5 Reasons to Join Me- To experience a whole day in silence. It's a powerful release from the talk habit and an entry into a new level of intimacy with your self, with others who are also silent, and with the natural world.
- To increase your power of concentration, which is the ability to focus your attention on something and keep if there for as long as needed. That's the state meditators call being in samadhi.
- To enhance the clarity of your 6 sense gates -- hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, body sensations and thoughts in the mind. Clarity of mind, for instance, enhances your thinking -- your ability to discriminate simply and precisely.
- To develop equanimity. I liken it to watching a herd of buffalo off in the distance. Or it's listening to your children argue without any investment in the outcome -- as long as they don't hurt each other. Sometimes bearing witness is all that's needed for life to take care of itself.
- To experience the delight of meditating with others.
The Psychotherapist's Corner
A meditation-inspired psychotherapy offers people a way of understanding their problems as well as a way of healing them... This full day retreat offers an opportunity to engage in learning mindfulness psychotherapy.
"The approach to working with others that I advocate is one in which spontaneity and humanness is extended to others."
---Chogyam Trungpa Rimposhe
Confusion, though uncomfortable, is a healthy state of mind. That's because it creates a great need for calm and clarity.
Psychotherapists can teach depressed people to become aware of their internal talk. This leads to the insight that thoughts are simply thoughts - nothing more. It also teaches that the person is bigger than his or her thoughts or the depression that comes with them. The result is a greater capacity to cope.
Meditation is a method for moving beyond the isolating tendency of the thinking mind.
Whether in a psychotherapy office or sitting on a cushion, we are practicing awareness. In the psychotherapy office our awareness is trained on the past and on the future. In meditation it is trained on the experience of awareness itself.
Narcissism is a double-edged sword; individuals suffering from narcissism either idealize or devalue themselves and others. Buddhist psychology blunts both sides of this sword by declaring that there is no solid and lasting self. Meditative exercises allow individuals to personally discover that they are ever changing, impermanent, and in the flow of life.
Meditation increases the psychotherapist's capacity for single pointed awareness. Relating in this way to a person who comes for help is an act of deep caring. It heals.
Strange how people come into our offices feeling guilty for trouble that is well beyond human control.
Letting go is a skill that can be taught.
