#743 Existential Loneliness

     "Loneliness is one of the most common of all human conditions, but it is largely misunderstood by the general population and clinicians alike. In this article, I draw sharp distinctions between 'pathological loneliness' (what people usually mean when they say they are lonely) and 'existential loneliness,' the central focus of this paper. I briefly review the former in order to differentiate it clearly from the latter, arguing that pathological loneliness derives from the unsuccessful resolution of existential loneliness. The two are fundamentally inseparable, constituting different manifestations of the same human condition. 

     Existential loneliness springs from our very nature as human beings. It speaks to the fundamental emptiness & disconnectedness we feel as we grapple with the profoundest questions of the uncertainty of life and death. I argue that we must come to grips with our existential loneliness if we are to fully embrace our humanity and that love is the only healthy response to our dilemma.

     Finally, I discuss our need to resolve our existential situation by adopting an alternative epistemology - unitary consciousness - an epistemology that understands the fundamental oneness of being." 

       Booth R. “Existential Loneliness: The Other Side of the Void.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 1997; 16(1): 23-32. 

La Femme en Bleu by Alice Mason   https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/AliceMasonArtist?ref=l2-shopheader-name

 

#716 How Mindfulness (MBSR) Can Change Your Life

     "Mindfulness is a way of being - a basic human quality of awareness that is cultivated by learning to pay wise attention to whatever is happening in our lives.
     People who participate in a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, learn through their own experience how to take better care of themselves, by understanding the interplay of mind and body, allowing for greater access to inner resources for coping, growing and healing. 
     MBSR is an approach that combines meditation, dialogue, reflective inquiry, mindful yoga and movement, as means to assisting participants to work more effectively with stress, pain and illness, as well as the challenges of life in the 21st century."

 

#682 How Meaningful?

     As we get older, it seems we try to squeeze more & more things from our "bucket list" into a shorter & shorter space of time - like several "trips of a lifetime" each year, year-after-year! We become desperate to keep busy - clearly needing to remain permanently distracted.
     Is this really the best use of the limited time we have left to live?

     What about QUALITY (vs quantity)? What about MEANING (vs distraction)? Shouldn't we inquire deeply "who am I?" "What is this?" "How can I embrace life most authentically?"

     Isn't quantity & busyness inversely related to quality? Shouldn't we carefully choose what we do, prioritizing only those things that have the most meaning for us at this time of life? Isn't it time to quit trying to escape, but to engage life with an open heart-mind?

Monet's garden, Giverny

#675 Do What Works

     We tend to assume that we can control our world to keep us happy. So we attempt constant adjustments to the environment, others, ourselves, trying to seize & hang onto whatever feels good, and avoid all that feels bad or threatening. What gradually dawns on us is the fact that we're almost constantly uncomfortable, despite all our manoevres. 
     There are many dysfunctional responses to this steady state of unsatisfactoriness, all involve denial / avoidance / escapism: trance-like relentless pursuit of pleasure via materialism, hedonism, substance abuse, workaholism, & other simplistic belief (& non-belief) systems.

     An alternative is facing reality with as much clear awareness and acceptance as possible (both improve with practice). It's remarkably difficult to accept life's existential facts - that we cannot really control anything, especially things that truly matter: aging, sickness & death of those we love, including ourselves. No wonder we're so compulsive about distracting / deluding ourselves! But that too gets old. 
     Mindfulness practice is a gentle, natural, universal way of making friends with things as they are. Accepting reality with an open heart-mind is an amazing journey. As we progress along this path, life progressively changes for the better. "Better" is not what we expect or typically wish for, but it does become better and better. Keep practicing!

while he plays piano ... 37, rue de la bûcherie — 75005 Paris, France

#661 Life's Short - Clarify the Mind

     “There is no question I am having the most fulfilling time of my life,” British political strategist Philip Gould wrote in his book When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, which he began after receiving a terminal diagnosis of esophageal cancer. “… I have had more moments of happiness in the last five months than in the last five years.”
     A death sentence is a licence to take shears to what remains of your life, leaving only what is vital. “I feel intensely alive,” Oliver Sacks wrote in a New York Times essay that was far more popular than any story featuring “multiple metastases in the liver” has a right to be. “I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. … I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential.”

