Starting Fresh

    Welcome to a brand new year! This can be the best year we've ever lived. And yes, it is entirely up to each one of us.

    Forget about past New Year's resolutions. What I'm suggesting is on an entirely different level than losing weight, or consuming less booze or weed. How about initiating a radically positive shift in your life?

    How often do we catch ourselves repeating a set of thoughts, speech or other behaviors that we regret, feel ashamed of - that make us feel like bratty kids rather than mature, evolved adults? These tend to start as critical, disparaging, demeaning thoughts about others. It's best to intercept & stop these frequent slips at the earliest thinking stage.

    So what's with all this criticizing self talk? We're very, very familiar with these story lines, because we repeat them many times every single day! They're like a trail we walk many times each day, where there are very slippery downhill slopes, and we know where these are, can feel the downward incline immediately, and know that if we take just one additional step, we'll slide all the way down to the bottom.
    Once we start criticizing, we have unconsciously assumed a separate identity - our 'small self' (neurotic pain body), from which we can look down on inferior 'others.' It's an embarrassingly dumb, messed-up sense of self, but it's the only one most of us (incorrectly assume we) have.
    This is very much like children who've been removed from abusive homes. When asked whether they wish to be placed in a foster home, or return to their abusive family, most choose the latter - because they fear the unknown more than 'the devil they know.'
    We also get a sick sense of comfortable familiarity, as we sink into our crappy little assumed 'separate self' - almost a sense of 'being right' - like a destitute homeless person crawling back into a crumbling, wet cardboard box under a bridge. The question, 'Would you rather be right or happy?' applies here. When strong emotions like fear, anger or hatred take over, we may (briefly) feel absolutely sure we're 'right' but are actually miserable.

    Most of us are completely unaware how incessantly we tell ourselves what we don't like vs what we do like - our 'preferences' - the chief purpose of which is to reassure ourselves that we have a solid, permanent identity - which deep down we know is false.
    As we gradually learn to notice & keep letting go of self-talk about preferences, we gradually learn to become intimate with everyone & everything, rather than remaining alienated, due to reality being severely distorted & edited by our preferences.

    “… live in reality and enjoy the moments that are unfolding in front of you. That’s what you can do. Use your mind to be creative, inspiring, and do great things. Don’t let the mind always be thinking about itself and what it wants. Learn to enjoy life as it is – instead of limiting the ways you can enjoy it to serve your past impressions.”
    Michael A. Singer “Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament” Sounds True, 2022. A VERY USEFUL GUIDE TO LIVING JOYFULLY - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

    We can only appreciate reality when we no longer look at it through the dense fog of our preferences. We can gradually learn to recognize, accept, and stop being slaves to our preferences.
    We are free to choose the quality of our lives because it is independent of external conditions as perceived through our preferences.

 

Portrait in L'Harmattan gallery lharmattan.com Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec

 

One Love

    We all function at 2 very different levels of consciousness (ways of being) on different occasions.
    How often do you recognize this in yourself?
    Why is differentiating between these important?

    Too often, most of us are striving to control our external world – ‘just trying to get by’ – not only in the present, but even in the future or the past! This feels stressful. No matter how well we manage situations, we feel it should have gone better, and there’s a nagging sense of lack or emptiness inside – ‘I can’t get no satisfaction.’ At this level of consciousness, we feel alone & at least somewhat alienated from everyone & everything else in the world. To some extent at least, most of us have been conditioned to perceive the world as uncaring, at times even hostile to us. As a result, this fear-based, survivalist (FBS) level of consciousness / way of being - often referred to as the ‘small self’ (Eckhart Tolle’s ‘pain body’) – dominates our way of being in the world.

