#763 Overview of Meditation PRACTICE

     Our life, at times, appears to be under control - "I've got this!" Though we more-or-less sleep-walk through life, "doing things half-assed," we assume we're smart enough to get away with it. We're self-absorbed, lost in youthful naivete, (imagined) power & bright future. At this level of unconsciousness, we're not interested meditation at all. For a variety reasons, some of us remain at this level of maturity.

     As the years roll on, some of us are forced to learn hard lessons, become more humble, recognize how minimal our ability is to control life, and start searching for a deeper, more reliable form of happiness that's independent of conditions. Meditation now becomes more relevant.

     NOW the entire world is in turmoil: Covid 19 crisis / financial meltdown / climate crisis / direct or proxy warfare / refugee crises. "Normal" times have evaporated, possibly forever. It's time to wake up & engage with life CONSCIOUSLY, WISELY. 
     Einstein said that we can't solve a mess with the same level of consciousness as the one with which we caused it. We MUST evolve / mature to a higher level of consciousness. Now meditation practice is a vital asset.

     The various mindfulness meditation (MBSR) practices all have us concentrate our awareness on an object of meditation, in real time. The physically-felt details of our object of meditation (eg breath in our belly) are to completely fill our awareness. No part of our awareness should remain with which to be anxious, sad, to obsess, or daydream. Stable, one-pointed concentration - absorbed only on one "object" in silence & stillness (without metal chatter, without physical / emotional restlessness), in and of itself, feels pleasant & can therefore be effortlessly maintained. Profound mental rest & therefore stress relief are relatively easily & quickly obtainable.
     But initially, we ALL behave according to our lifelong training - unconsciously follow our deeply conditioned habits. So we follow the instructions in a "half-assed" way, "just going through the motions," remaining lost in our trance: self-talk about "the story of me," continuing to catastrophize, wallow, or daydream. Then we quickly jump to self-judgment & want to quit meditation "because we're no good at it."
     Our greatest obstacles are: 1) Lack of practice,  2) Impatience, & 3) Expecting dramatic results.
     1) A regular daily meditation PRACTICE must be established to replace our old outdated conditioning with new more appropriate conditioning / training. The more we practice wisely, the better we become at it. Without this disciplined approach, we derive ZERO benefits, no matter how much we read & talk about meditation. As with skiing, tennis or golf, we improve in direct proportion to the quality & quantity of our practice.
     2) IF we PATIENTLY persevere, and accept our old conditioning (untrained, distracted mind), treat ourselves with incredible patience, gentleness & kindness - holding ourselves in safety & unconditional love - carefully following the meditation instructions - zooming in on the details with curiosity, we WILL INEVITABLY SUCCEED. 
     Our mind is the organ of change. Wise, consistent training invariably transforms our mind to work FOR us (instead of against us). We will turn our life right around. From feeling helpless, vulnerable & needy, we gradually shift to embody the source of safety & unconditional love first for ourselves, and subsequently for others. 
     3) When we stabilize our awareness on a physical sensation (even for 10 seconds), we release our habitual shallow level of consciousness ("noisy ego") and become our deeper intelligence, experiencing peace, stillness & silence. The first few times, we tend to get either bored or all excited and so pop right back up to the shallows & start blabbering to ourselves, which of course immediately ends the experience. 
     If we expect meditation to deliver fireworks & levitation, we might actually overlook the subtle quality of profound peace, stillness & silence, and judge it boring, a waste of time! 
     If however we have suffered, or are now suffering from a lot of emotional anguish, then experiencing profound peace, stillness & silence will feel absolutely heavenly. Gradually, we do learn to feel comfortable & stabilize in this profoundly peaceful, still, silent, loving space of deep intelligence where we are deeply connected to, engaged, intimate with ourselves, others, the environment, life itself: http://www.johnlovas.com/2020/03/appreciating-subtle.html

     Let us PRACTICE regularly, wisely, patiently, kindly every day, formally and informally. We've created a desperate mess with our noisy ego. Now we must clean up this hot mess, but can only do so by embodying our deep intelligence. We know how; we can do it!

