SDA Issues - Next Heresy: "Mindfulness"?

"The line of distinction between professed Christians and the ungodly is now hardly distinguishable.
Church members love what the world loves and are ready to join with them, and Satan determines to unite them in one body and thus strengthen his cause by sweeping all into the ranks of spiritualism." Great Controversy p.588 E.G.W. 

Therefore, come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them, says the LORD. Don't touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you.

2 Corinthians 6:17 NLT

 

Why is it every time we turn around we have to deal with someone in a position of influence on the payroll trying to bring in things they shouldn't?

Entering Adventism

"A news article on the Loma Linda University Health website stressed the importance of meditation and mindfulness. Ayesha Sherzai, MD, MAS, a neurologist with the Brain Health and Alzheimer’s Prevention program at Loma Linda University Health, said that many people, including herself, meditate to disconnect from the stresses of life and that this is very important. She says that meditation and intentional mindfulness allow the brain to take care of the body and also allow a person to create a higher purpose for their lives." CCV

What is "Mindfulness"?

"Ray Yungen states:

In recent years, a type of meditation known as mindfulness has made a surprising showing. Based on current trends, it has the potential to eclipse even Yoga in popularity. You will now find it everywhere that people are seeking therapeutic approaches to ailments or disorders. . . it is presented as something to cure society’s ills.

 According to the respected Mayo Clinic, mindfulness is a form of meditation:

If you’ve heard of or read about mindfulness—a form of meditation—you might be curious about how to practice it.

Meditation author and teacher and founder of MNDFUL, Lodro Rinzler, states:

Mindfulness is a form of meditation. . . . There are many forms of meditation, including contemplation and visualization, but mindfulness is the type where you bring your full mind to an object.

Not only is mindfulness a type of meditation, there would be few mindfulness teachers who would deny that mindfulness as roots in Buddhism:

Being mindful of your breath, for example, is a common form of mindfulness during meditation. Following your breath improves your awareness of being in the present. This is called mindfulness meditation, known as shamatha among Buddhists.

In an article in Psychology Today titled “How to Practice Mindful Meditation,” it explains:

In the Buddhist tradition and in Contemplative Psychotherapy training, we nurture mindfulness through the practice of sitting meditation. There are many different kinds of meditation. For example, some are designed to help us relax; others are meant to produce altered states of consciousness.

Ray Yungen, who researched and wrote about various forms of meditation for over twenty years, said:

True to its Buddhist roots, mindfulness involves focusing on the breath to stop the normal flow of thought. In effect, it acts the same way as a mantra; and as with Yoga.

An article titled “What is Mindfulness?” discusses mindfulness’ role in stress reduction therapy:

Jon Kabat-Zinn [founding member of the Cambridge Zen Center and trained by Buddhist teachers] developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program. This stress reduction program became the basis of mindfulness.

Role of Kabat-Zinn 

Kabat-Zinn is credited for having brought mindfulness meditation into the medical sector of our western society, and now it has been brought into public schools. One program in California for children on welfare called MBCT-C is a “psychotherapy for anxious or depressed children adapted from MBCT for adults.”
Do parents realize their children are undergoing “therapy” in the form of mindfulness?

A 2015 article titled “How the Mindfulness Movement Went Mainstream—And the Backlash That Came With It” explains Jon Kabat-Zinn’s efforts in bringing mindfulness meditation into mainstream America:

In 1979, a 35-year-old avid student of Buddhist meditation and MIT-trained molecular biologist was on a two-week meditation retreat when he had a vision of what his life’s work—his “karmic assignment”—would be. While he sat alone one afternoon, it all came to him at once: he’d bring the ancient Eastern disciplines he’d followed for 13 years—mindfulness meditation and yoga—to people with chronic health conditions right here in modern America.

However, as the article continues, Kabat-Zinn knew he would have to convince Americans that mindfulness is not a religious practice but rather a scientific one. He knew they wouldn’t accept it if they knew the truth about it, that it is a Buddhist/New Age practice:

He approached the challenge by adopting a mainstream and commonsensical American vocabulary that described meditation as a way of paying attention and cultivating awareness in everyday life, and by using practices that were equally accessible and straightforward. . . . Kabat-Zinn’s approach would be to offer training in mindfulness in ways that were implicitly anchored in Buddhist teachings, but in a universal and mainstream American idiom and framework.

Dangers of "Mindfulness" 

Farias explains:

[M]editation, for all its de-stressing and self-development potential, can take you deeper into the recesses of your mind than you may have wished for.

In the article, Farias relays the stories of people who were meditators and upon further research came to believe that meditation can be very dangerous. He found there were other professionals who agreed:

In 1992, David Shapiro, a professor at UCLA Irvine, published an article about the

effects of meditation retreats. After examining 27 people with different levels of meditation experience, he found 63 per cent of them had suffered at least one negative effect and seven per cent profoundly adverse effects.

Farias continues:

A number of Western Buddhists are aware that not all is plain sailing with meditation; and they have even given a name to the emotional difficulties that arise—the “dark night”—borrowing the phrase coined by the 16th-century Christian mystic St John of the Cross to describe an advanced stage of prayer and contemplation characterised by an emotional dryness, in which the subject feels abandoned by God.

Professor Willoughby Britton, lead researcher and psychiatrist in the project, has recorded surprising problems among some of the Buddhist meditators that include: “cognitive, perceptual and sensory aberrations,” impairment in social relationships and changes in their sense of self.
Another article, titled “The Dangers of Meditation: It Can Actually Lead to Insomnia, Fear and Hypersensitivity to Light,” states:

Mindfulness, so popular with celebrities like Emma Watson and Angelina Jolie, could be bad for you—causing insomnia, anxiety and hypersensitivity to light and sound.

These were side effects discovered by US researchers exploring the phenomenon of “meditation sickness” by interviewing nearly 100

people.

In the study, it was discovered that the most common side effects were fear, anxiety, panic or paranoia.

This was experienced by 82 per cent of those questioned, while 42 per cent suffered hallucinations, visions or illusions and 28 per cent said they had become hypersensitive to light and sound.

Author Mary Wylie, Ph.D., writes:

These effects are well documented in Buddhist texts as stages along the long, hard path to inner wisdom but . . . aren’t featured in mindfulness/meditation brochures . . . [meditation is] in fact, a far deeper, more complex, and less well-understood process than many people realize."

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