I was recently asked if I could include God in my presentation and teaching of mindfulness to make it a meaningful addition to our church’s youth education program. This question caused my body to tense as I experienced some inner resistance to the thought of explicitly bringing God into this exploration. I see immense value in learning and practicing mindfulness AND I want to make it accessible to anyone and everyone.
Mindfulness and meditation are rooted in Eastern tradition, and I believe it’s important to honor this history. At the same time, I don’t necessarily want to exclude people by connecting a mindfulness practice with a specific spiritual affiliation. After all, my formal training has been through a secular based program that can be used in public schools. I’ve found it to be a fantastic program, and it is through this training as well as my own personal experience that I have come to understand that there is inherent worth in the process, regardless of one’s spiritual beliefs. After all, the ability for a mindfulness practice to help regulate one’s nervous system is, in itself, perhaps enough reason to give the practice a try.
I was feeling really torn here. Do I only focus on teaching mindfulness secularly, or do I sometimes bring God and/or spirituality into the conversation, when appropriate?
Can God and mindfulness coexist?
The next morning, I put my pen to paper and journaled to see if I could gain some clarity.
(I feel like I should disclose that this next part did not go as expected! My personal background is based in Christianity so I thought about Jesus and how he might approach mindfulness if he were here with us, speaking today. I honestly thought I would write something about how Jesus would say that there is no reason to get God involved in guiding someone on an exploration in mindfulness because God does not exclude anyone based on their religious affiliation or spiritual beliefs. And I suppose maybe that IS part of the message that I ultimately received, but it’s so interesting to see the path that my pen took to get there!)
This is the message that flowed to me, through me, and onto the ink on my page:
Yes, sometimes God* is a part of the conversation because God is there. Here. Within us. Flowing. Present. Part of it all, if not IT ALL, within every thing.
And I think about Jesus and I imagine him here, today. Perhaps he would teach mindfulness as a way to tune into the present moment, which is where God is always available to us. Mindfulness is a gateway to God. It’s being fully immersed in the experience God is putting before us and noticing God’s presence in it all.
AND the practice is about each person sitting with God and allowing God to meet them right where they are, in this moment, without any judgement…just Love. It’s about each person discovering and getting to know God personally, intimately.
So, therefore, what is my experience may be different from your experience. God comes to each of us uniquely. We just need to practice paying attention so we can meet him (or her) at the door.
And then came this invitation:
Intentionally tune into the present moment, releasing judgement, and God will naturally flow into your experience, in a way that is designed specifically for you. For your relationship with God is personal and one-of-a-kind. Enter this experience with a sense of curiosity and openness, and invite the Spirit to dance.
Woah.
So returning back to the original question, Can God and mindfulness coexist? I would have to say, Of course. Because whether or not I directly refer to any sort of spirituality when guiding someone in mindfulness, when I am tuned into the moment with love as my intention, God is there too.
*As I was journal writing, I remember feeling that the name “God” was too limiting a word to describe the creator of everything, but nonetheless, I needed a word to describe it. Seeing as “God” is the name for the divine that I am personally most accustomed to, it’s the one that flowed out in ink. It’s like God wanted me to know that this is the word coming to me because I’m the one that he (or she) was meeting in that moment. If someone else had the pen, perhaps the name would have been received and written differently, but it still would have held the same intention, which I think is Love.