A Mindfulness Teacher's Letter to Her Students
Dear Mindfulness Students,
We did it! We made it to the end of this bonkers year. What. a. ride. Now let’s all sleep for ten hours a night all summer long and try to recover from this pandemic chaos, please.
Before we leave school entirely, though, I want to ask you one last question: What do you think would happen if more people practiced mindfulness? In light of the constant gun violence in this country, in light of climate change and white supremacy culture and the pandemic, let’s talk about what mindfulness could offer to a culture like ours, so steeped in so much tender and troubling news.
At its core, mindfulness (and our class) is about learning to befriend ourselves. That is a radical thing to do because we live in a culture that, in so many ways, demands we not like ourselves. We’ve talked a lot about what happens when we don’t like ourselves, personally—we overwork ourselves to prove our worthiness, we feel not-good-enough, we worry we’re not lovable and maybe withdraw from connection. And we see the symptoms of what not liking ourselves does on a collective scale: it gets us grind-culture, and overwork and burnout, and an unprecedented teen mental health crisis declared by the U.S. Surgeon General; it gets us stress and worry and disconnection; it gets us white supremacy culture (where others have to be made small for some to feel big). Not liking ourselves isn’t working and it hasn’t been for a long, long time.
We’ve talked a lot about the Conditioned Mind this year, how we’re flooded with messages about how we ‘should’ be, look, or act, how we ‘should’ measure up to others, ways we should feel not-good-enough until we do or have X, Y, or Z. This future-oriented, betterment-oriented lens leaves many of us feeling like we fall short and aren’t enough and won’t be enough until…
We’ve talked so much this year about how we want to be free of these pressures. We’ve imagined into some really beautiful questions, like, What if we just knew and believed in our inherent dignity and we didn’t have to spend our lives proving it? How much more ease and joy could we experience if we had genuine self-compassion, and trusted our inner gold, and trusted we are whole and loveable? That’s the practice of mindfulness—befriending ourselves and being with our experience with kindness, no matter what; practicing non-judgement and acceptance.
In the last weeks of school, a lot of us were spooked by being in a school after the school shooting in Texas, and that was sad and hard and uncomfortable. And I’m bringing that in because it has, for me, something to do with mindfulness: it’s just my opinion, but I don't think someone who was their own friend would walk into a school with a gun. We have a real crisis in this country around violence and patriarchy and white supremacy, among other things. And we need the medicine for this wound, and I believe mindfulness is a part of it. And I’m not at all dismissing the very real (and very straightforward) need for gun control laws as step number one. What I am saying is, What if we lived in a culture that uplifted the inner gold that’s inside all of us, instead of sold us advertisements for how we’re not enough? What if, as a core component within the education system, we were taught relational mindfulness and deep listening skills so we all truly knew what it felt like to be seen and heard, and knew without doubt that we deserve to be seen and heard (which is what mindfulness teaches us)? I think if we lived in a culture that uplifted our inherent dignity, we’d know how powerful we really are. And if we knew how powerful we really are, the need for the cheap power of a gun and white supremacy and domination wouldn’t be necessary—it’s the difference between authentic inner power (which we find in our meditation practice) and fake, cheap power. If more people practiced mindfulness, I think we’d all be more liberated. I think it’s our birthright to know our own goodness, to be valued in our tender heartedness and sensitivity, to be seen for the beauty of our vulnerability, to feel the wholeness of who we are, and the correctness of our hearts. When we see the goodness of who we are, I don’t think we suffer so much—and it’s only when someone suffers so much that they hurt other people so much. So I think we actually have one of the key ingredients of the medicine for the illness of our time.
It’s really important to me that you know how subversive and rebellious mindfulness practice is—mindfulness is about challenging and dismantling the overculture that tells us who we are, and what we have to do to be worthy. You probably wouldn't know this based on how I teach, but I am a rule-breaker at my core. So I love this aspect of mindfulness. We’re learning to listen from the inside out to find out who we actually are in a culture that tries to define who we are by what we do and how much we prove ourselves. It’s rebellious to listen to ourselves in a culture that encourages us to not. It’s rebellious to love ourselves in a culture anorexic in self-love and withholding in self-worth.
What excites me about sharing mindfulness with you is that now we’re a community of rebels: we now all have these seeds of mindfulness in us and we can spread them as a movement to heal our culture. I see how much anxiety you have around school gun violence and climate change. I also know that you often don’t know where to turn with these anxieties, or don’t know how or where to talk about them, that they can feel so overwhelming that it’s hard to even know where to start, or leaves you sometimes feeling numb. I see how much your generation is holding. You deserve better.
I want to remind you that we do have power, and mindfulness reminds us of that. In fact, a mindfulness practice can turn us back to our power everyday. I’m inspired by a doctor and writer named Rachel Naomi Remen, and she wrote, “We are all healers of the world. It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference, it’s about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you. And that’s where our power is.” I hope you keep practicing and that you share what you know about mindfulness—not in a weird, teachy way, just in a simple, humble way. You know tools and practices now that most people don’t know. Share them! I think many of us feel powerless with all that is happening in the world, but I think there is a different way to understand our power—to know that we are healers healing the world one heart at a time. And healing, in my experience, is active and contagious. So please keep doing it, it will impact others. Let’s break these boring, BS rules together and learn to celebrate who we authentically are in a culture that often tells us not to. Let’s remember who we are and help remind each other when we forget. Let’s all be our own really good friends.
You’re not broken. Nothing is wrong with you. You are whole. And I see how good your heart is.
With love,
Cassandra