From Nurturing Our Taro Patches By Jimmy Toyama
One day, not long ago, while browsing through the magazine racks at Borders Book Store an article in the September 2008 issue of Shambhala Sun caught my attention.
Curiosity aroused, I focused in on an article written by Andrea Miller with the tag line “Mindful Society.” The article, like others in the issue, sought to show how and in what ways mindfulness living was making a difference in society.
“Mindfulness is being purposefully aware,” the article says. “It is noting what we are experiencing and our responses to those experiences.”
Meditation practices which nurtures mindfulness is not only for Buddhist. Most spiritual traditions have profound contemplation practices too. However, Buddhist meditation techniques that foster mindfulness are often seen as useful tools because it usually requires no attendant belief systems. As such, mindfulness is open to and is accessible to anyone. Mindfulness is everywhere Miller writes. It can be used by anyone to find balance.
Accordingly, mindfulness is making inroads into our culture as a nonsectarian method to enhance peoples’ lives. Reporting on her survey, Andrea Miller says that mindfulness practices are making important contributions in fields like health and healing, care giving, education, prison, and organizational leadership—involving proponents like Peter Senge, author of the internationally read “The Fifth Discipline” and Margaret Wheatley who wrote “Leadership and the New Science”.
Learning through Andrea Miller’s report of the many contributions mindfulness is making in various fields, I became, as one long interested in healthy communities, intrigued by the question the role mindfulness might play in impacting the tenor of relationships among people in a community. This question intrigues me because after many years of community involvement, I believe that a defining mark of a vibrant healthy community is the high level of quality that exists in the relationships and relatedness between its members.
To get a sense of the possibilities that mindfulness can make, I contacted Kona Goulet, Development Director, for Enlighten Next, an organization dedicated to transforming consciousness and culture. Enlighten Next also publishes “What Is Enlightenment” magazine, soon to be published as “Enlighten Next”.
As always, Kona was generous with her time to discuss and recommend material. She referred me to the works of Andrew Cohen, Spiritual Teacher and Founder of Enlighten Next, and Ken Wilber, integral philosopher and prolific writer. Both are leaders at the cutting edge of the evolution of human consciousness and spirituality for the twenty first century and beyond.
In our current century community is more than ever important but, it seems strange that in an age when technology connects us instantaneously and continuously, building and maintaining human relationships should be a mounting challenge. Our present context according to Andrew Cohen is that “we find ourselves very sophisticated, very evolved and developed, but very much alone and experiencing a deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual sense of alienation.”
Ken Wilber further adds that “relationships seems to be more important than ever and yet more elusive (emphasis added). That’s the real irony of the postmodern situation, that the thing probably valued most highly, is the thing that people have the least of in any authentic sort of way.”
Does all of this have a familiar ring? We all yearn for and are supposedly capable of authentically connecting and relating but find it a real challenge. What makes it so difficult for us in this day and age? Here, Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber provide powerful insights.
According to both, in the run up to the twenty first century we have developed a tremendous capacity for individuation, a highly developed ego, which enables us to see our experiences and things in a highly detached and objective way. Great, but according to Andrew Cohen there is a downside as “we’ve become so attached to this separate sense of self—-that it seems to have made it harder and harder for us to sustain our relationships. We all long for deeper connections, but are unwilling to give up our attachment to our self importance in order to experience that connection.” This deep contradiction is further highlighted by Ken Wilber who succinctly says that we find ourselves where one says “okay, we are going to get together, but only if it doesn’t impinge upon our egos.”
This hidden limitation on connecting and relating is exacerbated and made difficult to see as it is covered over by the mask of our multicultural ideal with its heavy emphasis on relationships. So, according to Ken Wilber “on the one hand, there’s the ideal of this multicultural, multidimensional relational [human] being—-but only as long as it doesn’t interfere with me and my desires.” The influence, it seems, of a narcissistic culture. A condition described well in the works of Christopher Lasch “The Culture of Narcissism” and Ken Wilber “Boomeritis.”
Solving a problem hidden from awareness is a tough task by any means. It’s like swimming upstream against a strong current without knowing. Is there any way out of this predicament?
Yes, according to Cohen and Wilber because as Cohen says “the evolutionary impulse right now is calling us, compelling us to find a way to connect, not only with our own deepest sense of self but also with other people at a deeper level.” This impulse is what gives us hope that we may move beyond our own deep self limiting force to connect and meaningfully relate with others in genuine community.
As we move forward to create a future together, it would serve us well to keep in mind and practice mindfulness, in any form one may choose, as a way to get in touch and be in touch with this evolutionary impulse that moves us toward community—a mindful community.
In this holiday season, at the cusp of a historic presidential inauguration on January 20, 2009, we have much to be hopeful for, including the potentials and possibilities in mindfulness. It’s a gift available to all. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!