Mindfulness – Meditation, Concentration and Focus

I mentioned mindfulness meditation to someone the other day. They have greatly benefited from the movement towards disrupting their lives from distractions.

Now, I go back a ways – to the days when Christians were disturbed by Transcendental Meditation. The idea that was most disruptive was that you could look within yourself – abandon yourself to yourself to know yourself. We really were worried about the devil in all this – he would fill our minds with unclean and senseless counsel.

I think we missed something. Abandoning ourselves to ourselves lets us run rampant – we don’t need another “being” to disturb out thoughts about our being. Yes, other beings do play a part, but our self-deception starts down the trail without needing a lot of push from someone else.

So, with the return of mindfulness meditation, and the many branches that come from this idea, I’m once again a bit skeptical and quite optimistic.

Intentionality is the keyword that is being used. To leave this to merely breathing exercises is intentional. I would go a step further. Be intentional about a bigger picture – or more rightly – about God. A flow from the mountain top is much more lively than gathering a bit of dew from the morning sunrise.