Mindfulness 'letting go of" maybe can be viewed as casting down and bringing into captivity because we do not get entangled in them.
This is obviously not the sense of the words Paul wrote in
2 Corinthians 10:3-5. He did not recommend letting go of certain thoughts but of taking them captive - the very opposite of what you're suggesting one should do with them! Your idea of not getting entangled in certain thoughts is you-centered where Paul's approach is Christ-centered. He commands believers to bring their thinking to Christ, into bondage to him, the Way, the Truth and the Life (
John 14:6), not merely to release attachment to one's thinking and let the thoughts simply drift about in one's mind. Paul's goal is submission and service to Christ, not merely being unattached to one's own thoughts (which I don't believe is actually possible).
When I come to some inner stillness it is for me an intimacy with God rather than "emptiness".
In "stillness" I may encounter God but He is not the stillness I may achieve within myself. God is revealed in Scripture as intensely active: creating, loving, watching, teaching, protecting, comforting, ordering, judging, punishing, and so on. God communicates to me best when I am still and quiet, undistracted by the world, but stillness and quietness are not ends in themselves, but merely aids to the clear transmission of God's "marching orders" to me and to undisturbed contemplation of
Him (as opposed to
my inner stillness/detachment).
From time to time I like to read St Bonaventure's Itinerarium:
"So it follows that, by the act of observing, the mind transcends and passes beyond not only the perceivable world, but equally its own self: and Christ is the way and the gate through which this transcendence is achieved, Christ is the ladder and the vehicle...
"If this transcendence is to be perfect, all intellectual activity should be relinquished and the entire apex of affection be transferred to and transformed into God.
http://faculty.uml.edu/rinnis/45.304 God and Philosophy/ITINERARIUM.pdf
Sounds like the temptation of the devil offered to Eve, packaged in a Roman Catholic version of eastern, pagan religious thought.
Genesis 3:4-5
4 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die!
5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God..."
None of the language or the goals outlined in the quotation from Bonaventure above appear in the New Testament. The Christian isn't called in Scripture to "transcendence," nor to relinquishing all intellectual activity, and Christ is never referred to in Scripture as a mere "ladder" or "vehicle" but as Saviour, Lord, Creator, God and King. Christ isn't a means to an end but the End itself, the Alpha and Omega:
Revelation 1:12-18
12 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands;
13 and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash.
14 His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.
15 His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters.
16 In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength.
17 When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,
18 and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
Christ doesn't sound to me, here, like a mere ladder or vehicle!
This for me is refreshing. Some of us need the inner silence, inner stillness to just observe, rest and let Christ do what he will do. And sometimes that seems to be nothing...boring.
Oh, he never does nothing. His goal is always to make us more and more like himself which involves loving, yielding, trusting, believing, confessing, repenting, receiving, and acting! When one is truly interacting with Christ, it is not boring at all. But mere stillness within, a Self-occupied effort at some detached inner state, would, I think become very boring - and generally spiritually useless, too - as a goal in-and-of itself.
Life is not bout being a perfect world for me. It is not all about me. My life in time is the unfolding of God's will and plan. My ego may not always like it.
Amen! Double Amen!! Now this is truth I can fully endorse!
Matthew 16:24-25
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
25 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
Philippians 1:21
21 For to me, to live is Christ ...