    “All of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one’s training.” Jubal, in ‘Stranger in a Strange Land,’ by Robert Heinlein

    At times, however, you may feel deeply immersed, ‘at one with’ an activity - alone or with one or more people. There’s no thought of yourself, time, or anything outside of this one activity. You, the activity & other participants are a single, pleasantly flowing process, like a wonderful dance or joyous celebration. You feel gratitude, intimacy with everyone & everything. Psychologist Csikszentmihalyi named such common but sporadic, universal human experiences ‘flow.’
    However, when this sense of (‘true self’) Self becomes increasingly dominant in one’s life, spiritual teachers refer to this sense of unity or oneness as ‘Universal Consciousness’ in the process of ‘awakening.’

    Our deeper intelligence tells us that we're profoundly interconnected & interdependent with everyone & everything - AND - science shows that we're only truly happy while intimately engaged with whoever / whatever we're dealing with in each successive present-moment. Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.” Science 2010; 330(6006): 932.

    “When we quit thinking (excessively) about
ourselves & our own self-preservation, we undergo
a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.” Joseph Campbell

    "… the greatest antidote to insecurity & sense of fear is compassion. It brings one back to the basis of one's inner strength. A truly compassionate person embodies a carefree spirit of fearlessness, born of the freedom from egoistic self-concern." The Dalai Lama

    How can we tell when we’re in fear-based survivalist (FBS) mode?
    It’s pretty fast & easy when we learn to focus on & thus refine awareness of our thoughts & feelings. Physically FBS mode feels tight & cold. Mentally / emotionally FBS feels insecure, repetitive, unpleasantly stressful & unsustainable. It’s easy to recognize the re-run of old internal conversations we’ve heard way too many times before: ‘I’m no good at this,’ ‘I can’t handle this,’ ‘When will this be over?’ ‘I hate this,’ ‘Are we there yet?’ ‘If only I could have x, THEN I’d be happy,’ ‘If only I could avoid y, THEN I’d be happy,’ ‘If only z never happened, THEN I’d be happy,’ ‘If only so & so could change, THEN I’d be happy,’ etc, etc.
    Habitually worrying about ourselves almost non-stop, is simply failing to realize that far from being helpful, it is the cause of most of our unnecessary suffering.
    Even in the worst possible situations – the death by suicide of one’s child or the loss of one’s family, home & all possessions in fires or floods – the most healing thing people who’ve sustained such unimaginable losses can possibly do, is to help others who’ve just suffered these same losses. This is the all-important shift from preoccupation with self to concern for others.

    It’s impossible to be happy when we fail to be authentic / true to our Self, just as it’s impossible for a fish to be happy flopping about on dry land; or for a healthy eagle to remain stuck in a small cage. It’s largely up to us WHETHER we remain stuck in the rat race – OR – be authentic to our true nature. Re-discovering who we truly are is primarily an intuitive journey, not something we can think our way to. Thinking is based on theories & models of reality. Who we truly are must be directly experienced, in the moment.
    Gangaji skillfully points us to directly experience our true nature:

    “I really try to direct people into just discovering there is a direct experience and then there is a narrative about that direct experience. Because we’re so attuned to the narrative (our internal conversations, opinions, judgments), we often follow the narrative as if it were reality, as if it were the direct experience. (BUT our narrative is based on our past experiences & how these have conditioned us to react. So, as Anais Nin has keenly observed, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ie we see & react to memories from our past, triggered by the present, rather than being able to directly experience & thus respond appropriately, to what we encounter right here & now.)  
    So even a superficial experience like feeling anger, or irritation not even anger. You feel irritation, we have a narrative about that. We’re righteous in our irritation because somebody cut me off on the freeway. Or, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t feel that way, I should let them do what they have to do. I shouldn’t feel this.’ And we get caught up in our internal conversation and we don’t get to experience the depth of what is here.
    Even if it starts as something superficial, like an irritation, in the willingness to experience that without the narrative about that; without good or bad judgment; just to for a moment be absolutely, completely irritated. And without a narrative, irritation can’t last. But it can reveal something deeper – maybe it’s true anger, maybe fear, maybe bliss, and finally, maybe, this radiant, unspeakable, indefinable presence of your own being.”
    Gangaji interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSVtlpsN58k - POWERFUL 81-year-old female spiritual teacher

