How to address the spiritual benefits of mindfulness without highlighting (or alienating) religion might be best left to the experts. For sure, as Sam Harris, author of several bestselling books, said, “Your mind is all you truly have. So it makes sense to train it.”
Sam’s newest book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, addresses the benefit of contemplative wisdom being married to modern science. If you are interested, check out the interview Joshua Fields Millburn did with Sam. The most important takeaway might be this:
Perhaps the most important thing one can discover through the practice of meditation is that the “self”—the conventional sense of being a subject, a thinker, an experiencer living inside one’s head—is an illusion.
And this is where meditative insight actually makes contact with science: because we know that the self is not what it seems to be. There is no place in the brain for a soul or an ego to be hiding. And it is possible to examine this illusory self closely enough to have the feeling that we call “I” disappear. As it happens, this comes as quite a relief.
Spirituality, at its core, allows the “I” to disappear; it is a tool to end the grasping and cheating and lying we do inside our own minds. It is about transcending the ordinary to experience the extraordinary in every moment of every day. As Albert Einstein wrote:
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people; first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest -a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
This week, remember the wisdom when Doctor Dean Ornish said the difference between illness and wellness is the shift from “I” to “We.” Mindfulness is the path….
This health tip originally appeared online at https://scs-matters.com/
Mindfulness-Spiritual-Benefits/. Send email or call or text to schedule a private session with Debra.
Tips from 5 April 2010 to 6 August 2012 are here: Archived Tips
 |
Rev.Debra Basham
Voice or text: (269) 921-2217 Email: debra@scs-matters.com https://scs-matters.com http://ImagineHealing.info http://SurgicalSupport.info Small Changes … Infinite Results™
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~Mother Teresa |