duality

This past week has been so heavy, so explosive, so grief-filled, so enraged.

As a mindfulness practitioner, I’ve wondered, aloud and silently in my heart, if what this work is appropriate for this moment.

Emerging from this moment are a bounty of contradictory and conflicting thoughts. And I do not simply mean here differences of stance, opinion, or worldview between individuals. I mean contradiction and opposing views in the mind of any one person.

I empathize with the rage but I wish there wasn’t looting and vandalism.

I recognize violence as wrong but I support the work of law enforcement.

I believe the experiences of Black people but my struggles haven’t felt like White Privilege.

I love my family member but I find their views abhorrent.

I am a patriot but I am devastatingly disappointed in my country right now.

These are just a few of the dialectics - opposing viewpoints held together - that I’ve heard, or observed, in the discourse of this past week.

Incidentally, mindfulness is well equipped to assist in the discomfort born of dialectical thinking.

For starters and most fundamentally, mindfulness brings us to full presence in the moment. It calls us to become fully aware of the thoughts we are having and to work to reduce the distress our thoughts cause. We are able to bring a gentle curiosity to our thoughts through mindful awareness.

WIth practice and increased skill, we can learn to observe those thoughts without associating value to them. What I mean by this is one can explore each opposing thought singularly and with clarity without placing demand that the opposition be resolved.

This is the other benefit mindfulness brings in this moment: mindfulness allows us to experience discomfort as a neutral event without demanding that it be fixed or solved. A great example of this is when my nose gets itchy when I am meditating, or if the muscles in my back start squawking. There is a conditioned response to label that discomfort as “wrong”, “bad”, and “demanding my attention”.

The same happens when we are confronted with the pains associated with deep growth, particularly when it is spiritual growth, intellectual growth, centuries old overdue growth.

By maintaining mindfulness even amid the challenges of our own uncomfortability we learn to tolerate it. This can then be applied to the pain, frustration, and unease of the dualities of life. The dualities of this challenging moment in time.

I fiercely believe that the only way to true healing - individually, collectively, nationally - is through.

We must unlearn the comfort of observing things in black and white only. Through mindfulness, it is possible to sit patiently in the unease of conflicting thoughts and resist the urge to turn away, distract, or grasp at a solution.

“A beginner’s mind” is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice; it calls us to release the demands and control of our thought processes and to approach our thoughts with an easy and gentle curiosity.

Perhaps it is not only possible, but imperative, that we approach the thoughts we find most challenging right now with that easy and gentle curiosity.

Let us approach the conflicting and difficult thoughts of this moment with gentleness.

Let us be curious about the different experiences of each individual.

Let us approach this growth with awareness and with ease.

Let us learn to sit deeply in this discomfort so that we may heal.