Using Lectio Divina to Improve Your Self-Esteem
LectioDivina is an ancient form of Christian (Benedictine) meditation. This meditative prayer is sometimes called 
“Sacred Seeing.” Lectio Divina follows specific steps as a process: lectio or reading a passage; Meditatio or meditating on the passage or image; Oratio or praying (I add – in your own way); Contemplatio or contemplation on it; and, Actio or action based on your new insights. Modified below.
- For a few minutes sit in calm, self-abiding meditation and just rest.
- Now ask yourself this question: “What strengths do I have?”
- Write a short paragraph noting the kinds of strengths you know you have.
- Now take five long, deep, slow breaths and close your eyes if you are ok with that. Think carefully about the strengths you listed. Contemplate them as you meditate again.
- Now in full conscious awareness, read that paragraph over and over slowly. Read it five or six times, and go deeper into your awareness each time you read it. Really concentrate.
- Answer the following questions about improving your self-esteem by using your strengths. Best to use a form of free association here; simply see what comes into awareness without great effort.
- What is the pattern of your strengths? If you come up with something, add it to your paragraph.
- Who are you when you have lived experience using your strengths. If something new comes up in your consciousness, add this information to your paragraph.
- When are you most likely to use your strengths? Follow the same procedure as above.
- Where are you most likely to live by your strengths? Follow the same procedure again.
- How does you using your strengths look? Make an image of it, or recall the last time you used your strengths. Notice anything significant, and add it to your paragraph.
- Now relax again, and read your longer paragraph over five more times. Read slowly, and add deeper concentration each time you read it. Go into it deeply!
- End with a short story about your future use of your signature strengths.
- Go back into light meditation with long, slow, deep breaths and just relax. Notice how you feel right now. Remember your strengths are always with you, but you need to use them.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha
Author of Mindful Happiness
learning HOW you help to cause your own emotional suffering. It enhances the view that long-term happiness is internal, and comes about via extended acute observation of how the mind works. In today’s words, we may learn to live and act via our wise mind skills, thus be happier. It easily relates to core Buddhist views on The Four Noble Truths, The Eight-Fold Path, as well as samsaric suffering by incessant attachment, desire, and craving. The main learnings are personally witnessed impermanence (arising and falling of all phenomena), dependent origination (nothing comes about by itself), and ultimately emptiness (Eastern not Western). This form of meditation has been used extensively all over the world for addictions and for people who have difficulty with action urges and emotion regulation (mainly in prisons).
relaxation, improvements in chronic pain, depression, anxiety, emotional self-regulation (anger, addictions), and spirituality.
sensation to spread this way. Move it down the arms all the way to your fingertips. Recall a substance-free happy experience and smile more. Feel the emotion, even perhaps love. Now slowly and gently place both hands over your heart and rock gently. Continue for a couple minutes. Notice!
body reacted, and that the whole is NOT the sum of its parts. Collective parts of the body and mind do not constitute the whole of the person. Here, again, we confront the most difficult understanding of ultimate reality – that the self is impermanent, insubstantial, dependent on causes and effects, a projection of mind, and an illusion – it is empty.
interactions. When practiced regularly, it may reduce suffering from excessive stress, shame, guilt, and traumatic life experiences. One key benefit is that wise mind’s effects on emotion regulation may reduce the need to self-medicate, a core cause for all addictions. Rather than simply depending on sensory pleasures for short-term escape from pain and/or a fleeting experiences of joy/happiness, wise mind may improve radical acceptance, sensory soothing, and responding inter-personally with wisdom (kindness, respect, compassion). A valued possible outcome is increased authentic, longer-term happiness.
anxiety, the effects of trauma, addictions, and eating disorders. Various well-constructed meta-analyses have demonstrated that mindfulness practice (mainly regular meditation) produced positive effects on depression, anxiety, chronic pain and emotion regulation. It is important to note that all these conditions may become precursors for addictions, including smartphone addiction. By 2007 it was estimated that nearly ten percent of Americans (30,000,000 people) practiced meditation; add to this other mindfulness practices like yoga, qi gong, and tai chi and that number may double. By 2015 mindfulness-based practices were well-integrated into various skilled therapies: mindfulness-based stress reduction (improves depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and emotion regulation), dialectical behavior therapy (improves emotion regulation, self-soothing, and impulsivity), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (50% eduction in relapse for repeated serious depressive episodes), mindfulness-based relapse prevention (for addictions), and acceptance and commitment therapy. The key variable was clear: if clients practiced regularly, they improved their clinical conditions, but if clients did not practice, they did not improve their clinical conditions. Therefore, two things are very important: doing regular practice in psychotherapy sessions, and the clinician being a regular mindfulness practitioner.
experienced directly. When people pay close attention to positive stories they tell themselves and/or positive emotional memories, serotonin levels may increase. Thus mindfulness practices enhance the experience of happiness. However, if people get stuck into paying attention to negative stories and negative emotional memories, the level of serotonin is reduced. Yes, being chronically stuck in the suffering of your past always makes emotional experience worse.