Best Of
Re: Gabor Maté and Ayahuasca
@Jeroen said:
It alerts you to the importance of trauma and encourages you to look at your own trauma’s more carefully. Even those of us who think we have had a happy childhood probably are suppressing a few things, such as the ex-prisoner in Gabor’s story who thought he had a happy childhood but in fact the father was an alcoholic who often fought with the mother and the tension in the house could be cut with a knife due to his temper. This man had built a picture of a happy childhood out of a few carefully selected memories.
The way I tend to look at something like this is that such events teach us things that are often unskillful or served us at one time but now hold us back. It isn't about denial, its about seeing ourselves honestly and looking forward at what will serve us better rather than looking back with regret and thinking of ourselves as damaged goods.
Going back to an example Mate has used in interviews, he talks about how the trauma of his youth caused him to excessively strive and become a therapist. To me, that achievement is something to celebrate and be grateful for, while at the same time its possible to recognize the downsides of that striving attitude and seek to change. His attitude came across as all negative and regretful. He only talked about the pain of it.
So in a way the ‘myth of normal’ is that there is anyone who is entirely normal. We all have our sensitivities and come out of childhood having taken some damage.
We're all unique, and part of that is how our lives shaped us. Maybe its just me, thinking of myself as damaged is an unpleasant way to view myself. I've learned to like myself as I am, while at the same time wanting to be better. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.”
person
Re: Gabor Maté and Ayahuasca
@how said:
Neither!
Couldn't justify the carbon footprint involved in doing either trip at this point in time.
Yes, I can understand that. I used to travel quite a bit but since returning to the Netherlands I’ve been in a mode of not travelling… I was in my flat by the beach, high up, and I would study Buddhism, do a little meditating, walk or cycle in the dunes. I’ve hardly left the country for about ten years, let alone gone on a long intercontinental flight.
The proposal to go to Egypt was my dads idea, he is now 75 and doesn’t want to go by himself so he invited me. We’d each pay our own way but it wouldn’t be cheap, about 1800 euros. But included would be visits to the Pyramids, the valley of the Kings, the temples at Luxor, a Nile cruise, the museum of antiquities in Caïro, and a few other things.
On the one hand it is quite tempting, on the other I find looking at man-made artefacts a lot less fascinating than I used to. Even here in the Netherlands I have found I visit museums a lot less than I used to, maybe once every few years.
Jeroen
Re: Mindfulness Hack
Meditation is not for poseurs.
It is being comfortable with where the mind positions itself without being distracted by its shenanigans.
When the Shambhala shambles into Zen or asana or beard stroking etc, how you react to the stick flagellation or Trungpa fondle is still mindfulness practice.
I was very happy to attend free classes and retreats with Shambhala, extreme yogis, cult Sufis and the usual weirdos. At the moment my main mindfulness is after formality, as ever.
Doing our best everyone ✅🫂😌
lobster
Re: Mindfulness Hack
One thing that occurs to me is that in some ways meditation posture is like an asana, a position which evokes a certain state of mind. So it’s not that the posture is pointless, it has a use, it is an aid to the mental process of meditation.
But for me it has always been about finding a position that is relaxed and comfortable. My knees and ankles don’t do the full lotus, and so on.
Jeroen
Re: Vassa Dhamma Challenge
Last night I sat for 22 minutes (funny number). I thought, "it is too late for meditating, I don't feel like it." I decided to Lobster it up with some positive visualisations and meditation.
I managed to sit crossed legged and realised my zafu needed it an extra cushion. It does make the pain go away completely and my posture is much more stable. My cushion is breaking though...
Also I smoked. It was really fun. Isn't samsara a lot of fun and games....that then we need to leave behind in one go.... maybe that is the problem...not knowing how to let go...!
Kotishka
Re: Accentuate the Positive or Eliminate the Negative?
I tend to find a new approach and dive in every once in a while, like Gabor Maté’s book on trauma, it is refreshing to me to see myself and the world from a new perspective. Then I see what remains with me afterwards, what I have learnt from it that has truly changed me.
I value positivity, but I also value truth, and the trauma approach has a lot of truth in it. It is certainly something I see myself returning to from time to time, and looking more deeply at my own trauma has made me realise that my sunny disposition was at times turning into a performance that wasn’t deep down genuine.
I’ve been carrying some things for a long while, and some of these realisations have been overdue. Maybe it’s the stage of life, I’m now 51 and finding a more nuanced approach to life, rather than the brash energy of youth, is appropriate.
Jeroen
Re: Gabor Maté and Ayahuasca
@Jeroen said:
It does seem to be one of those things that a lot of people are doing. If you have a choice between a once in a lifetime tourist trip to see the antiquities in Greece and Egypt, or doing an authentic Ayahuasca healing journey with indigenous shamans in the jungle… what would bring you more in the end?
Egypt hands down for me
Re: Mindfulness Hack
While I have been graced with a body that happens to sit easily in the Seiza posture, various knee, hip, and ankle injuries in life have occasionally required my formal meditation to be spent in chairs. I saw little difference in my meditation between sitting on the floor and sitting in a chair.
