Improve Relationships by Tackling Self-Consciousness
6 Ways to Improve Relationships by Tackling Self-Consciousness
When I was growing up, I was a great soccer star, a swimming champion, and a well-read student.
Deep down, though, I was struggling to make more than a few good relationships with other people.
One of the biggest hindrances in my life has been self-consciousness.
Not only did I worry what other people thought about me, but I would intentionally avoid social situations where I would be uncomfortable.
I had no problem with people in general, but in some cases I avoided them like the plague.
Why? I sweat.
A lot.
I sweat so much I have to carry around a little cloth with me. I sweat so much, I sometimes have to wring out that cloth.
While in grade school I asked to be excused from class to avoid square dancing – I never came back to class that day.
It's a disease called hyperhidrosis, but I always imagined that nobody would understand the scientific aspects so I became incredibly self-conscious.
If I had to shake people's hand, I would feel strange around them for fear that they were disgusted by me.
Far from a loner, my closest friends were those who knew about my sweaty hands. We rarely talked about it, but they knew.
The relationship I had with those friends was great because I learned to accept myself when I was around them. With most other people, I never accepted my sweating disease.
More importantly, when I felt uncomfortable and disgusted with myself, the emotions were reciprocated by others through a part of the brain known as "mirror neurons".
The frontal lobe has neurons that signal when you are being touched, but there are also neurons that signal when you see other people being touched. In the same way, when my sweaty hands made me feel noticeably uncomfortable, other peop! le were feeling the same discomfort.
Now, I have grown enough to overcome most of my self-consciousness with sweating. Before anyone else could love me, I realized that I had to love myself. Embracing my situation and myself was the only way that I could be accepted fully by others.
While it is a life-long process when self-consciousness has rooted itself deep in your mind, here are 6 ways that I have been able to tackle self-consciousness:
It has dictated my life for many years so it is a slow and steady process, but an absolutely necessary one.
By removing self-consciousness in your life, you will find better relationships with people who are as comfortable with you as you are with yourself.
An extract from the kava plant can treat people with chronic anxiety, an study from Australia finds.
Patients with generalized anxiety disorder who took kava extract tablets for six weeks showed a significant reduction in their symptoms, compared with a control group that took placebo pills, the results showed.
The study confirms previous findings showing the anti-anxiety effects of kava, a psychoactive plant native to the Pacific region.
Kava is culturally important among many Pacific Islanders, and is used in rituals and ceremonies. Consuming kava may induce a mild sedation and euphoria, a numbing effect and enhanced social interaction. It is prepared in various forms, such as grinding the plant or brewing its roots.
It's believed the roots contain chemicals that may treat anxiety. The active ingredients of the plant are compounds called kavalactones. These chemicals have similar effects to medications such as Xanax, which are used to treat anxiety and panic disorders.
In the new study, 75 patients with anxiety disorders were given either kava or placebo pills, and their anxiety levels were regularly assessed over the next six weeks.
Patients who consumed kava tablets showed significant improvements in their symptoms, as measured by a commonly used psychological test.
By the end of the experiment, 26 percent of kava-consuming patients were in remission from their symptoms compared with 6 percent of the placebo group, according to the study, which was published this month in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
Kava is less addictive and has a lower risk of side effects compared with conventional anxiety medications, according to the study.
In the study, some people taking kava reported headaches, but no other side effects were seen. Previous studies have suggested the plant may have negative effects on the liver, but liver tests in the study participants showed no problems.
Researchers also found that people's genetics may affect their response to kava. Genes that code for proteins that transport a brain chemical called GABA may play a role in this, .
"If this finding is replicated, it may pave the way for simple genetic tests to determine which people may be likely to have a beneficial anxiety-reducing effect from taking kava," said Jerome Sarris, study author from the University of Melbourne.
The new study adds to the evidence of kava's medicinal potential. A 2010 review of 12 controlled trials concluded that kava is likely to be an effective treatment for anxiety, and its short-term use is likely to be safe. The reviewers, however, called for larger studies to bolster these results.
