My Baha’i Journey with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

You’ve probably heard of mindfulness — but do you know where it came from, how to practice it, and what it has to do with the spiritual teachings of the Baha’i Faith?

An emergent knowledge from the Western fields of medicine and psychological science over the past decades, beginning with Jon Kabat-Zin’s newly formed eight-week stress-reduction program in 1979, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), recommends methods and states of being that produce conditions for increased health, well-being, and happiness.

RELATED: Mindfulness and Eternity

This practice, called mindfulness for short, intentionally focuses one’s attention on the present moment without judgment or attachment as a way of life. That sounds deceptively easy but actually requires great effort and discipline to attain it.

In the past five years alone, scientific research on mindfulness has exploded, with thousands of articles being published in academic journals, highlighting what appears to be a great shift in contemporary society in the path of caring for and attending to humanity’s well-being. Personally, I find it revolutionary and evolutionary with great promise! Practitioners of positive psychology have also joined forces with other movements outside of Western science in a collaborative effort to work for the betterment of the world and the advancement of human civilization, particularly as it relates to the inner world first. 

One kind of mindful meditation has been a cognitive success for me — the reading of beautiful words of wisdom and reflecting on their meaning in my own life. In the quiet, expansive space of reflection on meaning, I hear answers and calls to action. 

As a Baha’i, the teachings of my faith urge me to meditate and pray daily:

It is an axiomatic fact that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind, you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed.

In this type of deep meditation, I feel informed and strengthened by the practice. In fact, I’ve come to see how mindfulness, meditation, and prayer are the only doorways through which to connect with my true self. In this mindful way of being and connecting, during moments of deep calmness, I engage in a conversation with my true self and that true self guides, and in doing so, I find profound happiness and love. As a result, I experience the benefits of heart-mind-body coherence in alignment with truth as I know it. 

This fascinating practice has extremely important implications, gradually manifesting more and more wholeness, knowledge, wisdom, spirituality, harmony, love, and unity within myself first and then in its varied manifestations outwardly in the world. 

Additionally, equally captivating, I have come to see with my mind’s eye how mindfulness meditation and positive psychology as a body of knowledge itself will naturally lead me and others to the integration of both science and religion as a way of life. 

When we embark on a daily practice of mindful meditation and prayer, at least three major benefits can manifest themselves:

1. Seeing in greater light the true gift of the human mind and consciousness and how we can switch and create conditions and states through the will of our mind. 

2. Understanding the science behind the human mind and emotions and their impact on our physiology, our physical health. 

3. Realizing how the human reality is, in essence, spirit, made up of emotions and spiritual qualities and much more, and how our organic growth and development from the lower self to the higher self can be aided and assisted by our mind on the path of holistic human development. 

Mindfulness meditation from positive psychology offers many benefits, but let’s focus on just two that are taught in the field: 1. deep listening (DL) and 2. loving-kindness meditation (LKM).

The first is “deep listening,” or, as I have understood it, advanced active listening. Active listening, first defined by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers in 1957, consists of both the skills of listening for the purpose of understanding and the more powerful heart aspects of feeling, purity, sincerity, caring, and loving. 

According to the American Psychological Association, active listening is defined as a “psychotherapeutic technique in which the therapist listens to a client closely, asking questions as needed, in order to fully understand the content of the message and the depth of the client’s emotion.” 

To me, however, this definition doesn’t fully capture the essence and magic of deep listening. I tend to believe that deep listening emerges from the heart and not only from a focused mind. This practice isn’t just for therapeutic professionals — we can all learn to develop the capacity for deep listening. Since I’ve learned about it, I’ve tried to practice deep listening daily with various family members, friends, and community members. 

If you’d like to learn the skill of deep listening, you can simply ask someone more about their life experiences, beliefs, values, hopes, interests, gifts, talents, and needs and pay close, quiet attention to their answers without passing judgment on anything they say. In doing so, I’ve discovered with more clarity both the strength and beauty of the person in front of me and their potential path for taking stepping stones forward. So far, this has helped me become keener, clearer, and more specific in effectively helping friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and clients to discover what they need at the moment. 

After you’ve deeply listened, you can begin practicing loving-kindness meditation — which essentially means sending intentional loving thoughts and well-wishes to others as an ongoing spiritual practice. According to Dr. Jo Nash, an academic in the field, “Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is an ancient Buddhist practice that cultivates goodwill and universal friendliness toward oneself and others.”

Of course, all true religions teach us how to be spiritual human beings by becoming selfless and loving towards all people. Buddhism is one of the great doors to this spiritual practice in secular Western society, and the Baha’i Faith also asks its followers to consciously and eagerly meditate and pray for the well-being of others and also to a greater understanding of a number of things that lead to our happiness or misery:

Meditate profoundly, that the secret of things unseen may be revealed unto you, that you may inhale the sweetness of a spiritual and imperishable fragrance, and that you may acknowledge the truth that from time immemorial even unto eternity the Almighty hath tried, and will continue to try, His servants, so that light may be distinguished from darkness, truth from falsehood, right from wrong, guidance from error, happiness from misery, and roses from thorns.

RELATED: How Mindfulness Can Help Us Combat Anxiety

Baha’u’llah’s teachings also direct humanity to pray and meditate in the pursuit of the peace and oneness of humanity:

If any man were to meditate on that which the Scriptures, sent down from the heaven of God’s holy Will, have revealed, he would readily recognize that their purpose is that all men shall be regarded as one soul …

Meditation is a mental power of the soul, an intellectual faculty of thinking and reflecting on the meanings of things in a quiet space from within.

Whenever you’re about to communicate with someone, center your attention in the moment and on what kind of spiritual qualities that person might best respond to, and then actively listen to what they have to say. When your conversation is finished, try some loving-kindness meditation on their behalf.

I have found that these combined approaches of deep listening and loving-kindness meditation, and other practices from the scientific field of positive psychology, and my daily spiritual practice of the Baha’i teachings of prayer and meditation have had a profound impact on my life and those in my sphere. I’ve also come to see how the more I practice this unity of science and religion, the more the reality of the divine mystery of our oneness is revealed, which leads to opening the floodgates of love for the divine beauty.