The near-LSD experience

I was standing in the toilet of the library filling my water bottle. It was the end of a working day and I was lost in thought. Then I brought awareness as I now do habitually. I saw how kind of bored I was standing there, looking at the water hitting the inside of my plastic bottle. Everything around me looked boring. I was longing for something interesting, anything, for example something like this:

Photo Diedier Van de Steene (Belgium)

 

 

I brought awareness to my boredom, to the whole experience of standing there and then BAM, it happened, I was 'behind the waterfall' of my thoughts. My thoughts were not in the way of direct experience. The veil had fallen for a while. I looked at the water and saw how incredible it was. How unbelievably beautiful. How abstract the world was, with me in it and that water. It was like a Raveel painting (I am pretty sure the painter Raveel was at least partly enlightened). The water kept it's diamond-like preciousness even when I walked away from the tap. In the bottle it seemed to me the most precious thing on earth. And then I also understood. I understood that water IS the most precious thing on earth, more valuable then the most expensive jewel. It was a very deep understanding that went beyond economic reasoning. I was deeply moved, deeply impressed, deeply grateful and deeply happy in a non-passionate way, I understood deeply too. I saw millions of little moments blend into the water bottle filling experience as a whole, like frames of a film. I saw reality rearranging itself to be seen through my eyes.  It was very significant. A near LSD-experience. In the desert. Where water is scarce. This all lasted perhaps for about 15 seconds, but it felt as if a day had past.

 

 

 

 

 



Marc Epstein combines Freud with Buddha in The Trauma of Everyday Life

Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind’s own development.
Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a lever for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. The way out of pain is through it.
Epstein’s discovery begins in his analysis of the life of Buddha, looking to how the death of his mother informed his path and teachings. The Buddha’s spiritual journey can be read as an expression of primitive agony grounded in childhood trauma. Yet the Buddha’s story is only one of many in The Trauma of Everyday Life. Here, Epstein looks to his own experience, that of his patients, and of the many fellow sojourners and teachers he encounters as a psychiatrist and Buddhist. They are alike only in that they share in trauma, large and small, as all of us do. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn’t destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds’ own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring, and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us.

Mark Epstein, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Thoughts without a Thinker, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart, Going on Being, Open to Desire and Psychotherapy without the Self. His newest work, The Trauma of Everyday Life, will be published in August of 2013 by Penguin Press. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and is currently Clinical Assistant Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University.

http://markepsteinmd.com/

http://shrinkrapradio.com/252-%E2%80%93-a-buddhist-perspective-on-psychotherapy-with-mark-epstein-md/

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My beautiful, sweet fierce teacher: Ayya Upekkha

Single Female Angry Meditator. Being tested: fierce anger

I am at the moment intensely angry.
I think my anger is just and necessary. Besides, my anger does not care what I think, my anger is not my choice, it is just there. Bam!
I am angry with someone who hates Jews and denies the Holocaust. This person is very near me at the moment.
I am surprised that people around me seem to think that a mediator does not get angry. Or is not supposed to get angry.
As if we are soft woozes sitting on a cushion all day.
I just heard the Daila Llama declare that he too gets angry and that he does not believe people when they say they don't.
Voila, I agree, as usual, with the Daila Llama. He is such a pet! Cheerful and cheeky, honest and fair. I would not mind him as my husband at all. Or Steven Hawkins. Alas! I am just a Single Female Angry Meditator.
I am leaning into my anger, bringing it into awareness as much as I can, and oh boy, it hurts. My whole body breaks out in a sweat it is that painful. But I do not deny my anger. I am feeling it. Full blast. That is awareness.
I try to be not reactive, but responsive.
Being responsive is like fighting with a sharp ax.
Being reactive is like fighting with water.
My ax is sharp.
I might win the war.
I might not.
I am not against war.
Some wars were just.
Like the war against the Nazi's.
With a sharp ax I will try to remove this person from my life.
Cheers!
A Meditating Warrior

Mudita: sympathetic joy: मुदिता

 

