Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

December 18, 2019 By Admin

How to Offer Personal Tribute to Those Who Have Died

How to Offer Personal Tribute to Those Who Have Died

The Four Noble Truths tell us sobering news. There is suffering, and impermanence of all things including us and our loved ones. Below I have listed several thing you can do to HONOR a person you have lost.  Here is the list.

  1. Recall a special time before or at the time of death, and consider it a sacred place in space and time. Honor it and the person with the complete softness of your loving heart.  Do this now if you wish to.
  2. Pray for the person you have lost – and the goodness in that lost relationship.  You can do this if you are agnostic, even atheist. The prayer is to honor the loved person not to one of many gods.
  3. Go to your soft, suffering heart and fill it with joyous remembrances of your time with the person. Yes, the person has moved beyond; however, your internal and emotional memories are quite vibrant. They have made a special place for them self in your soul.
  4. You can carry this to a deeper level by seeing and touching special objects that belonged to the deceased.  Or, you can set up a small shrine in your home to pay respect and honor whenever you wish to do so.
  5. Know that the deceased person would want you to recall your joy, so light up your senses and recall in mild meditative state the pleasant and happy experiences you both shared.  If something happened with them that made you laugh, go there! This is what they wish for you.
  6. Listen to the music the lost person enjoyed, or read something inspirational.
  7. Think carefully of all the ways you could say goodbye again. Do it now if you wish to.
  8. Recall the smile on their face, and smile back. You may be surprised at how powerful this experience may be.
  9. Dedicate meritorious behavior to them. If you wish, set up some special program or fund to champion causes they cared about. The financial level is far less important than the emotional level of actually doing something.
  10. Write a special tribute about them in a journal. Write often, and read what your have written again and again.
  11. Lastly, work carefully to discover some ways to celebrate that person’s life and your relationship. Celebrate often and be calm within the warmth of your love.

For more information refer to Reoch, R. (1997). To Die Well: A Holistic Approach for the Dying and Their Caregivers. New York: Harper. See also Holecek, A. (2013). Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition. Boston: Snow Lion, pp. 312-314.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC  

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon

Filed Under: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Compassion, Coping, Death, Deep Mindfulness, Featured, Gratitude Meditation, Grief, Letting Go, Meditation, Mourning, Rituals, Self Care, Spiriuality, Tributes Tagged With: HONOR, LOVING, OFFERINGS, PRAYER, TRIBUTES

January 16, 2017 By Admin

Significance of Beads in Spiritual & Religious Practices

Beads: Significance in Spiritual and Religious Practices

The significance of religious and spiritual practices in the world is enormous.  Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist practitioners make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. The  CIA estimates are that Christians (33%), Muslims (23%), Hindus (14%) and Buddhist (7%) make up the majority of religious followers. Atheists and non-religious believers make up only 12% of the world’s population.   About 11% of the world’s population practices other spiritual and religious traditions.  ALL of the major spiritual and religious traditions have used beads in their practices.  Below I have listed some details about the nature of spiritual/religious beads used by major groups. As you will see the use of beads in spiritual and religious practices is very common.

  1. Roman Catholics use rosary beads (from rose petal “beads” in the rose garden or rosarium) – usually 54 + 5 beads. When beads are used to recite 150 psalms, they are 150 beads long and called patermasters.
  2. Muslims use their misbaha/masbaha, tasbih, subha  beads – usually 99 or 33 beads.
  3. Hindus (from 500 BCE) use mala beads – usually 108 (the cosmos) or 27 beads.
  4. Buddhists (mala) for 108 worldly desires, and Sikhs have generally maintained the Hindu “counts.”
  5. Baha’i uses beads – usually 19 or 99 + 5 beads.
  6. Orthodox Jews, use tassels tallit or tzitzits (Moses – to remember the commandments of god).
  7. Ortodox Greek and Russian Christians use knots as beads – Greek prayer ropes are called kombologian, and Russian prayer ropes are called chotki – Greek knots are 33, 50 and 100 while Russian knots are 33, 100, and 500.
  8. African Masai, Native American, and Greek and Russian Orthodoxy also use beads.

So why use beads in spiritual and religious prayer practices?  There are many, many reasons why beads are used in these spiritual traditions.  However, I will note just a few. Here are some reasons.  Beads are used:

  1. To maintain your counting in prayers practices – in praising the object of your beliefs;
  2. To confirm your level of dedicated practice by repetitions;
  3. To deepen your personal belief by mantra-like or out loud speaking;
  4. To enhance your level of faith by deeper and deeper contemplations about your beliefs; and,
  5. To deepen practice by repeated, deeper contemplations (called lectio divina ) in Catholicism.

