Spirituality - Healthy or Unhealthy?

     “The pursuit of spiritual goals can be a useful excuse to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved trauma, and limited professional development. But prioritizing transcendence over relationships becomes a way to be self-centered while appearing to be concerned for the benefit of other people. 
     So psychologists … apply a simple test to spiritual statements: Do the beliefs and practices take the person closer to a functional and helpful existence, or away from one?”
        Scott Carney. "A Death on Diamond Mountain. A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment." Gotham Books, 2015.
       The message: don't join cults, especially if you have undiagnosed & untreated psychiatric conditions - perfectly reasonable!
       But then the author warns against serious spiritual pursuits in general, travel to foreign countries with different cultures, and the power of evil spells, - all of these endangering sanity & life - ????

     Futile attempts to escape psychosocial dysfunction through religion / spirituality is called spiritual bypassing. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/02/processing-karma-now-spiritual-bypassing.html 
     When unfortunate, marginalized individuals get trapped in spiritual bypassing, usually after intensive brainwashing by sociopathic handlers, instead of finding heaven, they "unleash hell on earth", primarily for their own families. Such psychosocial illness has nothing to do with legitimate humanistic / religious / spiritual aspirations. 
     Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an increasingly common humanistic pathway towards greater depth of meaning: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!Meditations-Potential/c17jj/565b14520cf221f2a7a5e228

     Examples of legitimate Buddhist aspirations are expressed by Dogen:
     "Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the self."
     and the Bodhisattva vow: http://www.johnlovas.com/2015/06/bohdisattva-vow.html 

Buddha statue

Capacity to Deal Realistically with Constant, at times Severe, Changes

      Developing a healthy ego or self-concept is only step one. Next we must gradually learn not to take this, or any other concept too seriously. We, concepts, the world - everything is in a constant state of flux. We're always undergoing quantitative changes - assimilating new stuff into our current self-concept & worldview. Periodically we all undergo shipwrecks, where our whole world, including ALL our concepts fall apart. Now we're forced to see reality more clearly, and accommodate by creating a new, qualitatively different, more accurate self-concept & worldview.
     Rigidity, though common, is dysfunctional & tragically inappropriate for shipwrecks; psychological flexibility, though uncommon & depends on intelligent, mature conscious choices, is adaptive & absolutely essential, particularly in times of shipwreck.

     "differences in identity styles are based on a differential balance in the use of the processes of assimilation & accommodation. Assimilation ... the process of incorporating or assimilating new information into one’s existing worldview whereas accommodation involves changing one’s worldview to accept the new information. 
     ... a balanced use of assimilation and accommodation characterizes only the informational style whereas the normative style is characterized by an overreliance on assimilation processes and the diffuse-avoidant style is characterized by an overuse of accommodation processes.
     ... theoretically the informational style, with its balanced social-cognitive processing, should allow for the most mature defense use. In contrast, the unbalanced processing associated with the normative and diffuse-avoidant styles should be associated with less mature forms of defenses; namely, those that are associated with distortion (neurotic) & denial (immature) of reality, respectively."

       Seaton CL, Beaumont SL. Identity processing styles and defense styles during emerging adulthood: Implications for life distress. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 2011; 11(1): 1-24.

     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/07/361-beyond-stress-management-resilience.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/10/from-egocentric-to-hypoegoic-to-anatta.html

stickpointed   www.dpreview.com

Energy Awareness & Micromanagement

So slowly we learn
to invest our finite time & energy
not just generally - but moment-by-moment
in directions that serve
to decrease suffering
and increase meaning & joy

These healthy direction choices
are always fresh
without momentum
appropriate in this specific moment
and differ from the tired momentum of our lives

The energy rescued
from habitual sufferings
is now available
for opening to real life
as it arises fresh in each unique moment

Our fictitious stories of 'me, myself & I'
we drag around - for a while
but nothing real is solid
we are free, changing, growing
so much more than we're now capable of knowing
everything is flowing expanding energy
manage & guide it wisely

microsurgeon   www.dpreview.com

Wisdom, Awareness & Self Transcendence

     "If wisdom is defined as a combination of 
          • cognitive (an understanding of life & the desire to know the truth), 
          • reflective (the ability & willingness to look at phenomena & events from different perspectives), and 
          • affective (sympathetic & compassionate love for others) personality qualities, 
then truly wise people, such as Jesus Christ or the Buddha, can also be described as the most psychologically developed persons. They are mature; psychologically healthy; autonomous; fully liberated from all outside & inside forces; and are, therefore, the masters of their own fate.

     Because people who grow in wisdom gradually come to accept reality as it is (and not as they would like it to be), including the negative side of their personalities, they are able to learn from their experiences, which allows them to overcome their negative tendencies and to gain inner peace through the de­velopment of equanimity. Hence, they tend to be less affected by external events and internal drives than other people, which results in greater autonomy and control.

     Yet wise individuals are also selfless; that is, they have transcended the egotistical self and feel more part of the ocean instead of an individual wave. How can we explain the paradox that the highest level of self-development requires a quieting of the ego and the transcendence of the self?"

        Ardelt M. "Self-development through selflessness: The paradoxical process of growing wiser." in Wayment HA, Bauer JJ eds. "Decade of behavior." American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2008.

     More from Ardelt's chapter: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/07/375-self-development-self-knowledge.html

Amateur Sony Shooter   www.dpreview.com