#762 Overview of the Meditative Path

     While busy raising a family, establishing a career, and coping with the effects of various traumas, little time or energy remains to get one's bearings. A recent radio show: "The Death of Leisure" discussed how current societal pressures & priorities are so narrowly focused on productivity (work), that opportunities to "think about how to pursue the things we value" are disappearing. "So how do we reconfigure our relationship to the time we have and open it up so we can pursue the good life?" https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-death-of-leisure-1.5470259
     A small proportion of us do seek out, and do obtain symptomatic relief from stress through meditation, including mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).
     After children have grown & become independent, career has peaked (or starts winding down), and psychological issues have more or less resolved, a gnawing "lack" often still remains - or becomes more pressing than ever before. 
     But because most of us have so exclusively devoted ourselves to "productivity," our profession becomes our entire identity, so we often find ourselves lost & feeling empty by middle-age, and especially after we retire. So some swear "I'll never retire"; some quickly go back to work after a very brief retirement; and some very quickly die after retirement. The momentum of a lifetime of constant struggle & striving for financial security, material success & professional respect is powerful & enduring. 
     All life transitions are challenging, perhaps especially retirement: loss of identity; diminished prestige, income, control & social contacts; diminishing physical & mental health; fear of death; and perhaps the most frightening of all - becoming consciously aware (perhaps for the first time) of what's actually going on. Retirement is an inherent part of wise aging - something in which most of us have ZERO training, knowledge, or even interest. http://www.johnlovas.com/2011/12/successful-aging.html

     Serious meditation practice can help us far more than we can imagine:

      “Beginning meditation may be difficult. Just sitting immobile for a half hour can be arduous at first and intensive practice over a period of days can be powerful and at times disconcerting. Any unresolved psychological conflicts tend to surface as soon as attention is turned inward and the restless agitated nature of the untrained mind rapidly becomes apparent. Powerful surges of arousal and emotion may alternate with deep peace and joy.
     Even a few hours of intensive practice can easily demonstrate that our usual levels of awareness and perception are grossly insensitive, distorted, and outside voluntary control. Indeed, it rapidly becomes apparent that our usual degree of voluntary control of psychological processes is far less than commonly assumed. Amazingly enough, we can live a whole lifetime without recognizing the fact that these perceptual processes continuously control, create, and distort our reality as well as our ideas of who and what we are. Most people who have tried would probably agree that training the mind and bringing it under voluntary control is one of the most difficult tasks a person can undertake.
     The rewards of meditative practice tend to be subtle at first. Increased calm, sensitivity, receptivity, empathy, insight, and clarity are some of the qualities that may be experienced early as a result of regular practice. Old assumptions about oneself and the world are gradually surrendered, and more finely tuned, comprehensive perspectives begin to emerge.
     Such immediate benefits, however, are only tastes of what is potentially a profound transformative process, for when practiced intensely, meditation disciplines almost invariably lead into the transpersonal realm of experience. Advanced practitioners report states of consciousness, levels of perceptual sensitivity and clarity, and degrees of insight, calm, joy, and love that far exceed those experienced by most people in their daily life. A progressive sequence of altered states of consciousness can occur, which may ultimately result in the permanent, radical shift in consciousness known as enlightenment or liberation.”

       Roger Walsh. “Meditation: Doorway to the Transpersonal.” In R. Walsh, F. Vaughan eds. “Beyond Ego: Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology.” JP Tarcher, 1980.

    For more depth & detail: http://www.johnlovas.com/2020/02/maturing-beyond-ordinary-happiness.html

#744 Consciousness - Some Finer Points

     "'There is nothing we know more intimately than consciousness, but there is nothing harder to explain.' 

 

     ... cognitive psychologists tend to define consciousness as the awareness of internal and external events (e.g., mental phenomena and stimuli in the environment, respectively).

     ... common to all definitions of consciousness is the implicit distinction between consciousness and the content of consciousness. 

 
     'When people are conscious, they are always conscious of something. Consciousness always has an object.'

     In contrast, a so-called state of consciousness (SoC) tends to be defined as '[the set] of mental episodes of which one can readily become directly aware'. ... (this) definition represents a theoretical confusion of consciousness and its contents by explicitly stating that a SoC is the content (i.e., mental episodes) available to conscious awareness. That is, when the qualifier 'state' is affixed to consciousness, 'it' [consciousness] is held to be content. Consequently, the term states of consciousness rests on a conflation of consciousness and content whereby consciousness is erroneously categorized in terms of content rendered perceptible, presumably, by itself. Again, we refer to this as the consciousness/content fallacy.
     Implicit in the consciousness/content fallacy is the fallacious notion that during a SoC, consciousness may observe its own qualities.

