spirituality

The current popularity of mindfulness is largely attributed to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work at the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. I suspect a combination of timing, insight and serendipity were responsible for this event. When I came across this program many years ago I had already been teaching meditation and related approaches for many years but had always seen these things as a niche approach for a limited number of people. Mindfulness had historically been a central part of a spiritual tradition and to re package it as a stress reduction approach in a major health care system was a novel and effective idea.

Not only did it immediately have a positive impact on stress related issues but it opened up mindfulness to a much wider population by making it a secular approach to overall health. It became a non threatening spiritual discipline without the usual polarizing concepts that people argue about when discussing spirituality. The reason I say this is because reducing stress opens up people to a much bigger experience of themselves and their relationship to the world around them. Once the fear from stress is reduced we are able to revisit our sense of interconnectedness which is a central aspect of the spiritual experience. I rarely bring up spirituality in my classes yet it inevitably is brought up by the participants as they discover the connection between stress reduction and spirituality. 

The healthcare system has provided an unexpected opportunity for many people to explore things that they normally would not be open to. In so doing, the healthcare system is beginning to realize it’s positive effect in the lives of so many people. It is beginning to see the potential for true healing rather than just treating disease. Both of these issues need to be addressed in a truly effective system.

The outcomes of this simple mindfulness program have been so profound that many other “delivery systems” have embraced mindfulness. We now see it in the schools, business, sports, the arts and practically every aspect of life. I still think the healthcare system is the hub of the delivery wheel, and like so many strong hubs, it gives support and strength to all the spokes.

Here’s a combination of quantum physics, mindfulness, science fiction(perhaps) and spirituality. This may end up sounding a bit “out there” but what the heck…fun is fun and it’s entertaining to speculate “what if” even if you can’t prove it(yet).

There have been many studies about mindfulness that say if you practice mindfulness in a certain way predictable outcomes will happen. Science let’s us predict the probability of repeating results if a certain protocol is followed. To my knowledge no one has actually gone to first principles as the source of these interactions. We rely on cause and effect and are unable to actually prove the mechanism behind the cause.

In the case of mindfulness within a spiritual context we can come up with an interesting possibility. What if we are spiritual beings in/or around a physical body. What if that spiritual being was essentially coherent, organized energy and affected its surroundings in a coherent, organized, energetic way. If the spirit occupied the body then we would have an ideal situation where the energetics influence the body and awaken the corresponding energetic system in the body. At that point the body would reflect and express the energy of the spirit by exhibiting similar qualities of coherence and organization.

There are many spiritual traditions that say the spirit has yet to fully occupy the body. They say there are many reasons for that and at the core of those reasons is a hesitancy to fully occupy a body that has a tendency towards fear. Fear and fearlessness working on cohabiting.

Let’s say attention is the mechanism that moves energy/spirit much like a rudder steers a boat. Since mindfulness is about attention in the present moment let’s say the body represents the present moment since all mindfulness practices begin with the “mind/body”. In this scenario you have mindfulness as the mechanism that steers the energy/spirit into the body through meditation and practice. So….perhaps it is that coherent, organized energy/spirit that creates the transformation of the body and sets the stage for healing and realization of human potential. That would explain the first principle of why mindfulness works and would encompass spirituality and quantum physics(energy on a sub atomic level and it’s behavior). If in fact the process of embodying spirit is a first principle then we still have a way to go in our understanding of these broader issues. So is this explanation just science fiction and if so, is science fiction merely a glimpse as to what is possible as time unfolds?