Policía y Mindfulness – Cheri Maples

Un bello artículo sobre las dificultades de ser policía y cómo desarrollar el entrenamiento en mindfulness para las personas que integran este cuerpo. Buenísimo! enlace Cheri Maples. El artículo fue publicado originalmente para Mindfulness Bell Magazine

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El artículo siguiente nos da una visión cronológica del coraje de Maples a través de la actuación en varios momentos de su carrera. También hay enlaces para ampliar la información de cada uno de esos momentos. Espero lo disfrutéis también, podéis leerlo clicando aquí.

Os dejo algunas frases del artículo «Mindfulness and the Police»

One of the things that I think is really important is that we have

to learn the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion,

because until we learn how to bring true self-compassion to our-

selves, the practice doesn’t really work well with other people. You

can make a full time job out of self-improvement, which leads to

high self-esteem, and I guess that’s better than low self-esteem.

But the problem with high self-esteem is you’re still comparing

yourself to other people. In fact, sometimes you’re competing

with them and secretly hoping they do worse than you do. It’s not

a very good way to live a spiritual life.

With self-compassion, we’re learning how to bring not just

empathy to ourselves but goodwill to ourselves, in a phenomenal

way. When I’m able to do that with the tools in the practice, the

volume of “me” goes way down. I’m happiest when the volume

of “me” is lowest. When the volume of “me” goes up, all those

habit seeds are ready to spring into action.

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One of the other things that Thay taught me that was so

valuable is that compassion can be gentle and compassion can be

fierce. Wisdom is knowing when to employ the gentle compassion

of understanding or the fierce compassion of good boundaries.

How we talk and relate to others is probably the most important

peace work that we can engage in.

Our current criminal justice system is based on a

very faulty premise: the premise that the punishment of the per-

petrator is going to heal the victim and rehabilitate the perpetrator.

What I found is that neither of those things is true. It seems

to reflect a collective belief that contributes to all kinds of inter-

personal and systemic dysfunction. What this premise fails to

recognize is one of the basic premises of restorative justice: it’s

not the wrongdoer’s repentance that creates forgiveness; it’s the

victim’s forgiveness that creates repentance. I’ve seen this happen

over and over again.

We need to recognize the costs of working as a police officer.

If you take soldiers, or people that are on SWAT teams, or the

ops-teams in policing, the effects that I talked about are much

more intense. We teach them how to keep themselves and others

physically safe by using force, and how to use force. But we don’t

teach them how to keep themselves emotionally safe. That’s where

I have received such a gift from Thay, the gift of mindfulness.

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Probably the most radical political act that any of us will

engage in is to learn to live in more harmony with everyone and

everything.To change the world or to love everybody is too big

an ambition for any single person, but to respond to this moment

with engagement and compassion is possible for each and every

one of us.