The Mindful Gift of the Principles
By Celine Kavalec-Miller
This article references The Peace and Justice Institute's Principles for How We Treat Each Other, which are free available in multiple languages and free for download.
Each morning I sit quietly and invite stillness into my life. This is a radical act. I meditate to open my heart to whatever arises and to free my mind from the biases that diminish me and my relationship with others.
Mindfulness is an open invitation to examine our lives, to slow down and pay attention to our thinking, our emotions, and our bodily sensations. And through this careful examination, we begin to uncover how we treat ourselves and others. We notice how we react, cruelly or kindly, to our own actions and the actions of others. We may see for the first time how our actions are directed by internal biases from past conditioning and not by the situation at hand. Seeing our behavior with clarity becomes the first step in conscious awareness, and this clear seeing creates a precious wedge of awareness between the situation and our reaction. In this space, we have time to choose a more skillful response, unfettered by the ghosts of past scripts, and instead guided by compassion, curiosity, and kindness. Living an awakened life is the gift a mindfulness practice offers us and the gift bestowed on us by practicing the Principles for How We Treat Each Other.
In both the Principles and in mindfulness, we learn to embrace silence and see non-doing and journeying inward as essential to awakening. We learn to sit in community and alone, examining ourselves to discover our truths so that we can speak them to others with compassion and honesty. We learn to listen fully without judgment, turning to curiosity when judgment arises and saying, “I wonder why she said that? I wonder why I reacted that way?” These questions and practices create a container for thoughtful reflection and conversation, allowing the soul to show up. They require discipline and steadfastness as well as patience and self-compassion. For as we practice opening our hearts, we sometimes shut down. We fall back into old patterns of judging and criticizing ourselves and others, for being different, for not measuring up. And in this moment of despair at our human lapses, we can turn gently inward and say with kindness, “That’s okay. Many people feel this distress. Change is difficult. You are loved, just as you are.” In accepting ourselves, we learn to accept others, allowing all of us the space to grow.
The Principles for How We Treat Each Other invite us to live our lives with present moment awareness in service to creating the change we wish to see in ourselves and in the world. They support us in creating a hospitable, compassionate community that seeks to welcome all, value all, and hear all through discipline and gentleness, strength and flexibility, accountability and compassion. And, in the mud of these tensions, the lotus of peace and justice blooms.
Celine Kavalec-Miller is an English Professor at Valencia College as well as the Academic Coordinator at PJI. She is a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor, trained through the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness Teacher Training program.
This was originally published in the Peace and Justice Institute's JOURNAL. To read the most recent copy of the JOURNAL, which includes this article, click here.
Comments (0)