Member-only story
The World of Meditation is Here
It has made it to my local public high school
My wife texted a picture of a new program at the local high school: Alien Eating. Imagine that M&M in your hand is an alien. Examine it. What do you notice? Does it have a smell or make a noise? How does it feel? Slowly eat it, noticing how it tastes and feels in your mouth.
My wife’s emoji rolled its eyes.
My daughter said it was autistic.
I liked it.
Mindfulness has now made it to the public schools and, like most good things that make it to the public schools, promptly molded for morons.
The practice of focusing on the alien M&M is secular mindfulness. At a third-grade level, sure, but secular mindfulness.
For you freaks who want your secular mindfulness in religious terms, it’s the spiritual art of detachment.
No one can articulate exactly how and why it works, but it does. 2,500+ years of spiritual advice tells us it works. So do modern mental imaging and medical studies. Seventeen minutes of meditation can improve our focus throughout the day. Thirteen minutes of meditation improves our cognitive abilities in general.
And the troubling fact that no one can seem to articulate why and how?