Mindful Witness

With its roots in Eastern spiritualities, mindfulness has now swept to prominence in the West, and in the process has become a billion-dollar industry. Is this mindfulness, severed from its original context, complementary to our Quaker commitment to working towards a more just and fairer world, or is it just the spirituality of capitalism, another opiate for the masses?

In this course we will explore mindfulness through a number of different lenses. We will ask ourselves what role values play in mindful practice and whether there is more to mindfulness than just concentrating the mind. What about heartfulness and soulfulness too? We will apply mindfulness holistically, asking what it might mean to eat mindfully, converse mindfully, and organise mindfully as we witness for a more just and beautiful world. We will also bring our mindfulness to our systems, asking ourselves what it might mean to be mindful of our privileges and entanglements in oppression, and what it might mean to be mindful of our place as humans within wider webs of life.

The course is 6 weeks long and there will be a weekly 2 hour online live gathering, which will include a guided mindfulness meditation alongside lots of time in small groups for mindful conversations.

Participants will also be encouraged to commit to a daily practice of mindfulness over the duration of the course, and to write a daily reflection of mindful journaling.