Here are some other reasons why beads are used. These reasons deal more with contemporary neuroscience research than with ancient and current religious practices.  These are:

  1. Enhanced learning in frontal and prefrontal areas by verbal/cognitive repetitions;
  2. Temporal area strengthening by hearing the words you are saying either to yourself or out loud;
  3. Multi-sensory applications to bead mantra work – using fingertips (huge representation in the brain) to touch beads as you repeat verbal statements over and over again;
  4. Multi-sensory applications open up pathways for brain plasticity, so your brain changes over time to make your religious practices and beliefs stronger and stronger over time;
  5. Possible multi-sensory brain coherence – lighting up neurons across various brain regions in your practices, which allows even more powerful plasticity to occur about your practices and beliefs; and,
  6. Ritualize the spiritual or religious practices, thus making the objects of practice more sacred.

So, now you have some information about why beads are so, so common in spiritual and religious practices. This same information is the basis for use of beads in contemporary spiritual practices without religious connections.

For more information refer to Dorff, V. (2014). The Little Book About Big Things: World Religion. New York, NY: Fall River Press. See also www.dharmabeads.net for more information. Retrieved May 2, 2016.

 Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Activities, Benefits of Meditation, Children & Youth, Contemplative Practices, Featured, Meditation, Meditation Activities, MIndfulness, MIndfulness Activities, Practices, Religion, Rituals, Self Care, Spiritual Energy, Spiritual Experience, Spiriuality Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, BEADS, MEDIATION, PRACTICES, PRAYER, RITUALS, SPIRITUAL

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

Vipassana Meditation:  Impermanence Although standard vipassana meditation practice leading to insight about the true nature of reality does not recommend what I am about to do, I plan to do it anyway. This meditation center is all about innovation in practice and generalization regarding the benefits of meditation for both regular meditators and novices.  Below […]

Concentration, Contentment, and Loving Kindness I have written various entries on concentration meditations in prior posts.  Yes, concentration meditation is beyond pure mindfulness meditation.  Here I will present briefly two other forms of meditation that are quite intentional and also beyond mindfulness: contentment and loving kindness meditations. Let’s begin with intentional meditation of contentment. Contentment […]

Very “SAD” Facts about the Addictions Field A recent issue of the Addictions Professional presented very disturbing news about how clinicians in the field are doing.  NOT WELL! Addictions clinicians treat people with addictions but mainly people with co-occurring disorders – addictions with trauma, depression, anxiety and/or eating disorders.  Often there is also a co-occurring medical […]

Meditations and Mantra: Try Them Out in Your Practice There are many forms of meditation.  In most cases, the common meditation forms fall into one of two categories: Mindfulness and Insight.  There are also demanding concentration meditations, chakra meditations, and mantra meditations. Here we’ll deal only with the two forms noted above and the use […]

Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way Meditations: A way of Being and Knowing Although Gurdjieff developed a whole way of being and knowing, including attentional practices, dance/body movements, group processes, and meditations here I will focus only on some of the suggested meditations.  In particular, I include the meditations noted by his primary student (J. DeSalzmann, 2011). […]

What Consciousness Really Is Considering that we have been to the moon and back, and more recently surveyed important moons of Saturn, science is still a very long way from understanding how the human brain works – and even further away from having a clear, agreed-upon interpretation of human consciousness.  Consciousness is the “stuff” of […]

Meditation on the Feeling of Letting Go – Pacification! Pacifying the mind is a desired outcome of regular, stable meditation practice.  Pacification may be done via meditating on the breath, general mindfulness awareness, vipassana, and various other forms of  meditation.  However, the wise mind skill of “letting go” of unhelpful, negative, and harmful thoughts and […]

  How Most People Learn in Psychotherapy It is highly important that clients learn from their therapists.  In most cases this includes alternative ways of thinking, emoting, and behaving. So what can we learn from educational research on how people learn? Of course we all know it begins with a solid therapeutic alliance – the […]

Helper Burnout in Today’s Healthcare System Helper burnout is a very common problem in all healthcare services and at all levels of professional training and experience. Helpers from recovery-oriented peer counselors, state employed case managers, and licensed counselors/therapists all the way to physicians are reporting record high levels of reactive stress and compassion fatigue. Psychiatrists are […]

