The Danger of Getting Stuck Half Way in Mindfulness
Welcome back! This month of July 2020, we’ve been diving into the world of mindfulness. Last week we talked about some practical examples of how to live a more mindful life and I hope that was useful for some of you. This week, I’ve decided to take it a slightly different direction and actually breakdown some of the “negative” aspects of mindfulness. Although I believe mindfulness to be one of the most potent skills we can develop across the lifespan in an attempt to live a more resilient, peaceful, meaningful life, I do still believe that like many other useful tools we have, it can be used in ways that aren’t conducive for our goals.
Mindfulness research and pop culture’s spin has introduced, in my opinion, a somewhat opiate like effect when it comes to the reality of what a mindful life looks like. Essentially, I see many folks online and in my own life that use mindfulness as a sort of numbing agent, which allows them to “sort of” deal with some issues that have arisen in their life. It’s as if being mindful, once you’ve decided to step onto the path of cultivating mindfulness, is the main goal of life. Although it’s amazingly useful in navigating our own internal landscape, I believe mindfulness to be a tool in addressing the actual obstacles and issues that arise in life that lead to more suffering. Mindfulness is not a replacement for speaking up for yourself in difficult situations, making difficult decisions, or changing your external environment – but it sure does help get us there.
Spiritual bypassing
It’s important for us to be able to feel and label naturally arising emotions in many situations so that we aren’t being dragged along by our subconscious reactions. In fact I believe the only way we can stop being dragged is to honestly look at our reactions. Mindfulness allows us to do this. But there is a second part to this equation; making the necessary changes either in ourselves or in our environment to reduce further disturbances. I think this second part is where some of us can get caught when we step onto the path of self development. There is an idea I’ve heard a number of times that suggests that if you can work on yourself enough, you don’t need to change your environment, or if you can’t, it means that you’re “weak” or need more practice. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Our environment plays a powerful role in our psychology and the way we view the world. We derive information from our local environment that is then used to derive what the rest of the world must look like. For this reason alone, it’s important for us to be somewhat strict with what we accept and keep in our local environment. For many of us, this is the practice. It’s difficult to manage your environment, it requires concentration and resilience. This is one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of keeping your room or house clean – beyond being a good hygiene practice, it prioritizes and continuously reminds us of our ability to have a positive (or negative) effect on our environment. Our lives are very similar to our rooms. If we go a long time without cleaning the dishes, within a few days our sink is piled with dirty plates and bowls, and we can hardly get a drink from the tap. In a very similar way if we allow things in our life to pile up, we are often spending more time and energy worrying about what we’re not doing rather than enjoying what we are doing. I understand this to be the general thesis of the idea of spiritual bypassing. Which says “everything is okay because as long as I’m aware of the stack of dirty plates, I’m fine”. Hopefully many of you can scoff and think “phew, glad that isn’t me”. But think again. A good test for this, or for me anyways, is to see what thoughts come bounding into your mind when your head hits the pillow before bed each night. Now I genuinely hope that all of you are going to bed without a worry in the world, but something tells me I’m not the only one who can think myself into a panic about all the things I need to do before I can live a good life (check back to last week’s article here if you’d like to hear more about not postponing your happiness). Some of us have structured our entire lives in an attempt to keep those sleep-preventing thoughts at bay; we’ve thrown a sheet over the dirty dishes, we say we don’t have time to clean them, we don’t go home, we yell at them, or we get someone else to do them for us.
Mindfulness can be an excellent tool in dealing with these “dirty dishes”. In fact, it adds depth and more meaning to cleaning them. When we can steady our thoughts onto pieces of incoming sensory information during or before a difficult task, we stop activating the all-too-familiar thoughts that have kept us stuck in the negative loop we wake up to everyday. We know what we want to change. Inhibiting the stories of past failures and all the associated negative emotions that come with it is a potent psychological move to make that will enable us to make the desired changes with far less friction than we are used to.
I wish you the best of luck.
