Negative feelings are a fact of life. And the messaging around them doesn’t usually help, either. Sadness, anger, despair, anxiety, worry, frustration, grief, rage, depression, hopelessness all have their place. They all, ideally, would be welcome. If you’re like me though, maybe you’ve had an ‘overabundance’ of some of these, however. Particularly nowadays when the world seems so much against us it is so hard to remember the ever present availability of joy and peace. Unlike so much self-help messaging out there, you don’t get to just bypass these ‘negative’ feelings to ‘positive vibes all the time’™. That is harmful and dismissive. Instead, I want to welcome all the parts and feelings. If I bypass the sadness over systemic marginalization and oppression so that I can enjoy my meal out, how is that true enjoyment? How is that being truly present to my own place and time? Jesus says:
And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:26
Sure, you can go through your life getting what you can and outrunning the harsh realities around you. But what benefit? You lose your soul. You remain whole and intact when you move through the world allowing more than one thing to be true at the same time; you can be truly grateful for your abundance and aware of the systemic forces harming folks. You can look at the harm you face, and rejoice when beauty, truth, goodness, and celebration come. The only way I’ve found for these things to all come together is through the release of the logical mind and embrace of intuition. The two, ideally, will work together. You can look around these days and correctly lament the horrors. I think it’s logical to come to this conclusion! But it’s also logical and necessary to look around and find the small things to rejoice in. Making art. Children playing. Community rallying. Truth being spoken in many places around us. Both things are true and while we want to simplify reality, it will always resist such attempts. Mindfulness encourages us to relax into the wider awareness available to us if we will see and hear it. It is hard to do and it is scary. But it has payed off time and time again. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said you gain your soul. No one gets out of this life unscathed. Through mindfulness we integrate all parts of our selves and our experiences.
Mindfulness practices are as varied as there are people out there. I think it’s harmful to require just one sort of practice to count as mindfulness. That’s the work of religion. Religion loves to control and direct people’s practices. Spirituality flows free to anyone who will stop and listen, and has as many expressions as there are people on this earth. I think that’s so beautiful and worth listening to and for. One of my missions these days is to seek out new voices to learn from, particularly from marginalized communities, because they’ve been systemically repressed and have so much to say to everyone’s freedom. We are all bound together and if we start from this worldview, we will weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. And that’s how we weather when those hard events befall us. We tap into the sea of those weeping with us and float by the grace of those rejoicing for us.
Actually an Artist 
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