#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

 

#718 How Can We Best Let Go near Life's End?

     How can we let go of clinging to life, near the end of life?

     “Be happy in every moment. … You don’t need to change anything. Let everything happen just as it comes. Just flow with it. It’s the process; everything dissolves into you, so change with whatever happens.” 


      “What practice makes it easier to let go of this life?”

      “The best practice, is calm abiding. Remain with the breath. Develop calmness inside. Join awareness and the breath. Trusting these. Trusting the knowing. Trusting the calmness. Not pushing yourself to make any changes. And not paying attention to what others say about it.” 
            Khandro Rimpoche in: Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, NY, 2008.



     “If you accept life and death without any conditions, your life will become supple instead of rigid. You will not create strife."
            Katagiri D. “You have to say something. Manifesting Zen insight.” Shambhala, Boston, 1998.  

 

#671 What Feels Healthy?

     Fear shuts us down. It makes our heart-mind, our whole body feel tight, constricted, stiff, rigid, cold, shaky, lousy.

     What do we fear? We fear constant change, aging, sickness and death. We fear having little or no control over our lives, others' lives, our stuff, our world. We fear meaninglessness.
     Fear is feeling unloved. Above all else we want unconditional love.

     What if each of us is the SOURCE of unconditional love?

     How does it feel while we radiate unconditional kindness towards anyone, anything & any activity?
     How does the above compare with how we usually feel caught up in our cravings, aversions & self-absorbtion?
     Which of these clearly feels healthy?

#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

 

#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

#334 Odd Statements, Self-knowledge & Addiction

     Many suggestions and statements in the mindfulness literature may - initially - sound odd, intriguing, puzzling or just plain irritating. We measure all information based on our current worldview and self-concept. If new information does not fit with our current worldview and self-concept, there's cognitive dissonance, which is uncomfortable. 
     We don't like being uncomfortable. So instead of creatively approaching novel information, we try to avoid new data that threatens the status quo: ignore it or reinterpret (distort) it to fit our preconceptions. Only as a last resort, do we elect to grow as a person, mature - upgrade, remodel & expand our worldview & self-concept to better fit reality. 
     There's an addictive quality to our opinions, concepts - including self-concept, and worldview. They have a magical spell quality to them - like a "lucky coin" we feel we have to carry in our pockets at all times - or else!!! We identify with these - we think that we are literally composed of these ephemeral "things". We fear ego-death when we contemplate upgrading our self-concept or worldview. But of course we don't disappear or become diminished in any way when we change our minds about any or all of these. In fact, we become more at home in the universe, the more we open up to reality as it truly is. It's a progressive unburdening to drop old superstitions and evolve as an intelligent mature human being.

Dale Chihuly   http://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/

#332 Who Treats Suffering?

     "Eric Cassel has written movingly of the way in which medicine’s failure to pay appropriate attention to the non-physical aspects of treatment can lead to suffering. Suffering is what a person, rather than a bare biological organism, experiences. It is an existential concept, resulting from consideration of the patient’s life, which is an attribute of them as a person, not just of their body. It occurs when the impending destruction of the person is perceived. ‘Most generally, suffering can be defined as the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person.’"          Wilson B. Metaphysics and medical education: taking holism seriously. J Eval Clin Pract 2013; 19(3): 478-84.

      If the above makes you cringe, you're not alone. The thought of one's own and one's loved ones' death is the most difficult thing to contemplate, for everyone, including doctors. What we fear, we tend to avoid. But one cannot avoid reality, after all we're all in it. And, pushing things out of our consciousness just drives them into our subconscious, where it festers and plays havoc with our lives, surfacing in varied unexpected but invariably unpleasant ways like symptoms that mimic physical disease, headaches, anxiety, sleep disturbance, angry outbursts etc etc.

     Avoidance doesn't work. The Mindful approach is intentionally embracing reality as it is. It's much easier and infinitely more effective than avoidance.

     Who treats suffering? We all self-manage our own. Mindfulness practices alone are powerful. Some people require additional help from mental health professionals, counselors etc.

Samish Island, WA

#86 Facing Basic Fear

     “I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life ... there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious (spiritual ***) outlook on life.”
      "Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose."             Carl Jung

     “The secret cause of all suffering is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life. It cannot be denied if life is to be affirmed … The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life’s joy.”          Joseph Campbell

     Humor: "I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes." and "Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing."     Anon

     *** See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/04/psychospiritual-technologies.html