The silence was crushing. I could hear loud screaming and realized it was coming from inside my head. A friend (?) had signed me up for a mindfulness retreat to help me find some peace. Mostly what I noticed was the not-so-peaceful thought: If the person behind me takes one more diabolical slurp of water, I am going to hasten their impermanence, pronto. If I had been allowed to talk, I would have yelled that if mindfulness was the wave of the future—I could wait! That was 25 years and almost 10,000 hours of practice ago. How on earth did I stick around? And why???
You don’t have to look too hard to see mindfulness popping up in hospitals, schools, around kitchen tables, and in corporations. Burnout is taking us all down. It makes sense that we are looking for help. People like me who feel fidgety, sad, depressed, angry, shell-shocked, or heartbroken have heard the word that something about watching your breath might make you feel better. Who knows why, but it seems to be helping other people, so why not give it a go?
Breathe, and Begin Again
One of the things I discovered was that even after years of practice, emptying my mind of all thoughts was not happening. And if I imagined that I would no longer feel sad or angry, it turns out that all those dark and feisty energies are still around. Mindfulness doesn’t make any of it go away. But as I continue to practice, continue to endure the irritation and boredom of anchoring my attention in my breath or my body or somewhere equally tedious, bit by bit my thoughts have quieted down. Ahhh. I notice that even when I don’t like what’s going on, learning to live in Now-Ville gives me the opportunity to live less in the world of knee-jerk reactivity, even when angry thoughts are on board. Suddenly, the speeding train of life is going in slow motion. Days are still very full and busy, but there is so much more space between everything.
