“What looks like weakness is actually where your strength lies.” 

– from You Have to Be Strong Enough to Be Weak”  in Wherever You Go, There You Are:  Meditations in Everyday Life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn

What do you make of this paradox, between strength and weakness?  I’m drawn to mindfulness practice as a means of taking good care of the parts of my life (and my communities, and the world at large) that feel hurt…or heavy…or in pain.  What I’m often looking for, in mindfulness practice, is relief.  I want to feel better, or not so alone, or, in JKZ’s words, “strong enough” to stay with and take care of hurt and pain.  This “staying with”…with the gentlest of intention and attention…is at the heart of compassion practice, lovingkindness, tonglen, and a host of other mindfulness practices.  

I’m old enough to understand that what hurts is not always easily fixed, especially the “big” things going on in the world at large.  Yet a childhood belief holds fast deep inside of me.  This is another reason I’m interested in the relationship between strength and weakness:  I cannot shake a kind of “magical thinking” that if I do just the right things, the problem might disappear. Like a bunny at the end of a wand, magic!   Personally, this magical thinking has something to do with the particular religious world I grew up in, the idea that this is a “Path” and that “We Know It” and that if I’m part of the  We that follows the Path, I might escape the bad things that happen to others.  I don’t think you have to grow up in a religious world to think this way.  I think many people think this way about their parents and the families they find for themselves.  I’m doing it differently and so will be happier than the family I grew up in or I’m doing it the same and so expect the same positive outcomes.  Magical thinking comes in many shapes and sizes.

Even if we’re old or wise enough to not believe in magic….even if, like me, you’ve long left behind childhood notions of a “Path” or a special “We” that can take you there...it is easy to think about mindfulness practice that we’re getting somewhere, or getting good at it.  Our urge to control, resist, or run from pain is real!  Mindfulness Practice itself can become yet another way of putting up walls, keeping what’s hard at arm’s length, thinking we have a handle on things and that this handle will last.  

Our practice this week will invite us to bring tenderness to feelings we’d rather control.  With seasonal energies gathering, our feelings quickly get clouded by action; to-do lists, invitations, obligations we’re trying to manage.  Can we pause, notice, and gently sit with whatever is going on behind the action?  What do we make of these words, strength and weakness, when we’re not trying to control or fix?

No experience in mindfulness is needed to join in, and you don’t need to read along.  Invite a friend.  Friday Mindfulness is open to all.

— Jonathan