    "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ

Words about "the nameless"

     Most of us were born into a religion and traumatized by it, and/or were traumatized by others' religions. So it's very common & understandable to be stuck in cynicism, aversion, anger, hatred etc towards religions. Nevertheless, it's vitally important to FREE ourselves from the prison that our afflictive emotions create: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2020/12/natural-evolution-of-understanding.html

 

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

Laozi, Tao Te Ching

 

     Below are two deeply insightful mystics, the late Robert A. Johnson, and Cynthia Bourgeault, who happen to use Christian terminology - just ONE of MANY - for "the nameless" - that which cannot be named. 

     “Apparently, one must separate from God so that there is an objective standpoint from which we can observe. In my own homespun theology, I believe that perhaps God wanted human eyes in order to be able to see the splendor of the Golden World. If so, then it’s our business to be the eyes and ears, to see and hear the splendor or God, but it requires that we stand apart from God. To be a discrete observer necessitates that one is separated from what one is observing. That is the alienation of a human life. One is reminded of the Zen comment on the intermediate stage of development when ‘rivers were no longer rivers and mountains were no longer mountains.’
     That sense of being separated is the ego. In arriving at adulthood we all have built an ego structure, a separate sense of ‘I,’ but it is precisely that distance from all else that makes us feel so lonely and alienated. One then must find a way to restore the unity with God, to worship. This is the Zen stage when ‘rivers are again rivers and mountains are again mountains.’
     It is our human duty to witness the splendor of God, which is my sense of worship. What makes all of this so difficult is that our duties are in conflict. These principal duties are to separate from oneness (the childhood paradise), develop an ego, and live a cultural life; and then to reunite with the oneness of God. Generally the early part of one’s life is taken up with the necessary distancing from God: learning about the cultural requirements of the society in which one lives, leaving the house of the parents, developing one’s independence and sense of personal self. There is a constant pull back to the sense of unity from which we came, and in Jungian psychology that it called the mother complex. There is a regressive pull in each of us to quit this business of winning independence, to escape the painful human process of becoming a distinct, separate personality. Physical suicide is the ultimate expression of the mother complex, but it takes many other forms, such as the use of drugs and alcohol or mindless consumption of food or other material goods. When people come to my consulting room with a drug problem, I tell them that they are addressing the right problem but in the wrong way. They are trying to go back to a paradise when they need to go forward to a paradise.
     We must separate from God before we can reunite with God. We must create a useful life, learning the customs of the society in which we live. You cannot put back together again that which has never been adequately differentiated. Consciousness must separate before it can reunite. Many of the spiritual communes, monasteries, and spiritual practices in this country are nothing but institutionalized mother complexes, with selfishness and ego regression running rampant in the name of spirituality.
     It is a legitimate question to ask just how far one really needs to push this differentiation before one can legitimately seek to reunite. That is an individual matter. A very simple person may not be differentiated to any great degree, and I have seen this among the traditional peasants who live in the small villages of India; they have the right to put things back together again without a great deal of differentiation. But educated Westerners go much further in developing their consciousness, becoming so split that it is difficult to become whole again. The cultural laws of Western society encourage us to get as separate, as specialized, as unique as we can get. To get a good job today you must have a college education, and a professional degree or a Ph.D. is better still. We are trained to become more and more specialized. Then on Sunday at church we are advised to merge ourselves with God. It’s no wonder we’ve become a neurotic society; the wonder is that we are not all schizophrenic!
     Once we have built a strong ego, we must then link it back to the matrix from which it has grown. Differentiation of consciousness is only one-half of our life journey. But to say, ‘I want an experience of God’ is a total oxymoron; if there is an ‘I’ seeking an experience, that is precisely the problem, since an ‘I’ that sees itself as separate from God is the cause of the suffering in one’s life. There’s a Christian proverb that says he who searches for God insults God, because a search implies that God is separate. Zen Buddhism also is very articulate about this, stating that the very motivation for satori or enlightenment is suspect. You find the kingdom, not by seeking, but only by grace. Seeking after the splendor of God is a highly egocentric and fragmenting thing to do. I now understand that the most profound religious life is found by being in the world yet in each moment doing our best to align ourselves with heaven, with the will of God.”
     Robert A. Johnson, Jerry M. Ruhl. “Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations.” HarperCollins, 1998.

