It can be terribly frustrating to suffer from debilitating physical symptoms, for which one physician after another fails to find a cause or effective treatment. Though each clinician might strongly suspect that the cause is primarily psychological, they'll suggest more tests & more referrals to avoid angry outbursts, "Are you saying, 'it's all in my head?!'" and to rule out the progressively diminishing possibility that everyone might have overlooked a rare physical cause.
Some sufferers (& clinicians) do gradually come to see the problem in a broader perspective. This clearly requires that their narrow, exclusive focus on their most glaring pain / discomfort opens up, so they see themselves holistically. Below is imho Helen Hamilton's exceptionally wise perspective:
“When we are ... trying to find a belief that is reflecting as this body condition, illness, this dys-ease in the harmony of the body is a reflection of some idea that we’re holding onto, that we haven’t seen or looked at clearly. And of course you know that I’m just kind of saying that to put it into context because our body is trying to tell us, having to tell us, something that perhaps we haven’t looked at emotionally. Something that we haven’t looked at deep enough emotionally. So if we have a strong emotion – fear, or guilt, or unworthiness, even self-hatred – and we haven’t been able to feel that emotion for whatever reason. Maybe it didn’t feel safe to feel it, or we were told it was wrong, or whatever – we were in a situation when it was generated where we couldn’t feel it. Finding the beliefs is going to be looking at the emotions. What emotions do you feel on a regular basis that are reflecting as the body condition?
Because every karmic pattern shows up 3 ways simultaneously as:
1) thoughts – the unconscious beliefs, and as an
2) emotion – a more gross manifestation than a thought, and then
3) physically – somewhere in your body.
So have a look at the negative emotions you feel. And mind will say, ‘You feel this emotion because you have this thing going on in your body.’ But in truth, that is separation – the emotion caused by what’s happening to the body. So if it’s life-threatening, there’s probably some fear there, and mind will say, ‘I’m scared because this thing is happening to my body.’ But in the truth, I’m scared because I think I’m a separate being, I’m in danger. And that’s reflecting. This belief is not allowing the fullness of the life-force to flow through the body, and it looks like illness & disease. And the more constricted the life-force is, the more severe the illness or disease will appear to be.
So first of all, having a look at the negative emotions that you feel, and then working that back to the beliefs. My website has a list of emotions & hidden beliefs behind them, as a suggestion to go with, using the contemplation technique : “Emotions & their Stories”: https://www.helenhamilton.org/uploads/4/0/0/9/4009977/emotions_and_hidden_beliefs_6.pdf
And still even, if you look at the body itself – a second way to look at this – the body is a very literal metaphor for what’s going on inside of us. So autoimmune disease is where your body is kind of attacking itself (as far as I know – my understanding might be limited here), the immune system is attacking tissues & systems that it shouldn’t be, so something is out of sync, there’s an attack going on inside. And this is symbolic of something happening deeper inside, where you’re attacking yourself, where you are criticizing yourself, where you’re hating yourself even if you look deep enough. And I know as I say this, most of us will say, ‘Well I don’t hate myself. It’s not that deep. I don’t have any such feelings I’m aware of.’ And that’s why the body’s having to show us, because we haven’t really seen it.
It was astonishing to me that even after several deep seeings (awakening experiences), when I actually looked at what was going on because my life wasn’t still flowing – I finally dug out this kind of intense self-hatred, this self-loathing inside – that was still there after many seeings, experiencing peace & joy. But my life wasn’t flowing, so there must have been some belief stopping the energy moving down through the energy centers of the body and out into the greater manifestation.
So looking at the metaphor - self attacking self - why would you be doing that on some level? Can you admit that that must be going on at some level and be willing to see that? Now others, especially this far along the path of awakening, want to see that, because we value love & truth & honesty. It doesn’t feel right & we don’t really want to look inside to find some kind of self-hatred still going on. We might not even believe. ‘Well I’m obviously not the egoic structure, I’ve seen what I really am.’ But that seeing, sometimes doesn’t penetrate deeply enough yet to undo this mechanism.
It’s very rare that someone will have a seeing (awakening experience) powerful enough in one go to obliterate all these egoic structures that are still working. We only hear about the ones that do. But most of us still have to go in and look at these patterns underneath. So just listening to yourself when you talk, are you unknowingly criticizing yourself, diminishing yourself? How do you really feel about yourself? How you feel about your body too is a reflection of how you feel about you. How you feel about your abilities, & your mind, and all of that is a reflection of how you feel about you.