Kava is a major export of the Pacific. It was once banned in some Western countries, primarily out of concern for its alleged effects on the liver. It is now legal in most places and available in various forms, such as in relaxation supplements and "anti-energy" drinks.
Follow Bahar Gholipour @alterwired. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience .
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For most of the 25 days in which we focused on Metta Bhavana, I felt like I was swimming in joy. About two thirds or three quarters of my meditations were positively blissful, and in my daily life I felt cocooned by lovingkindness, as if I was inside a bubble of joy that stress was unable to penetrate.
Then, on day 26, I switched to the karuna bhavana (developing compassion) and that all ground to a halt. I didn't find the practice actually depressing, but it did feel sober. There was a feeling of having a weight in the heart.
But after just over a week of karuna bhavana I started finding the joy starting to return to my meditations. I'm not the only one. One of the participants in 100 Days of Lovingkindness wrote about experiencing a rush of blissful energy (pīti) as he cultivated compassion for a "neutral person":
If you like my articles, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s.
But as I said to him at the time, "Interesting things happen when you turn toward your fears." When you find you can't contemplate others' suffering without feeling sorrow (which an early Stress Reduction commentator called "failed compassion") but keep on looking, then the fear and aversion can drop away. And this can be experienced as liberating — even blissfully liberating — and the tension that's released in the body can be experienced as pleasurable energy.
In fact there can be many joyful experiences that arise while cultivating compassion. It can feel both serious and light at the same time. Last night I chose to focus on someone I know who has terminal cancer, and to wish her well, in the sense of wanting her, in her final months, to experience mindfulness and evenmindedness, and to know that she is loved and that her life has been meaningful. And there was a feeling of warmth and joy. I was aware of her condition and the physical and mental suffering she must be going through, but my sense of love for her was enough to be able to balance up the sober feelings that were arising in the heart.
And I had no sense that I needed to "fix" anything. I can't make her better. I can't save her. There's no point thinking that she "shouldn't" have cancer or that life is "unfair," or that suffering shouldn't exist. These things just happen. People get sick. People die. The important thing, it seemed, was just to see myself as a compassionate and supportive presence for her. With an acceptance of impermanence and no attachment to the idea of her getting better (although that would be welcome!) there was no sorrow.
In fact it's possible to experience joyful, even blissful, states of jhāna in the karuna bhavana practice. The Buddha discussed this often, and that's something I'll write about tomorrow.
PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.
Read More @ Source
DigitalJournal: In an attempt to teach children how to live peacefully and forge a better future, Meditation Master Peter Amato has announced he will bring a meditation program to five deserving schools throughout the country, a $ 250,000 value in training and materials. At absolutely no cost to the schools.
By making meditation a regular part of the school day, Amato said, young children and teens will be given the tools to reduce stress in their lives, and cope with competition, peer pressure, bullying and the violence all around them. "Key research findings in pilot and current school meditation programs included increases in calm…
Read the original article »
Read More @ Source
We're just over a third of the way into our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, and to celebrate we're all but giving away my double CD of guided lovingkindness and compassion meditations, The Heart's Wisdom.
As far as I'm aware, the Heart's Wisdom is the only CD set offering a guide to the four practices known as the "immeasurables" or "brahmaviharas."
The four meditations on the CD set are:
You can also see all of the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.
And if you'd like to support the work we do, which seeks to change the world through the promotion of mindfulness and compassion, you can make a one-time or recurring donation here.
Thank you!
Bodhipaksa
Deep down, though, I was struggling to make more than a few good relationships with other people.
One of the biggest hindrances in my life has been self-consciousness.
Not only did I worry what other people thought about me, but I would intentionally avoid social situations where I would be uncomfortable.
I had no problem with people in general, but in some cases I avoided them like the plague.
Why? I sweat.
A lot.
I sweat so much I have to carry around a little cloth with me. I sweat so much, I sometimes have to wring out that cloth.
While in grade school I asked to be excused from class to avoid square dancing – I never came back to class that day.
It's a disease called hyperhidrosis, but I always imagined that nobody would understand the scientific aspects so I became incredibly self-conscious.
If I had to shake people's hand, I would feel strange around them for fear that they were disgusted by me.
