Insulted? Reply with, "Namaste"

    I've recently witnessed first-hand Covid's corrosive effects on peoples' mental health. It's frighteningly easy, even for people we had previously considered to be reasonable, intelligent, educated friends, to suddenly vent an alarming amount & degree of nastiness that we never saw coming. Though this could be partially due to alcohol- & age-related executive-function decline, isolation under more-or-less house-arrest conditions for several years, clearly has driven some of us "shack-wacky!"
    Our ego's natural reaction to such violent behavior is to counter-attack, which would just start one more useless, unwinnable, ever-escalating 'pissing contest.' At some point individuals, and finally all human beings MUST realize the utter insanity of ego vs ego battles - no matter how skilled we are at fabricating gradiose rationale for our unacceptable behavior.
    "Is there any rule that one should follow all of one's life? Yes! The rule of the gentle goodness: That which we do not wish to be done to us, we do not do to others." T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien (Taoism) Wisdom traditions throughout the ages have advised similar basic rules of conduct.

    “Love is the recognition of shared being.” Rupert Spira

     “Maybe, when talking about love, we could say, ‘Let our blind spots fall in love. Let the stranger in me fall in love with the stranger in you. Let the I that I’m becoming fall in love with the you I haven’t yet discovered and can’t even imagine.’ That would be a more realistic way of relating to one another. And, ironically, also more loving.” Vanessa Zuisei Goddard

    "… the essentials are inner virtues or capacities that are activated – switched on and embodied. These inner powers open consciousness and thus enable us to contact and understand the world. The world opens & is revealed to us to the extent that we can open & receive it. This is a kind of physics of the unfolding mind."
    Tobin Hart “The Four Virtues. Presence, Heart, Wisdom, Creation.” Atria, 2014.

    ALL of us operate at (at least) 2 very different levels of consciousness or 'kinds of psychological history':
    "One is the history of pain, discouragement, missed opportunities, unfulfilled hopes, & unrealized possibilities in relationships. Such a history of neurosis has a compelling quality that can freeze the therapeutic (& all other) relationships into an endless dissection, searching for the origin of inhibited development. The implicit question becomes, ‘Where did things go wrong?’ Such a story is frequently filled with fear, guilt, blame, & aggression; it resembles the history of nations at war, where one war inexorably triggers another in the ageless recycling of insult & territorial revenge. The story line threads together a variety of memories with an explanation of why one event follows another and how one got to be the way one is.
    On the other hand, embedded within the history of neurosis is another kind of history – the history of SANITY. The history of sanity is episodic and often appears fleeting & subtle. This history of wakefulness, dignity, & patience is often lost by people in despair. To perceive the history of sanity, we need curiosity and effort to look beyond immediate appearances."
    Edward Podvoll MD, in John Welwood ed. “Awakening the Heart. East / West Approaches to Psychotherapy and the Healing Relationship.” Shambhala, 1983.
    When we are able to relate directly to 'the other's' wakefulness (Divine or True nature), and can become curious about their history of sanity, a different kind of relationship can develop: one of mutual appreciation & trust, instead of one based on bad behavior or neuroses.

    So if some of our (former?) friends startled us by dumping a bucket of fiery venom on our head, as hard as it is, we should, at least for our own peace of mind, realize that they've probably been traumatized by Covid (& perhaps several other factors) much more than we ourselves have, forgive them, say Namaste - and really mean it. 