A helpful Buddhist concept is Mudita or sympathetic joy. It is closely connected to Metta (loving-kindness). It is an exercise in feeling joyful when others achieve something that brings them happiness. I am going to talk about Mudita tonight (if anybody turns up, Alice Springers are strange in that respect) as a part of the ten week Metta focus.
It is ingrained in people to feel a pang of jealousy when the Other has luck or achieves something. Our first split second reaction is to feel a little of envy and spite that not we but them are the lucky, fortunate one on the receiving side. The more sophisticated we are the sooner we can suppress this little hairy devil Monkey Mind.
It is easy to find joy in the achievements of close ones, ones children for example, but to feel the same joy for a complete stranger is more complicated. However, just as Metta is a skill and not an inborn quality or talent, so is Modita. At first it will feel a bit forced and fake to practice Modita, but it will settle itself as a habit in the mind soon after the first practice and it is, just as Metta, extremely beneficial for the practitioner as well as for the receiver. The doublesided ax of Metta and Modita sharpens the mind and soon after the beginning of the practice we will notice subtle changes in ourselves and the way others react to us.


The Brahma Vihara Organization has the following on their website:

Mudita strengthens the capacity to experience joy and happiness. It is likened to a flower at full bloom. It is the ability to appreciate something as it is blooming and releasing the fragrance of its happiness, without falling over the edge into a sceptical sardonic reaction such as "What is the point? It will only last for a moment." The practice of mudita lifts the heart out of its preoccupation with insufficiency. As a result, the buoyant energies of gratitude and generosity begin to restore the human spirit.
The near enemy of mudita is exuberance. Exuberance is an overly excited, even manic state. It is the sense of deprivation grasping at moments of joy.
The far enemy of mudita is resentment. Mudita is the medicine for the poisons of jealousy, envy and derision. Mudita heals the cruel urge to suppress happiness. With the cultivation of mudita we tap a reservoir of joy by sharing times of happiness and good fortune.
Mudita is exemplified in the mother-child connection when the child begins to express its own creative nature. Mudita is the ability to join and support this expanding spirit. The Buddha taught that one of our challenges is to cultivate mudita even in a world full of misery.
http://www.brahmaviharas.org/mudita.htm

bringing awareness to relationships with Others

My students focus on Metta and Dukkha these ten weeks. I have been doing so since November. What did I find out? That there is a small ball of fear motoring away in my lower body, it probably started during adolescence. What to do about it? No idea yet. Bring more awareness to it until I hit a good idea. Unpack the problem bit by bit. I think it has to do with relationships so:
I am now ready to move onto another subject of focus. Bringing awareness to the relationship with the Other it is going to be. It is one thing to bring present moment awareness to oneself when one is alone (which I am a lot), or when one is sitting in meditation (which I am a lot), or in a counselling situation (which I love), bringing minute to minute awareness to interaction with Others is an entire other ball game.
I tend to lose myself in the Other. This is not difficult; the Other is immensely fascinating to me. Thus today the experiment will start. I have already noticed that I completely lost awareness when I was waiting for someone who had promised me an appointment but did not deliver. I was irritated and full of judgement. I had to deal with innocent receptionists and I treated them badly. Voila, the first chance was missed gloriously.
Now I am in the library, surrounded by European tourists who treat the library as a cafe. They have loud Skype conversations, have long chats and play music on their computers. I find them completely rude, stupid even. There is no way in the world I can get over myself (or them) and I am in a very bad mood.
I know a guy who is like that on a full time basis, like me at the moment; he finds fault in others, especially when it comes to following the rules. He even has a blog that is dedicated to the faults of others. He painstakingly points out mistakes in newspapers and magazines, in politicians and other leaders... It is the most boring blog I have ever laid eyes on. And I am like that at the moment. Someone rescue me from the noisy Europeans and most of all: from myself.

Okay, I try to "bring space to the moment" as Eckhard Tolle calls it. I have completely forgotten what that is supposed to mean. I end up yelping to the self-confident boys and girls: "This is a library, people are trying to work here." I remember myself at that age. I was exactly the same. Arrogant and a knowitall.

It worked! My angry words. They are silent in a high-school-class-sudden-silence kinda way. They try to get away with whispering and look at me every five seconds or so. 

I bring awareness to this and suddenly have a laugh. 

What an assholes, all of us, them and I.

 I think I need to read this book:

And here is the boring blokes blog: (it's in Dutch, sorry, but you'll get the idea by just looking at it.)

http://vanwelzen.blogspot.com.au/

Sleep well all! Zzzzzzzzzz