Love Yourself or Nobody Else Will
Far from a loner, my closest friends were those who knew about my sweaty hands. We rarely talked about it, but they knew.
The relationship I had with those friends was great because I learned to accept myself when I was around them. With most other people, I never accepted my sweating disease.
More importantly, when I felt uncomfortable and disgusted with myself, the emotions were reciprocated by others through a part of the brain known as "mirror neurons".
The frontal lobe has neurons that signal when you are being touched, but there are also neurons that signal when you see other people being touched. In the same way, when my sweaty hands made me feel noticeably uncomfortable, other peop! le were feeling the same discomfort.
Now, I have grown enough to overcome most of my self-consciousness with sweating. Before anyone else could love me, I realized that I had to love myself. Embracing my situation and myself was the only way that I could be accepted fully by others.
While it is a life-long process when self-consciousness has rooted itself deep in your mind, here are 6 ways that I have been able to tackle self-consciousness:
- Embrace what you cannot control. Conventional wisdom often tells us that it is good to accept ourselves the way we are. Acceptance is great, but I feel it doesn't have a strong enough connotation to promote real change with self-consciousness. Don't just accept what you cannot control, but fully embrace it. It may never be a positive thing, but it is a part of you and embrace how much stronger the adversity has made you become.
- Create selective blind spots. Many people who are naturally free from crippling self-consciousness are simply ignorant of their flaws. You can replicate this by telling yourself whatever you need to make yourself feel better. For example, I might tell myself that my sweating is actually a good thing for some identified reason.
- Recognize where your flaws are helpful. No matter how bitter your problems, there are probably some ways that they can help. When I drop dry food on the floor, my sweaty hands act like an efficient sweeper. In one instance, a member of the opposite sex continued raving about how attractive it was. Why be self-conscious when other people might like it?
- Talk to many strangers. Regardless of what you are self-conscious about, talking to strangers and people in general will help you to feel more comfortable. As much as you accept and embrace your own flaws, the true test is getting out with strangers and interacting with them on a routine basis. Not getting good feedback from people? Maybe you haven't really gotten rid of self-consciousness. K! eep testi! ng and trying.
- Bleed emotionally with others. Not everyone is emotional in the same way, but when you bleed about your thoughts and feelings, there is nothing left to hide. Start telling friends about whatever makes you self-conscious and you will realize that it is mostly in your imagination. Then tell the world in a blog (like this one) and there are even fewer people to hide from.
- Do something completely absurd in public. Going out in public and doing something completely absurd might sound silly, but afterwards there is little to be self-conscious about. As with bleeding emotionally, you go to the extreme in a physical sense to recognize that your problems are not that great. Last week I ran for two miles in my underwear around campus (for charity) and I could feel self-consciousness slipping away.
It has dictated my life for many years so it is a slow and steady process, but an absolutely necessary one.
By removing self-consciousness in your life, you will find better relationships with people who are as comfortable with you as you are with yourself.
 | Written on 5/20/2013 by Mans Denton. Mans Denton is an entrepreneur and self-improvement nut. His blog, The Hacked Mind, takes a scientific approach to improving life, including dietary, sleep, and meditative practices. He also likes to explore abstract self-improvement methods, such as conquering self-consciousness. | Photo Credit |
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| Roots from a kava plant CREDIT: Kava root photo via Shutterstock |
Patients with generalized anxiety disorder who took kava extract tablets for six weeks showed a significant reduction in their symptoms, compared with a control group that took placebo pills, the results showed.
The study confirms previous findings showing the anti-anxiety effects of kava, a psychoactive plant native to the Pacific region.
Kava is culturally important among many Pacific Islanders, and is used in rituals and ceremonies. Consuming kava may induce a mild sedation and euphoria, a numbing effect and enhanced social interaction. It is prepared in various forms, such as grinding the plant or brewing its roots.
It's believed the roots contain chemicals that may treat anxiety. The active ingredients of the plant are compounds called kavalactones. These chemicals have similar effects to medications such as Xanax, which are used to treat anxiety and panic disorders.
