The whole point is to be aware (or mindful) of the emotional reactions that you are having so that you can process them in a way that works better for you.
Clear your mind, see what floats to the top, carefully examine it (without getting caught up in it), let it go, see what comes up next.
From my understanding, mindfulness does not imply no thinking. It is more like not reacting to the thoughts that arise. I am a beginner so don't quote me here, though!
I understand it through a Christian lens and the traditions of Contemplation, Hesychasm, Centering Prayer.
The latter two are enormously controversial, and it's sort of amusing that Carmelites and many other orders don't seem to make the same waves, as long as it's called Contemplative, I guess.
But honestly, it's really fantastic and takes significant discipline to bear fruit. I've simply tried it on the surface and experienced results, but to truly practice it is to choose a guru, and devote oneself singularly to it. The mentally ill are generally too haphazard to follow such a path.
I did find a YouTube channel that provides guided meditations called "The Mindful Christian" and again, recasts Mindfulness with a Christian ethos, and I enjoy the attentive guidance where otherwise my mind would wander in abject silence. But an experienced Mindfulness practitioner would tolerate that wandering, redirect focus, and continue on. The focus is generally assisted through use of mantra or specific repetetive phrase, but experience permits us to release even the words and transcend their meaning and sensations.
It's a matter of releasing our ego and self-concern and permit a larger perspective to take over, however you'll conceive that. It may begin with an emptying of the mind, but seeks a grounded-ness, a better awareness of reality, allowing the immanent power to envelop us, and practcing our ability to remain rooted despite all the world's attempts to wrest us into fantasy, paranoia, psychosis, lies.
Hesychasm describes a specific discipline of the Eastern Orthodox/Byzantine tradition where monastics will incorporate the physicality of breathing and body posture, reciting mantras, if you will, with the spirituality of contemplation and emptiness from distractions or concrete bodily concerns.
I believe that the controversy arises somewhat for a real need for discipline and guidance, so that the emptiness is not filled with something worse or demonic. So that one doesn't lose oneself to the numinous and indeed forget reality entirely. Some practitioners report missing appointments or forgetting their surroundings while immersed in contemplation. Beware.
> It is more like not reacting to the thoughts that arise.
Surely this is as close an approximation to not thinking as conscious humans are capable of. Anyway, words get useless pretty quickly describing internal phenomenon. I just think "mindfulness" is itself simply so vague and so widely applied it could apply to basically any kind of mental therapy.
What I want is less mindfulness, please, I want an empty head.
yeah i try to understand it as not creating emotional cycles tied to an idea in your mind, cycles that can spin and leave you ruminating at best, fully depressed in worse cases
I hate this trend wholeheartedly. They even introduce it to schools. I know they have good intentions but this is not how things work. The processes related to one's mind and personal development need to be voluntary and genuine, not sponsored by HR. Instead, what happened is that some people took an important aspects of Asian religions and presented it as a panaceum for stress and other contemporary problems.
It is not a universal cure, though. If you have problems, you become more aware of these problems. What do you do, then? In a traditional setting, you had a teacher who was personally responsible for guiding you on the path. Will your HR lady do that? It all makes very little sense to me when implemented in this way.
I am a fan of mindfulness, but grounded in (a) faith or religious/spiritual framework.
When it comes to 'corporate-style mindfulness', I like to think of the mindfulness as brushing a set of fake work-teeth that you may or may not care about.
Mindfulness has absolutely swept away anything else in the mental health field. I’m still not sure what it is after 20 years, but everybody is a fervent disciple around here.
It hardly even surprised me, when I rewatched The Phantom Menace, that Obi-Wan was overtly training Anakin for Mindfulness.
Come on nerds, embrace the post-Christian Hesychasm!
I mean exactly what I say. I'm simply pointing out an interesting observation: Western countries abandoning their roots do not transition into pure "atheism"; instead, they exchange their spirituality for something else. Rather than Christianity, what's popular now are horoscopes, tarot cards, meditation, and various practices derived from Buddhism, among other things.
You are holding Christianity in higher regard. It is as equally (in)valid as horoscopes and Buddhism.
Humans are pattern matchers and will identify patterns where there are none. Faces in clouds, mountain outcrops, etc. this lends itself to superstition. Nothing is special about Christianity aside from being regionally popular.
Your implication is that there is more superstition post-christianity, and I just don't see it, unless you define Christianity to not be superstition. There appears to be less superstition now, since there are now actual atheists, which were rare when Christianity ruled the roost.
You'd think if we were returning to western roots there would be a lot more slavery and reading of bird livers on live tv. And just an astounding amount of male-on-male competitive anal sex (which, tbf, you can definitely still find if you look in the right place).
Paradoxically, it might be the other way round. The Biblical folks were always very superstitious, and this is clearly documented in the Bible even before Christ.
Now, what Jesus taught is one thing, but what people created is another one. What Luter revolted against, for example, were not the teachings of Jesus, but all superstitions that were created by Christians and deemed to be Christianity.
Even today, when you talk to Christians, many of them believe in various superstitions. So, frankly, the opposite of your statement might be true.
>Only subjective measures were employed, and due to the cross-sectional design, no causal inferences can be made.