What's This All About?

     All of us experience varying degrees of hardship & pain in life. Far more of us have endured major traumas than we realized, as shown in the ACE studies. And, I suspect most if not all of us become at least somewhat wiser by the end of our life. Some of us are fortunate enough to undergo a profoundly transformative, liberating shift in consciousness - a radical change in self-concept, worldview AND how we relate to life.

      "The long term poor health outcomes in people who have experienced multiple adverse events in childhood have been well documented since the original CDC-Kaiser study in the late 1990's. Those people who have experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are at significantly increased risk of chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes as well as mental illness and health risk behaviours."
     M Boullier, M Blair. "Adverse Childhood Experiences." Pediatrics and Child Health 2018; 28 (3): 132-7.

     "… harsh, unpredictable environments in childhood (may well be) the common node of psychiatric disease. ‘If you look at every disorder, the core of each disorder is some sort of aberrant way of viewing or seeing the world,’ he says. ‘It’s that paranoid ideation.’ There’s the boy who thinks that everyone is out to get him and is later diagnosed with a conduct disorder. The skinny girl who looks in the mirror and thinks that she’s fat – eating disorder. The teenager who thinks that they’re guilty for their parents’ disputes and drinking – depression.
     ‘One of the most interesting origins for much of this aberrant thought comes out of harsh & inconsistent & unpredictable early environments,’ Caspi tells me. ‘Those kinds of experiences that set up the anticipation of bad things happening, or they set up the anticipation of being rejected, they set up the anticipation of being violated, they set up anticipation of constantly being threatened, and things going wrong. Things ... being unalterable. And thereby spiraling out of control. So I think a lot of it is about what those early experiences do – they distort our expectations about the future. And that’s why they’re so consequential.’"
     Alex Riley. “The seed of suffering. The p-factor is the dark matter of psychiatry: an invisible, unifying force that might lie behind a multitude of mental disorders.”
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-p-factor-says-about-the-root-of-all-mental-illness

     Clearly, therapy by competent mental-health specialists, as early in life as possible is ideal for those who've experienced major trauma, or even lesser trauma that to highly sensitive children, may be equally damaging. With adequate therapy, such children have the chance to see themselves & their surroundings not as victims in a cruel, random universe, but in a progressively more balanced, realistic light. Then, a lifetime of self-reflection & meditation can proceed relatively unhindered.

     "When all the layers of false identity have been stripped off, there is no longer any version of that old self. What is left behind is pure consciousness (rigpa). That is our original being. That is our true identity. Our true nature is indestructible. No matter whether we are sick or healthy, poor or wealthy, it always remains divine and perfect as it is. When we realize our true nature, our life is transformed in a way we could not have imagined before. We realize the very meaning of our life and it puts an end to all searching right there." Anam Thubten

“What can we gain by sailing to the moon
if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates
us from ourselves?”

Thomas Merton

 

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.

“As we travel through life, we are all seekers
after something larger than ourselves…”
Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer PhD

 

     Other useful perspectives on our frequently divisive dualism:

http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/11/transcending-duality-of-agency-communion.html

https://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.com/2014/07/551-primary-goal-selects-our-operating.html 

 

WisdomAtWork.com

We're All Doing Our Best, and Yet ...

     We're all just trying to do our best to be happy, no matter how our behaviors may appear to outside observers. In the process, we unintentionally create, or at least maintain, a lot of needless suffering for ourselves & others.
     Meditation, first & foremost, allows us see clearly, with a far deeper intelligence (than the conditioned, fear-based, self-talk-filled, superficial level with which we're usually identified).
 
     In his fascinating paper, Roger Walsh MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology & religion, describes his remarkable insights & discoveries during meditation, despite his strong initial skepticism & fears. 
     These same fears keep many away from meditation. And even those of us who choose to meditate, only disengage from our momentum of distracted self-talk ("the story of me") very, very gradually, at our own pace. The shift from noisy psychological defenses to the sublime silence & stillness of our deeper intelligence tends to be slow & delicate.


     “Whereas initially I had believed that the inner world must of necessity harbor unwholesome collections of monsters, which I had avoided confronting all my life, I now came to think of this inner world as a very attractive, pleasant source of positive information.
 