     (But) consciousness cannot directly experience 'itself' as a perceptible object, for then it would cease to be the subject. ... analogous to a sword that cannot cut itself...  

 

     Definitions of altered states of consciousness (ASCs)... postulate that it is the shifts, deviations, or differences in subjective experience, psychological functioning, or mental functioning that constitute an ASC. 

     If one accepts the definition of consciousness as being conscious of something, then it would seem to follow that during an ASC it is the altered phenomenal properties (e.g., visual mental imagery, body image, time sense) that consciousness may be aware of, rather than the state of consciousness. 

     (The) definition of phenomenal field as 'absolutely anything that is in the total momentary experiencing of a person, including the experience of the self' is adopted and applied to 'phenomenal properties.' It is arguable that if one defines phenomenal properties in this way, then an altered pattern of phenomenal properties encapsulates what has been referred to ... as phenomenal and non-phenomenal objects of conscious awareness, that is, the content that a privileged observer may be aware of during what (has been) referred to as an ASC. One may then recommend that the term altered state of consciousness be supplanted by a new term, 'altered pattern of phenomenal properties.' It would seem that by reconceptualizing the notion of an ASC in this manner, the confusion of consciousness with the content of consciousness is avoided. 

      (In conclusion) when the qualifier 'state' is affixed to consciousness, 'it' [consciousness] is held to be content. This is referred to as the consciousness/content fallacy. It is also contended that the consciousness/content fallacy is avoided if one reconceptualizes an ASC as an altered pattern of phenomenal properties."

        Rock AJ, Krippner S. "Does the concept of 'altered states of consciousness' rest on a mistake?" International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 2007; 26(1): 33–40. http://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies/vol26/iss1/5

 

 

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

 

#736 Words, Concepts, Definitions ... Limits of Language

     When we directly engage with reality, there is wonder, gratitude, silence, stillness, timelessness, peace, and joy. We all know & love this as an aspect of consciousness, yet don't experience it nearly often enough. And when we do experience it, we may inadvertently start talking to ourselves or to others to describe it, to "capture it" in words - which immediately ends the transcendent experience. Words can indeed get in the way!
     Though we crank out far too many words (rather than listening attentively), we do sometimes need to say something. Here's an interesting discussion about the great difficulty of capturing complex, important concepts (such as wisdom) using words, word-based concepts & definitions:

     "Philosophers have debated definitional issues for centuries, and even today lament that, in the words of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 'The problems of definition are constantly recurring ... no problems of knowledge are less settled than those of definition ...' In fact the French philosopher Jacques Derrida argued that 'nearly every term is an aporia' (an irreducible puzzle) that 'admits of no settled solution or clear resolution.'
     Eastern philosophies agree. One of the central themes of Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy is that all phenomena are shunyata: a difficult term to translate, but implying that all phenomena are inherently transconceptual. Likewise Radhakrishnan, one of India’s greatest philosophers and also its second president, pointed to 'the inadequacy of all intellectual categories ...” Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, put it poetically:

          Existence is beyond the power of words to define:
          Terms may be used but none of them are absolute.

     So defining wisdom, or anything else for that matter, turns out to be a deep linguistic challenge. We cannot expect absolute certainty or agreement from our terms nor from our definitions. However, we can try to use them carefully and skillfully, remembering that, as the philosopher Huston Smith put it, 'all human thought proceeds from words. As long as words are askew, thought cannot be straight.' "
       Roger Walsh. "What is Wisdom? Cross-cultural and Cross-disciplinary Synthesis." Review of General Psychology 19(3); 278-293: 2015.

Pinterest

 

#733 Time for Intra- & Interpersonal Qualitative Change?

     "Einstein said that we cannot solve the problems of he world from the level of thinking that we were at when we created them. I think a lot of people embrace this concept, while underestimating what it really means. A different level of thinking means a different level of thinking. It does not even mean just a different kind of thinking. It does not mean a different emphasis in our thinking. It does not mean a more loving kind of thinking. It means what he said, a different level of thinking, and to me, that is what meditation brings.
      Meditation can change the world because meditation changes us. That is the point. The world will not change until we change. The state of the world is a reflection of who we are. The state of the world is the effect; the state of consciousness of human beings is the cause. Mahatma Gandhi said the problem with the world is that humanity is not in its right mind and that is what meditation addresses. It returns us to our right mind, and until there is this evolution in consciousness, we will stay locked in a fear based perspective in which we continue to see ourselves as separate from each other, and in which we continue to think we can do something to someone else and not reap the result ourselves."    Marianne Williamson

        Ed Shapiro, Deb Shapiro eds. "Be the Change: How Meditation Can Transform You and the World" Sterling Ethos, 2011.

