Mindfulness is the art of paying attention. This may sound like a suspiciously un-Nordic, perhaps even un-Pagan concept until you consider the primary result of a conscious application to being mindful — an increase in wisdom. One does not become wise by being oblivious to how the world works, what people think or why people do the things we do. Rest assured that Aud Ketilsdottir (also known as Aud the Deep-Minded) did not earn her respect by not paying attention to what went on around her! Nor did a king or thane rule wisely or effectively without being mindful of his peoples’ doings, attitudes and opinions towards himself, or of the strength or limits of his own power.
Warriors need mindfulness in order to survive conflicts and hone their skills. Farmers need to be mindful of how their animals and crops are faring so that they can increase their own chances of surviving yet another winter. Parents need mindfulness of their children’s health and state of mind in order to help them learn and grow. For a lay person, being mindful is important in many ways. But when we talk about mindfulness in a monastic sense, is this the same thing? Yes and no.
While serving others in the name of the gods is often one of the goals of a monk or nun, the primary goal, as I see it, is to serve the gods by giving Them devotion on a scale that the lay person, because of his or her own responsibilities, cannot necessarily offer. To do that, one needs to be mindful. Because the vocation of the monastic is to make the spiritual as much a part of their lives as the material world — or perhaps even more so, depending on how one is inclined — inward mindfulness is as important as outwardly-directed mindfulness, and just as difficult to cultivate. When one seeks to build a rich interior life based on devotion to the Holy Ones, it can be surprising to find out how many layers of unnecessary “noise” one has to sift through in order to achieve that richness — even if you’re a hermit living far from the rest of society and its distractions.
When Western people involved in Eastern faiths have talked of mindfulness to me, I’ve occasionally gotten the vague but unsettling feeling that they were missing some essential point. More discussion revealed that their beliefs about what constitutes “mindfuless” seemed to involve a kind of self-satisfied observation of how they were the center of their own reality. Such an attitude may be pleasant for the one so involved, but that sort of approach is not going to be helpful to a Pagan nun, especially since it ignores what I consider a fundamental Pagan belief: that all things are connected in some way.
And now we are back to the central argument of my earlier post about faith — not having assumptions. Mindfulness too relies on dismantling your assumptions about things, including yourself and why you believe and behave as you do. It is not enough simply to observe; you need to understand the reasons behind everything, or as much as is possible for a human to understand, particularly if you are going to overcome the things that lead to acedia and impede your awareness of the spiritual world. And the vast majority of those things are internally generated.
Assumptions are best challenged not by trying desperately to prove them wrong, as so many Lokeans make the mistake of doing when enabling themselves as self-appointed “makers of controversy,” but by merely asking questions that highlight things that people take for granted. In the best of worlds, asking the right questions can bring to light both outer situations that need to be remedied and inner structures of belief that may, ultimately, be built on shaky ground. Some cases in point:
Assumption #1: Northern Tradition religion ought to be built firmly on the ways of the ancestors as we understand them. Is every belief of our pre-Conversion Heathen ancestors necessarily a good idea? Is the fact that some of their practices are now illegal in our modern world the only reason not to engage in them? What precludes them from having been dead wrong about some things, even if they were right about others?
Assumption #2: In being Heathens or Norse-aligned Pagans, we are practicing the ways of our ancestors, which is what the gods wanted of them and want of us now. Has anybody who is devoted to practicing strict reconstructionism ever asked the ancestors or the gods themselves (either directly or through a seidhworker) whether or not they’re actually on the right track? Has anybody who is convinced that someone else’s UPG is bullshit ever tried to confirm or deny that through similar means? Have people who have publicly tried to pass their UPG or PCPG off to others ever gotten another opinion from some unbiased source to verify the truthfulness of their statements? Instead of squabbling and bitching about other people who are supposedly “doing it wrong,” why doesn’t anybody ever ask the dead or the spirits what they think?
Assumption #3: The millennia during which the Norse/Germanic gods were not actively worshipped was an aberration and does not “count” because They have been waiting for us to come back to Them. Do most Northern Traditionists know whether their ancestors were put to the sword or converted willingly to Christianity? What kind of effect does that have on one’s orlog or hamingja? Do the gods and spirits care whether our antecedents converted, and if so do They expect us to make some sort of recompense to Them? If so, what? What makes anyone think They want anything to do with the likes of us, particularly if they see us as descendants of troth-breakers?
These are merely examples of some common assumptions I’ve seen and heard amongst Norse-inclined folks. I am not pointing any fingers by bringing them up because I’m just as guilty as anybody else of making them. However, these kinds of questions, while important to Northern Tradition folks in general, are particularly important for monastics because if one is serious about giving over one’s life to the call of service, there can be no room for selective blindness. This is why it’s been so personally important to me to figure out where I stand on things and how to integrate that into my life as a nun. A contemplative life spent contemplating illusions is a joke. Cultivating mindfulness helps us remove the illusions and see things for what they are. If practiced long-term, it also helps us see how things change, because whether we will it or no, change is inexorable.
It can be painful and embarrassing to see how we’ve let our assumptions hold us back in the past. I sometimes wonder with both amusement and dread if I’ll cringe when I read these posts years from now. Maybe I’ll have decided that most of what I believe at this time is false and will be practicing some entirely different variant of Nordic religion. In any case, if I don’t pay attention, if I’m not mindful, I can’t learn and I can’t discern where the line between my own assumptions and reality lies. This is particularly important to me because of the nature of my relationships with Loki and other gods and spirits, which rely a good deal of self-examination and fact-checking via divination in order to try and avoid self-delusion. The risk is there, both in misinterpreting the will of the gods and in assuming that They have the same plans as I do.
That’s something that few people see about monastic life, which is viewed as an escape from the dangers of “the real world.” Monastic life is not safe or comfortable; it invites risk, the kind which involves the possible shattering of your entire world-view and all your beliefs about your gods. If you are doing it in a way conducive to both your service to others and your effectiveness as a dedicant, you can’t help but take that risk. Mindfulness helps us prepare for the risk-taking by giving us knowledge of the way (many) things actually are. That knowledge builds wisdom, and wisdom increases hamingja by informing our deeds. Whether one is a monastic or not, that can only be a positive thing.