     I was beginning to agree with the statements such as those of Willis Harman (1962): ‘We are all hypnotized from infancy … We do not perceive ourselves and the world about us as they are but as we have been persuaded to perceive them.’
     … it was becoming clear that from the perspective of this hypnotized, illusory world view, my symptoms and defenses appeared not only logical but optimal. It would have seemed stupid to act in any other way. And here was the key to a new understanding of the nature of defenses and resistance. If from our perceived world view we are already acting optimally, then of course we would resist change of any type and would seek to strengthen our defenses rather than relinquish them. To relinquish them would feel like sacrificing those very strategies which we believe to be essential for our well-being. Now I could begin to make sense out of the old adage that neurotics don’t come into psychotherapy to get better; they come in to learn how to be better neurotics. A corollary of this is that the really important growth choices involve changes in the beliefs, perspectives, and viewpoints from which we are perceiving rather than attempting to change that which we are looking at. That is, the changes are process, second order, contextual, or perspective changes.
     These insights gave me a very new perspective on the nature of personality, neurosis, neurotic symptoms, self-actualization, authenticity, and courage. Now I could look at people and see that each and everyone of them, each and everyone of us, was courageously coping with reality and themselves as he or she believed, and hence perceived, them to be. Furthermore, they acted and perceived with total commitment in ways that seemed to them absolutely necessary and appropriate. Moreover, each person daily created and endured an extraordinary amount of well-intended suffering in a continuous battle which was fought day in and day out with total but almost totally unappreciated commitment and courage. For each of them, for each of us, every response appeared to represent the optimal self-actualizing strategy, and I could now understand the humanistic psychology position as enunciated by Carl Rogers (1959) that the ‘basic actualizing tendency is the only motive which is postulated in this theoretical system.’
     Thus it became apparent that many of the beliefs and fears I encountered were not unique to me but rather were widespread in our culture. This raises the interesting question as to what extent they are transmitted and taught to us as part of the cultural hypnosis mentioned above.” 
       Roger Walsh. “Journey Beyond Belief.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 24(2); 30-65, 1984. https://drrogerwalsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Journey-Beyond-Belief-1984-J.-Humanistic-Psychology-24-2-30-651.pdf

Confidence in our Authenticity

"The world is not a problem to be solved;
it is a living being to which we belong.
It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing.
And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature,
which is also our own sacred nature."
Thich Nhat Hanh

     A mostly hidden, silent part of us may resonate & sympathize. But the dominant "practical, responsible, adult" part likely pulls away, and yanks us firmly "back into reality." 

     If we reflect on our own & society's overall approach to life, we may notice that it's based on fearful self-interest, in a competitive, adversarial relationship towards other people, animals & the environment. 

     If we seriously attempt to go even deeper eg by meditating - we'll notice that we're surprisingly averse to self-reflection partly because we (mistakenly) assume that our authenticity, the depth of our being (which resonates with Thich Nhat Hanh's statement) - is somehow too fragile & could not survive in our hostile world.

     We appear to have two very distinct natures: 

          • one which is in harmony, profoundly interconnected & interdependent, perhaps even one with others & the environment;

and 

          • the other which is alone, competing against other people, animals & the environment.

     The ideal middle way may be exemplified by a wise grandmother, and how she relates to her grandchildren with nurturing unconditional love. This is BOTH absolutely admirable AND a perfectly practical model we can, & have the responsibility to emulate. 
     To the degree that we're conditioned (we're all conditioned / trained / traumatized by our genetics & life experiences) we feel as if we're alone in a hostile world. AND yet we directly experience that in the depth of our being, we're intimately connected to & interdependent with everything.

     Is the mess we're in personally & globally caused by estrangement from our own (& everyone else's) depth of being / authenticity? Do we allow our lives to be run by primitive instincts: fight, flight & freeze - OR - are we evolved enough to collaborate in harmony? Can we deeply reflect on our true nature and progressively learn to embody the depth of who we truly are?

"We are the ones we have been waiting for."

Alice Walker

Momentary? Timeless?

     We think BOTH as if we had all the time in the world AND as if our hair were on fire! 
     A bit of self-reflection reveals how obsessed we are about the relentless, irreversible passage of time. 

     and every flower a tiny tributary 
     that from the ground flows green and momentary              Alice Oswald

     Yet, on deeper reflection, when the anxious "me" has settled down, isn't the one who looks through these eyes outside of time entirely? Isn't this "one who knows" entirely free of personal concerns, abiding in deep silence, stillness & equanimity?

