I am told you want soundbites with pictures.

Apparently, to capture your attention I have to be short and as dumbed down as possible. I am told that to be complex is an insult to your stressed sense of busyness. I know you signed-up but don’t open the emails you signed up for, never mind even click more than once when you see them. Just too much to do and worry about. Not again one more newsletter, a nuisance that requires time and leisure to read and contemplate. After all, aren’t we past the age of languorous snail mail that forced us to wait 3 weeks before we received an answer to a letter?

God forbid there is a space for reflection between my inbreath and your outbreath – it could actually yield challenging thoughts and insights! I know I am encouraged to join a sleeping mob of humans, who live as if we had no minds, vote for whoever symbolizes the power they have disowned within themselves, and gorge on short, flashy soundbites that satisfy their attention deficit minds, addicted to the lure of facile parochialism at the expense of deeply nourishing, but much harder to come by contextual perspective. Such perspective requires time for reflection and a good dose of calming neurotransmitters that tone down your need for excitement to make space for more patient curiosity.

I know your attention span has shriveled to the amazing size of a fruit fly’s, just long enough to register a tweet and cultivate the mind of a twit. I belong to those fools who write longer pieces only few people apparently read, because cultivating the mind is a thing of the past. Even in the new McMindfulness world order, in which everybody and their uncle not only practices, but teaches mindfulness, I mostly see trivialities and regurgitations of undigested mindfulness sound bites. The mindfulness soldiers selling Big MindMacs march on everywhere, spewing out trivialities fit for mindful robots.

I cherish the people who do not seem to participate in the new McMindfulness and lulu yoga world order, and yearn to do justice to the complexity of reality, of who we are and what our mind is. I obstinately teach and write for those who honor the mind and are humbled by its enormity. I am simply unable to dumb you down, dear reader, because the awe-inspiring mystery of your essence forces me to stop, take stock, reflect and meet you on levels deeper than we both imagine.

I therefore (foolishly?) invite you to study, to take time to read and gain perspective. I write for an educated audience, because to understand the reality of our lives more deeply, we need to guide our inner genius out of its numbing slumber into the light of awareness (education from Latin e-ducere = to bring out, lead out, guide out of its dormant state).

Education does not just mean university education, but the education of the mind that allows us to develop the capacity for reflection, resilience and deeply attuned relationships. Uneducated people don’t reflect and look to their chosen authority to tell them what the right thing to do is. The uneducated mind is not only your worst enemy, but also the one who asks what others can do for you. The educated mind is your best friend and will take on the task of asking what you can do for your life, the people in your life and the planet as a whole.

I invite you not to let any stone remain unturned, and as one of my students who has invented a new word would say, let yourself be treyvoked.

With kind regards,

Dr. T.

Copyright © 2017 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.