What Might a Mindful Divorce Look Like?
T.W. Arnold, III
Q. What is meant by mindfulness?
A. Mindfulness is as old as our experiencing of consciousness, and has been known by many names that all describe the experience. Mysticism is found in every culture, from our earliest times painting animals and hand prints upon the dark roofs of caves by torchlight. For examples of this voice in our collective psyche you can look to Meister Eckhart from 13th century Catholicism, to the Buddha 2,500 years ago, to Christ, to Thomas Merton, to Rumi and Hafiz and the Sufi poets and the whirling dervishes, to Mohandas Ghandi, to the studies of Joseph Campbell, to Henry David Thoreau, to the awakened Ramana Maharshi, to Emerson, to Krishnamurti, to his Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, to Alan Watts, to Ram Dass, to Rudolf Steiner, - an unending list, and you undoubtedly have your own favorites. When we look we find that each and every single one of these amazing human beings is describing exactly the same thing.
Today in our times, thanks in part to teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one way we speak of these Truths is in terms of "mindfulness." The purpose of mindfulness training and meditation includes training the mind to return to the present moment even as we reflexively become lost in the trance of thought. This is what Buddhist's have been doing with meditation practices for thousands of years. In this way we may stop being so identified with our thoughts that we believe that they are all true. Thinking tends to be habitual, reactive, and circular - 95% of the content and structure of most of our experiencing of thought comes in the form of an internal dialogue going nowhere and having nothing to do with what is really happening outside our heads. Have you noticed this? It is worth considering whether the causes of divorce, and the experience of it, might be altered by this simple recognition.
Kabat-Zinn has described mindfulness as "paying attention, in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. Mindfulness is not about thinking, it is about experiencing. It is a form of meditation, and is available in every moment." This does have the power to transform our experience, and evidently to rewire our brains.
Mindfulness is indifferent to overt spirituality (heck, spirituality is one of the most sophisticated traps used by the mind!); yet, it is fundamentally spiritual in attitude. This spirituality rests not in any particular philosophy, religion, or belief system but underlies them all. It does not even require a belief system, and so suits the atheist and agnostic. Mindfulness is bringing the attention to the mind and body into the present moment. When this is done everything else spontaneously takes care of itself. We may find this an amazingly powerful tool, and a big relief. Being mindful of mindfulness becomes a richly non-spiritual form of textural spirituality. It is especially useful in guiding choices, points of view, recognizing the destructive presence of reactivity, and in reshaping the experience of marital and non-marital breakup.
Q. Are there practices that can be of use?
A. Kabat-Zinn developed what he coined as MBSR, which is but one tool at your disposal. According to his website, his programs are designed to "help you befriend yourself in the only moment you will ever have -- this one -- and to enter into and dwell for a time in the domain of being, whatever is going on in your mind or in the world in any given moment or on any given day, and thus restore and strengthen your health and well-being at the level of the mind, the body, and the heart, which I see as one undivided whole. By cultivating mindfulness in a disciplined way, as a radical act of self-compassion and intelligence, you are tapping into your own deepest resources for learning, growing, healing, and transformation, resources that you may not even know you possess, but that emerge as we cultivate the kind attention at the heart of these meditations."
There are many others. I am constantly updating our
LINKS
pages on the certainty that those who bump into this website will find exactly what they might need. Generally we are speaking of some form of
meditation
. You've practiced meditation throughout your life: Noticing with awe a stormy sea, or the smell of rain just after a thunderstorm, or the birth of your child are simple examples. Adyahsanti gives an outstanding description for how to meditate.
Without some form of practice mindfulness and equanimity are impossible to maintain. This is just the truth. Even with practice, one tends to only enjoy glimpses of it. But glimpses are a crucial beginning, and they tend to have a life of their own and to start us out on a journey where we need and want to go. These practices are no different from those that underlie all faces of religion, spirituality, poetry and philosophy. They are not in conflict with anything that you already know. So, mindfulness must be pointed to as a practical tool for escaping our suffering and the inevitable dissatisfaction with the process of divorce.
Q. What does being mindful require?
A. Mindfulness requires nothing because it exists outside the realm of achievement. It is always based within the present moment, and the present moment just exists without concern for past or future.
The present moment doesn't care about striving to change anything. It is not in argument with "what is." In the present moment, nothing matters other than the present moment. Here is the present moment as an existing fact, here and now - can we say the same about some remembrance of what happened yesterday, or what we hope or fear will happen tomorrow?
Which is not to say that we are not forced to come to peace with the past and to come to terms with the future. As topics and timeframes, these concepts remain highly relevant. It is not enough to say "this too will pass" or "in the present moment you cannot be harmed" because not only can that seem incomprehensible at times, but mindfulness without perspective risks failing to protect the person from destructive harm. It is not our common experience that we disappear in a cloud of bliss. So, what is to be done? Mindfulness gives perspective.
For purposes of divorce mindfulness begins by recognizing what is mindlessness, and the forms of thinking or behavior that mindlessness takes. After all, it is often easier to see the insanity of everything than how things are all interconnected. This sensitivity does not begin by changing anything at all; the impulse to change things is just more trance, wearing emperor's clothing. Recognition is all that is ever required, - the rest takes care of itself. How simple is that! But without attempting to see what is and what is not zombie like reactivity, there is little room for desire and intention to sprout and take root. The method of mindfulness allows for a constant re-dialing back to the simple presence, without demand and even without plan.
But, beware, the mind ('the ego') moves nimbly and so quickly. As soon as these words form, are expressed on paper or read, they tend to coalesce into a plan of action into "a doing" - an activity. And so mindlessness begins again.
Is this confusing? Absolutely - its filled with paradoxes because ultimately the mind cannot grasp it all. Instead, the mind can point to illustrations that cause a felt sense of recognition which usually cannot be explained. Have you ever awakened to the fact that you've been unconscious until that moment? Doesn't this happen every day, all the time? For instance, suddenly you are at the bathroom mirror with a toothbrush in your mouth and you have no idea nor remembrance how you got there? Someone has been talking and that you've not been listening and have no idea what they just said. You've clicked to this page or away from it, and don't recall the clicks in between or the content of what you observed. That you have been distracted by some story of your mind while driving, and now arrive at your destination uncertain who was steering or what route they took? Where did the present go?