The Power of Self-knowledge and Self-awareness

     “Prioritizing self-knowledge and self-awareness is not for everyone; although, I would argue it should be. Some people don’t seem to care about who they truly are or about the stuff within themselves. Others are just plain afraid of what they might find. Some people simply don’t value self-awareness as a worthwhile pursuit. But indeed, knowing ourselves is highly valuable. If we know who we are, we can become thriving human beings who can contribute our skills, strengths, and virtues – which we are aware of – to the world. Without self-knowledge, how can we possibly place ourselves in the right relationships, in the right environments, in the right lifestyles, and among the right friends, or choose the right career path? We can’t, at least not easily. When we are not living optimally in the right environments for us, we are drained and we become a drain on the system. We get sick, we don’t volunteer to help others, and we fail to thrive in the deepest sense. It can also be a huge source of existential anxiety and depression. Without self-knowledge, we may also flounder without direction, or we might mistakenly follow someone else’s direction instead. … Self-knowledge is a prerequisite for living a good, productive, and meaningful life, which ultimately benefits us and those around us.”
 
       Mandy Wintink PhD. “Self Science. A Guide to the Mind and Your Brain’s Potential.” Iguana Books, Toronto, 2016.  

 

Frida Kahlo - Self portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird 1940

He Had to Say Something ...

He did not wax poetic
He spoke plain
With turning words
Mirroring
Death
Birth

The Blues - As Good As It Gets? Really??

     It can take a painfully long, long time - and some of us never really get it: it's not about being rescued, saved, or completed by anyone or anything out there.
     Each one of us, individually, needs to fully discover, directly experience who / what we actually are. However with our common personal-verbal level of consciousness, we can only grossly underestimate: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!Two-Levels-of-Consciousness/c17jj/56f14e0c0cf266a292561f27
     The blues - even the wonderful Mary Gauthier's (below) - seems to be about the seemingly endless futile struggle to find happiness, wholeness, perfection, outside of ourselves. No wonder so much of the blues is about all sorts of doomed, broken escape routes - booze, drugs, gambling etc. 
     We need to see clearly, accept & have compassion for this deluded aspect of our shared human life. But we need to grow bored, sick & tired of wallowing, and break through to the other side of this ...

     See: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!Seriously/c17jj/56fe7a7d0cf2b279cdbb25e1

Truth

     “Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth.
     Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don’t mean in a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense that we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness.”

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

     See also: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/12/self-knowledge-depth-and-healing.html

http://robertpopefoundation.com/about-robert-pope/his-perspectives/

Artist: Robert Pope

Self-reflection, Distraction & Quality of Life

     “Awareness reflects how things are, how you’re acting in the world, how you’re living in the world. So not only do I have the capacity to engage with life, I also have the capacity to reflect and notice how I’m engaging with life. Just as the mirror reflects my physical posture, awareness reflects the mental-emotional attitude I am coming from in any kind of encounter in life. 
     That’s really the secret of Buddhism – it’s this capacity to reflect. Because without that, without using that reflective capacity, you tend to be very much just involved with life. You try to do it well, keep the precepts and so on, but we don’t really understand life. We come from a kind of attitude of ‘I should be this’ and ‘I shouldn’t be that’, ‘I should do this’ and ‘I shouldn’t do that’, and we have our responsibilities. But we don’t really understand life.
     Where we begin to understand life is where we have this kind of mirroring going on called reflection. And Buddhism is about understanding life. It’s not about just being moral. But morality and generosity are a basis for a reflective capacity actually being stronger. When I live in a way that’s morally impeccable, when I live in a way that has a generous heart in it, it’s much more easy to be reflective, to be aware. If someone is living in a way that’s exploitative of other beings, the environment or hurtful to others, it’s very hard to be reflective, because one doesn’t want to look at the results of that. I don’t want to look at my mind if I’ve been hurting people. I just want to keep it distracted. 
     We see that in people who are dying. If they’ve lived wholesome, meaningful lives, and then as death comes … the person who has lived a good life, they have no problem with awareness. ‘Oh yah, I remember that, I did that well.’ Whereas a person who has lived a poor life, a divisive life, it’s very hard to be aware - and they need distractions. That’s quite a strong lesson. 
     So we all have the capacity to reflect. We all can do that whether our karmic formations are very depressed or difficult, or very bright and lucid, we all have this capacity to reflect. And the Buddha’s teachings on awareness are really encouraging. Just begin by awakening to what’s going on in your life. Begin by really just noticing how you live your life, how you speak with people, how you do what you do.”