In the new study, 75 patients with anxiety disorders were given either kava or placebo pills, and their anxiety levels were regularly assessed over the next six weeks.
Patients who consumed kava tablets showed significant improvements in their symptoms, as measured by a commonly used psychological test.
By the end of the experiment, 26 percent of kava-consuming patients were in remission from their symptoms compared with 6 percent of the placebo group, according to the study, which was published this month in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
Kava is less addictive and has a lower risk of side effects compared with conventional anxiety medications, according to the study.
In the study, some people taking kava reported headaches, but no other side effects were seen. Previous studies have suggested the plant may have negative effects on the liver, but liver tests in the study participants showed no problems.
Researchers also found that people's genetics may affect their response to kava. Genes that code for proteins that transport a brain chemical called GABA may play a role in this, .
"If this finding is replicated, it may pave the way for simple genetic tests to determine which people may be likely to have a beneficial anxiety-reducing effect from taking kava," said Jerome Sarris, study author from the University of Melbourne.
The new study adds to the evidence of kava's medicinal potential. A 2010 review of 12 controlled trials concluded that kava is likely to be an effective treatment for anxiety, and its short-term use is likely to be safe. The reviewers, however, called for larger studies to bolster these results.
Kava is a major export of the Pacific. It was once banned in some Western countries, primarily out of concern for its alleged effects on the liver. It is now legal in most places and available in various forms, such as in relaxation supplements and "anti-energy" drinks.
Follow Bahar Gholipour @alterwired. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience .
Read More @ Source
Posted: 20 May 2013 12:00 AM PDT
This week's issue of New Scientist has a special section on consciousness. Conscious being that I am, I enjoyed reading about whatever the heck my consciousness consists of.
The articles contained a lot of interesting information. Much progress is being made on understanding how the brain works, including what causes something to be conscious rather unconscious. For example:
To me "the hard problem" bears a lot of resemblance to the famous question, "why is there something rather than nothing?" This presumes the validity of "rather than nothing."
Why not solve the problem of why there is something rather than nothing by simply saying, "there is something." End of story. No one has any experience of a cosmos that doesn't exist, of absolute nothingness.
Yet philosophers act as if this is a possibility. So, wow!, isn't it amazing that there is something rather than nothing!!! Let's ponder why this is so!
Noted philosopher Daniel Dennett doesn't believe there is a hard problem of consciousness. Here's what he says in his new book, "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools of Thinking."
Again, this reminds me of the "something" rather than "nothing" question. Philosophers imagine that an entity which shows no sign of existing does, then wonder how it can be that what exists isn't what doesn't exist.
Dennett describes a magic trick called "The Tuned Deck." No one, even other magicians, could ever figure out how Ralph Hull performed the trick with a deck of cards. After he died, Hull revealed the secret.
Hull's basic approach was that he would repeat "The Tuned Deck" trick, fooling people with the singular word "The" so they wouldn't recognize that Hull was using a wide variety of well-known "pick a card, any card..." tricks.
Without revealing the exact details (a magic no-no), Dennett writes:
But damn! I want my consciousness to be a freaking Big Mystery!
For most of my life I've meditated, taken psychedelic drugs, sat at the feet of a mystic guru (both literally and metaphorically), studied esoteric literature, marveled at how I'm aware of a vast cosmos that seemingly could have remained without consciousness in any corner of it.
Reading Dennett, part of me feels... Hey, dude, don't take away that Big Mystery I've been so invested in fathoming. What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
While another part of me feels... There's nothing wrong with being a Little Mystery. Even a Teeny-Tiny Mystery. After all, does size really matter?
Read More @ Source The articles contained a lot of interesting information. Much progress is being made on understanding how the brain works, including what causes something to be conscious rather unconscious. For example:
One of the most prominent attempts to turn this experimental data into a theory of consciousness is known as the "global neuronal workspace" model. This suggests that input from our eyes, ears and so on, is first processed unconsciously, primarily in sensory brain regions.
It emerges into our conscious awareness only if it ignites activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortices, with these regions connecting through ultrafast brainwaves.
However, the introduction to the special issue distinguished between "easy problems" like what's discussed above, and the "hard problem" -- what consciousness is in itself.
