20) Mindfulness
The "one size fits all" meditation programs/apps operate on the premise that their program works for everyone...every gender, age, nationality, religion, etc. IME, that isn't the reality, as everyone unfolds in their own unique way and process.
Using different approaches for different capabilities and temperaments has been recognized for millennia. It is important to find your own path, tailored to your temperament and capability!
Source: Mindfulness works for women, but not for men?..new research
Q&A
Q) I've read a lot of your blogposts and two books on inquiry but I'm running to a few hangups, I hope you'll be able to clarify what's going on.
First, I'm not sure which thoughts I should be inquiring into. I can have thousands of thoughts within a span of an hour and most of them aren't really threatening. It's stuff like "I gotta go to the bank", "I should do this, etc etc.". If I inquired into every thought I would go crazy because I would not be able to focus on life. Should I make it so that I only inquire into thoughts that bother me?
Second, sometimes I don't have a clear idea of the thought I'm supposed to inquire into. I get an unpleasant bodily reaction to something (anxiety, anger, etc.) but I can't immediately identify the source of this emotion. What should I do in this scenario?
A) That is exactly the problem, there are just too many thoughts rushing by to analyze each one that arises and then decide what to do about this particular thought before it disappears and is replaced by dozens of others.
The problem is focusing on the "objects", the thoughts, and not on the "subject", the ego/I, that is at the root of the problem as every problematic thought has an I/me/my in it, every one.
Amazingly, virtually no western philosophers, except perhaps Spinoza, recognized the problem, and focused on the subject as the source of the problem. Only the eastern disciplines and philosophers recognized the opportunity with working on the subject to get rid of the thoughts.
If you look @ the below videos "Where do our thoughts come from?" , and "What 'no thoughts' means...3 different kinds of thoughts", and the blogpost "what are 'planning thoughts'? what are 'narrative' thoughts'?" you'll get a better idea of the approach to be taken.
Fortunately, the two different types of thoughts have a distinctly different feel and they emerge from/through two different neural networks. The brain can quickly learn to separate these out and let the "planning" thoughts like "How do I get to the coffee house?" go, and focus on eliminating the "self-referential internal narrative"/SRIN thoughts like from "How the #$%$#^ can i EVER get to the coffee house in time for our meeting?!!!" by deconstructing the "I".
The "one size fits all" meditation programs/apps operate on the premise that their program works for everyone...every gender, age, nationality, religion, etc. IME, that isn't the reality, as everyone unfolds in their own unique way and process.
Using different approaches for different capabilities and temperaments has been recognized for millennia. It is important to find your own path, tailored to your temperament and capability!
Source: Mindfulness works for women, but not for men?..new research
Q&A
Q) I've read a lot of your blogposts and two books on inquiry but I'm running to a few hangups, I hope you'll be able to clarify what's going on.
First, I'm not sure which thoughts I should be inquiring into. I can have thousands of thoughts within a span of an hour and most of them aren't really threatening. It's stuff like "I gotta go to the bank", "I should do this, etc etc.". If I inquired into every thought I would go crazy because I would not be able to focus on life. Should I make it so that I only inquire into thoughts that bother me?
Second, sometimes I don't have a clear idea of the thought I'm supposed to inquire into. I get an unpleasant bodily reaction to something (anxiety, anger, etc.) but I can't immediately identify the source of this emotion. What should I do in this scenario?
A) That is exactly the problem, there are just too many thoughts rushing by to analyze each one that arises and then decide what to do about this particular thought before it disappears and is replaced by dozens of others.
The problem is focusing on the "objects", the thoughts, and not on the "subject", the ego/I, that is at the root of the problem as every problematic thought has an I/me/my in it, every one.
Amazingly, virtually no western philosophers, except perhaps Spinoza, recognized the problem, and focused on the subject as the source of the problem. Only the eastern disciplines and philosophers recognized the opportunity with working on the subject to get rid of the thoughts.
If you look @ the below videos "Where do our thoughts come from?" , and "What 'no thoughts' means...3 different kinds of thoughts", and the blogpost "what are 'planning thoughts'? what are 'narrative' thoughts'?" you'll get a better idea of the approach to be taken.
Fortunately, the two different types of thoughts have a distinctly different feel and they emerge from/through two different neural networks. The brain can quickly learn to separate these out and let the "planning" thoughts like "How do I get to the coffee house?" go, and focus on eliminating the "self-referential internal narrative"/SRIN thoughts like from "How the #$%$#^ can i EVER get to the coffee house in time for our meeting?!!!" by deconstructing the "I".