Fruits of Meditation

      Busyness, restlessness, distraction, intolerance to discomfort, and impatience energizes searching, but results in a lot of shallow, dry wells, exacerbating a chronic sense of 'lack.' 
     Those who persevere, 'delving deep,' achieve all that meditation has to offer. Lifelong committed meditation practice yields profound benefits, far beyond stress reduction.

      “Often when we meditate, we are not consciously aware of much happening. It just seems like we are sitting there. Much of the time, our mind may be wandering, and when our mind is not wandering, it goes to sleep. After a while, we become aware that we are physically uncomfortable, and then we come back to our object of meditation for a couple of seconds. Sometimes meditation practice goes on and on like this, and it doesn’t seem as if anything of real value is taking place. When we tell our friends what we experienced at a meditation retreat – mostly pain, sleepiness, and confusion – they may well say, ‘You paid good money for that?’
     But all the while, clarity and equanimity are slowly but surely trickling down into the subconscious. They rewire us at the most fundamental levels without us necessarily knowing it at the time. How do we know that it’s happening? We notice that things are changing in daily life. Our behavior and perception seem to be improving spontaneously. … In meditation, a lot of the learning that takes place is of this type. Meditation can clean out stored materials without necessarily requiring that you recall specific memories, traumas, and such.
     We might refer to this paradigm as the ‘trickle down’ model for reaching the subconscious. This contrasts with the ‘dredge up’ model used in much of psychotherapy. In the dredge up model, we reach down and explore a specific complex. This leads to a specific personal insight that then improves our quality of life. Dredge up and trickle down could be looked upon as mutually complementary processes. For some meditators, trickle down purification may be sufficient. But when that’s not the case, they can utilize the services of dredge up experts, that is, competent mental health professionals. It’s important to appreciate the awesome power of meditation practice, but it’s also important to realize its limitations. Sometimes other elements are required – therapy, 12-step programs, openness to social feedback, having a list of explicitly stated ethical guidelines, and so forth.” 
        Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016.

Processing Suffering

     We all sense varying degrees of chronic dys-ease: anxiety, lack, hunger, inadequacy, guilt. We never seem to be able to clearly identify the specific cause. Therefore not surprisingly, despite our constant striving towards comfort, lasting relief remains elusive. A "low-grade neurosis called normality" or "ordinary unhappiness" is obviously a central, universal human itch. Many of us mistakenly assume that everyone else is fairly consistently happy, and if we were only "normal" we too would be living a life-long river boat cruise commercial.
     Below is a surprisingly helpful (if a tad scholarly) insight derived from Western psychology, Western philosophy, and thousands of years of Buddhist meditation experience. 
     In summary, what can actually help us with this universal dys-ease is seeing our situation as clearly as possible, fully accepting and staying with unavoidable discomfort until it resolves. In fully meeting ('physically processing' or 'being intimate with') life's constant, mostly uncontrollable, often uncomfortable & at times frightening aspects, we learn to release our many illusions (of control, of certainty, of solidity, of identity, of everything) and instead, learn to peacefully abide in not-knowing, in groundlessness. 
     "Finally, the mind comes to rest in its natural state: the ground from which both conscious and ordinary subconscious events arise." B. Alan Wallace

     “… the Buddhist path is nothing other than a way to resolve our sense of lack. Since there was no primeval offense and no expulsion from the Garden, there is nothing that needs to be gained. Our lack turns out to be the sense that there is a lack, which does not mean we can simply deny or try to ignore that sense. For Buddhism our problem turns out to be paradoxical. The actual problem is our deeply repressed fear that our groundlessness / nothing-ness is a problem. When I stop trying to fill up that hole at my core by vindicating or realizing myself in some symbolic way, something can happen to it, and to me.  
     This is easy to misunderstand, for the letting go that is necessary is not directly accessible to consciousness. The ego cannot absolve its own lack because the ego is the other side of that lack. In terms of life and death, the ego is that which believes itself to be alive and fears death; hence the ego, although only a mental construction, will face its imminent disappearance with horror. Uncovering that repression, recovering the denial of death for consciousness, requires the courage to suffer. Our struggle against death is usually redirected into symbolic games of competition, as the urge to defeat our opponent or at least be a little better than our neighbor. To free us from the paralysis of death-in-life, the energy that is distorted into such symptomatic activities must be translated back into its more original form, the terror of death, and that terror endured (there’s nothing one can do with it except be conscious of it and bear it.). … the Buddhist path is not resoluteness but simple awareness, which Buddhist meditation cultivates. One does not do anything with that anguish except develop the ability to dwell in it or rather as it; then the anguish, having nowhere else to direct itself, consumes the sense of self. Since the sense of lack is the other pole of the sense of self – tails to its head, but one coin – primordial lack-as-anguish devours not only the ego-self but itself.  