THERE are a lot of hard problems in the world, but only one of them gets to call itself "the hard problem". And that is the problem of consciousness – how a kilogram or so of nerve cells conjures up the seamless kaleidoscope of sensations, thoughts, memories and emotions that occupy every waking moment.
The intractability of this problem prompted British psychologist Stuart Sutherland's notorious 1989 observation: "Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon… Nothing worth reading has been written on it."
The hard problem remains unsolved. Yet neuroscientists have still made incredible progress understanding consciousness, from the reasons it exists to the problems we have when it doesn't work properly.
Is consciousness still fascinating? Yes. Elusive? Absolutely. But Sutherland's final point no longer stands. Read on…
Some people, though, don't agree that there even is a hard problem. I'm coming to agree with them.The intractability of this problem prompted British psychologist Stuart Sutherland's notorious 1989 observation: "Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon… Nothing worth reading has been written on it."
The hard problem remains unsolved. Yet neuroscientists have still made incredible progress understanding consciousness, from the reasons it exists to the problems we have when it doesn't work properly.
Is consciousness still fascinating? Yes. Elusive? Absolutely. But Sutherland's final point no longer stands. Read on…
To me "the hard problem" bears a lot of resemblance to the famous question, "why is there something rather than nothing?" This presumes the validity of "rather than nothing."
Why not solve the problem of why there is something rather than nothing by simply saying, "there is something." End of story. No one has any experience of a cosmos that doesn't exist, of absolute nothingness.
Yet philosophers act as if this is a possibility. So, wow!, isn't it amazing that there is something rather than nothing!!! Let's ponder why this is so!
Noted philosopher Daniel Dennett doesn't believe there is a hard problem of consciousness. Here's what he says in his new book, "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools of Thinking."
The Hard Problem, for [David] Chalmers, is the problem of "experience," what it is like to be conscious, the inexpressible, unanalyzable thusness of being conscious.
...Some of us, myself included, think the Hard Problem is a figment of Chalmer's imagination, but others -- surprisingly many -- have the conviction that there is or would be a real difference between a conscious person and a perfect zombie and that this is important.
There is, of course, no evidence that a perfect zombie actually exists, someone who acts exactly like a normal person, yet has no conscious experience. Again, this reminds me of the "something" rather than "nothing" question. Philosophers imagine that an entity which shows no sign of existing does, then wonder how it can be that what exists isn't what doesn't exist.
Dennett describes a magic trick called "The Tuned Deck." No one, even other magicians, could ever figure out how Ralph Hull performed the trick with a deck of cards. After he died, Hull revealed the secret.
Hull's basic approach was that he would repeat "The Tuned Deck" trick, fooling people with the singular word "The" so they wouldn't recognize that Hull was using a wide variety of well-known "pick a card, any card..." tricks.
Without revealing the exact details (a magic no-no), Dennett writes:
And so it would go, for dozens of repetitions, with Hull staying one step ahead of his hypothesis-testers, exploiting his realization that he could always do some trick or other from the pool of tricks they all knew, and concealing the fact that he was doing a grab bag of different tricks by the simple expedient of the definite article: The Tuned Deck. As Hull explained it to Hilliard:
Each time it is performed, the routine is such that one or more ideas in the back of the spectator's head is exploded, and sooner or later he will invariably give up any further attempt to solve the mystery.
Hull's trick was introducing a single common word: "the" -- for heaven's sake. This modest monosyllable seduced his audience of experts, paralyzing their minds, preventing them from jootsing. They found themselves stuck in a system in which they were sure they had to find a big, new trick, so they couldn't see that their problem(s) had not one solution, but many; they failed to jump out of the system.
I am suggesting, then, that David Chalmers has -- unintentionally -- perpetuated the same feat of conceptual sleight of hand in declaring to the world that he has discovered "The Hard Problem." Is there really a Hard Problem?
Or is what appears to be the Hard Problem simply the large bag of tricks that constitute what Chalmers calls the Easy Problems of Consciousness? These all have mundane explanations, requiring no revolutions in physics, no emergent novelties. They succumb, with much effort, to the standard methods of cognitive science.
