#596 Identity & Self-transcendence

     In mindfulness (MBSR) workshops, we share the experiences we encounter during sitting meditation. Common themes include: struggles with "monkey mind", struggles with sleepiness, struggles with physical discomfort, struggles with restlessness, compulsive planning, obsessing about time-poverty, obsessing about being no good at meditation, etc.

     How do you feel after sharing your particular struggle with the group, and the facilitator suggests mindful ways of addressing your struggle?
     Does it feel like a personal attack? Are you angry? Do you feel "diminished"? If you do, what does it say about YOUR identity?

     Mindfulness training is fundamentally about letting go of limiting ideas about our assumed identity. Mindfulness is a journey of self-transcendence - never easy, but a huge leap if we're struggling with low self-esteem - and many of us are. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2014/11/painful-mistaken-identity.html
     For those who find mindfulness training traumatically challenging, Western psychotherapy can help create a healthier sense of self first. Perhaps then, mindfulness training can facilitate and gently expedite the normal healthy human evolutionary process of self-transcendence.

#81 Conscious Awareness

     “Much of what happens in the mind is not within consciousness, yet these non-conscious processes have an impact on our health. Bringing these negative thoughts, such as fear, hostility, betrayal, or sadness, to awareness is part of basic health, because those thoughts – what in (psychiatry) are called unintegrated neural processes – are basically like black holes. They have so much gravity to them that they suck the energy out of life. They influence the health of the mind, its flexibility and fluidity, its sense of joy & gratitude. They impact relationships, leading to rigid ways of behaving or explosive ways of interacting. They also influence the body itself, including the nervous system and the immune system.
     So an exploratory process like mindfulness that brings those fearful negative thoughts to awareness can be very beneficial. Sometimes you have to name it to tame it. A number of studies suggest that when you bring something into awareness, and describe it, you can move that previously negative energy – a draining thought or cognition – into a new form.
     With mindfulness, what was not available to awareness becomes available. We need to support people in that journey, because bringing more of what’s going on in the mind to awareness can be a very helpful development in a person’s life.”
       Daniel Siegal MD, clinical professor of psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine.

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