Ancient Chinese Dragon

 

#731 What is there to hang onto?

     It's fascinating to think of a newborn baby having an oceanic relationship with the external world - no sense of separation.
     Gradually, she gains a sense of being a separate individual, though still very much identified with her caretakers. 
     Later she comes to identify with & tries hard to "fit in" with her peers. 
     As a young adult, she will differentiate somewhat from her cluster of friends. 
     But in all probability, she will remain more-or-less unconsciously identified with her tribe (sex/gender, religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, etc). She may even intentionally join some cult, which demands conformity to their group-think. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2016/11/memberships-benefits-and-drawbacks.html

     Very, very few of us evolve past tribal consciousness. This requires a surprising amount of courage, as well as patient, intentional, disciplined practice of letting go of absolutely everything we assume our "self" to be - that's letting go of a lot. But ...

          If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
          If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
          And if you let go completely, you will have complete peace.                 Ajahn Chah

     Lots more on the ego: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=ego

#726 Your Mind Transforms When Practicing Meditation

     1. Each time you focus on or return to the anchor, you are building your concentration
     2. Each time you focus on the anchor, you detach from your thought stream. This is a practice of letting go in the moment, which translates to letting go in the rest of the world.
     3. Each time you notice that the mind is wandering, that is the moment of mindfulness — not a moment of failure.
     4. Each time you are kind to yourself when your mind wanders, instead of criticizing yourself, you are exercising and strengthening your self-compassion for challenging moments in the rest of your daily life.
     5. Each time you notice where the mind is wandering, that is an opportunity for insight into your mind’s habits and patterns — what we might call wisdom or self-understanding.

       Christopher Willard. "Growing Up Mindful: Essential Practices to Help Children, Teens, and Families Find Balance, Calm, and Resilience." Sounds True, 2016.

Apple blossoms, Wolfville, NS

#720 Quality of Life = Quality of Consciousness

     Many of us have a strong, recurrent tendency to waste a lot of time, energy & heartache on external events that have already passed, or are unlikely to happen in the future. In no way is this useful or practical such as seriously deciding to change our behavior, or drawing up a real action plan. 
     By obsessing over the contents of consciousness like this, we inflict tremendous unnecessary suffering on ourselves.

      “We are all prisoners of our minds.
     This realization is the first step on the journey to freedom.”         Ram Das

     “When water is still it is like a mirror ….
      And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness,
      How much more the faculties of mind?
      The mind of the sage being in repose
      Becomes the mirror of the universe.”                    Chuang Tzu

     We're free to effortlessly shift from attending to the contents of (our noisy egoic) consciousness to directly experience the depth of stillness & silence within - the vast field of consciousness itself.
     Contents can be compared to clouds, while (transpersonal post-symbolic) consciousness is the sky in which clouds occasionally float by.

    See: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!Two-Levels-of-Consciousness/c17jj/56f14e0c0cf266a292561f27

#703 Behaving At Home

www.elephantjournal.com

#696 Freedom

     “We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.”

        Huston Smith, Jeffery Paine. “Tales of Wonder. Adventures Chasing the Divine. An Autobiography.” HarperOne, NY, 2009.

#695 Accepting Ourselves, Accepting Others, and Then ...

     We keep trying so desperately to be accepted, valued and loved. We're acutely aware, at some level, of our many imperfections. And we fear our very survival hinges on eliminating, hiding, or overcompensating for our "defectiveness".
     After a while, we start realizing that nobody is perfect; and that unconditional love is painfully rare. Imperfection is tolerable, but life without unconditional love is brutal. What can we do about it? We know that we can't make others do anything. 
     But we can learn to accept ourselves as we are, then it's relatively easy to accept others as they are, and then, perhaps, we ourselves can become the source of unconditional love - the absolutely most precious, nurturing aspect of life. Perfection within imperfection?

