At a workshop today the teacher introduced me to a mindfulness jar. It’s not that different from a snow globe, a transparent vessel with some dense liquid and glitter in it, designed to be shaken up. In its most chaotic state, the jar represents what happens in your mind when you’re stressed and overwhelmed, with all sorts of thoughts muddling your brain. Watching the glitter sink to the bottom is a great way to ground yourself and calm down. In the end, you’re able to easily see through the perfectly clear water–and hopefully also through the situation you found yourself in.
The idea sounds simple yet powerful, so I decided to make a similar jar for myself (or could it have been because I love glitter so much?). As you can guess, I might have considerably overdosed some of the ingredients, especially those of the shiny and sparkly kind. Additionally, the kind of glue I used is too dense to have everything sink. Some of the finer particles are light enough to float forever, which might make my jar not quite the best tool to meditate upon if you want to achieve a perfectly clear and empty mind.
Perfectly clear or not, the jar is a delightful and mesmerizing thing to watch. Here is what happens right after I shake it up.