There can, however, be some noticeable differences between the two hand mudras that you mentioned. The hand mudra of the palms laying down on the thighs is generally reserved for supervised sittings as it is usually used for a resting of the mind, a grounding of the body, or the cultivation of a focus on the root chakra which can provide emotional strength in the face of arising fear and anxiety.
The mudra you chose of putting the hands facing upward in your lap is more common, requires little supervision, and simply puts more emphasis on the harmonization between the body & mind.
Bare in mind though, that I come from a lineage that places much emphasis on the study of the minutia that can affect formal meditation, compared to many other schools that are more casual about meditation instructions.
how
Accentuate the Positive or Eliminate the Negative?
This dichotomy has been on my mind lately. It all exists on a spectrum were we seek a balance, but some naturally fall more to one side than the other. Is one better than the other, or are they two sides of the same coin? The question for the spiritual seeker, or life liver in general, do we live our lives trying to build the positive qualities and situations to better our lives and the world or do we clear away the negative aspects of life so the good can flourish? Is one way more beneficial such that we are justified in advocating generalized advice to adopt one over the other?
I come at this issue from the lens of being an introvert. Growing up introversion was viewed in a negative light, extroverts would say things like, "you just need to come out of your shell". At some point in the not so distant past introversion/extroversion was seen more as a spectrum and the positive aspects of introverts received attention and praise, while still honoring the value of extroverts.
Introversion/extroversion is only one of the psychologically defined and studied personality spectrums, the other being conscientiousness/careless (I prefer care free), agreeable/disagreeable (challenging), neuroticism/emotional stability and degree of openness to experience. To me the question at hand concerns neuroticism/emotional stability.
I test pretty heavily towards the emotional stability end of the spectrum, so it is a little hard for me to truly understand the perspective of someone towards the neuroticism end. Even so, I do believe there is value in a more neurotic world view. Problems that would bother others, don't tend to bother me and can go unaddressed until they get out of hand. And I do believe that the best medicine is customized for the individual so trying to force a neurotic peg into an emotionally stable hole isn't very productive. That said I do believe in the value of a positive focus. For one, life in the moment is likely more pleasant, and second an optimistic outlook favors seeing and taking advantage of opportunities when they do happen to arise.
Optimistic thinking has been in the ascendant for a while, but now there seems to be a shift towards the value of honoring our negative feelings. On the one hand, most everything moves in cycles and as they mature healthy strategies can become extreme and mutate into something less beneficial, toxic positivity for example. I see a distinction between the rise of the recognition of introversion and this movement towards valuing negative feeling today, in that introverts didn't condemn extroversion the way it feels like the trend today devalues a positive, constructive and forward looking attitude. I see criticism of therapies like CBT or time tested philosophies like Stoicism that have relieved a lot of suffering over the years. I find reframing my view does me a lot of good, I just recently turned 50 and was lamenting it a bit. My uncle light heartedly said its better than the alternative of not getting older, and that helped. Some of the advice I've been hearing lately would tell me that instead I should feel the bad feelings I have about ageing, I think so I can process them? But I only have those feelings because of the way I contextualize and view the reality of ageing, I don't get it... Going back to the personality spectrum, I can imagine that for others this new advice might prove helpful and recontextualization not so much.
Maybe this also somewhat goes back to the old argument about the state of nature. By eliminating the negative do we return to a naturally wholesome state, or do we need to construct beneficial structures to temper our naturally antagonistic qualities? I think baby studies show we have both positive and negative hardwired into us and thus need to both accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative to varying degrees depending on the circumstance.
That's all the long way of saying, I think its all a balance and different strokes for different folks. We're all of differing temperaments and we're all better together when we can honor these differences. I'm of a pretty positive disposition and I like hearing other perspectives. It does bother me though when those perspectives get presented as The Truth rather than one way of many valuable ways to be in the world.
What has and hasn't worked for you?
person
Re: Mindfulness Hack
@how said:
Few things point out the fallacy of a correct posture like achieving such a thing, because the difficulties of a meditation practice will simply continue on unabated despite such a narrow achievement.
Do you think that a mind, when threatened with a potential curtailment of its empire during meditation, won't bring up the ideal of a perfect posture to neutralize such a threat?
How much of these aches and pains are about having chosen a meditation posture that is more ideal-based than it is actually comfortable?
Is each moment of your life, also equally filled with these aches & pains when you are simply being physically still?
Interesting! It's my feeling that posture is overrated. I think it's important for novice meditators, but one of those rafts that can be discarded. I've taken 3 levels of Shambhala training and the staff is always going around the room "correcting" posture. I found it extremely distracting to be suddenly told to place my hands on my thighs, palm down, just behind the knees. My hands were just fine in my lap and I had been meditating comfortably. Thank god I never did a Dathun.
After a couple of years, I found sitting on the floor wasn't going to work. My legs were going numb and it hurt. Rather than fight it, I started sitting on a stool or chair. 15" above the floor is about right. Much better. I still didn't conform to "correct posture" for a chair, which was fine by me. Not so fine with some meditation instructors, but whatever. Usually they'll try to correct me a couple of times, but when I continue in normal practice, they leave me alone.
There is the ideal and then there's the real world, so to speak.