I'll readily admit to being conflicted. As noted above, I'm coming to feel that the Big Mystery of consciousness is indeed reducible to a bunch of Little Mysteries.But damn! I want my consciousness to be a freaking Big Mystery!
For most of my life I've meditated, taken psychedelic drugs, sat at the feet of a mystic guru (both literally and metaphorically), studied esoteric literature, marveled at how I'm aware of a vast cosmos that seemingly could have remained without consciousness in any corner of it.
Reading Dennett, part of me feels... Hey, dude, don't take away that Big Mystery I've been so invested in fathoming. What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
While another part of me feels... There's nothing wrong with being a Little Mystery. Even a Teeny-Tiny Mystery. After all, does size really matter?
Posted: 19 May 2013 11:00 PM PDT
Even in great Buddhist Spirituality countries like Thailand a quiet revolutionary movement goes on below the public's radar. It is concerned with the place of self or, in Pali attâ (in Sanskrit, âtman). The typical Western Buddhist Spirituality doesn't pay attention to this, despite its boat-rocking significance and lasting implications. I know I have blogged this before, but permit me to bring this again to the reader's attention.
From the book of Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism (pp., 125–28), in 1939 the Samgharaja (lit., ruler of the Sangha) of Thailand, who is the head of the national Samgha, gave up the accepted Theravada Buddhist Spirituality notion of Non-Self (anatta) and switched to the doctrine of the Self (âtman), insisting nirvana (P., nibbana) is the true Self. Citing an unpublished dissertation by P. Cholvijarn, Nibbana as Self or No Self (2007) Williams quotes the following from Cholvijarn's dissertation:
How much easier to explain Buddhism if we assume that the teaching of the Buddha revolves around the self and, at the same time, woe unto those who, in their ignorance, seek the self in the conditioned or deny it completely (e.g., the annihilationists/materialists).
Without such a revolution no real spiritual progress can be made in Buddhism since adherence to the doctrine of anattâ or no-self, only includes the conditioned—not the unconditioned which marks nirvana. How we get from the conditioned no-self to unconditioned nirvana has thus far not been adequately explained by the proponents of anattâ doctrine.
Read More @ Source From the book of Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism (pp., 125–28), in 1939 the Samgharaja (lit., ruler of the Sangha) of Thailand, who is the head of the national Samgha, gave up the accepted Theravada Buddhist Spirituality notion of Non-Self (anatta) and switched to the doctrine of the Self (âtman), insisting nirvana (P., nibbana) is the true Self. Citing an unpublished dissertation by P. Cholvijarn, Nibbana as Self or No Self (2007) Williams quotes the following from Cholvijarn's dissertation:
"[T]he uniqueness of the Buddhist Spirituality doctrine of anattâ [not-Self] is realised once attâ [the Self] has been attained. The Buddha discovered that nibbana is attâ and only by doing so, was able to say that the five aggregates are anattâ. The anattâ doctrine of the Buddha is the doctrine of only Buddhism because the Buddha realised attâ that is different from conditioned dhammas. Nibbana is the purity of an object, it is void of defilements [cf. the tathagatagarbha] and once it is reached there is no more clinging. As purity, it must [be] situate[d] within an object. That object is self. Anattâ is a tool that the Buddha uses for [his] disciples to reject the conditioned dhamma and to accept nibbana. If nibbana is anattâ, then, nibbana is to be rejected and there would be no purpose in practising the Noble Eightfold Path."This is very pithy stuff. The Samgharaja helped to shed light on the notion of no-self/anattâ. We should reject what is not the self, for example, the aggregates (pañca-khandas/skandhas)—never the self. He realized that the Buddha taught his awakening to his followers from the standpoint of attained self or attâ, in particular, that conditioned things or dhammas are not the self/attâ, this lack of self in Pali being anattâ. For the Samgharaja, I am guessing, this was a Buddhist Spirituality version of the Copernican revolution that the German philosopher Kant described in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
How much easier to explain Buddhism if we assume that the teaching of the Buddha revolves around the self and, at the same time, woe unto those who, in their ignorance, seek the self in the conditioned or deny it completely (e.g., the annihilationists/materialists).