More Psychoanalytic Gems – In an earlier post, I noted a list of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Gems, including a later post on D.W. Winnicott’s approaches to building a therapeutic alliance.  My general aversion to this form of therapy has more to do with its slowness and high costs than to its effectiveness. It is effective!  However, […]

Advanced Meditations – Middle Way -Wisdom Path Between Extremes These meditation practices are advanced, and combine complex ideas from Nagarjuna (Indian Master), T’ong-Kha-Pa (Tibetan Master), and The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso).  In keeping with the mixed secular nature of my meditation center, I have decided to present these complex ideas with several of my […]

COVID-19 Brings Higher Stress and Emotion Dysregulation The Book of Job notes “Man is born unto troubles as the sparks fly upward.” Current stress surveys indicate Americans are stressed out due to COVID-19 concerns, work stress (money needs), imbalance in life-work experience, and lack of support (social, emotional, financial).  The 2020 American Psychological Association national survey […]

Secular Meditation and Addictions Treatment Today we have ample research evidence (NIH, NIDA, SAMHSA, etc.) that mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and mind training all have some effectiveness in improving addiction disorders. In recent meta-analyses the primary effect was through improved emotion regulations, whereas there was a more direct positive impact on chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. […]

Enhancing Hope in Psychotherapy The enhancement of personal hope is a key part of successful psychotherapy practice. Some view this requirement as a foundational aspect of the therapeutic alliance; others do not hold the same view.  In the case of serious co-occurring disorders, especially trauma and substance misuse, initiating, developing, and sustaining a hopeful future-view […]

Making the Best of the Holidays Thanks to Sounds True, we have many good suggestions for making the most of the holidays.  It is a norm for the holidays to be happy and joyous, and it is a norm for many people for the holidays to be filled with emotional and behavioral challenges.  To reduce […]

Tips on Practice During These Troubling Times Some people are religious, and I am sure turn to those sources for support and hope. Others are spiritual, and I hope also pursue those sources for emotional stability and closeness to the “their” divine. Other people may  be Agnostic or Atheist; I am certain such people also […]

Mindfulness Expands the Art of Journal Writing T. Merton, J. Kerouc, I. Progoff, J. Upton, and others have helped to expand the art or journal writing practice.  This type of practice can become your mindfulness practice.  You will need to write on a daily basis (even if briefly), and you will need to be highly […]

Trauma Therapy:  Basics from Some Expert Clinicians For many years trauma therapist have used many approaches in their psychotherapy. Most of these approaches lack strong empirical support for outcomes, and are often the “favorites” of these therapists.  One might wonder what benefits therapists derive from using approaches that are not evidence-based. If an intervention fails […]

Tips for Improving Your Mindfulness Practices The following practices may improve your mindfulness skills.  It all depends – it all depends on whether or not you will do regular, daily practices.  If you desire to improve your mindfulness skills, consider following the tips noted below.  Most of the practices below involve sitting meditation.  Likewise, regular […]

So Many Ways to Self-Medicate –  It Just Brings More Suffering Very often poor child-parent (child-caretaker) object relations, attachment with care takers, and attunement by care takers negatively impact young children early in their lives.  The well-documented scientific fact that environmental conditions play a more important role in gene-expression than pure genetics implies clearly that […]

Mindful Happiness Tags

THERAPY. VERMONT MINDFUL MEDITATION BUDDHISM SUFFERING TRAUMA MINDFUL TRAINING RITUALS VIPASSANA MINDFULNESS WISE MIND ADDICTION COMPASSION MINDFUL HAPPINESS EMPTINESS MEDITATION PRACTICE COVID-19 THICH NHAT HANH MINDFULNESS TRAINING EXERCISES SELF COMPASSION SELF MEDICATION MINDFUL ACTIVITIES MEDITATION WALKING MEDITATION SELF CARE HAPPINESS ACTIVITY ANTHONY QUINTILIANI ACTIVITIES PRACTICES CONSCIOUSNESS ELEANOR R LIEBMAN CENTER CLINICAL SUPERVISION VIPASSANA MEDITATION BRAIN MBSR PSYCHOTHERAPY PRACTICE TRAINING INNER PEACE BREATHING DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI STRESS SELF ESTEEM

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2021 · Mindful Happiness