 
     Cynthia Bourgeault (CB): “I became more and more intrigued and disturbed about why it was that Christianity, a religion that clearly has one of the most loving and inclusive gurus that’s ever walked the face of the planet, at its epicenter, should tend to develop itself in formats that were so rigid and exclusive and non-generous. And why didn’t people walk the talk? It became more and more of a heartbreak to me. So it was actually through reading Jacob Needleman’s 'Lost Christianity' in 1980, that the first pieces began to come together. He said at one point, ‘telling people to wake up and be conscious is like telling stones to pick themselves up, sprout wings and fly to the sea.’ There’s a missing piece, and until you can get that missing piece online, you can’t do the teachings of Jesus. ‘If one aspires to live the beatitudes or any Gospel teaching it is necessary to establish the level of consciousness from which they emerge.’ is virtually a direct quote from Symeon the New Theologian in the 11th century, who was the first one to be on to the fact that the Jesus teachings emerged from a very high level of consciousness, and that until you could basically run that program, you are going to be constantly dumbing it down to a place where it’s basically an inversion of itself. So Needleman was onto the fact that something was broken in the way that we pay attention that kept our consciousness scrambled, low, distracted, and not under our free command, and it was this that was constantly making hash out of the Gospel that Jesus was teaching."
     Rick Archer (RA): “A speaker, or anyone, can only speak from their level of consciousness; a student, or anyone, can only listen or hear from their level of consciousness, which brings in the whole ‘pearl before swine’ thing, the parable of the sower, if we want to quote Biblical references. There’s always going to be a gulf, not only contemporaneously in the life of that teacher, but then as time goes on, and the teachings get passed down like a party-game from one ear to another, over time it gets more and more distorted. I think it’s happened in every tradition.”
     CB: “Even our understanding of what ‘esoteric’ means. Nowadays, people will think esoteric means secret information that’s withheld from people, which is ridiculous. The esoteric dimension of every faith, which is very simple, is hidden in plain sight. Nobody’s hiding anything. But until you reach a certain level of receptivity, and the teacher reaches a certain level of broadcastability, you can’t see it, you can’t pick it up.
     They say that until a student has enough collective well, and is able to sort out on their own and discriminate between a billion different things out there, the thing that has their name on it, they’re not going to be able to appreciate, they’re not going to be fit for work anyway. It’s like a chicken picking its way out of the egg, you have to do that work before you’re ready to be where the teaching is going to put you.”

     RA: “How do you develop that discrimination to find the thing that’s right for you, among all the different influences out there?”
     CB: "Gurdjieff had a teaching about A and B influences. And he said most of us are out there in the world surrounded by A influences, which are all sort of competing things making a play for our attention. And it’s not until you can recognize something that’s a B influence, which has a qualitatively different taste for you, that you can follow it. You’ve got to get there yourself. How that happens? – A little luck, a little management. I certainly think that meditation is a really good starting point, because it allows you to filter out a lot of the garbage that’s obviously just playing at superficial parts of you, and to listen to something qualitatively deeper.
     I think actually we have the direction wrong of the journey all along. We start from the impression that we are here, and God’s over there, and that we have to go towards God. And if you can make enough noise and jump up & down loud enough, you’ll attract God’s attention. But I think rather it is always the opposite - we’re flowing out from the divine at any given moment, as a particular path, as a kind of instantiation of divinity in form. We’re always guided, and the path is always specific to ourself. What we have to learn is simply to stay in alignment with it. That’s what learning B influences is all about. It’s easier to stay in alignment once you get the hang of it, than not to stay in alignment with it and try on a billion different paths because they seem interesting. I venture to say that God is your heart of hearts."
      Cynthia Bourgeault - Oct 23, 2017 Batgap interview:  https://batgap.com/cynthia-bourgeault/

