Dr Alison Gray (pictured), chair of
the spirituality special interest group at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and a liaison psychiatry consultant working in Hereford and
at the Beacon Clinic, Malvern, has
recently said that those who engage in more ‘inward-focused’ types of spirituality
– and that includes mindfulness meditation – ‘can become self-involved’.
‘In as much as religion is
about binding people together, spirituality can become inward looking and
selfish,’ Dr Gray said. ‘In no way does that happen to everyone … But
there's a potential for it to become inward-looking and basically
self-centred.’ To counter this, Dr Gray recommends that people practice
mindfulness and other forms of spirituality in groups rather than alone.
Well, what do I think of
that? Dr Gray is right. Damn right. Religion, at its best (note: I said, ‘at its
best’), binds people together. After all, the word religion has an affinity
with the Latin verb religare, which means to bind, bind back,
bind up, and bind fast together. Spirituality is more personal, informal and unorganized in
nature. Of course, not all religion is good. Indeed, it can be quite toxic and
harmful at times, but at its best it binds people together and binds them to a
power-other-than-themselves, that is, to what has been referred to as the
largeness of life. We all need to get our minds off ourselves. Unfortunately,
far too much spirituality makes us more self-centred, self-focused and self-absorbed. New Age
spirituality tends to do that. It’s all about me, me, me. My inner growth, my
health, my goals, and so on. Too many of our attempts at divesting ourselves of our
little selves only heighten our obsession with self—and that is not good!
True mindfulness makes us
increasingly aware of a power and presence greater than, and other than, our
little, tiny, puny selves. The regular practice of mindfulness increases our
awareness of the flow of life of which we are but a small part. There is the
inner content of our mindfulness but let’s not neglect the outer content as
well, that is, all that is going on around us and outside of us.
The truly mindful person
grows in love, compassion and tolerance for their fellow human beings, indeed,
for all life in all its myriad forms and comes to know that he or she is one
with all life.
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