For me, I had very negative feelings about my body. I had to admit eventually, that’s how I actually feel about myself. My body is just innocently reflecting to me – it doesn’t have any other choice about what I’m thinking & feeling, on a deep unconscious level of course. And that’s why it’s having to show us, because we can’t see it any other way.
So I hope that gives you some direction to go with that. Have a go applying what I’ve said here. Do write back if you need to kind of fine-tune that. And my gut feeling is that it’s about some kind of self-hatred going on inside. And not blaming yourself for that, because that just adds to it. Each one of us has been functioning from mind’s perspective, and mind is taking a snapshot of our life looking at who he thinks we are, comparing it with where he thinks we want to be, need to be. When I get to this point in the future, I’ll be good enough, I’ll like myself, I’ll love myself. And it can never kind of arrive at that point there, because this one, where it thinks we’re starting from, is deeply flawed. We are not this separate being that mind thinks we are. So how can we ever go from here to there if the starting reference point is completely untrue? But mind thinks it’s true, so it keeps trying & failing to be this better person, more awakened, better father, better wife, better career, … all these things it’s trying to get to, whatever that is for you, where I’ll finally be happy & I’ll like myself. So recognizing it’s not your fault, not any of our fault. We have these deep feelings about ourselves and that is a natural byproduct of using the mind to try to navigate through our life to try to find happiness. That’s the only tool we had till now, so we can let go of the blame in that.”
Helen Hamilton. “Awareness recognising awareness.” from the excellent video below:
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Our Mind, Emotions & Body
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Two Main Ways of Seeing and Being
Have we not all - individually, or as part of a group - said or done things that just boggles our minds? As we privately reflect on our misbehavior, we may be shocked & disturbed, vowing to do better from now on.
Amazingly, if the very same misbehavior is criticized by another, or from outside our group, we - individually or collectively - tend to quickly 'circle the wagons' in defense mode, & even mount a 'no holds barred' counterattack! We rationalize, loudly justifying our (inappropriate) behavior, and express outrage towards the stupid, evil 'enemies' who dared criticize us. Examples of this happen daily on the news and in our private lives.
Maybe there's more to this bizarre dichotomy than hypocrisy & lax morality. Maybe our neurobiology has evolved this way.
In the first instance, we have the luxury of being able to self-reflect - to examine our past behavior in private, without fear of judgement & punishment. We can remember or imagine how our misbehavior negatively impacted ourself & others involved. Our felt safety of unconditional self-acceptance (vs harsh self-judgement) frees our essential spaciousness & wisdom, allowing us to see, connect with & inhabit a far larger context (than the 'normal' immediate egocentric fears & desires). Self-reflection also provides more subtle, more evolved, longer-term positive evolutionary payoffs: more acceptable behavior = better approval by one's group = greater probability of survival, mating & passing on of DNA.
Self-reflection is temporarily suppressed on rare occasions when we legitimately fear for our life - we may automatically lock into fight-flight-freeze. For many, self-reflection is chronically suppressed when many times each day, relatively-meaningless threats to our ego (personal or group) are misinterpreted as life-threatening. We confuse slights to the ego with threats to our life; personal ego with our group ego; hoarding & overeating with nurturing love. Stress seems to be the new norm. Anxious, fearful 'noisy egos' continue to fuel endless, childish but often lethal conflicts - 'my/our noisy ego is bigger & better than your/your group's noisy ego!' Our materialistic society only offers shopping & antidepressants for our profound dys-ease. But egocentricity & associated fervent accumulation of things & experiences in a meaningless universe is not the cure but the cause of our unhappiness. Remaining at this low level of consciousness, means doing more of the same, with the same results.
Real life far, far exceeds materialism's dogma of a 'random, meaningless, dead-matter' universe: http://www.johnlovas.com/2021/05/trajectory-of-consciousness.html
Investigate, see for yourself, how letting go of compulsively chasing shiny objects effects your life! Experience what many have - that only fearful egocentricity keeps us from our natural state of peace, silence, stillness, spaciousness, contentedness, equanimity & intimacy with 'the big picture' - everyone, nature, life as a whole.
Steve Taylor. “The Leap. The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening.” New World Library, 2017.
after something larger than ourselves…”
Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer PhD
 |
| WisdomAtWork.com |
Saturday, March 27, 2021
Healing - Slow and Fast
Different circumstances can profoundly change life for the better:
1) Awakening;
2) Near death experiences (NDEs);
3) Post-traumatic growth (PTG); and
4) Entheogens.