     “When you came into this world, you cried and everyone else smiled. You should so live your life that when you leave, everyone else will cry, but you will be smiling.”                         Paramahansa Yogananda
        Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

#691 Engaging Life

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell - don't go back to sleep,
You have to ask for what you really want - don't go back to sleep.
You know, there are those who go back and forth over the threshold
where the two worlds meet, and the door it's always open
and it's round -
don't go back to sleep."

Rumi

WisdomAtWork.com

#678 Each Moment is Brand New & Unique - Is Your Response?

      Each moment presents an absolutely new, absolutely unique, never-to-be-repeated set of circumstances, to which we're asked to respond in an absolutely brand new unique open fashion. Can we be absolutely fresh, authentic & true to what is?

     Each moment holds incredible freedom of choice & creative potential, as long as we are the very energy of an alert, loving, spacious, open heart-mind. Can we be fully alive?

Fire juggler in front of the Basilica of the Sacre Coeur, Montmartre

#674 No Time to BE Mindful ???

     "Definitions of mindfulness ... focus upon a number of qualities

          (a) a deliberate intention to pay attention to momentary experience, 

          (b) a marked distinction from normal, everyday modes of consciousness, 

          (c) a clear focus on aspects of active investigation of moment-to-moment experience, 

          (d) continuity of a precise, dispassionate, non-evaluative, and sustained moment-to-moment awareness of immediate experience, and 

          (e) an attitude of openness, acceptance, kindness, curiosity and patience."

       Hofmann FG, Grossman P, Hinton DE. "Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation: Potential for Psychological Interventions." Clin Psychol Rev. 2011 November ; 31(7): 1126–1132. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2011.07.003. 

     Since we tend to live "in our heads", theories are important, too important. We don't really consider BEING mindful in our own daily, moment-by-moment life - at least not now, maybe later, when we're not so busy ...... 

     Even sincere young people taking & apparently "enjoying" an 8-week MBSR course typically "don't get the chance" to practice between classes, often "get too busy" & drop out before finishing the course, and "don't get around" to filling out a one-page course evaluation.

     But mindfulness is NOT THEORETICAL, and it's not just another "add-on" to one's overcrowded litany of stuff to get done.  

     Mindfulness is about actually living RIGHT NOW within our most evolved operating system, with an open heart-mind. How can we not have time to live optimally?

How To Enter?

 

#653 Awareness Leads to Spaciousness & Freedom

     “Change will happen naturally as we open to the truth. The more we bring our attachments into awareness, the freer we become, not because we eliminate the attachments, but because we learn to identify more with awareness than with desire. Using our capacity for consciousness, we can change perspective on ourselves, giving a sense of space where once there was only habit. Discipline means restraining the habitual movement of the mind, so that instead of blind impulse there can be clear comprehension. 
     In our quest to understand where our unsatisfactoriness derives from, we are often inclined to search for causes and people to blame. … the search for causes has to lead eventually back to the individual. Although traumatic and terrible things may have occurred, it is the individual’s mind that perpetuates the suffering, and that can be trained to change. As long as we are struggling against the feeling, hoping to eliminate it by getting high or being cured, we are still attached. We can relieve unsatisfactoriness only by sharpening our focus and changing our perspective.”

        Epstein M. "Going on Being. Buddhism and the way of Change. A Positive Psychology for the West." Broadway Books, NY, 2001. 

Rutger Bus   www.dpreview.com

#634 Personal Quality of Life - Professionalism - Citizenship

     We can all agree that every one of us is very interested & highly motivated to have & enjoy maximal personal health & quality of life. What constitutes professional behavior & good citizenship, and how best to promote these is more controversial & challenging.
     Yet I've come to understand that an individual's attention to self-care & wellness, their professionalism, good citizenship overlap greatly. From the other direction, I suggest that it's not possible (except perhaps for sociopaths) to enjoy optimal health while behaving unethically. If someone commits a horrific crime, chances are s/he will be found criminally insane (innocent by virtue of insanity). But I suggest that anything short of consistent prosocial, civilized, allocentric / ecocentric behavior is unhealthy - creates needless additional suffering - for the individual "actor" and society. Individuals (except sociopaths) are an integral part of society and nature - whatever benefits or harms one, has the identical effect on the other.
     So progressive maximal personal evolution of consciousness, fully integrated into one’s life, is the path to maximal health & well-being for oneself (wellness), one's profession (professionalism) and society at large (good citizenship).
     Teaching self-care - at the deepest level eg via mindfulness (MBSR) - is I suggest, a highly effective way of teaching professionalism and good citizenship in our multicultural, multi-faith, multi-ethnic society. Our world is literally dying for these qualities.