       Elizabeth Renzetti, "We can't live every day like it's our last, but dying does seem to clarify the mind." The Globe and Mail, Saturday, April 4, 2015
         http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/we-cant-live-every-day-like-its-our-lastbut-dying-does-seem-to-clarify-the-mind/article23793614/

two of Monet's flowers

#650 Effective Management for Existential Distress ??

     A life of generosity, ethical living & ideally, a longstanding deep meditation practice, seems to be one of the ideal ways to access & embody profoundly meaningful, transformative insight & evolve or mature spiritually. Such maturity generally includes facing death with calm composure (equanimity).

     However, for many in our secular society, who spend their lives focused mostly on material concerns, the possibility remains open for having profound transformative spiritual experiences, even at the end of life, via medically-supervised psychedelic drugs, in palliative care settings.

     "under the influence of the (psilocybin), 'individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states . . . and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance.'
     ... cancer patients receiving just a single dose of psilocybin experienced immediate and dramatic reductions in anxiety and depression, improvements that were sustained for at least six months.
     Researchers are using or planning to use psilocybin not only to treat anxiety, addiction (to smoking and alcohol), and depression but also to study the neurobiology of mystical experience, which the drug, at high doses, can reliably occasion.
     “People don’t realize how few tools we have in psychiatry to address existential distress. Xanax isn’t the answer. So how can we not explore this, if it can recalibrate how we die?”
     “When administered under supportive conditions,” the paper concluded, “psilocybin occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences.” Participants ranked these experiences as among the most meaningful in their lives, comparable to the birth of a child or the death of a parent. Two-thirds of the participants rated the psilocybin session among the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives; a third ranked it at the top. Fourteen months later, these ratings had slipped only slightly.
     Furthermore, the “completeness” of the mystical experience closely tracked the improvements reported in personal well-being, life satisfaction, and “positive behavior change” measured two months and then fourteen months after the session.
     A follow-up study ... found that the psilocybin experience also had a positive and lasting effect on the personality of most participants. This is a striking result, since the conventional wisdom in psychology holds that personality is usually fixed by age thirty and thereafter is unlikely to substantially change. But more than a year after their psilocybin sessions volunteers who had had the most complete mystical experiences showed significant increases in their “openness,” one of the five domains that psychologists look at in assessing personality traits. (The others are conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.) Openness, which encompasses aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and tolerance of others’ viewpoints, is a good predictor of creativity.
     “I don’t want to use the word ‘mind-blowing,’ ” Griffiths told me, “but, as a scientific phenomenon, if you can create conditions in which seventy per cent of people will say they have had one of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives? To a scientist, that’s just incredible.”
     ... William James ... suggested that we judge the mystical experience not by its veracity, which is unknowable, but by its fruits: does it turn someone’s life in a positive direction?"
       Michael Pollan "The Trip Treatment." Annals of Medicine, The New Yorker Magazine, Feb 9, 2015
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment 

     Listen to Mary Hines' March 12, 2015 interview: "Psychologist Anthony Bossis: Can psychedelic drugs help ease the fear of death?"  http://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry

Lilly J Warren   www.dpreview.com

 

#638 Two Paths to Wisdom

    “Juan Pascual-Leone has argued that there are basically two paths to wisdom*. 
     One is through what he calls ultimate limit situations** - situations, crises, obstacles in life, but really more devastating than that. I would argue, actually, that wisdom also develops through the minor crises and obstacles in life -- basically learning from negative experiences in life. You can also learn from positive experiences, but the negative experiences jolt people out of their everyday rut and sometimes might force them to change priorities. Somebody loses a job at mid-life and questions what is really important in life; and then they start a new career or something that might be more meaningful … and they might want to contribute more to society. In this way, Pascual-Leone would argue, this is one pathway to wisdom. 
     The other pathway, what he would argue, is meditation.