     The point is neither to flee from the pure-guilt-as-anguish by objectifying it in some fashion, nor to identify with it by abasing oneself, but to let it burn itself out, like a fire that exhausts its fuel, which in this case is the sense of self. If we cultivate the ability to dwell as it, then ontological guilt, finding nothing else to be guilty for, consumes the sense of self and thereby itself as well. Since this devours one’s compensatory self-importance, one becomes a completely ordinary person, who feels no different from anyone else and no need to be different from anyone else. … this is the end of experiencing our existence as a burden to be shouldered, inasmuch as the heavy weight of life originates in the need to secure or vindicate ourselves. According to Buddhism, the ego-as-lack dissolves in the experience of one’s true nature as a groundlessness that has nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and is therefore free.”

       David R. Loy. “Lack & Transcendence. The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism.” Wisdom Publications, 2018.

To Know What is True ...

     “To understand our true nature, consciousness must take a journey that reveals all that we are not. For most of us who long to know God, or to know what is true, this is a long inner journey in which our shadowy sides, stuck points of view, traumas, and emotional contractions appear to be faced and released. Consciousness enters the vastness of emptiness in which there is no-self, that is, no personal self – just one cosmic self, one consciousness penetrating all existence. Some of us feel this to be God, some feel it to be our true nature, and we resolve to deepen our awakening. … 
     Our thinking mind is not big enough to grasp the whole of our journey to enlightenment. It has created models, like yoga science, Buddhist insights, and esoteric practices, but these do not convey the essence. We might understand the chemistry of water, but that is not the same knowing of water as drinking it when we are thirsty.
     This limitation of thought calls us to rest instead in this unconditional openness, allowing it to permeate the cells of our body. When a heart embraces this emptiness, it becomes possible to bring unconditional compassion and love into the world.” 
       Bonnie L. Greenwell. “When Spirit Leaps. Navigating the Process of Spiritual Awakening.” Non-Duality Press, 2018. 

“Deep in the soul, below pain,
below all the distraction of life,
is a silence vast and grand –
an infinite ocean of calm,
which nothing can disturb;
nature’s own exceeding peace,
which ‘surpasses understanding’.
That which we seek with passionate longing,
here and there,
upward and outward;
we find at last within ourselves.”         Richard Maurice Bucke MD (1837-1902)

Ghita Levin - Heron Platter stoneware - fogforestgallery.ca

Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation

     Amoda Maa's exceptionally clear, valuable (imho) 20-minute presentation:

