Mindfulness-And Finding Your  Calm

It has been hard for me to practice mindfulness and reach a state of calm during these past few months of Covid 19. Judging from the statistics we see about depression, drug overdoses, suicides, and other psychological challenges, many people feel the same. Some of us feel we are living in an unreal dream, with the very real possibility of losing ourselves.

Mindfulness is an effective strategy in helping people come to grips with their turbulent emotions. For those who can maintain a high level of consistency in controlling their thoughts, it works. It means being constantly on guard to be positive, and to change a thought the second that fear and worry intrude. But for many, it seems exhaustive—the demands of that level of control is just too much.

Thankfully, there are many other approaches to mindfulness and calming your emotions. You can look at this time of suspended activity as a period during which you can go deeper into yourself and explore your awareness. Is your purpose to enjoy life, to exist in a protected environment where you will experience only pleasure and happiness? Or is it something else, something that can propel you to another level of mindfulness, possibly to journey toward a higher state of consciousness?

We all have our own path, and our own ways of dealing with this societal challenge. I have chosen to study, explore, and venture out of my field of comfort to look at other ideas.

I’ll start with what is most familiar to me, psychology—this is where I have always concentrated my efforts to understand mindfulness and human emotions.

Psychology

Shahram Heshmat, Ph.D., is an associate professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. He specializes in applying insights from behavioral economics research to human behavior, and makes the following comments about emotions:

“An emotion is a special kind of thinking about what we make of an event. Emotions provide us with cognitive access to our judgments and goals. For example, happiness tells we are doing well, and fear warns us of danger. Anger provides information about the violation of one’s rights. Sometimes the beliefs involved may not be accurate. Some mental illnesses may be characterized by chronically dysfunctional appraisals. For example, depressed individuals tend to believe that they have no power over events in their own lives. With repeated activation, the negative beliefs acquire a stronger habitual thought pattern that over time is more easily accessed by stressful life events.

We interpret everything we see or hear in terms of our habitual thinking or prior experience. As we go about our day-to-day lives, we tell a story about reality, and these stories shape our beliefs.

Our ability to manage the flow of thought and emotion contributes to our happiness. We create paradise or hell in our own minds.”

The Church

People of faith are well versed in addressing emotions. The church teaches that our feelings during difficult times may be disturbed and mixed, but comfort can be found.

Charles Frazier Stanley is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an evangelical, and the founder of In Touch ministries, offering ‘straight up’ inspiration and bible interpretation. The following quote is taken from one of his sermons :

“We live in an age of anxiety. Whether it’s personal concerns, family matters, financial needs, health issues, governmental policies, or global conditions, we all have reasons to worry and fret. Sometimes critical situations strike immediate fear in our hearts, and that is only natural. However, much of our anxiety is associated with everyday problems. We take our worries to bed with us, wake up with them, and carry them around with us all day.

Anxiety is a condition in which the mind is being pulled in two directions. This results in an emotional state of distress that dominates our thoughts and disrupts our sleep. It could be fueled by present circumstances or fear of what could happen in the future. It’s basically a reaction to our circumstances, but it’s also a choice. Instead of giving in to worry, we can cast all our anxiety on the Lord because He cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7).”

The Sanscrit Tradition

Sat Shree, teaching the Bhagavad Gita, (Journey into Consciousness), focuses on what happens to us as we undergo our transformation or ‘awakening into consciousness’:

Pain, anxiety and discomfort are all part of the process, the ‘Gita’ teaches. In fact, it is the resistance to change, expressed through the distractions of life, that causes the inevitable pain of transformation. It is normal to resist, and a characteristic of the human condition. But without struggle and effort, the ego stays intact, and nothing changes.

For most people, it is not a sudden transformation, but rather a gradual process, with stops and starts, and a feeling of dejection in between. The ‘stops’ of course, are the periods of distraction we choose, in order to avoid coming to terms with the demands of becoming ‘enlightened’. This tradition teaches that we are all on this path, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Of the various traditions I have outlined, (and many others I haven’t addressed), I have been drawn to Hindu philosophy, spending time each day reading, viewing videos and meditating. For me, Sat Shree’s teachings of the Bhagavad Gita has been comforting and uplifting in these confusing times.