     He would say that we don't necessarily have to have those traumatic experiences. One can just sit and reflect on what is important … without necessarily having this really big event. So negative experiences can actually be the teacher that help to develop wisdom. 
     People say learning from experiences is really important to develop wisdom, but the key is learning from experiences, not just having experiences. It doesn't mean that every negative experience will automatically lead to wisdom. It could also lead to despair and devastation. It's not automatic. But a negative experience might lead to post traumatic growth***.”
 

       Monika Ardelt PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida

       http://wisdomresearch.org/forums/t/1521.aspx# 

     * see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/07/wisdom-awareness-self-transcendence.html

    ** see: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/05/self-concept-worldview.html
   *** see: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/05/dealing-with-trauma-adversity.html

#603 Healthy Relationship with CHRONIC Pain

     CHRONIC pain is fascinating - IF we don't allow it to automatically shut us down. By "shut us down" I include all of our usual mindless behaviors: anger, blaming, popping pills, otherwise "self-medicating", complaining, playing the victim, withdrawing, etc, etc.
     WHAT IF we DIDN'T judge chronic pain to be a terrible mistake? What if we simply didn't know what to make of it - drew no conclusions, made no judgments? The fact is, we don't know much at all about our generally unexamined life. 
     For one thing, we typically mistakenly OVERREACT to CHRONIC pain as though it were acute - yet it's sending us a TOTALLY DIFFERENT message, about a completely different situation.
     ACUTE pain signals an emergency. It's an alarm bell screaming at us to stop everything & immediately look after a potentially life-threatening injury.
     CHRONIC pain, far from being an emergency, is an ongoing reminder that we need to address existential issues in this lifetime. 
     To the extent we mindfully open our mind-heart to the reality of sickness, aging, and death, we heal into wholeness. 
     To the extent that we refuse to do so, and (like heroin addicts, we) aggressively demand a "cure" - escape from reality, OR become cynically embittered by life, we suffer. 
     The CHOICE is entirely ours - let's make it intelligent!

#516 Strength, Vulnerability & Reality

     We're all, at some level, aware of our own weaknesses, shortcomings, vulnerabilities. The effect this awareness has on us varies tremendously from person to person, as well as for each of us under different circumstances and over the span of a lifetime.
     Dysfunctional, yet all too common ways of dealing with the reality of our human condition include various types of: 
          overcompensation eg tough guy / gal, workaholism, narcissistic personality disorder;
          suppression eg pretending everything's always happy-happy; and 
          decompensation eg paralyzing anxiety / fear / depression.

     A healthy way of living in reality, in all its complexity, unpredictability, high ups & low downs is with a clear, open heart-mind. Does this sound as revolutionary as driving sober? It's common sense, yet as we all know, common sense is not common at all.
     Mindfulness practice increases & stabilizes metacognition - ability to observe the workings of our own mind: mental, emotional, verbal & behavioral reactions. We learn to clearly see when these are dysfunctional (noise, friction), accept these as they are, and observe their consequences (increased suffering for ourselves & others). As a result of this clear insight & acceptance of ourselves & others as we are ("our common human condition"), we naturally, gradually, at our own pace, let go of dysfunctional compensations, and become progressively healthier & wiser.
     See:  http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2014/02/490-safe-learning-environment.html

Steve McCurry   stevemccurry.com

#508 Does Mindfulness Practice Lead to a Consistent "High"?

     NO! But some us, early in our practice, do feel "high" or "up" - for a while. We're in a blissful trance, brought about by false expectations of mindfulness practice.
     “... how easily we place a veneer of spiritual practice and spiritual correctness over deeply unresolved personal problems."        Preece R. “The Wisdom of Imperfection. The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life.” Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca NY, 2006.  