From Alienation to True Intimacy

     "Americans suffer inordinately with what therapists call problems of the self - an inability to self soothe; an inability to sustain a satisfying and cohesive sense of self over time; an inability to warmly love the self; an inability to maintain an ongoing sense of belonging and a deep sense of meaning and purpose in life. … we live cut off from a sense of our true deep mutual belonging & interdependence, and we suffer from a painful sense of separation – a separation from the life of the body; a separation from the hidden depths of life, its mystery and interiority; a separation from the source of our own guidance, wisdom, and compassion; and a separation from the life-giving roots of human community.”
       Stephen Cope. “The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extraordinary Living.” Bantam Books, 2006.

      “If you pin your hopes on things outside your control, taking upon yourself things which rightfully belong to others, you are liable to stumble, fall, suffer, and blame both gods and men.
      But if you focus your attention only on what is truly your own concern, and leave to others what concerns them, then you will be in charge of your interior life. No one will be able to harm or hinder you. You will blame no one, and have no enemies.”
       Epictetus (55 – 135 AD), Greek Stoic Philosopher

     "... the philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, creator of a therapeutic approach called ‘Focusing,’ beautifully clarifies the nature and character of what is known through interoception, the viewing & experiencing of the body from the inside. Gendlin developed the widely influential notion of ‘felt sense,’ referring to what the body knows directly of itself, without the mediation of the thinking mind. For Gendlin, the felt sense, the ability to know one’s own interior, somatic experience, is the 'open sesame' of successful psychotherapies.
     Through (body-centered meditation practices), we learn how to extend our awareness into our body and we begin to sense what is there ... we are softening the boundary between our highly intentional, restricted, conscious ego mind and the limitless, unconscious domain of the body. When we do this, our conscious mind begins to tap into and connect with the somatic awareness that is already going on - mostly unbeknownst to us - in our body. In this larger field of consciousness, we are still conscious but in a very different way.
     It is as if we are waking up, within our Soma, and we suddenly find ourselves in a new world. We are uncovering a completely different experience of what our body is. We begin to see that what we formerly took to be our body was just a made-up version with little correspondence to anything real. We find in our body previously unimaginable vistas of spaciousness, experience arising that is ever surprising & fresh, an endless world of possibilities for ourselves and our lives.”
      Reginald A. Ray. "The Awakening Body. Somatic Meditation for Discovering Our Deepest Life." Shambhala, 2016.

       “When we sit in meditation, we can discover a way of being that is very different from our typical interactions with the world. For the period of time that we sit, we agree within ourselves to quiet the familiar internal chatter that goes on most of the time. We sit so that we can discover in ourselves this capability for stillness, for intimacy with our self. We can uncover the heart.
     This process of stilling the mind and opening the heart brings a great feeling of ease that courses through the body, releasing the sensation of holding back, of fragility or tightness, and freeing us to work with the challenges of life. I call that true intimacy. When we can actually feel what we are feeling, experience what we are experiencing, and recognize what we are thinking, then we become intimate with ourselves. This intimacy is a closeness, a quality of interiority, a nearness. To be intimate with yourself is to be so attuned to your own feeling-state and mind-state and perception-state that nothing is hidden, your whole being is available to your life. In this intimacy with self, we begin to recognize the habits of thinking that stop us from living confidently, generously, and vigorously. And we begin to trust ourselves.”
      Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. “Most Intimate. A Zen Approach to Life’s Challenges.” Shambhala, 2014.

