In the aftermath of the election Maggie Gibbons muses on loss, acceptance and mindfulness without navel gazing.<\/i><\/p>\n
I initially wrote this blog for\u00a0<\/i>https:\/\/dayinthelifemh.org.uk\/<\/i><\/a>, a project which clusters together the experiences of people with mental health difficulties during four ordinary days over a year. I wrote this for 10 May 2015, sent it to a few people and it seemed to resonate. So I\u2019ve decided to share it more widely, with a few tweaks. It is, I stress, a very personal take. <\/i><\/p>\n I\u2019m tired after weeks of hard work. I stood as an election candidate locally and shared others\u2019 sense of shock, anger and bewilderment at the scale of Labour\u2019s defeat. Coincidentally, it\u2019s also the day before Mental Health Awareness Week. This year the theme is mindfulness. There\u2019s an interesting debate going on in Buddhist, mental health and other circles about the \u2018McDonaldisation\u2019 of mindfulness \u2013 is it becoming detached from its origins in Buddhist teachings and practice, sold as a panacea for wider social ills and discontents, exploited for commercial gain, a way of keeping workers compliant? And so I have been thinking politics, hearts and minds all day.<\/p>\n Though I\u2019ve experienced, benefited from and researched mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), I first learned meditation – during an episode of severe depression – from Buddhist teachers who come from a particular tradition. For them, mindfulness goes hand in hand with a practice called metta bhavana. This is often left untranslated, but my own working definition is \u2018the development of love and solidarity for everyone\u2019. This is underpinned by the understanding that we all suffer and we all wish to be free from suffering. We are encouraged, within this practice, to open our hearts to everyone \u2013 including those we are close to, those we find difficult and ourselves. So in metta bhavana one thing you can say is, \u2018May they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from suffering\u2019.<\/p>\n Where, as I understand it, mindfulness is a way of bringing gentle attention to the thoughts running through our distracted minds, metta bhavana brings us hard up against our feelings, emotions and moods and can offer a way of sitting with distress and discomfort without disappearing up our solitary mental arses.<\/p>\n My own, hardcore experience of depression, mania, psychosis and crisis has taken me to the outer limits of sanity and selfhood. It has taught me that I am indeed a naked ape, and given me a full and literal definition of \u2018unspeakable\u2019. But it has also given me an insight into what it is to be marginal, unheard and left behind \u2013 to suffer and wish to be free of suffering. What has restored me to myself during these dark times for my soul is the persistent and loving good humour and kindness of those who know me and can call me back from the alien, alternative universe in which \u2018I\u2019 \u2013 as a cluster of meanings \u2013\u00a0 have become lost.<\/p>\n So I made a decision today not to join the post-election pity party, but to try and be a stand for consolation, solidarity and getting back to Labour\u2019s simple belief: \u2018by the strength of the common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few\u2019.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been chatting to left-leaning and socialist friends and we\u2019ve been sharing music and poetry back and forth. Someone reminded me of this extract from WH Auden\u2019s poem \u2018September 1, 1939<\/a>\u2019, written at the beginning of World War II:<\/p>\n Defenceless under the night I\u2019ll be trying to show others an affirming flame over the coming months. Will they respond? No idea and don\u2019t mind, but hope so.<\/p>\n
\nOur world in stupor lies;
\nYet, dotted everywhere,
\nIronic points of light
\nFlash out wherever the Just
\nExchange their messages:
\nMay I, composed like them
\nOf Eros and of dust,
\nBeleaguered by the same
\nNegation and despair,
\nShow an affirming flame.*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n