     Once this placebo effect wears off, the "honeymoon period" ends, and our feet land firmly on the ground. Everything changes constantly, including our circumstances & moods. With mindfulness practice, the severity of our mood swings diminishes, because we take normal events less & less personally, and therefore suffering diminishes.
     Mindfulness practice is about waking up to reality, not escaping to "never-never land". Life in the real world is challenging: birth, constant change, sickness, aging, death - existential reality is not easy stuff, nobody escapes it. 
     The more fully we integrate mindfulness into our daily life, the less goal-oriented / self-centered / escapist we become, and the more profoundly our perception changes towards all experience. It's very useful to remember the fearful child / wise grandparent metaphor - see: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=grandparent

Steve McCurry   stevemccurry.com

#493 How We Prioritize - Why We Fail to "Pick our Battles"

     How do we know when we have to drop everything, & immediately redirect all our resources to a new specific issue? A classic example: we suddenly feel searing pain (anywhere in the body-mind) - all our alarm bells go off at once - a massive call for action & we're instantly in full fight-freeze-flight mode. We're running on emotions, everything else - including ability to make mature judgments - shuts down. This is the default mode for most people in life-or-death emergencies - instinctively prioritized reaction to the threat to our survival.
     Unfortunately, few of us appropriately distinguish acute life-or-death emergencies from minor threats: to our ego, comfort & convenience. Because of this common conflation, stress, anxiety & depression are epidemic & becoming increasingly incapacitating.
     So the problem is that our firefighters routinely break down the doors & windows, whisking us off to the ER, even though most of the time, there's no fire - just kitty stuck in the tree. This biological version of "the boy who cried wolf" is very hard on everyone concerned - internal friction: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/10/423-what-is-this.html and http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=fight

Dianne Silverman   The Boy Who Cried Wolf   www.mnartists.org

#444 Dancing in Constant Change

     “It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today.”           Isaac Asimov
 
     "The psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man's existential problems change."                                                       Clare W. Graves (1914-1986) 

      “Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”           William James

Steve McCurry   http://stevemccurry.com/

#432 "I try, and I try, ... but I can't get No Satisfaction"

     "The desire for a more meaningful and authentic existence may be experienced as a vague sense of longing that cannot be satisfied by the attainment of external ego goals. Once the transitory nature of egoic satisfactions has been recognized, whether they are in the realm of material possessions, personal achievement, or interpersonal relationships, attention may be turned to inner development in a search for deeper meaning.
     Carl Jung suggested that the first half of life was appropriately devoted to external accomplishments and the development of ego, while the second half should be devoted to the inward journey and letting go of ego. Although healthy ego functioning may precede confrontation with existential issues in healthy human development, it appears that the process is not necessarily chronologically sequential. Ego development may be satisfactorily completed in early childhood, and a call to inner development can be experienced at any age. It is no longer necessary to make a choice between devoting oneself exclusively to outer or inner development. On the contrary, it appears that optimum well-being demands both. Perhaps if the inner life were not so badly neglected in the educational system, there would be less need for remedial work in psychotherapy in order to redress the balance between inner and outer development.  
     When inner experience has been ignored or repressed throughout adolescence & early adulthood, it can become a source of considerable pain, anguish, & existential despair. 
     If, on the other hand, existential concerns can be acknowledged in conjunction with one's work in the world, one may discover inner resources for guidance, inspiration & deep satisfaction that transcend the boundaries of isolated individual existence."

        Vaughn F. The Inward Arc. Healing in Psychotherapy and Spirituality. iUniverse.com Inc, Lincoln NE, 1995, 2000. 

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/10/408-deterioration-and-improvement-both.html

tko   www.dpreview.com

#412 Failing to Embrace Reality, We Miss Out on Miracles

     Most of us miss out on innumerable "ordinary miracles" each and every day. Why? Because we're in a self-absorbed trance, running from ghosts from our past, chasing after fantasies of future happiness, all the while ignoring the wonders of our one rare and precious life.

     We miss truly seeing our loved ones changing in real time, we miss nature's endlessly mysterious beauty, we miss even our own physical presence on this precious earth - life passes us by, yet sadly, most of us have never really lived. The stories below illustrate our propensity for sleepwalking through life:

     "New Yorkers who love a good bargain missed a golden opportunity Saturday, when the artist and provocateur Banksy, whose sly graffiti art adorns collectors' walls, opened a sidewalk kiosk in Central Park to sell his work for $60 apiece.
     His first sale came hours after opening, when a woman bought two canvases for her children. She negotiated a 50 percent discount on the pieces ...
     The offerings included small and large canvases, including a version of "Love Is in the Air." A limited edition of that work sold for $249,000 at auction this summer."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/14/234023611/collectible-art-at-street-prices-banksy-sells-pieces-for-60?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook

     In January 2007, virtuoso Joshua Bell performed incognito, on a violin worth millions of dollars, at a metro station in Washington DC. This was an experiment organized by the Washington Post. His performance received very little interest from passersby.