Without such a revolution no real spiritual progress can be made in Buddhism since adherence to the doctrine of anattâ or no-self, only includes the conditioned—not the unconditioned which marks nirvana. How we get from the conditioned no-self to unconditioned nirvana has thus far not been adequately explained by the proponents of anattâ doctrine.
Posted: 19 May 2013 10:00 PM PDT
For most of the 25 days in which we focused on Metta Bhavana, I felt like I was swimming in joy. About two thirds or three quarters of my meditations were positively blissful, and in my daily life I felt cocooned by lovingkindness, as if I was inside a bubble of joy that stress was unable to penetrate. Then, on day 26, I switched to the karuna bhavana (developing compassion) and that all ground to a halt. I didn't find the practice actually depressing, but it did feel sober. There was a feeling of having a weight in the heart.
But after just over a week of karuna bhavana I started finding the joy starting to return to my meditations. I'm not the only one. One of the participants in 100 Days of Lovingkindness wrote about experiencing a rush of blissful energy (pīti) as he cultivated compassion for a "neutral person":
What's startlingly odd about this is that it was only a few days ago that in the same step merely looking at others' lingering hurt utterly flattened me, filling me with a deep, yawning sorrow. Yet, this morning I was witnessing the arising of pīti when looking at the same thing.He was rather perplexed by this, and concerned that it might be the result of decreased compassion. After all, why feel pleasurable sensations when contemplating someone's suffering?
If you like my articles, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s. But as I said to him at the time, "Interesting things happen when you turn toward your fears." When you find you can't contemplate others' suffering without feeling sorrow (which an early Stress Reduction commentator called "failed compassion") but keep on looking, then the fear and aversion can drop away. And this can be experienced as liberating — even blissfully liberating — and the tension that's released in the body can be experienced as pleasurable energy.
In fact there can be many joyful experiences that arise while cultivating compassion. It can feel both serious and light at the same time. Last night I chose to focus on someone I know who has terminal cancer, and to wish her well, in the sense of wanting her, in her final months, to experience mindfulness and evenmindedness, and to know that she is loved and that her life has been meaningful. And there was a feeling of warmth and joy. I was aware of her condition and the physical and mental suffering she must be going through, but my sense of love for her was enough to be able to balance up the sober feelings that were arising in the heart.
And I had no sense that I needed to "fix" anything. I can't make her better. I can't save her. There's no point thinking that she "shouldn't" have cancer or that life is "unfair," or that suffering shouldn't exist. These things just happen. People get sick. People die. The important thing, it seemed, was just to see myself as a compassionate and supportive presence for her. With an acceptance of impermanence and no attachment to the idea of her getting better (although that would be welcome!) there was no sorrow.
In fact it's possible to experience joyful, even blissful, states of jhāna in the karuna bhavana practice. The Buddha discussed this often, and that's something I'll write about tomorrow.
PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.
Read More @ Source
Posted: 19 May 2013 08:00 PM PDT
DigitalJournal: In an attempt to teach children how to live peacefully and forge a better future, Meditation Master Peter Amato has announced he will bring a meditation program to five deserving schools throughout the country, a $ 250,000 value in training and materials. At absolutely no cost to the schools.By making meditation a regular part of the school day, Amato said, young children and teens will be given the tools to reduce stress in their lives, and cope with competition, peer pressure, bullying and the violence all around them. "Key research findings in pilot and current school meditation programs included increases in calm…
Read the original article »
Read More @ Source
Posted: 19 May 2013 07:00 PM PDT
We're just over a third of the way into our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, and to celebrate we're all but giving away my double CD of guided lovingkindness and compassion meditations, The Heart's Wisdom.As far as I'm aware, the Heart's Wisdom is the only CD set offering a guide to the four practices known as the "immeasurables" or "brahmaviharas."
The four meditations on the CD set are:
- Developing lovingkindness
- Developing compassion
- Developing empathetic joy
- Developing equanimity.
You can also see all of the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.
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Thank you!
Bodhipaksa