1) Those who practice meditation seriously, seamlessly incorporate a mindful way of being into the fabric of daily life. The more wisely one practices meditation, the more one progressively awakens to a qualitatively different, wiser, kinder, more joyous relationship to oneself, others, life itself, that is independent of society's usual markers of happiness such as wealth, power, fame, and even physical health. This transformation - like becoming a parent - cannot be fully appreciated intellectually, only directly experienced.
We tend not to notice the negative influences our culture has on us, and so most people simply follow the herd and avoid thinking outside the box - watch the short video (bottom of this page).
Rodney Smith. "Awakening. A Paradigm Shift of the Heart." Shambhala, 2014.
2) “A near death experience (NDE) is a profound event that (10-20% of) people experience when they are near death, on the threshold of death, or sometimes are afraid they’re about to die. They include such things as a sense of leaving the physical body; going through some type of tunnel to another realm of light where they encounter a loving beam of light; they often go through a life review; & at some point may see other entities such as deceased loved ones; & then at some point they choose to come back to their bodies or are told to come back. But the entire experience is infused by a sense of peace & well-being, which is in stark contrast to the near-death state where they’re terrified usually, & in a lot of pain.” Bruce Greyson
3) "Post-traumatic growth (PTG) typically refers to enduring positive psychological changes experienced
as a result of adversity, trauma, or highly challenging life
circumstances."
Eranda Jayawickreme et al. “Post‐traumatic Growth as Positive Personality Change: Challenges, Opportunities, and Recommendations.” Personality 89; 1: 145-165, 2021.
Elizabeth Lesser. “Broken Open. How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow.” Villard, 2005.
4) Entheogens are psychoactive substances that alter perception, mood, consciousness,
cognition, or behavior for spiritual development or other sacred
contexts en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogen. There are increasing reports in scientific journals of agents such as ketamine, which when administered by trained medical personnel in supportive, controlled settings, can elicit remarkable alleviation of severe, previously treatment-resistant depression; lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin can eliminate extreme fear of death (thanatophobia) among the dying, etc.
The powerful healing effect of these drugs is highly dependent on "set & setting": safe, supportive healing environment, medical expertise & healing intention.
Krystal JH et al. "Ketamine: A Paradigm Shift for Depression Research and Treatment." Neuron 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.02.005
Mackenzie Blomstrom, Andrew Burns, Daniel Larriviere & Jennifer Kim Penberthy (2020): "Addressing fear of death and dying: traditional and innovative interventions." Mortality, DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2020.1810649
Michael Pollan's book “How to Change Your Mind. What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” Penguin, 2018. - AND - his 2022 (4-part) Documentary “How to Change Your Mind" on Netflix both EXCELLENT & HIGHLY recommended!
Of these four, meditation-facilitated awakening is the most gradual, gentle, and most directly under the participant's own guidance. This is an alternative life path, chosen by those who seek a more deeply meaningful, heart-centered quality of life than the mainstream egocentric competitive / adversarial materialistic lifestyle. Serious, long-time meditation practice markedly reduces fear of aging, sickness & death, which in turn allows us to appreciate & enjoy life more deeply.
The other three tend to involve recent or impending severe trauma as a potential wake-up call.
All four can result in a radically positive, stable change in the participant's personality, self-concept, worldview, and overall quality of life. All this happens WHILE clearly facing & lovingly embracing ALL of "life's 10,000 joys AND 10,000 sorrows" - THIS is radical intimacy! THIS is "healing into wholeness." THIS is what is meant when a person is healed, despite not being cured. THIS is the BEST a mortal human can be.
To our ego (the role of which is our physical survival & passing on of our DNA), physical death is "unacceptable." Yet, the most basic law of nature is that everything changes constantly, we all become sick, grow old and die. So, if we are ready & able to prioritize our sanity & happiness, we prioritize maturing well beyond basic egocentricity.
"Suffering is caused by identification with egoic consciousness." Adyashanti
"the ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow." D.T. Suzuki
Especially if you fear death - and most of us do - I HIGHLY recommend this wonderful book - you will feel much better about death AND about life!:
Bruce Greyson. “After. A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond.” St. Martin’s, 2021.
"The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand. They are two sides of one reality. The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.” Thich Nhat Hanh
Bud Light 2010 Ad - Crashed Plane "We're gonna be okay!!!!"
