Peaceful Emotions: Mindfulness and Gratitude

Perhaps the most disturbing single piece of data in this book coms from a massive survey of parents and teachers and shows a worldwide trend for the present generation of children to be more troubled emotionally than the last: more lonely and depressed, more angry and unruly, more nervous and prone to worry, more impulsive and aggressive.

(Daniel Goleman: Emotional Intelligence: xiii)

            Mindfulness, or focused attention, is both the glue that keeps us intimately connected to events and others, and that gives us detachment to see the world and ourselves clearly.  It is how we use our psychic energy.  How we choose to direct that energy is intensely meaningful.  Not all our scars can be seen.  Some are deep within the psyche.  These emotional and spiritual wounds create a distorted self-image which, in turn, makes the world look like one of those distorting funhouse mirrors.  This can create anxiety and a sense of disconnection.  Since our actions depend upon what we think is true, if what we think about ourselves is not true, we cannot perceive either others or the world accurately.  There is a prayer that says: “O God, help me to see the world as it is.”  That is mindfulness.

            Mindfulness does not permit the mind to spin out of control about the negative what if's and could be’s of life.  Mindfulness doesn’t focus on the things one can’t control, rather it focuses on what can be controlled, and this, more often than not, is our own thoughts and feelings, actions and reactions, to life’s events.  You can choose to focus on what can do to make any situation better, or you can focus on how it is overwhelming you.  Within a strong social network of caring friends positive focus is much easier, because, as I wrote in the last post, our friends emotions, especially their positive emotions, influence how we feel.

            Another aspect of mindfulness is: Forget your failures.  If you have had one of those days when nothing went right, lessons bombed, kids acted up and you resembled a screaming banshee or angry thundergod, or a contentious faculty meeting went spiraling out of control, try to let it go.  Also, as we used to say as kids, “If you mess up, ‘fess up.”  Seeing things directly, without a haze of self-justification or through a fog of rationalization, will help to put a bad event behind you and you are then free to concentrate on doing the next thing right.  Reframe!  After a bad day, to prepare for the next day, remember your past successes.  This will encourage your creativity.  Trying to fix weaknesses won't help; rather, incorporating strengths such as humor, originality and generosity into everyday interactions with people is a better way to achieve success.  These are all situations to act out in your imagination in order to act them out in public.  According to the Buddha, "Mind is the forerunner of states of existence. Mind is chief, and (those states) are caused by the mind. If one speaks and acts with a pure mind, surely happiness will follow like one's own shadow!"

            The authors of The Good Society remind us that: “Mindfulness is valued because it is a kind of foretaste of religious enlightenment, which in turn is a full waking up from the darkness of illusion and a full recognition of reality as it is.” (Good Society: 255)  No doubt, this is the reason that many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and to be here now.

            In an important study, two Harvard researchers, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, conducted a study based on an iPhone web application that allowed gathering 250,000 data points on 2,250 subjects' thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.  The volunteers were contacted at random intervals and asked how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or about something else that was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.
            The subjects reported spending 46.9% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they were doing, and this mind-wandering actually made them unhappy. Killingsworth and Gilbert said that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”
            Lives pervaded by the non-present are not often happy lives, but are filled with anxiety, boredom, and dissatisfaction.  Mind-wandering, not mind-engagement, seems to be a better predictor of people's happiness, though in a reverse correlation.  I mean that the more often the mind wanders the less happy people seem to be.  On one level, mind wandering was not a consequence of being unhappy, but the cause of it. 

To increase mindfulness be grateful.  Gratitude is an emotion connected with joy and happiness, both feeding them and being fed by them.  The grateful person always feels he has enough, he is thankful for what he has, he expects little, so he feels able to handle pain and is not bitter about it.  What he gets is always a reward.  That his neighbor has more is not a cause for envy and covetousness, but rejoicing.  Gratitude, being mindful of blessings, develops that sense of inner security that is essential to prevent the mind from wandering into unhappiness.

            A Bahá’í is encouraged to “bring yourself to account each day.”  This is no mere bookkeeping exercise.  I think that to develop a good sense of gratitude, every night remember the good things that happened to you that day—as the early Baha’is did with each other while in the prison of Akka.  Gratitude visits — looking up someone who has taught or mentored you and thanking him or her — are important in positive psychology.  Such visits, studies show, bring the largest increase in happiness to everyone.  Find things in your life to be grateful for.  Count your blessings.  Gratitude boosts happiness and social well-being and health.  In his book, The Hidden Messages in Water, Masaru Emoto ranks gratitude higher than even love.  

Another aspect of spiritual accounting can be seen when we recall that “grace” is the root of “gratitude”, so that we should be grateful for the grace given to us in the form of innate talents and abilities.  Gratitude is an active power drawing to us the good pleasure of God, the first attracting the second.  Gratitude works for prosperity by establishing relations of trust.

            Finally, ‘Abdul-Baha wrote: “There is a cordial thanksgiving, too, which expresses itself in the deeds and actions of man when his heart is filled with gratitude. For example, God has conferred upon man the gift of guidance, and in thankfulness for this great gift certain deeds must emanate from him. To express his gratitude for the favors of God man must show forth praiseworthy actions. In response to these bestowals he must render good deeds, be self-sacrificing, loving the servants of God, forfeiting even life for them, showing kindness to all the creatures.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 236.)

            When we perform these actions as services for others, we not only show our gratitude to God, but also this increases everyone’s feelings of love, happiness, and feeling secure and positive, embraced by love, increases mindfulness.

             Both of these emotions or practices, along with love and happiness discussed in the last post, will go a long way toward reversing the situation described by Daniel Goleman in the opening quote.