     “One of the greatest obstacles to the embodiment of awakening – the full filtering into our everyday lives of the realization of awakening, of awakeness – one of the greatest obstacles to that is this idea that suffering comes to a complete end. It’s an idea that is very prevalent in traditional spiritual teachings that tend to focus on the transcendent, clear light of awareness, and also has filtered into many modern-day non-dual teachings, where suffering is seen to be an illusion. …
     Consider the possibility that the darkest places in our inner experience are doorways to liberation. Without the honest examination of that, in one’s own experience, awakeness cannot be fully integrated into the human experience. And this is perhaps true. And I say from a place of having spoken to many people, in many different cultures, in many different settings, from many different backgrounds, and from many levels of experience if you like, on the spiritual path. It comes up over and over again, in lots of different guises. Either prior to awakening, or post-awakening. Either way, it’s the same obstacle.
     The idea prior to awakening – that awakening will take away all pain, will take away all suffering, that we will live in some kind of unfeeling state, perhaps you could call that bliss, but it sounds like numbness to me – is a big illusion itself and interferes with the full flowering of awakeness. It’s the expectation that gets in the way. As long as we expect awakening to be a particular way, or to bring a particular state, or to make our lives conform to how we wish them to be, in order to take away any discomfort or challenge or pain or suffering that is currently being experienced, that very expectation is what stands in the way of the full bud of awakening bursting through and having the opportunity to authentically integrate into everyday life. So that’s the kind of clue, it’s the expectation, the agenda.
     Post-awakening, post-realization, when we’ve awakened out of the dream of separation, there can also be a hindrance in that any dark knots of energetic contraction that continue to appear, any challenging feelings, any pain, any physical pain, any emotional pain, if these still appear and continue to be experienced, there can be a subtle avoiding. And that avoidance creates or perpetuates an inner division, which means that we have not totally woken up out of the dream of separation. Inner division means that something is avoided, something is denied, there is still a subtle separation between the awake state and the often still-turbulent experience of living as a human being. It sounds in some ways simple, and you’ve probably heard some of this before – spiritual bypassing and all this – but to authentically examine oneself, where those vestiges of separation still play themselves out, where there’s still a holding on to some pristine state of awakeness, requires a real ruthless turning in & self-exposure, an honesty that is often quite painful. Because it’s very likely that even after awakeness has been realized, that the human journey still continues, that certain perhaps traumas, or let’s call them energies, coalesced energies, areas we have not previously met, continue to appear, not because there’s something wrong, but because they’re an invitation to an even deeper embodiment of awakeness. Every dark knot, every difficult feeling, everything we may call suffering, is the opportunity to sit inside it, to be crucified & resurrected. It’s the invitation for deep intimacy that is often overlooked with everything that appears as part of the human experience. Human experience is wavy – it comes in waves. It goes up & down; in & out; dark & light. Everything is included in that. It’s the opportunity for every vestige of inner darkness that remains, of inner division, of everything that has been denied, to be welcomed into the clear light of awareness, into the openness, into the vulnerability, into the tenderness, and deep intimacy with each moment as it arises. 
     That’s not to say that the story of suffering continues. The victim is no longer there. But what we may call suffering, as the exquisite agony of meeting pain as it arises whether that be physical pain, the pain of loss, the pain of heartbreak, the pain of failure, may still arise. And in the meeting of that in the awake space, it doesn’t stick. It pierces the heart all the way. It breaks the heart open. It’s exquisite. It’s bitter-sweet. But it doesn’t remain as a story of being a victim. It doesn’t remain because it’s (no longer being) denied and tucked into the shadows. It doesn’t remain to play itself out again. It’s as if that particular karma has been totally released [[imho - it has been 'physically processed' in real time]]. It totally dissolves. And that’s a purification that happens if we’re willing to meet everything. 
     Neem Karoli Baba said ‘I love suffering. It brings me closer to God.’ Suffering is a doorway. It’s not the end – it’s a means to an end. It’s the doorway. It’s the doorway to the kind of joy that is like a bubbling brook behind everything, beneath everything. A joy that has nothing to do with being happy or being sad. A joy that has nothing to do with things going your way. A joy that has nothing to do with what it looks like, or feels like in your imagination to be spiritual or to be awakened. Everything is included. Everything is embraced. And the grace of it is that the external world is likely to mirror that internal non-attachment, non-craving, non-aversion. It mirrors it by not recreating the trauma, by not recreating a story of poor me. There’s no self invested in the circumstances that appear, whether those circumstances are good or bad. There is no inner division in that. 
     In fact everything is seen as good. Even the most challenging experience contains the seed of light. That’s how we evolve, and grow out of the immaturity of believing that awakening or being spiritual should look like any particular fantasy we have around that. As we have the courage to do this, then everything comes rushing forwards, everything. Everything in our own personal history, everything perhaps from our karmic history, everything comes rushing in, because everything yearns to be met. Everything yearns to resolve itself in love – that love being the open space of acceptance, of allowing, of staying resolutely present, and unconditionally open to every nuance of your inner experience. In that way, awakeness can filter into every aspect of your life. Every interaction, every experience, every relationship, in the deepest intimacy of your own experience, that’s the place, that’s the place where a radical self-exposure is called for. An honesty to simply see where there is any avoidance, any turning away from, any strategy or maneuver to escape what is being offered here, in this moment, in each moment. In that way, suffering becomes the doorway to grace. Suffering is no longer an entrapment, no longer a limitation – neither something to be clung to as a story of drama or trauma, not to be avoided, not to be denied, not to be escaped from.
     In that way, the divided mind, the mind that divides its experience into good & bad, right & wrong, should & shouldn’t, awake & unawake, spiritual & unspiritual, the mind that divides, categorizes every aspect of its experience, is crucified. It has no escape route. All strategies, all maneuvers, all contortions, all acrobatics come to a stop. It’s not the suffering that stops. It’s the mind’s acrobatics that stop. And out of that crucifixion, you are resurrected. You are resurrected as the light which has no division in it. In that sense you are liberated from any notion of suffering. You are liberated from any notion of awakening. You are liberated from any idea of being spiritual. Life is fully lived, and yet you do not find your self in that. You are not invested in the circumstances of life, in the events of life, in the waves that rise & fall. In that sense, you live selflessly. To live selflessly is to have no expectation or agenda. To meet each moment in the openness of who you really are.” 
       Amoda Maa. "Surfing the Heart of Darkness: Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXlUsBYbv0w