#408 Deterioration AND Improvement - BOTH Predictable

     Many try hard to avoid dealing with existential realities: constant change, aging, sickness & death - considering these to be "downers." When we do consider these, we often think of these happening to others, as if we ourselves were immune. Our physical & cognitive deterioration, and eventual death is of course inevitable, regardless of how we deal (or refuse to deal) with it. If our worldview is essentially materialistic, then avoidance (though proven ineffective as a long-term strategy) is somewhat understandable.
     Far more difficult to understand, however, is the common tendency to doubt our capability, and thus ignore direct responsibility for elevating our own level of consciousness, and thus quality of life. 
     Both of the above tendencies are irrational, problematic, and egocentric. A rational, effective approach is ridiculously simple conceptually, yet a challenging behavioral shift - releasing our grip on our ego is similar to quitting smoking. We tend to behave strangely, even self-destructively, when self-concern (egocentricity) dominates, be this conscious or subconscious.
     We're social beings. Egocentricity, though common these days, is unnatural, unhealthy, and guarantees unhappiness for the individual, his associates, and environment. Training ourselves to gradually shift from being egocentric towards being allocentric and ecocentric is, quite literally, a wise move. 
     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=wisdom
     and: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/search?q=allocentric

Evgenia Arbugaeva   http://pdn30.pdnevents.com/gallery/2013/index.php?contest=arbugaeva

#406 Good People, Doing their Best, Rolling Down the Line

     At the start of each 8-week MBSR-style Mindfulness Training workshop, each participant is asked to share a bit about themselves, including what brought them to Mindfulness. Even though most participants don't know each other in the group yet, there's a remarkably touching honesty in their stories.
     The common theme is that they're working hard, often too hard, are suffering, and are looking for a way to decrease their suffering ("better manage stress"), and perhaps regain (or find for the first time) joy in life. At some point, I suspect most of us reach this realization, though unfortunately, many simply resign themselves to this sorry state of "ordinary unhappiness". They assume that, like a huge moving train, the momentum of their lives can't be re-directed.
     Fortunately, those who take Mindfulness training learn practical, evidence-based skills that help develop underutilized natural capacities for dramatically shifting their "operating system" - their trajectory, from dissonance, struggle & suffering, towards congruence, ease & joy. These folks must also deal with the momentum of their lives - a lifetime of conditioning, but have an open mind and are willing to use intelligent effort to intentionally, gradually, change towards a wiser way of life.

     "Wisdom is a function of deep insight into, and mature understanding of, the central existential issues of life, together with practical skill in responding to these issues in ways that enhance the deep wellbeing of all those who the responses affect." 
       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

Ireland

#373 How Free is our Free Will?

     In the introduction to his short book “Free Will” (Free Press, 2012), Sam Harris writes: 
    “The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: 1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and 2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. As we are about to see, however, both of these assumptions are false. 
     But the deeper truth is that free will doesn’t even correspond to any subjective fact about us – and introspection soon proves as hostile to the idea as the laws of physics are. Seeming acts of volition merely arise spontaneously (whether caused, uncaused, or probabilistically inclined, it makes no difference) and cannot be traced to a point of origin in our conscious minds. A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than the next thought I write.”

     When we devote no more than the odd moment to contemplate who we are, and how we relate to our environment, Harris is correct, we do remain locked into being thoroughly conditioned by our past history, genetics, etc. Conditioning powerfully, predictably programs specific responses to specific stimuli. Our default mode is indeed primitive conditioned reactivity - we live much (ALL according to Harris) of our lives on autopilot. Sadly, most of us behave based on the complex cocktail of causes & conditions of our past - our future 'set in stone' by our past - with no chance of creatively carving out new, qualitatively better possibilities. 

