Mindfulness

I have a feeling this may drag on. I want to be concise here because there's a lot to cover and, unfortunately, my concentration fades easily.

Mindfulness - the fashionable practice of meditation on the breath or other sensation (hands in the lap, movement of the belly, sensation of body on seat, etc) to stimulate well being, but ultimately the process of becoming aware of the present moment. At the fullest it is rooted in a worldview I'm not entirely sure is as helpful as it is positive sounding. It is my understanding it stems from buddhist meditation practises along with the accompanying worldview of compassion. That's a lovely quality to have, but, at the risk of being crass, it doesn't pay the bills.

Breath meditation is something I have tried for a while, on and off. I usually do it in the morning for about ten minutes. Recently I signed up for a Mindfulness class and the experience of it is oddly more formal than I would like, and I'm not sure that's for the best.

Firstly it's important to state that the person running the course is a well meaning kindhearted person, I feel she is bringing some baggage to this course as she believes in a lot of new agey practises I personally am sceptical of: Reiki, guardian angels, energy healing and crystals. Now, I do have a problem with this because I think it's potentially muddying the waters. I have no problem with people wanting to do any of these things if they feel it helps them - but there's a difference when you bring it into a classroom context. This is because we start conflating the practical reality of mindfulness as a practise, with the new agey belief structures which ultimately, in my humble opinion, leads to magic thinking.

Magic thinking is where we believe our thoughts can change reality. I don't think this is very helpful when dealing with a society that treats mental health abominably and where the government spits on the disabled. It gives way to victim blaming as well as (and this is the crux of this article) being an excuse to deprive society of vital mental health support.

This is exactly the problem with CBT, as experienced by me in dealing with the local CBT peddlers called Positive Step who did precisely nothing to help. Both CBT and mindfulness seem to have a lot in common. They seem to be about deconstructing your perception of the situation, with associated baggage and weight of expectations/assumptions, and seeing things as they are. This means they can be delivered on the cheap with no real thought to long term support. If the process is found wanting by the patient, well it's because they aren't doing it properly. It is no substitute for a decent caring society that helps people find purpose and community.

My problem is that it is too easy to sell this as self help in place of real help. This is why I say magic thinking: if we could just learn to live in the moment then all our problems disappear. But they don't. I will not stop being isolated, unemployed and alone. What will this do to fund the NHS, to bring a vital sea change in society re: mental health. What will it do to reorder society away from capitalism, greed and profit, toward what is good right and vital for a progressive world?

So I'm sitting in a classroom still waiting for the date to be called in for a WCA being told lots of dreamy wonderful fluff about how life will improve if I manage to learn mindfulness. I'm being given handouts which are filled with simple puns and worldplay designed to make me thing "ah, buddha!" (for example: Mind full or mindfulness, was the slogan that accompanied a picture of someone thinking cluttered thoughts alongside someone thinking about a lovely clear blue sky). Each class is ultimately the same because mindfulness isn't something you can expound on indefinitely, nor is it complex - the point is that it is experiential. Telling people that it is important to see things as they are is not a difficult concept, it is however difficult to develop that degree of mental clarity.

In fact I'm not entirely convinced it's possible. Certainly one can, and indeed should, learn how cluttered our minds are - as products of a deeply screwed up environment. We should also probably try practice ways to clear that mind and develop better attention and awareness. But IMHO that is really all it is. It's just way harder to do because of our minds, but noone's really 100% clear and focussed 100% of the time. Again that's magic thinking. It's unrealistic and it is bound to create unrealistic expectations.

So what happens when the course ends? The tutor has a 'teaching assistant', a guy who's been through many of her courses, including multiples goes at Mindfulness! Again he's a nice guy and I hope his experience has been a positive one, but if you have to do these classes over and over because your experience, in a shitty seaside town in a shitty little England shire with no opportunities or support, is such that you need to - doesn't that tell you something?

Aren't these problems that should be solved by fixing our broken society? I fear Mindfulness, with its spiritual veneer, is a sticking plaster, or at least has become one.

For what it's worth, I have a different take on the word 'spirituality'. I am not religious, I do not believe in a supernatural component, be it energy healing or angels. But I do believe that we should develop a relationship with the living world. What do I mean by living world? I speak of the natural flow of life on earth: the seasons, the warmth, the cold, when things grow, when they die. We are not in tune with that and I think we should be. Developing that relationship makes use of methods I would regard as the proper meaning of the word spiritual - and they may embrace methods seen as traditionally spiritual or even religious (though hopefully not dogmatic). So we may mark the passing of seasons or the change of the year or a birthday, or something more esoteric. No angels required.

I'm not sure this article conveyed what I wanted it to, but I'm posting it anyway - as you have no doubt noticed. Enjoy.