Amoda Maa: "Surfing the Heart of Darkness: Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation."

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.

Between & Beyond Words

     “ ‘Teach a child the name of a bird,’ writes Jesuit author Anthony DeMello, ‘and she’ll never see that bird again.’
     DeMello means that language, by labeling phenomena, exacts two injuries. First, it obscures uniqueness: the mystery of this bird, this night’s moon. And second, it also fractures the unified field of mystics and physicists. … 
     So we wonder: How to create a family culture with abundant spaces beyond words? How, in such spaces, can we learn from Clea (18-month-old daughter) how to be part of nature’s web, both as individuals and together? … 

     In her book Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, family counselor Naomi Aldort encourages parents to refrain from reacting when our kids push our buttons. Buddhist teacher Jonathan Foust has a wonderful acronym for it: WAIT (Why Am I Talking?). 
     I use it a lot. When I’m about to either put a label on a mystery or try to make a situation right, I WAIT. I sink into the sky, a breeze … and also into my inner weather. Something interesting usually happens: The moment aligns. Life doesn’t need my brain.
     After a year of using Aldort’s practice, I realized part of why it’s effective. Instead of anthropocentrically narrowing reality, WAITing allows us to be biocentric: Clea and me both. It allows me to tune in to how attuned she is to surrounding sensory stimulus. She’s noticing a hawk overhead, wings stiff as kites. She’s stopping to pick daisies for Mom. She’s here, now: a plume of smoke, the coarse lick of our kitten Boot’s tongue, a crescent moon. Clea’s in a place of peace. It’s not the nervous, more-is-better place that fuels overconsumption and creates the divide between ourselves and the rest of nature. Clea is nature. Or, rather, she has yet to find out she’s not.”

       William Powers. “Child of Nature.” Lion’s Roar, March 2016.

 

Photo: David A. Lovas

Beyond the Personal–Verbal or Discursive Frame of Mind

     A "fundamental shift in consciousness from preverbal to verbal processing" occurs in young children. 

     A "second, similarly monumental transformation from the personal–verbal to transpersonal–postsymbolic processing" can potentially occur in adulthood. 

     "People at the high end of ego development (can potentially) become aware of ... the language habit. They describe how the personal–verbal or discursive frame of mind prevents them from remaining in the open, nonevaluative witnessing stance they enjoy during peak moments and altered states of consciousness.

     Briefly, the language habit has the following attributes: 

          • It constitutes a universal, all-pervasive dimension of human existence. 

          • It is innate but needs activation and modeling by expert speakers in early childhood to emerge. 

          • It is a learned behavior that becomes automatic and unconscious once acquired. 

