SAMSARA Archives - Mindful Happiness

June 15, 2019 By Admin

In-Depth Means to Discover and Be Your True Self

Henry David Thoreau reminded us that it is not what you look at, but it is what you see that matters. How do you SEE yourself? John Muir reminded us that the sun shines in us as well as in our souls. Do you find “the healing light” in your soul? The following “thinkers” have provided some interested self-search methods for us to consider; try some of these to find your own true self and be grateful.

Arvni Nan Futuronsky, Thomas Moore, and Christopher Germer – According to these people, finding the true center of the true self requires a mindfully deep questing processes, which may include regular silent meditation and inner self-contemplation. Being stuck in past struggles, painful experiences, and general suffering block not only finding our true self but also it’s healing capacities. Likewise being stuck in anxiety, fear, depression, loneliness, trauma, addictions (including “I-Smartphone” addiction), self-doubt, and non-stop critical thinking – all harm our true self and keep us in cyclical patterns of suffering and despair. Samsara is dominant here. These are very serious problems, and they are not overcome without considerable personal effort. However, locating and “seeing” the good of your true self will enable you to grow and be happier. Confirm and affirm yourself! Use your self-leadership to experience pure self-compassion and maintain a mindfully oriented mind. Find your strengths and pleasures in art, literature, poetry, nature, metaphors, myth, random movements, and facial expressions of pleasure. Spend more personal and silent time in nature. Study, experience, and appreciate these many resources of the self. With regular practice improved habits of mind-body realities will occur in both self-narratives and behavioral ways. You must practice regularly. Trade some “worry time” for beneficial practice time.

J. Belmont in Embrace Your Greatness.. recommends that you unconditionally and radically accept yourself as being “good enough” (D.W. Winnicott). It is not a problem to have human imperfections; our race if loaded with imperfections – it is normal. Our highly competitive and sometimes violent society, however, entrains us to focus on negatives in life. Even our brain is designed to emphasize negatives; the human Limbic System is designed for survival, thus our focus on negatives may be part of our genetic heritage to survive. To improve regularly practice letting go of your inner critical voices – your own inner voice as well as critical, projected voices from others. Do not respond to typical, habitual, conditioned “shoulds.” Emphasize and take advantage of your own possible post-traumatic growth. Seek it in yourself and it will be there. Pay very close attention to your personal strengths, and take the time to list them and read them periodically. Meditate, practice yoga, and remain mindful daily.

Other Things to Do

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – If you know this approach, use it’s diffusion and distancing techniques often. Clarification here is beyond the scope of this post. Google it, or look up information available on this blog site.
Kundalini Yoga – Certain easy and energetic practices of taking in and pushing out may be helpful . The approach using your arms to take into the body something you want and saying “YES” with louder and louder force might help you. Likewise, using your arms to push out something you do not want and saying “NO” (with louder force) in the process can be helpful. Teaching you this is beyond the scope of this post. Google it.
Likewise using Loving Kindness Meditation and Yoga Nidra processes are often helpful to us humans. Once again, it is not the focus of this blog post to teach you these practices. Google them, or look them up elsewhere in this blog site. Practice! Practice! Practice!

For more information you may wish to refer to Belmont, J. (2019). Embrace Your Greatness…Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

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

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Wind Ridge Press NEW Publication! Author Anthony Quintiliani, a licensed psychologist with more than 35 years professional clinical experience, casts a wide net into the personal, clinical, and societal causes of prolonged human suffering and unhappiness in his book Mindful Happiness. The book’s guided interventions are aimed at helping to relieve depression, anxiety, traumatic reactivity, and […]

Attitudes of Gratitude Thoughts and Applications M. J. Ryan presents some interesting practices in the book, Attitudes of Gratitude (1999). Here are some ideas. Hope you will practice some of them soon. As The 14th Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh suggest, we should always appreciate the preciousness and miracle of human life – our own life no matter what […]

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, […]

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 […]

Essential Knowledge for Clinical Supervisors This post will include information and skills dealing with research on role induction practices, quality of clinical supervision, psychodynamics of alliance, and progress measurement. Since the information and skills for all these topics is complex, I will do my best to keep it as clear as possible. This information aims […]

In-Depth Means to Discover and Be Your True Self Henry David Thoreau reminded us that it is not what you look at, but it is what you see that matters. How do you SEE yourself? John Muir reminded us that the sun shines in us as well as in our souls. Do you find “the […]

Poem on the Wind I am quite pleased with my experience on BEING in the wind today. This poem will suggest that you allow the wind to be a metaphor – even a fantasy – that allows your pain and suffering to be swept away by the endless, gentle, blowing wind of nature. We […]

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 […]

Gratitude Along with Sadness and Fear – It Is Life The famous Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh gently advises us to appreciate the many things that we may take for granted. For example, when he does walking meditation he believes and feels that the the earth below his feet is, itself, a miracle of reality. […]

Insights – Vipassana Mediation There will be future, more advanced vipassana meditations posted on the site. For now, however, we will end this series with a final post about the insights often experienced via vipassana meditation. We learn via experience about impermanence, suffering and its causes, no-self, emptiness and many other things – or, perhaps, […]

Loss, Grief and Suffering in America By Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC Other than our nation’s suffering during The Civil War, The Great Depression, and World War II this past year has been one of the most stress-filled, fear-filled times in our history. Here is a list of the reasons behind it all: the COVID-19 […]

Mindfulness On Loss, Grief and Mourning Mindfulness about personal loss, grief, and mourning may encompass many things. Here I will focus on the process and what people can do to better handle their suffering and pain. One way to look at it is through the lens of radical acceptance; another is via the reality of […]

From The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation, Monkton, Vermont – Five Breathing and Meditation Practices – Attention and concentration on the breath are common practices to attune meditation capacity. We use the breath as an object of attention in our mind training. The better your quality of attention and concentration, the better […]

Building Emotional Resilience On a personal note, right now I am suffering. Its April 15th and I have a terrible viral infection (sore throat, chest congestion, and fever). I feel weak and miserable. Perhaps all that frigid air we endured in New England this Winter also kept infectious “stuff” under control for a while. However, […]

Practice: Yogi Deep Meditation on Inner Listening Carl Jung noted: Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakens. The Katha Upanishads (800-400 BCE) noted: One path leads outward and the other inward. [The] way inward leads to grace. The Mind Cave Focus instructs us to close our eyes and expand your third-eye space to the back of […]

Advanced Buddhist Practices Abiding in Emptiness The various impediments (enemies) to abiding in emptiness are noted below. We have strong attachment to objects of mind and our sense door pleasures. We experience strong desire and cravings as our norms. We over-attach to forms of affection. We may become stuck in grief related to our experienced […]

Vipassana Meditation – Emptiness One of the great insights from regular, long-term vipassana practice is the experience of emptiness. The actual knowing of it by the experience of it. This is not your typical conceptual emptiness of the West; it is not total void, negative beings, or nihilistic pit, or suffering in endlessness. It is […]

Interoception and Your Inner Self-Helper Interoception (sometimes called neuroception) is a sensory experience, in which you feel sensations in your body (viscera, heart, throat, etc.) that may be warning signs of limbic surveillance or inner continuity of your inner self-helper – that part of you and your brain that hopes to help you in whatever […]

Human Beings Have Trouble BEING Human – Some Sound Advice from Dr Anthony Quintiliani The world today appears to be even more destructive than ever before in human history. However, historians and violence researchers inform us that we as average persons are safer today than we were in the past. Finger-tip access to world-wide media […]

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). […]