     "In human relationships, as mutual love deepens, there comes a time when the two friends convey their exchanges without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each other's presence without saying anything. Holding hands or a single word from time to time can develop this communication. This kind of relationship points to the level of interior silence ..." Fr. Thomas Keating

"The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or not,
What we mean by 'love' is its sound coming in.
When love hits the farthest edge of excess, it reaches a wisdom.
And the fragrance of that knowledge!
It penetrates our thick bodies,
It goes through walls —
Its network of notes has a structure as if a million suns were arranged inside.
This tune has truth in it.
Where else have you heard a sound like this?" Kabir

“May I meet this moment fully;
May I meet it as a friend.” Sylvia Boorstein

 

Susan Paterson "Strawberries and Cream" fogforestgallery.ca

A Breath of Fresh Air

     Central to Zen meditation (zazen) is maintaining attention on the breath in the lower abdomen (hara). With patient, persistent practice, this cultivates both a stabilizing & energizing force - anchor, ballast & power plant - not just during meditation, but throughout life. This practice is central to all Chinese, Japanese, & other Eastern martial arts & is the basis of "core strength" in gymnastics, diving, dance, figure skating etc.

     A baby sleeping on her back will breathe slowly, regularly, the chest remaining still, the abdomen slowly rising & falling. This is normal, healthy abdominal (diaphragmatic) breathing. When a deep breath is taken, first the abdomen rises (due to the diaphragm bowing towards the stomach, thus displacing the abdominal organs outwards), then near the end of the inhalation, the (intercostal) muscles between the ribs become activated, expanding the chest. On exhalation, the intercostal muscles relax, the chest returns to normal, then the diaphragm relaxes, allowing the abdomen to return to normal.

     This is very efficient breathing and is naturally slower than the way many today breathe - chest breathing - which is intentionally (self-consciously) holding the abdomen in, and breathing primarily in the upper chest.

     James Nestor wrote a very interesting short article (based on his book: "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art"): https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/26/every-breath-you-take-the-lost-art-of-breathing?utm_source=pocket-newtab  In it he writes about the benefits of abdominal breathing:

     "But lest we forget, nature is simple but subtle. For me, the perfect breath is this: inhale for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 litres of air. You can practice this perfect breathing for a few minutes, or a few hours. When we breathe like this, breathing practitioners suggest that circulation in the brain and body will increase while the burden on the heart decreases. All the while the diaphragm – that umbrella-shaped muscle in our chests – will drop lower and rise higher, allowing more air to enter the lungs and assisting in pushing blood throughout the body. For this reason, the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as 'the second heart', because it not only beats to its own rhythm but also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat."

     A key component needs to be added - the quality of our relationships. A surprising number of us relate to our own breath much like the new owner of a car who has absolutely no interest in or affection for their car other than to use it to go places. Disconnection / dissociation from not only our own breath, but also from the rest of our body, from our own deepest values, from our family, friends & co-workers, from our community, from the environment, from nature, from the present moment, from our very life - is more common than we realize AND is profoundly alienating, lonely & unhealthy.

     A small but important step towards re-establishing a healthy, normal relationship with life is through our breath. A normal healthy relationship is modeled by our hands. How do our left & right hands naturally relate to each other? That's a deep question to silently ponder - and then bring to ALL of our relationships.

     We can all use a breath of fresh air in our lives.

Core Beliefs and Mental Health

     Our personal core beliefs, no matter how unaware we may be of them, nevertheless powerfully guide & influence our life. And many educated, Westernized people have core beliefs based on scientific materialism. Scientific materialism is entirely appropriate for physical sciences, BUT makes no sense at all as a worldview, particularly when dealing with our identity, the meaning of life, and other existential matters. These most critical aspects of life have been studied by the world's wisdom traditions for thousands of years. Ignoring this depth of knowledge, and assuming by default that science has all the answers is "profoundly alienating, depressing and delusional."

     Wisdom traditions can be compared to politics. Many politicians put self-interest & their own party's success, ahead of the welfare of their country. Such "partisanship" is tearing the US apart. However, politicians who take their job seriously, primarily serve their country's, & ideally the world's, best interests. Wisdom traditions, taken seriously, guide practitioners toward ethical behavior, unconditional love of self & others, and the capacity to gracefully navigate life's most difficult existential challenges. Like politics, religions have a shameful history of incompetence, bad actors & criminals. Nevertheless, both politics and wisdom traditions - when taken seriously - are absolutely vital & irreplaceable for a deeply meaningful life.