          • It bundles the flux of sensory input and inner experience into labeled concepts shared with one’s speech community.

          • It is so deeply engrained that speakers of any given language are not aware of the reality construction imposed on them by their language. 

          • It can become a barrier to further development if it remains unconscious, automatic and unexamined.

     Thus, the determination of how high-end ego development stages fit into a full-spectrum model of consciousness depends in part on whether people can become aware of the language habit and on the possibility of postrepresentational ways of knowing."

       Cook-Greuter SR. "Mature Ego Development: A Gateway to Ego Transcendence?" Journal of Adult Development 2000; 7(4): 227-40.

Freedom from Emotions that are Derived from Division

     “It is surprising indeed to realize that none of our arguments with what is, or with what was, have any basis in truth. Our arguments are just part of the dream state. Now, to say they’re part of the dream state or to hear someone else say it is not enough. Each of us has to look for ourselves; each of us has to look into our own emotional life to bring into awareness anything that has the power to cause us to experience division. We need to look at our emotions and see them for what they are; we need to question their truthfulness, to meditate on them in silence, and to let the deeper truths reveal themselves. 
     As I said, this isn’t necessarily an analytical process. True inquiry is experiential. We aren’t seeking to stop something from happening, for true inquiry has no goal other than truth itself. It’s not trying to heal us or to stop us from feeling unpleasant feelings. Inquiry can’t be motivated solely by a desire not to suffer. The impulse not to suffer is understandable, but there is something else that must accompany genuine inquiry, which is the desire and the willingness to see what is true, to see how we ourselves are putting ourselves into conflict. 
     Once we realize that it is you and me who put ourselves into conflict – that nobody and no situation in our life has the power to do it – we see that our emotional life is a portal. It offers an invitation to look deeply, to look from the awakened state – a state that is not trying to change or alter anything, but is itself a lover of truth.
     It might be easy to misinterpret what I’m saying to mean that all negative emotions are indications of division. This is not what I mean to imply. One can be sad without feeling divided. One can feel grief without being divided. One can feel a certain amount of anger without being divided. … spirituality includes a vast array of human emotional experience. Thus one should not conclude that the presence of negative emotions – or what we call negative emotions – is an indication of illusion. The key is whether or not the emotion is being derived from divisiveness. If it is, then the emotion is based on illusion. If you inquire sincerely and discover that an emotion is not derived from divisiveness, then it is not based on illusion. Seeing this opens up to having a wide range of emotions. We open up, becoming a big space in which the winds of different emotions can travel through our system.”

       Adyashanti. “The End of Your World. Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment.” Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado, 2010. 

January in Halifax, Nova Scotia

 

Healing Even When - Especially When? - Meditation Practice Feels "Icky"

     An excerpt of Shinzen Young on processing psychological baggage during meditation:

      “'relaxation pain' (has) two strange characteristics: the more you relax, the worse it gets (at least for a while) and though it doesn't hurt much, it seems to cause a lot of suffering.
      The act of relaxing causes the mesh of ones consciousness to open. You become porous like diaphanous cloth. Psychological 'impurities' (samskaras), deep seated fixating, can now percolate up to the surface in tangible form. Resistance per se is coming up with nothing particular to resist! The actual discomfort (P) in your body may only be at level 2, but your perceived suffering may be at level 100. S = P x R implies that R = S / P. So you must be resisting at level 100/2 = 50. You are experiencing almost pure resistance, pure craving and aversion. In other words you are experiencing pure impurity!
      … try to the best of your ability to accept it. In this way, layer after layer of blockage from the deep unconscious, which would be very difficult to get to directly, percolates up to the surface and gets worked off. Admittedly this is challenging because those very sensations are the tangible manifestation of deep seeded tendencies of non-acceptance. Although it is challenging, it is also quite doable by anyone. Objectively, the suffering associated with this phenomenon is no greater than that associated with a rash or the flu. Anyone can learn to live with those kinds of sensations, but why would anyone want to? What is the payoff? The payoff is that consciousness is being cleansed at a radical level, a level that would perhaps be difficult to reach otherwise. 
      This is the reason that I said to be happy. Trying to contact ones innermost conflicting tendencies directly in the unconscious is very difficult. But when the phenomenon of the 'icky-sticky' sensations arises, the endeavor becomes very simple. All you have to do is pay attention to those sensations, try to accept them and let time pass. Nature will do the rest. 
      The mark of maturity in meditation is that everything becomes a positive feedback loop. The better it feels, the deeper you go! The worse it feels, the deeper you go!”

