Mindfulness with Mike

In this week’s mindfulness episode, we take a moment to reflect on the journey of self-awareness so far. What have I learned this semester (or this year) about myself – and how can I take these insights into the summer? How can my spirituality of self-awareness help me navigate my life’s decisions with integrity and intentionality?

As we look inward, as we engage the outward world, we discover new insights about who we are and chances to befriend our closest other: ourselves. In this week’s mindfulness episode, we remember that mindfulness is a turning inward so that we can turn outwards, too. Self-awareness and other-awareness are deeply connected. But we must not forget one important part: befriending ourselves. Receive words of blessing for befriending yourself this week from Jacqui Mignault at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. 

In this week’s mindfulness episode, we question the idea that spirituality and self-awareness are for ourselves alone, in the privacy of our own introspection. Self-awareness and meditation aren’t only for looking inside; ideally, we are equipped to engage the world and contribute to life all around us.

Sometimes we even see this idea captured in commercials. Have you seen this one from RVing Canada? Where will your spirituality provoke you to encounter the wild – and then equip you to live in the moments you find there?

Self-awareness is hard; it’s an uphill climb; sometimes we get tired; sometimes there are setbacks; we’re broken and far from perfect but beautiful still.

We’re not just brains on a stick; we have bodies; self-awareness includes being aware of our flesh.

In this week’s mindfulness episode, Western students Shayanne and Jocelyn join Mike to talk about embodiment. It’s so easy for us to live in our heads, to think of ourselves (and others) as brains on sticks. But what if we were to imagine our embodied existence as a gift? What opportunities might this give us for self-awareness? This week, listen in on our recent conversation and consider what your body tells you about who you are.

This week’s mindfulness episode invites you to think about who you are and the description of yourself that comes to mind. Black or white, queer or straight, struggling or secure, we can be secure in ourselves and that is a success. It is avoiding what the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls the danger of having a single story about your life.

“Show someone a single story about themselves, over and over again, and that is what they become.” “Power is not just the ability to tell the story about another person but to make it the definitive story about that person.”

Who are we beneath the expectations to be someone else – from others or ourselves.

In the Netflix documentary “Less is Now” (2021), T.K. Coleman says that “the kind of debt that creates the most problems in our society comes from a felt need to keep up with appearances. Sometimes we’re afraid to be honest with ourselves, fearing that we’re not enough. Let’s peek behind our avatars, our public images, to challenge this idea head on.

If we’re honest, all is not bright and sunny inside our consciousness. We need to practice the habit or spirituality of patience: being patient with the process of reflecting on who we are.

To cultivate patience, Jon Kabat-Zinn says we need to stop rushing to “get somewhere” because then we’re never where we are. Impatience is destructive; patience is restorative. Remember, the butterfly can only emerge on its own time.

For more insight on patience, check out Jon Kabat-Zinn’s short talk (length 2:18)

We don’t need to know where the good things in life come from. But when we recognize them, we can affirm them, embrace them, and be grateful. In this episode, we consider how to respond to the positive thoughts and feelings we experience when we engage in reflective self-awareness.

In a recent podcast, Living Gratefully, Dr. Cornel West (Harvard University) attempts to reckon with Black Lives Matter and integrate it as an expression of Christian hope (length 52:10).

When we engage in self-awareness, when we journey to the inside of “us,” we are often flooded with both positive thoughts and negative thoughts. They both can be relentless. Our task is to disconnect our identity, through self-awareness, from the autopilot of our thoughts and create space for processing.

In this episode, we begin by being aware of our thoughts and feelings as we sit quietly for five minutes. The goal is to be aware of our thoughts and feelings and not to be possessed by them.