#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/

#233 Number of Hits & Meaning?

     A recent editorial had the promising title "Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth." The abstract indicated the author would describe "the evolution of concepts related to knowledge." 
       Benjamins VR. Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2012.10.005 

      Instead, it listed the numbers of hits a series of terms generated on Google. The quantity of anything - be it hits, "likes", or Facebook "friends" - should have no bearing on the quality of your life. Numbers lack inherent meaning.

      "Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life."      Viktor Frankl

Fall in Nova Scotia

#232 Cultivating the "Wisdom to know the difference"

       “Compassion’s way is the way of letting go, of loosening our grip. … We can only become compassionate toward our life and toward those around us when we are no longer preoccupied with trying to control the uncontrollable.
     Acknowledging the inevitability of change does not mean mere passivity or resignation however. We can still ‘row, row, row’ our boat, but gently rather than frantically. We are honest about what we can control and what we can’t, and our efforts are directed toward what’s possible, not what’s impossible.” 
       Magid B. “Ending the pursuit of happiness – a Zen guide.” Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2008.  

     "oncologists ... who saw their role as both biomedical and psychosocial found end-of-life care very satisfying. But those 'who described a primarily biomedical role reported a more distant relationship with the patient, a sense of failure at not being able to alter the course of the disease and an absence of collegial support' ..."
       Jackson AV et al. A Qualitative Study of Oncologists’ Approaches to End-of-Life Care. J Palliative Med 2008; 11(6): 893-906.

Brody JE. "Aiding the Doctor Who Feels Cancer’s Toll" NY Times Nov 26, 2012
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/aiding-the-doctor-who-feels-cancers-toll/ 

Paul Hannon   http://paulhannon.com/

#231 Practice, Distractions, Letting go, Accumulating

     It's somewhat surprising that even among those who complete and seem to benefit from an 8-week MBSR course, the question arises: is there a follow-up course containing 'new' information? The implication being that now they 'get it' and unless there's something new and different to stimulate (distract) the mind, they'd be bored.
     One of the reasons that we sit still, silently, for up to 50 minutes at a time is precisely to let go of distractions - habitual busyness, so we can clearly study the mind.
     Fortunately, people do take the 'same' MBSR course several times sequentially, and progressively deepen their practice and understanding each time. In fact MBSR facilitators could never teach the exact same course twice because the depth of our understanding is also progressively increasing with daily practice.
     In reality, we're only able to hear or appreciate what we're ready for. As we mature psycho-spiritually, we actually appreciate things as if we heard them for the very first time. So 'beginner's mind' is really a way of avoiding 'premature closure' - the common tendency to catch the drift of a theme and immediately 'shut down', because one (mistakenly) assumes one already 'knows all about it'.
     We can spend all of our waking hours these days reading the flood of scientific and other papers and books on mindfulness should we wish to simply accumulate knowledge. No matter how much we read about mindfulness - but don't practice it - we know NOTHING about it. More importantly, such scholars derive NO benefit in terms of decreasing their own suffering, or improving their quality of life.
     Those who teach mindfulness MUST have a deep ongoing personal practice, guided by wise teachers, if they are to truly help themselves & others. "See one, do one, teach one" is just plain wrong when it comes to being a guide to an immensely deep, broad, way of life.

     Practice refers to the discipline of cultivating a crucial capacity of mind, such as wisdom or concentration. Practices are rehearsals of desired qualities, which eventually become spontaneous, natural ways of being.” 
       Walsh R. “Essential spirituality. The 7 central practices to awaken heart and mind.” John Wiley & Sons Inc, NY, 1999.

Photo: giants   www.dpreview.com

#230 First we Must have Self-compassion

     "To be able to forgive others, we first need to hold the wound inside of ourselves with compassion - compassion to our own sense of woundedness.
     If you see a little dog and you bend over to pet it, but suddenly it leaps at you and bares it's fangs and is about to bite you, then you go suddenly from being friendly to being angry and alarmed. But then you notice that underneath the leaves, the dog's leg is caught in a trap. Again your mood suddenly changes and all of a sudden it's 'Oh, you poor thing' because - and this comes from wisdom - you see how this behavior was coming out of suffering. That is really the dynamic of forgiveness.
     First we need to see for ourselves, when we act in ways we don't like, if we can deepen our attention and see our own hurts and fears underneath our behavior. It's not that we want the behavior to go on, but we hold ourselves with the kind of compassion and understanding that actually frees us, that allows us to have more intelligence and creativity as we move on. This is the alchemy of self-forgiveness, to contact our own vulnerability and hold ourselves with kindness requires an actual offering to ourselves of forgiveness."   Tara Brach PhD

The Compassionate Brain with Dr. Rick Hanson
Session 3: Cultivating a Forgiving Heart 
live.soundstrue.com/compassionatebrain

Michael Wood   http://miksang.com//michael_wood.html

#229 Mindfulness - NOT JUST a goal-oriented therapy

     “Mindfulness is significantly altered in both intent and method when it is separated from its spiritual *** origins and applied in clinical contexts such as psychotherapy and behavioral medicine. The shift from a spiritual to clinical framework requires a consideration of what mindfulness methods are intended to do and how they intend to do it. More specifically, when a clinician conducts guided mindfulness meditation (GMM) and then encourages the client to carry on practicing the core elements of that process, what personal, interpersonal, and contextual factors influence the degree of benefit derived by the client?”

       Yapko MD. Mindfulness and hypnosis. The power of suggestion to transform experience. WW Norton & Co, NY, 2011.

 *** spiritual, in the context of mindfulness' origins, has nothing to do with dogma, and everything to do with skillfully reducing suffering and improving health and quality of life - much like modern health care itself. The real distinction is between the short-term, specific goal-orientation of therapy eg remove something from one's life - like fear of flying, versus the broad, deep life-transforming aims of Mindfulness (MBSR) as taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn's team at UMASS.

See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/10/210-why-mindfulness-meditation.html 

Andre Gallant   http://www.andregallant.com/

#228 The Power of Attention, Intention - every Thought, Word & Deed

     “Our attention / intention and every word we say to ourselves and others serve as virtual posthypnotic suggestions that alter our perceptions of reality – and thereby reality itself – for good or ill. It is exciting for me to realize that much of the world is out of touch with the power we all have to create the kinds of realities we desire, but that this does not have to be so. We can actually change reality, each and every one of us, and shift our consciousness and the consciousness of the whole planet to a higher level.”              Lama Surya Das

Yapko MD. Mindfulness and hypnosis. The power of suggestion to transform experience. WW Norton & Co, NY, 2011.   

Fall in Nova Scotia