MYSTICISM & MINDFULNESS

“Westerners, including Christians, are rediscovering the value of nonduality: a way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building based on inner experience of God and God’s Spirit moving in the world. We’re not throwing out our rational mind, but we’re adding nondual, mystical, contemplative consciousness.” 

– Fr Richard Rohr

Are we aware of the sacredness of the mundane? The imminent presence of God as we go about the lives we lead, and the work we do? The movement of modernism, the proliferation of the scientific method, the incredible advancements of technology, and the sheer volume of knowledge and information available to us in our pockets has impacted the way we understand our faith. To many it appear that our faith has been too literalised, too rationalised, too dogmatised, and that worship, prayer, and encountering the divine has been confined to a discrete set of activities practised at specific times. 

How would it reinvigorate our faith, how would it impact our relationships, how would we develop our capacity to reduce our distractedness and enhance our ability to be present, if we were to rediscover the mysticism of our faith? How would we benefit from creating space in our daily lives to experience the awe and wonder of encountering the divine in the seemingly mundane? What can the wisdom of the Christian mystics, and the deep practice of contemplation teach us about how we see the world?

I often heard people quip: She says it as it is! Or: He sees it as it is! It is as though some people in our world, through the relationship-damaging traits of being blunt, direct and rude without kindness, compassion, or understanding, have some undeniable claim on objective truth and have all the answers. But this is not so.

People do not see the world the way it is. People see the world the way they are. Prisoners to our emotions, distracted by our phones, captive to our anxieties about the future. As Albert Einstein said, “We are trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s software”.

Though, the Christian mystics have taught us that we can reboot and reset our systems through the practice of contemplation, meditation and mindfulness:

“Through a regular practice of contemplation we can awaken to the profound presence of the unitive Spirit, which then gives us the courage and capacity to face the paradox that everything is—ourselves included. Higher levels of consciousness always allow us to include and understand more. Deeper levels of divine union allow us to forgive and show compassion toward more and more, even those we are not naturally attracted to, and even our enemies.” – Fr Richard Rohr

In meditation, the goal is not to become ‘a meditator’, not even a good one. Rather, it is to dissolve the apparent boundary between meditation and the rest of life. Because, as we soon discover, no such boundary exists. The clarity and freedom you can experience in periods of meditation are no different than the clarity and freedom we can experience in our lives, in our relationships, at work, when stuck in traffic, even when receiving a confronting diagnosis from a doctor.

Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience, it is the act of experiencing more clearly.

St Thomas More’s Catholic School is actively providing opportunities, learning, and curriculum for our students to develop this skill set of mindfulness, stillness, meditation and presence. Our students engage in the stillness of prayer at the start of every school day, encouraging them to encounter and experience the imminent presence of God in our community. Also, every Tuesday following first break we have school-wide Christian meditation, where the entire school pauses for 10 minutes to participate in a period of stillness and reflection. 

Additionally, our school is committed to the delivery of The Resilience Project curriculum, which is built on the GEM Principles: gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness. Our students therefore have regular lessons on mindfulness with age-appropriate resources, experiences, and outcomes. These learning opportunities for our students equate to them downloading the software of today, the skills and information they need to move toward stillness and presence.

The enemy of presence is choice. We have so many options, excuses, and opportunities to give into distractedness. But the development of mindfulness, the art of contemplation, the patience of stillness, and the wisdom of the mystics can teach, show us, how to see and experience the presence of God right where we are, right here, right, now.

I’ll end with a tired, but powerful, aphorism that urges us towards presence in every moment: Every moment is a gift. That’s why we call it: the present.

Mr Casimir Douglas

Wednesday 7th May, 2025