    SEE my previous blogs about Namaste : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=namaste 

 

 

Reconnecting with Our Unconscious Mind

     “Most of us have an intuitive feeling about what is meant when we hear the term unconscious. We correlate this idea with myriads of experiences, small and large, that are interwoven with the fabric of our daily lives. We all have had the experience of doing something unconsciously when our minds were ‘someplace else,’ then being surprised at what we had done. We remember getting worked up during a conversation and blurting out some strong opinion we didn’t know consciously that we held.
     Sometimes we are startled: ‘Where did that come from? I didn’t know I felt so strongly about that.’ As we become more sensitive to the surges of energy from the unconscious we learn instead to ask, ‘What part of me believes that? Why does this subject set off such an intense reaction in that unseen part of myself?’
     We can learn to look at the issue more closely. What ‘comes over me’ is a sudden invasion of energy from the unconscious. If I think I wasn’t being ‘myself,’ it is because I don’t realize that ‘myself’ also includes my unconscious. These hidden parts of ourselves have strong feelings and want to express them. Yet, unless we learn to do inner work, these parts of ourselves are hidden from our conscious view.
     Sometimes these hidden personalities are embarrassing or violent, and we are humiliated when they show themselves. At other times we wake up to strengths and fine qualities without ourselves that we never knew were there. We draw on hidden resources and do things we normally could not have done, say something more clear and intelligent that we’ve ever been able to say before, express wisdom we did not know we had, show a generosity or understanding of which we never knew we were capable. In each case there is a startled reaction: ‘I am a different person than I thought I was. I have qualities – both positive and negative – that I didn’t know were a part of my definition.’ These qualities live in the unconscious, where they are ‘out of sight, out of mind.’
     We are all much more than the ‘I’ of whom we are aware. Our conscious minds can focus on only a limited sector of our total being at any given time. Despite our efforts at self-knowledge, only a small portion of the huge energy system of the unconscious can be incorporated into the conscious mind or function at the conscious level. Therefore we have to learn how to go to the unconscious and become receptive to its messages: It is the only way to find the unknown parts of ourselves.
     To get a true sense of who we are, become more complete and integrated human beings, we must go to the unconscious and set up communication with it. Much of ourselves and many determinants of our character are contained in the unconscious. It is only by approaching it that we have a chance to become conscious, complete, whole human beings. Jung has shown that by approaching the unconscious and learning its symbolic language, we live richer and fuller lives. We begin to live in partnership with the unconscious rather than at its mercy or in constant warfare with it.
     Most people, however, do not approach the unconscious voluntarily. They only become aware of the unconscious when they get into trouble with it. We modern people are so out of touch with the inner world that we encounter it mostly through psychological distress. For example, a woman who thinks she has everything under control may find herself horribly depressed, able neither to shake it off nor to understand what is happening to her. Or a man may find that he has terrible conflicts between the life he lives outwardly and the unconscious ideals he holds deep inside himself where he never looks. He feels torn or anxiety-ridden, but can’t say why.
     When we experience inexplicable conflicts that we can’t resolve; when we become aware of urges in ourselves that seem irrational, primitive, or destructive; when a neurosis afflicts us because our conscious attitudes are at odds with our instinctual selves – then we begin to realize that the unconscious is playing a role in our lives and we need to face it.
     Jung discovered that the unconscious is not merely an appendage of the conscious mind, a place where forgotten memories or unpleasant feelings are repressed. He posited a model of the unconscious so momentous that the Western world has still not fully caught up with its implications. He showed that the unconscious is the creative source of all that evolves into the conscious mind and into the total personality of each individual. It is out of the raw material of the unconscious that our conscious minds develop, mature, and expand to include all the qualities that we carry potentially within us. It is from this treasure trove that we are enriched with strengths and qualities we never knew we possessed.
     Jung showed that the conscious and the unconscious minds both have critical roles to play in the equilibrium of the total self. When they are out of correct balance with one another, neurosis or other disturbances result.”

     Robert A. Johnson. “Inner Work. Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.” HarperOne, 1986. - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

 

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.

Acceptance and Discretionary Suffering

     The core of meditation practice IMHO is carefully investigating the difference between unavoidable vs discretionary suffering: investigating how we can minimize our tendency to unwittingly cause LOTS of unnecessary problems for ourself & those around us.
     A reasonable starting point is Reinhold Niebuhr's "serenity prayer":
          Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
          courage to change the things I can;
          and wisdom to know the difference. 

