Mindful Mess
A typo made while writing a paper for grad school ended up being an excellent topic for reflection. Instead of writing the word mindfulness, I typed “mindfulmess.” Just as I was correcting it, I paused. I realized that being a mindful mess is precisely what I was experiencing at the time. I realized that my thinking around this has been evolving for some time now. It has become especially relevant as I have been in the process of becoming a therapist and at the same time processing immense grief over the death of my beloved step-sister and mentor. This seemed nearly impossible while at the same time managing a full course load in graduate school, working as a new clinician, being in a marriage, continuing to show up for my yoga students, and just being a human in this world.
Part of my spiritual practice is listening to talks with different monastics from Plum Village, the community that Thich Nhat Hanh founded in France. Many of the talks I have been listening to are about how the monks and nuns processed their grief when their dear teacher suffered from a massive stroke and later died. Brother Pháp Hữu, the Abbot of Plum Village and personal attendant to Thich Nhat Hanh, spoke on his podcast, The Way Out is In, two weeks after Thich Nhat Hanh's death. There were so many moments in the podcast that his words stopped and his tears flowed freely while his co-host, Jo, silently held space for grief. There were also moments of mindfulness when the bells of Plum Village rang, the raindrops hit the roof and windows, and the two hosts sat together in silence in Thich Nhat Hanh’s hut.
There is often pressure to have “good vibes only” in the complex world of modern yoga and wellness. This is simply not possible and can be damaging. These practices were meant to help one navigate the inevitable suffering that is part of the human experience. To give the pain we experience the love and compassion needed to transform, it must be recognized. The danger of “good vibes only” is that pain, a natural part of the human experience, is stigmatized. This is a direct route to spiritual and emotional bypassing, suppression of feelings, and deep shame.
If you allow yourself to feel and express sadness, anger, grief, anxiety, and fear are you not also on a path of awakening? What if your relationship with yourself is built on awareness, compassion, and nonjudgment? This relationship may be the path to awakening or better yet a re-awakening to the essence of your interconnection, loving-kindness, equanimity, awareness, vulnerability, and humanity. Some refer to this as the “Self.”
I am embracing the new word “mindfulmess.” My feelings can be messy and my heart can hurt at times when I witness suffering or I suffer AND I can hold it all with non-judgmental presence and awareness. I can have an attitude of kindness and curiosity as I navigate life’s inevitable challenges, transitions, and grief. As an associate marriage and family therapist, I support therapy clients to hold their painful emotions and suffering with tenderness and care, explore attachment wounds and unhelpful beliefs, identify what matters most, and cultivate the courage it takes to be a mindful mess while acting on our values. Jeff Foster’s Poem Trust The Pain illustrates this beautifully.
Trust the Pain
~Jeff Foster, from Poems to Save Your Life, You Were Never Broken
Friend, the ache you feel today
is not a mistake. There is no shame
In what you are going through.
In some distant world
You are being hailed as a warrior-hero.
Your pain is a holy site, an altar.
Come out of the mind and into the body now.
Send attention into deep raw sensations in your belly, your chest, your head.
Dress today’s wounds with presence.
Breathe into sadness.
Offer the anger oxygen.
Infuse the fearful one with fearless fascination.
Don't try to “fix” the burning.
(It’s not yours to fix, it belongs to the ages.)
Don’t try to “get rid” of it.
(The heart does not understand “get rid of.”)
Don't even try to “transmute” it.
That is not your job.
Your only job is to love what is here.
And to love your own inability to love
And to have courage, or not to have courage today,
to be as present as you can possibly be,
and not an ounce more.
You are giving birth to new life,
to a precious inner child,
love and pain making something new,
wound as womb.
She is scared, she is raw, she is a little heartbroken,
But she is so alive now, and deserving of love.
The ache in you is the place
where alchemy longs to happen.
To learn more about Therapy offerings, visit my new therapy page
https://plumvillage.org/podcast/the-passing-of-zen-master-thich-nhat-hanh-a-cloud-never-dies