Saying No to Mindfulness as a Special Effect
In matters of popular mindfulness, caution is appropriate.
Any day I expect to see someone in the mindfulness industrial complex promise to lead me in a twelve-minute meditation freeing me from my guilt over my many prior mistakes, misjudgments, sins, and cruelties. They promise healing through crystals, diets, oils, neuroscience. and charms.
No one can clear the conscience. It’s there, and hopefully it’s appropriately remorseful. We need the conscience with all it’s sadness. It’s part of how we learn.
Mindfulness isn’t intended to be a special effect. It helps make life a little more tolerable. That’s it. And, a twelve minute practice, a liturgy, or an amulet doesn’t do that.
Nor will a visit to your local confessional. It may ease things a bit. When I was a chaplain, listening to people’s rough edges sometimes seemed to bring some solace. Sometimes, just naming our transgressions to someone we don’t know but still trust can be helpful. We carry the price of our misbehaviors and mistakes in our consciences. This is good. This is human. It can drive us toward change.
There are other ways to modulate the pain of our guilt: taking responsibility, make reparations (where possible), and asking forgiveness. Nothing, though, wipes the slate clean.
Let your conscience be. Len into the pain, remorse, and sadness. As much as you can, thank your conscience for the work it’s trying to do, for it’s teaching. Pushing your conscience away only assures it’s continued alarm, that thing that says, pay attention to me. Do what you can to learn from the past.
But, don’t waste your money on false promises of mindfulness. Mindfulness can help. But it’s not a miracle. Indeed, I’m not sure we need miracles. At least not the twelve-minute kind, with crystals and other paraphernalia.
Unless you like the crystal and can afford it. Then, by all means buy it. But, only because the crystal makes you happy!
mike