Thursday, April 9, 2020
What is Dependability?
David Brooks
The vast majority of our precious time & energy is spent chasing after these accomplishments.
Exponential year-over-year increases in corporate profits fail to deliver the deep happiness we hope for. Despite being (financially) richer than ever, we in 'developed' countries experience progressively rising rates of anxiety, depression, burnout, bullying, partisanship, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, hoarding, every imaginable addiction, mass shootings, suicides, destruction of the air / soil / water, and mass extinction of plant & animal species.
Our exclusive focus on personal material gain appears to be a serious mistake.
Can we take a close look at 'character'?
“People with character ... tend to have a certain level of self-respect. Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something.
It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones. It can only be earned by a person who has endured some internal temptation, who has confronted their own weaknesses and who knows, ‘Well, if worse comes to worst, I can endure that. I can overcome that.’
My general belief is that we’ve accidentally left this moral tradition behind. Over the last several decades, we’ve lost the language, this way of organizing our life. We’re not bad. But we are morally inarticulate. We’re not more selfish or venal than people in other times, but we’ve lost the understanding of how character is built. … Without it, there is a certain superficiality to modern culture, especially in the moral sphere.”
David Brooks "The Road to Character." Random House, 2015.
And people stayed home
and read books and listened
and rested and exercised
and made art and played
and learned new ways of being
and stopped
and listened deeper
someone meditated
someone prayed
someone danced
someone met their shadow
and people began to think differently
and people healed
and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,
dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
even the earth began to heal
and when the danger ended
and people found each other
grieved for the dead people
and they made new choices
and dreamed of new visions
and created new ways of life
and healed the earth completely
just as they were healed themselves.
 |
| www.etsy.com |
Monday, January 29, 2018
"But Words (Word-based Thoughts) Get in the Way"
and all the while Great Winds
are carrying me across the sky." Ojibwe saying
 |
| www.facebook.com/globalsisterhoodmovement |
Monday, October 23, 2017
On the Path towards Wisdom
Tejaniya encourages us to “keep practicing continuously ... Eventually wisdom will outweigh the defilements***, and you will begin to gather momentum. The practice will then become interesting; new avenues will open to you. Then you will begin to see and be part of a simpler and less complicated reality …”
*** Defilements: “ ‘unwholesome qualities that can defile or taint the mind’ – negative qualities of mind that have the potential to make us suffer and cause trouble in our lives. Defilements in meditation practice (refer to) greed, hatred or aversion, and delusion. There are many subcategories of these three defilements …”
We're "hard-wired" for our minds to slip into defilements: we have a fully functional brain stem that reacts automatically to even the mildest dislikes; the mildest preferences; and the many, many in-between "neutrals"; with immediate visceral feelings of, respectively: hatred, aversion, anger; or greed, clinging, attachment; or boredom, delusion or confusion. In cave-dwelling times, this crude survival-mating focused level of consciousness helped us survive. But now, in our closely-interconnected, interdependent, collaborative world, this primitive level of consciousness causes a great deal of harm, and little if any benefit. See: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/why-buddhism-is-true/
"Four central features of wisdom (are recognized) in both European & Asian philosophy: self-knowledge, detachment, integration, and self-transcendence. …
(These) four features can be conceptualized as developmental stages:
Self-knowledge is awareness of what constitutes one’s sense of self in the context of roles, relationships, and beliefs.
Detachment refers to awareness of the transience of external aspects of one’s sense of self.
Integration means overcoming the separation among different ‘inner selves,’ that is, accepting and integrating all facets of one’s self.
Finally, self-transcendence refers to independence of the self of external definitions and dissolution of mental boundaries between self and others. … ‘self-transcendence is equivalent to wisdom and implies the dissolution of (self-based) obstacles to empathy, understanding, and integrity’.”
Staudinger UM, Gluck J. "Psychological wisdom research: commonalities and differences in a growing field." Annu Rev Psychol 2011; 62: 215-41.
 |
Courtesy of Buddha Doodles www.buddhadoodles.com
|
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Meditation Practice
What IS this, right here, right now?
THEN
Fearfully re-playing the endless "story of me" in the quicksand of obsessing about "I, me & mine"?
THEN
Gratefully mindful that attention is noticed being off course, attention effortlessly, gently, patiently, seamlessly shifts back to reality:
"Just this" right here, right now.
THEN ...
 |
| by Georgia Peschel www.georgiatoons.com |
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Can We Get Beyond Partisanship?