     The quote below is from a Buddhist perspective, but those who take any wisdom tradition seriously (are working towards or are at Culliford's or Fowler's 5th or 6th stage: http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/10/nurturing-nonpartisan-human-maturation.html or http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/11/fowlers-six-stages-of-faith.html) tend to have surprisingly similar perspectives. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and other mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are secular practices, based on Buddhist principles.

     “Cross-cultural psychiatric research shows that the Western understanding of all mental illnesses, such as depression, is profoundly influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations. Mental health care providers, drug companies, and patient-advocacy groups typically regard mental illnesses as ‘brain diseases’ in which the patient has little choice or responsibility. As journalist Ethan Watters comments, ‘The mental-health ideas we export to the world are rarely unadulterated scientific facts and never culturally neutral.’ Derek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry in London writes, ‘Western mental-health discourse introduces core components of Western culture, including a theory of human nature, a definition of personhood, a sense of time and memory, and a secular source of moral authority. None of this is universal.’
     From a Buddhist (& other wisdom traditions') perspective, the materialist view of the human mind – reduced to a composite of electrochemical processes occurring unconsciously in the brain – is profoundly alienating and depressing precisely because it is essentially delusional. Watters writes:
     ‘If our rising need for mental-health services does indeed spring from a breakdown in meaning, our insistence that the rest of the world think like us may be all the more problematic. Offering the latest Western mental-health theories, treatments, and categories in an attempt to ameliorate the psychological stress sparked by modernization and globalization is not a solution; it may be part of the problem. When we undermine local conceptions of the self and modes of healing, we may be speeding along the disorienting changes that are at the very heart of much of the world’s mental distress.’
     The only cure for this culturally induced mental illness is to awaken from our culturally acquired delusion so that we can grapple more effectively with our habitual mental afflictions. The process of adopting a Buddhist (or other wisdom traditions') view of human nature and the world around us is actually designed to induce a profound disillusionment with all mundane concerns. This has served as a motivating force for many Buddhists (& others) to take monastic ordination or devote themselves to a life of solitary contemplative practice. From the perspective of modern clinical psychology, such disillusionment and malaise could easily be diagnosed as clinical depression, calling for therapy, including drugs, to restore the renunciate to the Western ‘norm.’ In the United States, one fourth of the population has a diagnosable mental illness, and from a Buddhist (& others') perspective, even what passes for normal mental health looks more like mental illness – for which the only cure is a radical shift in one’s worldview, values, and way of life.
     William James is not alone in regarding Indian spiritual traditions as promoting a kind of pessimism and nihilism. But Buddhism, unlike modern psychology, proposes that mental afflictions are not innate to the human mind. They are rooted in ignorance and delusion, so they can be irreversibly dispelled through direct insight into the nature of reality. ... the essential purpose of sentient existence is to free ourselves from the fundamental causes of suffering ... by coming to know reality as it is.
     In stark contrast, the modern view of human nature is that we have evolved through natural selection in such a way that all our mental processes have survival value, including egotism, attachment, and hatred, despite the grief they bring us. They are intrinsic, inescapable features of the human mind; any attempt to defeat them could only be a futile and frustrating endeavor. Freud sums up the modern materialistic view by declaring that there is no possibility of achieving the goal of the absence of pain and displeasure and of experiencing lasting pleasure: ‘all the regulations of the universe run counter to it.’ From a Buddhist (or other wisdom traditions') perspective, the view that an individual’s consciousness terminates at death is utterly nihilistic, and the belief that there is no possibility of gaining freedom from suffering, except through personal annihilation, is deeply pessimistic and self-defeating.
     Within the Buddhist context, spiritual practice ... refers to a worldview, meditative practice, and way of life that lead to a lasting state of genuine happiness.”
       B. Alan Wallace. “Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic. A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice.” Columbia University Press, 2012.

