Thoughts in Mindfulness are Beautiful !!!!
Are you afraid of intrusive thoughts while meditating?
Do you often feel "I just can't concentrate, I'm no good, I can't do this." And that story often is unsaid, as it feels too imperfect to say out loud.
What if I, as a mindful teacher, say that having intrusive thoughts while trying to concentrate is normal and all right?
It reminds me of beautiful lines by Leonard Cohen, "There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in.”
There's wisdom even outside of mindfulness.
Surprised???
How???
In this quote, he beautifully puts forward the idea that the cracks are valuable, because "that's how the light gets in," that's how we learn to see the truth.
Even in Japanese culture, cracks are considered beautiful. They have an art of putting together broken pottery pieces with gold, which is called Kintsugi.
The transformation from broken scars to shining gold is breathtaking.
It reiterates that when we start finding the beauty in our imperfections, we begin to shine and radiate.
Isn't our thought also like cracks, imperfections?
They're fine. More than that, these are the things that let in the truth.
Do imperfections let in the truth?
Yes, emphatically yes, because in recognizing the tendency of the brain to create thoughts that are noticed in the mind, we get to see the truth of our brains, that they produce a flow of nonsense and sometimes wisdom, that they are like the "monkey mind" that teachers referred to a decade ago.
This is a critical realization. It flies in the face of the Renaissance idea that "I think therefore I am," a statement that worships rational thought.
The truth is, many thoughts are not facts, as we teach in the MB-CT Workshop. For example, the belief that "I should be able to quiet my mind" is not a fact, because it is untrue! This untruth we realize when mindful inquiry examines the mind we encounter when we begin to meditate without judgment.
So, we listen to Leonard again:
"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in.”
(Donald Fleck, Diplomate in Clinical Social Work, teaches mindfulness in the 8-week workshop called Mindfulness Based - Cognitive Therapy — MB-CT. A group starts September 28, on Zoom. Details here.)