     Let's look at the rather large & often frustrating "things I cannot change" category. Many people suffering with chronic pain, as well as a variety of mental health issues including addictions, can potentially benefit greatly from the following teaching:

     “Accepting and releasing into just what is, is the homeopathy of Zen. Being willing to settle into just this experience – this is the teaching of saying yes to our life, not giving in to thoughts of another life. We learn that our resistance strengthens whatever we want to avoid.
     Trying on the attitude of yes is the not-knowing mind, whereas the conditioned mind creates conditions. This is too much (or not enough). No way am I going to stay in this situation. The not-knowing mind is willing to know and feel whatever is happening.
     Recently I was thinking about a difficult situation in my life, trying to find a way to make it acceptable. For days I would think about it, invite my mind to reimagine it in a less painful way. After weeks of trying, I realized, I’m helpless. I can’t solve this by myself: I just have to be it. That realization was an enormous relief. Like Ram Dass saying, I’m going to be on this train forever, I settled into my own circumstances: There isn’t anything I can do about this situation. There is no way to escape it. I must live with it and let it become digested and transformed internally on its own. Thinking I had to solve the problem became the problem.”
        Katherine Thanas. “The Truth of This Life. Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is.” Shambhala, 2018.

Common Factors - for Meditation Teachers?

     "Common factors" play a very important role in all forms of psychotherapy & counseling. I suggest that they're equally important in teaching meditation.
     Perhaps the most detailed analysis of common factors is found in: Nancy McWilliams. "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. A Practitioners Guide." The Guilford Press, NY, 2004. Below is a long but valuable series of quotes from McWilliams' excellent text, which should startle meditation teachers, especially those without formal training in mental-health care. I found that almost every point (with perhaps one notable exception), is equally applicable to teaching meditation:

"People who seek psychotherapy are generally looking both for specific expertise and for the kind of relationship that will allow them to unburden themselves and grow in a more general way.

     'We must not forget that the analytic relationship is based on a love of truth - that is, on a recognition of reality - and that it precludes any kind of sham or deceit.' Sigmund Freud

... The overarching theme among psychodynamic approaches to helping people is that the more honest we are with ourselves, the better our chances for living a satisfying and useful life. Moreover, a psychoanalytic sensibility appreciates the fact that honesty about our own motives does not come easily to us. The diverse therapeutic approaches within the psychotherapeutic pantheon share the aim of cultivating an increased capacity to acknowledge what is not conscious - that is, to admit what is difficult or painful to see in ourselves.

Psychoanalytic clinical and theoretical writing has always specialized in exposing motives that are not obvious to us, on the premise that becoming aware of disavowed aspects of our psychologies will relieve us of the time and effort required to keep them unconscious. Thus, more of our attention and energy can be liberated for the complex task of living realistically, productively, and joyfully. Motives that tend to be relegated to unconsciousness vary from individual to individual, from culture to culture, and from one time period to another. It is probably no accident that in contemporary Western cultures, where individual mobility is assumed, where extended and even nuclear families are geographically disparate, and where the assumed solution to most relationship problems is separation - in other words, where longings to cling are unwelcome and signs of dependency inspire scorn - psychoanalytic researchers and theorists are emphasizing attachment, relationship, mutuality, and intersubjectivity.

If this account sounds somewhat moralistic, that is also not accidental. Several decades ago, the sociologist Philip Rieff made a scholarly and persuasive argument that Freud was essentially a moralist - not in the popular sense of the person who gets a rush from attacking others for engaging in specific sins, but in the more philosophical sense of being ultimately concerned with what is true:
     '... Psychoanalysis ... demands a special capacity for candor which not only distinguishes it as a healing movement but also connects it with the drive toward disenchantment characteristic of modern literature and of life among the intellectuals.'

... Psychoanalysis as a field has ... embraced an ethic of honesty that has precedence over other aims and regards therapeutic goals, including symptom relief, as by-products of the achievement of honest discourse. ... For many decades, the ethic of honesty was personified in the image of a therapist who had presumably attained unflinching self-awareness in a personal analysis and who bore the responsibility for fostering the same achievement in the patient. In current analytic writing, there is more acknowledgement that participation in a therapeutic partnership requires both analyst and patient to become progressively more honest with themselves in the context of that relationship.