#632 Awareness Shines

     "Awareness is like a beam of light that shines endlessly into space. We only perceive that light when it is reflected off some object and consciousness is produced... Awareness is the light by which we see the world... We mistake the clear light of pure awareness for the shadows that it casts in consciousness... We forget that we are the light itself and imagine that we are the densities that reflect the light back to us." 

                                                                         Stephen Levine                                                         www.wisdomatwork.com

       Beyond Concepts: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/beyond-concepts.html

Alastair Cochrane ARPS   www.dpreview.com

#629 Curiosity, Waking up

     "To consider that you might play a part in your own difficulties is like a loss of innocence.
     Loss of innocence comes with some advantages though, the main one being self-knowledge. If you no longer believe that the problem is entirely outside, you can be curious. If you are curious about your thoughts, then your thoughts become hypotheses, which you can test. You don't have to believe your thoughts or the conclusions and fears that go with them.
     This is thrilling but also deeply disturbing, because you thought you were your thoughts, and now you begin to suspect that you are not. In which case, who are you? Who is thinking? Being curious - about who you are and your part in your life - is a first step. But into what? Probably into a meditation practice."

       John Tarrant. "Hidden in Plain Sight. The truth is hidden in the last place we look - the moment that's happening to us right now. That's why we meditate." Shambhala Sun, March 2015

#626 Satisfaction??

     We're always "hungry" aren't we? And we anxiously race around getting, becoming, doing, consuming - desperately trying to get rid of this "hunger", this "fire in the belly".
     We experiment constantly, testing the very limits of self-indulgence (intoxication, overeating, hoarding, workaholism, compulsive traveling) and self-denial (abstinence, fasting, homelessness, agoraphobia) trying to "get some satisfaction". But all of these are transient, fundamentally unsatisfying, and not what we're about.

     Can you recall ever feeling truly, wonderfully satisfied, for any length of time? If you can, it's very useful to recall the direct experience of this event in as much detail as possible. Though powerful, it was probably an otherwise simple event: being on the sea shore; stepping outdoors into a cool, crisp starlit night; as a child, sitting under a rose-apple tree, quietly watching your father working in the fields.
     The sublime quality of consciousness at such times is a natural part of ourselves that we barely know. Yet this aspect of consciousness is peaceful - hungers for nothing. This is the quality of consciousness & life that we stabilize during mindfulness practices. This, and only this quality of consciousness, while doing anything or nothing at all, brings peace, satisfaction, joy.
    

#608 Fearing the Shallows & Depths

     This morning, in a local jewellery store, I saw a collection of clay wall hangings, each with a woman's face on top, and a slogan, meant to be funny, below. On one of these was written:
          "Deep down, I'm really shallow!"

     This is dark humor - trying to deal with something that's actually terrifying. I think a large proportion of us, women and probably more so men, go to great lengths to remain constantly distracted so as to avoid seeing clearly who / what they are deep down. They fear that their own character / psyche / soul is at best shallow, at worst wicked. This is a hangover from the dark ages of clerics terrifying people with burning in hell forever unless they pay clerics to pray for them. How could, or indeed why would we live meaningful, dignified lives if we believe that we're "rotten to the core"?
     All the world's wisdom traditions have intelligent, educated, well-meaning, civilized representatives. Also, all have shrill representatives who've miraculously evaded a thousand years of human evolution, and misery loves company.
     Meditation practices are avoided at all costs by those who fear getting to know themselves (as well as those who gain by propagating this fear). In meditation we do directly experience the "shadow" aspect of ourselves - the less flattering aspects of our personality that everyone else clearly sees, but which otherwise remains hidden from us. But seeing & understanding our shadow has nothing to do with encountering "the devil". Becoming aware of this part of our subconscious helps us mature and behave as responsible, civilized adults.
     Fortunately, meditation also lets each of us directly experience the very best of human nature. Each of us, fundamentally, is kind, spacious awareness. This wise, mature, civilized aspect is amply able to hold the relatively small, transient shadow aspect.
     Mindfulness practices, which are all forms of meditation, are ancient, time-proven practices, specifically designed to foster human evolution of consciousness. In other words, we CAN intentionally promote our own psychosocialspiritual maturation - but ONLY IF we can overcome fear-based avoidance.

Bess learning from Gretel