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What is mindfulness and is it biblical?

by | Dec 12, 2018 | Questions, Other

Recently on my radio show, a woman called in about a practice that is being implemented in schools in her area called “mindfulness.” When she told me what the practices were, I became alarmed. After some research, I discovered that the practice of “mindfulness” has been around for decades. It is an Eastern-based technique that brings an altered state of consciousness.  It is dangerous.

“Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) have nearly 35 years of research & development supporting them, and have moved progressively through three large institutional cultures: health care, mental health, & education.”1

Before I provide definitions from various sources on what mindfulness is, I want to inform you about my practices in the occult before I became a Christian. Then when we look at mindfulness practices, you can see the similarity.

Mindfulness

The occult deals with things like séances, energy balancing, trying to contact spirits or the dead, meditation practices, emptying the mind, and patiently waiting and expecting something to happen around you. Generally, I don’t talk about my occult past because I don’t want to negatively influence anyone and inadvertently help them practice anything occultic. But, for the sake of this article, I’m going to list some (not all) of the things that I would do when I was involved in the occult and was seeking to make contact with “the other side.”

When I hear myself speak these words (I’m using a speech recognition program to dictate this), I want to laugh at how ridiculous it sounds. But, it’s not laughable. If anything, I am extremely ashamed of that part of my life. I will never understand why God, in his great mercy, chose to save me out of that filth. All I can say is to him be all the glory.

Anyway, let me get back on track and list some of the practices that I would do in my occult practices.

  • Sit in a comfortable position.
  • Focus on a memory, thought, or object that is soothing.
  • Reduce your breathing rate.
  • Relax your muscles.
  • Continue to focus the soothing memory, thought, or object.
  • Wait.
  • Let your mind go empty. Let it flow in a relaxed, self-guided path of calm expectation.
  • Tune in to your environment.
  • Focus on listening and seeing what is around you as you wait to make for manifestations.

One of the results of this methodology is an altered state of consciousness. This can lead a person to become open to suggestion and manipulation because he is not focusing on any absolute truth, i.e. something from God’s word. Instead, he is abiding in subjective experience as he lets his mind go where ever it wants. In the process he can become very receptive to whatever happens and whatever is suggested. This is an occult practice and has roots in Eastern Mysticism.

Definitions of Mindfulness

Now, let’s look at some definitions of mindfulness.

  • “Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”2
  • “The development of mindfulness, a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, sensations and surrounding environment.”3
  • “Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.”4

Do you see any similarities?  I do.

Now, similarities don’t mean something is automatically bad. But when it comes to the mental state of our children who are being heavily influenced by secularism in schools, then we need to take this practice very seriously. Consider another quote regarding mindfulness.

“Toxic stress is challenging to work with because our stress response taps into some very old survival hardware in our evolutionary biology.”5

So, the basis of mindfulness is rooted in the secular presupposition of evolutionary biology. This necessitates a humanistic philosophy as the starting point of mindfulness. But if that weren’t enough, consider the following.

“Because the roots of toxic stress lie deep in the nervous system, we need tools that go beyond the conceptual mind to directly target that system. To transform our habitual responses, we need to regularly practice our skills when we are not in “fight – flight – freeze” mode.6

New Age Movement

The New Age movement has fallen out of popular favor, but its concepts and practices can still be detected in modern American society. New Age philosophy is full of phrases such as “brain hemisphere balancing,” “divine presence,” “mind balancing,” “divine consciousness,” “subconscious mind,” etc. When I read the phrase “we need tools that go beyond the conceptual mind,” I am immediately reminded of New Age terminology.

Back in the 80s and 90s, I did seminars on the New Age. One of the things I would do is get out my collection of New Age material in a large notebook and then randomly open to any page and read for a few seconds. I would do this several times because I wanted the audience to get a feel for the language that is used in the New Age movement so they could then recognize it more easily.

Often such New Age terminology has no direct definitional meaning. Instead, it seems that they would combine various words which, in my opinion, were attempts to sound intellectual and spiritual. The student of the New Age is then left to fill in the blanks as to what any particular word or phrase might mean – which would be contextualized based on practice. So, I have to ask, what does it mean to “go beyond the conceptual mind”?

Now my very brief comment here about the similarity of the phraseology of mindfulness with the New Age doesn’t prove anything. Nor does the coincidental practices of mindfulness of inducing altered states of consciousness in the occult to prove that mindfulness is dangerous. But, this is something that should concern us nonetheless.

Meditation and Relaxation

There’s nothing wrong with relaxing. But, the danger in mindfulness is that it is done with children who are extremely susceptible to suggestion. Teachers can easily induce an altered state of consciousness in the children who can then be easily influenced by teachers offering guided imagery and statements that can affect the thoughts, emotions, feelings, and expectations of the children. That is not the job of the teacher!

Now we Christians know that the enemy of the gospel is always trying to use any method he can to control, manipulate, and ultimately damn people. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the devil is behind mindfulness. It’s just that meditative processes put upon children can be used for bad purposes and this is dangerous.

Everything we do has a moral value

Everything we do has a moral value. I say this because God works all things after the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11) which means all of our actions and all of our thoughts are worked after His counsel. This further means that everything that we do is related to God in some way (by his direct or indirect decree).  Therefore, everything we do has a moral quality. This means that mindfulness is a moral issue with which Christians ought to be concerned.

The way of the world, and particularly with the enemy of the gospel, is to use things that are good in appearance, that can appear helpful in practice, that seem to have positive results, and then gradually move them into something that can be used for evil.  And, since his world is moving towards darkness, the enemy is gaining more power. One of the things that the enemy wants to do is control children. And, if I might be so bold as to give a warning, mindfulness practices will be used to move children away from Christianity, away from moral absolutes, and towards the subjective experience of feelings and self-help meditation practices.

Conclusion

I am not condemning mindfulness in every aspect. I’m only saying that there are some areas of concern. There seems to be the implementation of altered states of consciousness, secularist philosophical basis in evolution, techniques that are similar to eastern meditation techniques, and the danger that children can be unduly influenced to follow subjective experience. As a Christian, I am concerned about this practice and urge other Christians to be “mindful” of potential dangers within its implementation.  Therefore, I would say that mindfulness, as it is presented in schools, is not biblical.

References

References
1, 3 mindfulschools.org
2 mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness/
4 greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/mindfulness/definition
5 mindfulschools.org  emphasis in original
6 mindfulschools.org, underline added

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