But if we're brave and invest the time to look a bit more deeply at ourself & our life, we may see things differently enough to perhaps work towards improving the quality of life for all. More on bravery: http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/04/25/Normal-Resistance-to-Maturation
"Studies of self-affirmation typically ask the experimental group to write about their most important value and the control group to write about a low-ranked value. The consistent superiority of experimental over control groups in beneficial outcomes suggests that thinking about one’s own highly ranked values is important. This finding is consistent with theories of optimal human functioning that emphasize the role of autonomy. Self-determination theory identifies autonomy as one of three basic needs (along with competence and relatedness) that are essential for psychological health and life satisfaction. Ryff’s comprehensive theory of psychological well-being also includes autonomy as a critical element of healthy functioning. Studies of the self-concordance model show that pursuit of goals that reflect authentic personal interests and values is associated with increased goal attainment and higher overall well-being.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) experts note that when clients are encouraged to think autonomously about their deepest aspirations, they almost invariably choose prosocial values, such as meaningful work, loving relationships, and contributions to a community. When this does not happen, e.g., a client says that he values making a lot of money, further discussion about why money is important is likely to reveal prosocial underlying values, such as providing security or opportunities for one’s family. If values appear to conflict (e.g., providing financial security for the family versus spending time with them), discussion focuses on finding patterns of committed action that serve both values and provide greater overall satisfaction with life.
The prevailing tendency to identify prosocial values is believed to reflect universal human requirements for biological survival, social interaction, and the welfare of groups. That is, individuals and societies are more likely to thrive if people take care of them- selves, help each other, and work for the benefit of the group. Of course, these universal needs do not invariably prevent harmful behaviors. However, current psychological theories, research, and treatment methods consistently suggest that encouraging people to identify their own most deeply held values may promote adaptive and prosocial behaviors more effectively than adopting a list of values prescribed or suggested by others.
A central concern of positive psychology is the understanding and cultivation of human virtues that define good character or the domain of moral excellence."
 |
| This morning, at the Canada Games Center, Halifax, NS |
Friday, June 24, 2016
Sand Castles
Jack Kornfield, Gil Fronsdal eds. “Teachings of the Buddha.” Shambhala, Boston, 2007.
 | |
| from the web |
Friday, May 1, 2015
Ego is the last to go ...
We're usually far more eager to claim ownership of a concept or the messenger, than to really understand and embody the message.
There's an old story of several blind men coming across an elephant. Based on which part of the animal each had their hands on, each of their descriptions was completely different. The fellow holding the elephant's ear vs the one holding the foot, the belly etc. Yet they were all correct - partially.
But most of us would rather grab hold of & claim as ours anything, even a partial truth, than to open up to & become porous to all of reality. Just more useless attempts at creating & maintaining a solid sense of self - ego.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
The Basic Problem Each of Us MUST Address
"Our current crisis originates between our (own) ears: in our outdated paradigms of economic thought. It originates in the disconnect between our dominant models of economic thought (which gravitate around ego-system awareness, in which stakeholders maximize benefit only for themselves) and the collaboration imperatives of our global eco-system economy (in which stakeholders seek to improve the well-being of all, including themselves). We have an enormous disconnect between egosystem thinking and the eco-system reality." Otto Scharmer www.wisdomatwork.com
 |
| karamanda13 www.dpreview.com |
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Authenticity, Certainty, Self-centeredness
Rodney Smith. "Awakening. A Paradigm Shift of the Heart." Shambhala, Boston, 2014.
"The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. While the sage keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners." Hafiz
http://wisdomandcompassion.us/
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
What Works, What's Practical Right Now?
From the third-person observer's perspective, or our own 20-20 hindsight, the act is incomprehensible. Yet obviously, to the perpetrator, at the time, it was the best or even the only conceivable option!
This is why it's so easy to be harshly judgmental towards others as well as ourselves. With a clear, balanced perspective, a situation will appear radically different than through the ego's frosted lenses. And when our ego is threatened, we feel precisely as if our very life is in mortal danger - rational perspective can instantly vanish - welcome to the land of "temporary insanity" - "crimes of passion" - "that wasn't me" - "I don't know what got into me" - "the devil made me do it".
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin
So here's a very practical question: when we're in deep trouble, whose advice should we listen to, an objective third party's - OR - someone who supports our current perspective?
 |
| Dalhousie University campus - February 13, 2014 |