by 11AM or 12PM the next day. On my weekends, however, I usually spend them either (a) exploring new sights in Manhattan or Brooklyn or (b) staying home and reading/writing.
6. Which is your favorite book and why?
Soren Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety (1844). This is my favorite book more so because of its personal impact on me rather than any significance it might carry in the philosophical or literary world. This is arguably one of Kierkegaard’s more technical and lesser-known works, although I think it is arguably [one of] his most important if not his most.
The Concept of Anxiety was Kierkegaard’s first outline of a ‘dogmatic problem of hereditary sin,’ which centered on a discussion of anxiety. While the subject of anxiety is widely known in the philosophical world, it wasn’t until Sigmund Freud’s famous 1895 paper on anxiety introduced psychoanalytic theory to the rest of the world. However, Kierkegaard had already done this some 50 years before Freud in an altogether more spiritually rigorous way. ‘He who understands how to be anxious in the right way has understood the ultimate,’ writes Kierkegaard.
Steven Dunn is the creator of The Instant, a Christian-based philosophy of religion blog dedicated to the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. Steven currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, and manages a rooftop lounge in Times Square
Interviewed by - Dasari Priya Angel
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