Consider mindfulness to grow in your experience of knowing God.
The practice of mindfulness can bring an experience of peace in chaotic times. What stresses you? What tears down your peace? Work that is never complete? A pet that forgot her training? Kids agitated and out of control? Anxiety growing into a panic attack when you’re in a close, crowded space?
It seems that seeking God should help. But how? Consider practicing mindfulness as you seek God for help. Mindfulness can open a way to connect with God’s Spirit and find peace, or wholeness in your inner self.
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
Psalm 63 NIV
Mindfulness began to be a popular practice in the West through a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He came to America in the 1960’s as the Vietnam War was escalating. He studied, then taught at Princeton University. Traveling the world extensively, he spread his teachings and lobbied Western leaders to end the Vietnam War.
Starting in France in the 1970s, he founded the first of a number of Buddhist Communities and monasteries where hundreds of residents and thousands of visitors were taught “the art of mindful living.” Through these and his books, Thich Nhat Hanh’s concepts caught on and drew a steady following in much of the Western world. By 2014, meditation and mindfulness had become part of mainstream culture. TIME magazine called it “the mindful revolution.” Mindfulness wasn’t discovered by Hanh, but his life and work brought it to everyday life in the Western World – to us. Today, mindfulness is applied to endless facets of life, personal and public, spiritual and secular.
Meditation and Mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness now thoroughly permeates our culture. It’s everywhere! In a church, meditation more than mindfulness is likely to be taught. Mindfulness often includes a vocalized mantra or meditation. Christians find scripture as their go-to resource for meditation in the practice of mindfulness. Easily memorized short passages are the clear preference for this type of meditation. The practice of mindfulness with a guided meditation, utilizes recordings of a longer passage of scripture, poetry, or songs.
Once a day is the most common recommendation for a beginning point to benefit from the practice of mindfulness. Meditations that are repeatable and measurable are recommended as a way to guide one’s thoughts for mindfulness practice. Some common beginning meditations are:
- Though I fall I will rise; Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. Micah 7:8 NIV
- Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10
- Come near to God and he will come near to you. James 4:8 NIV
- The Serenity Prayer.
- Many well-known worship songs and hymns.
Seeking God. The practice of mindfulness is simply the practice of being still and experiencing God. To begin mindfulness practices is to begin on the next step of one’s journey to know God more intimately.
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1 NIV
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
Psalm 139:23-24 NLT
For more on what mindfulness is about, listen to our podcast, Wholeness and Awareness Via Mindfulness.