Spiritual Alignment With Mindfulness

Lately I’ve been exploring what it means to be in (or out of) spiritual alignment.

Spiritual alignment is not something I have really contemplated before, but after a couple of months of yet another period of feeling ungrounded, I’ve begun to wonder if it may have to do with the fact that I live my life, for the most part, like this:

(bbc.uk.co)

Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) wrote:

I fear nothing; I hope for nothing, I am free.

And I believe that he was right.  I’ve just never experienced it for myself.

When I step back, I am able to see with greater awareness and clarity the way in which lam constantly leaning just enough into the future, whilst I hang on to the past, which effectively leaves very little of me actually grounded in the present.

And while as I sit here at my computer writing these very words, what is problematic about this future-oriented stance toward life is glaringly obvious from a spiritual perspective, I have to say, this very same future-oriented stance is also what probably led to the majority of my successes and accomplishments because even before I had finished one project, or graduation, or committee, I was already on to the next one in my mind- if not in real time as well.

As someone who has spent a lot of her time as a behavioral psychotherapist, I am able to see how this future-oriented mind-set has had an important function in my life. 

I am also keenly aware that this mind-set, or behavior,  was heavily reinforced by my environment because I was rewarded greatly for my goal-directed ability to complete consecutive tasks.

So then, why is it problematic?

Let me answer that with an anecdote.

The other day my 8 year-old was going on and on about the XBOX that two of his friends have, and the trip to Great Wolf Lodge that someone from his class  went on, and his thoughts about how much better our lives  would be if we had a second shower/bathtub in our house (our shower was broken at the time).

It was at this point, regretfully, that I snapped and  found myself using my “mom voice” to shame him by ranting about how grateful he should be for the electronics he does have, the trips he has taken, and the shower/bathtub we do have (even if it was broken).

No, not my best parenting moment…

However, there is a silver lining.

Because mid-rant, I did have an A-HA moment, where I saw in technicolor how I was the pot calling the kettle black.

I too get caught in envy and desire, wanting and needing the next thing.

I too take on this feeling of always being slightly dissatisfied with the present moment because of the possibility of what could be more, better or next; I even secretly wonder sometimes if the label I've taken on of "seeker" is not just another extension of this same behavior.

And the science backs it up.

In 2010 Harvard University researchers Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth published an article called “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind” in Science Magazine.

The article summarized how it used modern day technology (an  iPhone app) and 2,200 study participants to test if mindfulness truly does increase happiness.

At the completion of the study, the researchers concluded:

A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost…

Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. 

Indeed, ‘stimulus-independent thought’ or ‘mind wandering’ appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation.

Although this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement  that allows people to learn, reason, and plan, it may have an emotional cost.

Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and ‘to be here now.’ These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

It would seem they are correct.

Since it was over three hundred years ago French scientist and Catholic theologian Blaise Pascal wrote his observation that:

The unhappiness of a person resides in one thing, to be unable to remain peacefully in a room.

And another 2 thousand years before that, Buddhist teachings introduced and taught the First and Second Noble Truths which are:

1.)    In life there is suffering, and
2.)    Suffering manifests from craving (future) and clinging (past).

An antidote to this cycle of suffering that me, my son, and the study participants get caught up in, is one critical aspect of mindfulness which is presence, or aligning yourself with the present moment.

I call this process: spiritual alignment.

When I practice spiritual alignment, I move from a mind-state of leaning forward into the future and/or reaching into the past, to one of “now” that would look more like this:

Where I am intentionally abiding in the present.

Because this process of spiritual alignment is so difficult for me (I am absolutely one of those people in the research article who’s default mode is "wandering mind"), on occasion I will use imagery to help me with this spiritual task.

The image I use is quite simple: I imagine myself in a small row boat on a river.

The image is borrowed from the Zen tradition, and the row boat is the present moment; the river is time; and I imagine myself being safely held and carried in the row boat as it moves down the river.

What I have found, is when I use this image I am not only brought into spiritual alignment, but I also often feel a greater sensation of serenity or peacefulness because I am relieved of the efforting that is involved in that constant (unsustainable) leaning forward into the future that I do, while holding on to aspects of the past.

It enables me to experience what academic, author, and Transpersonal Psychologist Jorge N. Ferrer writes that:

Embodied spirituality views all human dimensions—body, vital, heart, mind, and consciousness—as equal partners in bringing self, community, and world into a fuller alignment with the Mystery out of which everything arises.. 

Perhaps you too may find benefits of spiritual alignment with mindfulness practice as well.

May it be so.