... psychoanalysis is located at the intersection of two vertices: the medical and the religious. By 'medical' (Bion) referred to the more objective, rational, technocratic, authoritative stance of the person trying to offer practical help to those suffering from mental and emotional disorders. The medical vertex is characterized by validated techniques, applied by an expert, intended to have specific, replicable effects. Recent efforts ... to develop manualized treatments for borderline personality organization exemplify this face of psychodynamic practice. Current writing on the neurology and brain chemistry of subjectivity and the changes that occur in analytic therapy also belong to the medical axis. In noting the equally important 'religious' vertex, Bion was calling attention to a dimension that is often depicted as existential, experiential, humanistic, romantic, collaborative, or discovery-oriented ways of seeking answers to (unanswerable) human questions."

      Nancy McWilliams. "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. A Practitioners Guide." The Guilford Press, NY, 2004.

'Ordinary Unhappiness' - OR - Mystical Experiences ??

     “A householder who was nevertheless engaged in an advanced meditation practice known as tantra, Manibhadra attained enlightenment while carrying water from the village well back to her home. Dropping her pitcher one day and seeing the water gush out of the broken gourd, she was suddenly liberated. The broken pitcher served as a powerful model of what her meditation was trying to show her. Like the water breaking forth, her consciousness flowed out and merged with all of reality. This jarring loose, or breaking free – this going to pieces without falling apart – is what Buddhism acknowledges as one of the self’s secret needs – to be released from a belief in its own absolute reality.”
 
       Epstein M. "Psychotherapy without the Self. A Buddhist Perspective." Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 2007.
 
     The latest scientific research on the neurobiology of psilocybin-induced mystical experience raises the possibility that human beings may actually suffer if DEPRIVED of mystical experiences: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2015/03/650-effective-management-for.html

Bess

Don't be Afraid of the Dark

     We all experience ups & downs numerous times each day. During meditation, we see & feel our actual life with minimal distraction, and therefore much greater clarity. That’s why we can experience emotions so powerfully during meditation and also why we're able to learn, through our meditation practice, to live with progressively increasing skill & wisdom. 
     However, many of us have experienced significant trauma in our lives, the echos of which can repeatedly re-emerge in various disruptive ways into our present life. Sometimes these energies are "too sticky" for us to process physically, on our own, during meditation. In such cases, professional counselling offers established psychological techniques for effective processing.
     A variety of challenges from our past, including, but not limited to what we consider significant trauma, can resurface as challenging mental content in meditation. There are many things that we may not consider to be "significant trauma" that can, nevertheless, have significant effects in meditation. Verbal abuse, witnessing domestic violence, various forms of neglect, having alcoholic parent(s), divorce, etc can all leave people with unresolved issues. For example, neuroimaging studies suggest that exposure to verbal abuse - considered relatively "minor" trauma - can have even more significant effects than more easily recognized forms of trauma, like sexual abuse.
     So choosing to seek counselling may be very wise. Counselling can markedly benefit both our overall quality of life, as well as our effectiveness in performing our wide variety of tasks - including meditation!
     Counselling is completely confidential. At least a third of us need counselling at some point. Far from jeopardizing our career, obtaining necessary help is as much a professional obligation as being sober at work.
     Should concerns or difficulties arise during meditation, make sure you discuss it during group meditation or on a one-to-one basis with the meditation teacher, trusted family or friends, - and or - a mental-health professional (who ideally also has meditation experience).
       *** I thank the wonderful mental-health care professionals in my immediate family who kindly help refine some of these blogs with their wise suggestions.***

     "This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don't be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, for these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings. To suffer with is the literal meaning of compassion."
                        Joanna Macy                   http://joannamacy.net/thegreatturning/personal-guidelines-t.html