Awaking from Conventional Slumber

     “At some point the hero’s conventional slumber is challenged by a crisis, an existential confrontation that calls previous beliefs and ways of life into question. The call can come from within or without. Outer physical crises may take the form of sickness, as with come shamans; a confrontation with sickness in others, as with the Buddha; or suddenly staring death in the face. 
     An inner call may take the form of a powerful dream or vision, as with some shamans, or of a deep heartfelt response to a new teacher or teaching. It may also emerge more subtly as ‘divine discontent’: a growing dissatisfaction with the pleasures of the world or a gnawing question about the meaning of life. No matter how this challenge arises, it reveals the limits of conventional thinking and living, and urges the hero beyond them. In our culture, this may appear as an existential or midlife crisis. Tragically, the deeper causes and questions of the crisis are rarely recognized, its potentials rarely fulfilled, and one of life’s great opportunities is then missed. 
     As Jesus said, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ Indeed, few choose to even recognize the call. And no wonder! For those who hear the call now face a terrible dilemma. They must choose whether to answer the call and venture into the unknown realms of life to which it beckons, or deny the call and retreat into their familiar cocoon. If the call is denied then there is little choice but to repress the message and its far-reaching implications. Only by such repression can non-heroes fall again into the seductive, anesthetic comforts of conventional unawareness, suppress the sublime and sink into what the philosopher Kierkegaard so aptly called ‘tranquilization by the trivial.’ The result is a life of unconsciousness and conformity, which existentialists call inauthentic living and alienation.”

        Roger Walsh. “The World of Shamanism. New Views of an Ancient Tradition.” Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2007.

Mindfulness & Healing Artificial Splits: Sacred-Profane, Man-Nature ...

     "Quasi-religion involves 'groups and activities which deal with the sacred but are anomalous given the American folk category of "religion" [ie they lack formal organizational components, particularly a church].'
     ... quasi-religious phenomena ... can be just as sacred or spiritual as 'sacred' ones. (and may elicit) spiritual experiences that rival and perhaps even surpass the sacred nature of much formal religious observance.
     An important component of the quasi-religious reaction against modernity is the deep ecology movement whose operative assumptions lead to its central thesis: In order to prevent a generalized ecosystems collapse before the mid-twenty-first century, humankind must experience a change in consciousness comparable in its intensity & comprehensiveness to the cultural shifts accompanying the agricultural & industrial revolutions. Transcending what deep ecologists see as environmental tinkering in the form of limited, disconnected laws & policies ('shallow' ecologies), this change in consciousness centers on healing humankind's alienation from nature in terms of a dualistic subject/object split that permits violence directed towards the earth, justified by the drive for material accumulation.
     In their pursuit of resources to heal what they see as alienation from nature, deep ecologists have focused on Eastern religious traditions, particularly on meditative phenomena. In a meditative experience, following deep ecological assumptions, the dualistic, subject/object split of Western science and materialism is assumed to recede, to be replaced by a sense of unity with one's natural environment. Deep ecologists, then, see meditative experiences as a primary vehicle for humankind to transcend anthropomorphism and find a wider identification with nature, culminating, by definition, in an ecocentric worldview."

       Brinkerhoff MB, Jacob JC. Mindfulness and quasi-religious meaning systems: An empirical exploration within the context of ecological sustainability and deep ecology. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1999; 38(4): 524-42.

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/01/going-against-grain-egocentric-vs-going.html
 

lljohnson   www.dpreview.com

Fear and the Illusion of Separateness

     “Fear is the primary mechanism sustaining the concept of the ‘other’ and reinforcing . . . loneliness and distance in our lives. [Through fear] we identify with a fragment of reality rather than with the whole. Metta [loving-kindness] overcomes the illusion of separateness... (and thereby) ... overcomes all of the states that accompany this fundamental error of separateness — [including] fear, alienation, loneliness, and despair . . . ”            Sharon Salzberg

         Phelan JP.  Practicing with Fear. Mindfulness - published online 06 September 2012.