     Read the rest of "The Icky-Sticky Creepy-Crawly It-Doesn't-Really-Hurt-But-I-Can't-Stand-It Feeling" found under "Articles", then "Meditation Practice"

http://www.shinzen.org/index.htm

Mond   www.dpreview.com

 

Keeping Doors Open, without Serving Tea, to Energies Passing Through

     “Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.”                   Mark Twain

     Can searing fear & terror be welcomed, & allowed to pass through, an open heart? Can I become that seamlessly porous? Can I surf the funky waves of dukkha itself? Yes, yes, yes!!

     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/03/65-embracing-full-catastrophe.html

 

Grounded, Groundlessness, & Soil in a Jar of Water

     As mindfulness stabilizes, the frequency & clarity of feeling a bit unsure, uneasy, out of control, scared, hungry, homeless, insecure, adrift - what Ezra Bayda brilliantly calls "the anxious quiver of being" - increases. Mindfulness allows us to perceive clearly the nature of human life. Each time we resist the reflexive urge to quickly block out this (accurate but unpleasant insight into the human condition) with treats eg "comfort food", other compensations, distractions, or (false) certainty / (illusion of) control, and instead accept & physically be with & process the physical feel of groundless, as we progressively detach from the gravitational pull of the material world. No, we don't float away, just see ourselves, others, & the rest of reality more clearly - and more kindly!
     Are the soil particles drifting down in the water - or - is the water drifing up, leaving the soil particles below?
     What grounding remains is from empathic connection with our fellow suffering living beings.

     For the Jar of Soil & Water Metaphors see: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/09/398.html
and
http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/09/399-letting-go-of-soil-jar-of-soil.html
and
http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/09/400-do-i-have-choice-jar-of-soil-water.html

 

The Never Ending Yarn by Kath Kornelsen Rutherford   http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_kornelsen.html

Approaching & Staying With vs Avoidance

     “Relaxing, we do not turn away from the tension and conditioning. When we stay with them, it becomes possible to apprehend the silence that underlies reactivity. 
     … when stillness meets reactivity, unbinding occurs. The karmic pattern that generated the reaction is interrupted, cut off from its source. Unfed, the energy drains out of the reaction. In the brain … the neural networks of stress defuse.”
 
       Kramer G. “Insight dialogue. The interpersonal path to freedom.” Shambhala, Boston, 2007.

João Carlos Nascimento   www.dpreview.com

Congruent Healing Metaphors Transform

     "At the heart of any healing practice are metaphorical transformations of the quality of experience (from feeling ill to wellness) and the identity of the person (from afflicted to healed). 

     metaphorical thinking conjoins sensory, affective and motivational levels of representation in ways that can help account for psychophysiological effects of symbolic interventions. Imagine a hierarchy of mental representational ‘spaces’ in which the lower levels correspond to the processing done by phylogenetically older parts of the brain involving sensory qualities and basic motivational valences, whereas other levels or layers correspond to representations of experience in terms of emotional states and more abstract conceptual structures. Metaphors transform our perceptions and representations by moving them through sensory, affective and abstract conceptual spaces. According to how this movement occurs within these independent spaces, any communication gives rise to multiple interpretations.These hierarchically stacked levels of meaning are text and subtext, literal and metaphorical strands of meaning in communication and action. Importantly, these multiple levels of interpretation go on in parallel and may reinforce each other, giving experience profound depth and resonance, or contradict each other creating complex experiences of irony, ambivalence and ambiguity."

       Kirmayer LJ.  The cultural diversity of healing: meaning, metaphor and mechanism. Br Med Bull 2004; 69: 33-48.

Photo: Bill Bentley   www.dpreview.com