#723 What Does It Take for Us to Realize?

      “The separate self that we have invested our whole identity in is being exposed in this investigation as being completely nonexistent. It’s not there. The self, the separate self around whom we have our lives, our thoughts, and feelings and activities and relationships have revolved for so many decades – when we look for it – it’s not there. 
     Now it takes courage and love and clarity to begin to look. And many of us, not all of us, but many of us have to suffer intensely before life pushes us to ask these fundamental questions. Others come to it through other ways. But for many of us it’s repeated failure and suffering that makes us say ‘Hang on. Just stop. How much longer am I going to go on thinking and feeling this way. Why don’t I look at the fundamental presumption.’ And that starts with ‘What am I?’ ‘Am I this image, this cluster of sensations?’ 
     And as soon as we start looking – we don’t have to look very deeply – it’s obvious that we’re not what we thought we were."

       above transcribed from the Youtube video:
       "Rupert Spira - 'The Seamless Intimacy Of Experience' - Interview by Renate McNay"
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAEwC4VjvyE

       The above non-dual inquiry method is very gentle compared to the challenges life hands out when we try - in vain - to cling to a fictional solid, fixed 'sense of self': http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=shipwrecks
    

 

#704 Choppy Waves AND Profound Stillness Beneath

www.elephantjournal.com

#537 Appropriate Behavior Takes Time AND Practice!

     How many people do you know who, no matter what:
1) laugh heartily, 
2) blurt something out,  
3) laugh heartily, then 
4) rush off? 

     Typically there's nothing funny, and they don't stop long enough to hear or understand what you have to say. 
     Is this really supposed to represent meaningful human interaction?

     Do I enjoy a regular daily sitting meditation practice? If not, then in all likelihood, I too lack what it takes to consistently engage - with an open mind-heart - with whomever & whatever the present moment holds.

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/07/introverts-contribute-much-more-than.html 

Cotton Coulson, National Geographic   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com

#234 Shared World of Deep Meaning AND Multiculturalism

     Based on our experience in fifteen 8-week MBSR workshops, with attendees from a wide range of cultures, ages, and educational backgrounds, it's abundantly clear that mindfulness welcomes all to meet in a "shared world" of deep meaning. Mindfulness may well be the Esperanto - the common language - of deeply meaningful connection. As human beings we're all wounded, in need of healing from each other; AND we're all healers through listening deeply, being fully with each other.
     Anything less than such a deep human-to-human connection (see quote below), is a barrier to meaningful communication between individuals, cultures, religions etc (eg doctor-patient, peace talks).

     "Most analyses of traditional healing systems involve situations in which patients and healers share a similar cultural background. In multicultural societies, sufferer and healer may live in different local worlds and may not share the same notions of the roles of patient and healer, the appropriate place and time for healing, the meaning of symbolic acts, and the expected outcome. Where a shared world cannot be assumed, patient and healer must go through prolonged negotiation to define the parameters of an effective clinical encounter. Even when patient and healer find common ground, their co-constructed understandings of illness and healing may run into conflict with larger institutional contexts and the social world. The clinical encounter is embedded in social structures, which may give it unintended meanings and consequences."
       Kirmayer LJ. Asklepian dreams: the ethos of the wounded-healer in the clinical encounter. Transcult Psychiatry 2003; 40(2): 248-77.

Paul Hannon   http://paulhannon.com/

#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