Ajahn Viradhammo 

http://tisarana.ca/self-reflection/

Our Confused Urge to Purge

     Don't we just love to hear an intelligent, devastating critique of a person or group we hate? Yes! It makes us feel so right, smart, good, holy; and makes "the other" look so wrong, stupid, bad, evil!
     It's easy if people we hate are different - not one of us. As Homer Simpson famously said "He's different - I don't like him!" We can even create differences to suit an agenda, as was apparently the case to divide Rwanda into Hutus & Tutsis. Religious belief is trickier, especially among those with essentially the same religion, but we've succeeded with a vengeance in this as well - Catholics vs Protestants, Shia Muslims vs Sunni Muslims ...

     Reformers within such groups, who believe that butchering each other may not be the best, most evolved, or sustainable approach, are often branded as traitors & heretics, shunned or even killed. Whistleblowers in large companies or governments fare no better. Why?

     Because we hate to face, much less to clean-up, our own home. It's so much easier to find fault in other individuals & groups, and then eradicate all our problems by declaring war on ... anything but the real problem. Eradicate whoever / whatever we project our own shadow upon, then everything will be perfect. "And how's that working for you?" Dr. Phil might reasonably inquire.
     We must recognize that we're still surprisingly primitive & tribal. The present state of the human race reflects the very early level of our individual psychosocialspiritual evolution. Each of us has a lot of growing-up to do. 
     This requires a complete turnabout, an inversion of sorts, turning our world right-side-up. Whenever we get very righteously energized to denounce or attack (verbally or otherwise) a person or a group, let's remember to look within - what dark aspect of ourselves are we trying to disown?
     Studying oneself, with steady awareness & gentle acceptance, is a continuously humbling experience. It makes one less & less judgmental of others, and more & more grateful to all those who put up with us while we were even less civilized than we are today. 

     "Be kind, for everyone is carrying a heavy load."

Near Mahone Bay, NS

Maturing Emotionally, Spiritually

     “Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.”       Francois de La Rochefoucauld

     “If only it were all so simple, if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”              Alexander Solzhenitsyen
 

Growing Up is Embarrassing!

     "Growing humility" is a serious understatement! Long-term meditation practice is best described in the words of Shunryu Suzuki Sensei: "one embarrassment after another!"
     As our protective defenses, pretenses & avoidances are lowered & shed, we perceive ourselves with increasing clarity - WOW, what a SURPRISE! We're ORDINARY MORTAL SLOBS! No wonder a lot of us refuse to grow up!!!!

Microsurgeon   www.dpreview.com

 

Where Am I Now? Now? Now? Now?

     At one time, parents were advised to always ask themselves "Do I know where my children are right now?" It's also important to be aware of where my attention is at any moment in time!
     Usually, it makes most sense to be consciously aware of what's going on in the present moment around us and within our mind-body. In this mindful way, we're most likely to behave appropriately - in the best long-term interests of all concerned.
     Mindlessness of various sorts (absent mindedness, distracted, multitasking, catastrophizing, wallowing etc) is generally the shadow side of mindfulness, resulting in much wasted time, loss of productivity, passivity, errors, accidents etc.
     At specific times & places, where mindfulness is not essential, eg relaxing weekend at home, "mind wandering" can contribute to: "self-awareness, creative incubation, improvisation & evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events & experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self & others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, & reflective compassion." 
     Yes, mind wandering has potential short- & long-term personal value, under the appropriate circumstances. But the fact that people spend "up to 50% of their waking hours" at it means that much of the time it has negative consequences, and may be a form of avoidance. Open-hearted engagement, in real time, with whatever is at hand, seems to be optimal. Escape into our heads, or increasingly into our smart phones, is avoidance of what's real & what needs to be addressed. If one is intentionally relaxing in a familiar environment, then one can intentionally, productively engage in mind wandering without negative consequences.

       Scott Barry Kaufman "Mind Wandering: A New Personal Intelligence Perspective." Scientific American September 25, 2013. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/09/25/mind-wandering-a-new-personal-intelligence-perspective/

Daydreamer by Leah Welch   http://fineartamerica.com