     The timeless exhortations to "Know Thyself!" and "A Life Unexamined is Not Worth Living" point to the power of conditioning to enslave, BUT ALSO to the fact that there is A WAY OUT of an otherwise pre-programmed, robotic existence.
     Einstein said, "We cannot solve the problems of today at the level of thinking at which they were first created." Since our "normal" level of thinking is conditioned, it cannot solve the problem of conditioning. Contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation are designed to free us from the prison of conditioning by cultivating a more evolved level of awareness that leads to wisdom.
     "Wisdom is a function of deep insight into, and mature understanding of, the central existential issues of life, together with practical skill in responding to these issues in ways that enhance the deep wellbeing of all those who the responses affect." 
       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

eaglevshawk   www.dpreview.com

#358 Evolution of Consciousness - Individually & Collectively

     “The two extreme worldviews are probably represented by materialism and the perennial philosophy, the central core of understanding common to the great religions. The materialistic perspective suggests that life and consciousness are accidental byproducts of matter, and that their evolution is driven by the interplay of random events and the instinct for survival. The purpose of human life and evolution is solely what humanity decides it is.
     The perennial philosophy, which lies at the heart of the great religions and is increasingly said to represent their deepest thinking, suggests that consciousness is central and its development is the primary goal of existence. This development will culminate in the condition variously known in different traditions as enlightenment, liberation, salvation, moksha, or satori.
     The descriptions of this condition show remarkable similarities across cultures and centuries. Its essence is the recognition that the distortions of our usual state of mind are such that we have been suffering from a case of mistaken identity. Our true nature is something much greater, an aspect of a universal consciousness, Self, Being, Mind, or God. The awakening to this true nature, claimed a Zen master, is ‘the direct awarenesss that you are more than this puny body or limited mind. Stated negatively, it is the realization that the universe is not external to you. Positively, it is experiencing the universe as yourself.’ … Typical is the claim by an Englishman that to realize our true identity is to ‘find that the I, one’s real, most intimate self, pervades the universe and all other beings. That the mountains, and the sea, and the stars are a part of one’s body, and that one’s soul is in touch with the souls of all creatures.’ Nor are such descriptions the exclusive province of mystics. They have been echoed by philosophers, psychologists, and physicists. ‘Out of my experience … one final conclusion dogmatically emerges,’ said the great American philosopher William James (1960). ‘There is a continuum of cosmic consciousness against which our individuality builds but accidental forces, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother sea.’
     From this perspective, evolution is a vast journey of growing self-awareness and a return to our true identity. Our current crises are seen as expressions that arise from our mistaken identity. But they can also be seen as self-created challenges that may speed us on our evolutionary journey toward ultimate self-recognition.”

       Walsh R. Human survival: A psychoevolutionary analysis. ReVision 1985; 8: 7-10. (available for free on the web)

 

fvalduga   www.dpreview.com

#354 Upgrading Models of Reality - Traumatic OR Gentle?

     We tend to ignore (avoidance) perceptions that don't fit our current worldview (ideas, self-concepts, preconceptions, diagnostic boxes). So we live our lives according to, identify with, & understandably cling to, stunningly simple models of reality. One way or another, we squeeze all perceptions to fit this model. Were it not so, we'd remain perpetually amazed & immobilized by this incomprehensibly complex, rapidly changing universe.
     But as time passes, we're forced to recognize discrepancies between reality & our models. Periodically, this disconnect completely overwhelms our model, causing our entire current worldview to crumble ("suffer a breakdown", "loss of faith", "existential crisis", "shipwreck" etc) and we're forced to build a new, more adequate model that's a closer approximation of reality. Initially, this can be quite traumatic, yet this is an absolutely normal part of maturation - see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/shipwrecks-meaning-meaning-making.html

     Mindfulness practice is an evidence-based, surprisingly gentle, effective way of learning about reality, by intentionally, gently, slowly but progressively approaching & embracing our entire experience, including fears, and thus learning to be at home with & finding joy in this very life. It's a very effective way of constantly, intentionally upgrading our operating system, so our software doesn't need to crash.

Udayan Sankar Pal   www.facebook.com/UdayanSankarPal