Mindfulness Is Not Positivity

The other day I had to get up at 5:45 in the morning to go to a meeting. It was horrible and I will never commit to doing anything like that again. I’m a firm believer in abiding by one’s own biorhythms, and my natural wake-up time is about 3 hours later than that. I generally never set my alarm and feel completely put out if I have to.

So, operating on half my normal amount of sleep, I was pretty sure the whole day was going to be a miserable write-off. I was pleasantly surprised when I was blessed with an actual Creative Idea before 9 in the morning.

Here it is: I decided that I’m going to write a book about how positivity and mindfulness have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I know I am alienating a vast legion of my friends with this concept, and I’m sure the book is going to seal my fate. But this is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. (Not alot though, that would be different.)

In the Bay Area—and especially in the yoga scene—people love to quote self-help jargon such as:

• “Manifest what you want with good intentions!”
• “Cultivate an attitude of abundance!”
• “Think positive and things will turn out great!”

And one of my personal favorites: “It will all be alright in the end. If it’s not alright; it’s not the end.” As my dharma teacher, Mark, pointed out the other night, in reality it’s not all going to be alright in the end, because in the end, without exception, we’re all going to get sick or old, and die.

Which is actually fine, in its own way. But, you get my point.

What irks me is when people try to link the above vapid platitudes together with Buddhism and mindfulness. No Buddhist teaching has ever instructed us to “think positive.” In fact, quite the opposite. In Buddhism, we are taught to look at our thoughts, feelings and emotional experience without judgment, and without trying to change it.

So, if I feel like stabbing someone through the eyeball today, the appropriate Buddhist reaction would be: “Note to self, I want to stab someone through the eyeball today.” Without judging myself for wanting to stab someone through the eyeball today. (Although, to be fair, stabbing someone through the eyeball is not Right Action, and thinking about it is not even Right Intention.)

When I say to someone, “You know, today I just really feel like stabbing so-and-so through the eyeball,” and they say to me, “I have just the solution. You just need to cultivate a better attitude of positivity and abundance!!!!!” do you know what that does not do?

Help.

That’s right, it doesn’t help.

I totally honor and respect that for some people, turning that frown upside down is a really great way to deal with being upset. And for others, a practice of gratitude and thoughts of abundance does indeed do the trick. (I actually have big love for the gratitude practice and have used it on and off for a long time to check in with myself about what is going right in my life.) And if you’re into The Secret, have tons of fun with that, and I’ll try to keep it zipped.

On the other hand, we don’t all subscribe to that particular line of thinking. A while back I wrote a post about the Barbara Ehrenreich book Bright Sided. Although I still haven’t read the book (cuz I read novels, mostly), I do love this audio excerpt.

Here’s the gist: it’s totally okay (and normal!) to feel unhappy, miserable, sad and angry sometimes.

So I’m going to write this book, and then I’m going to move to France, because I probably won’t have any friends left here in California.