The practice of meditation is to try to come up against our resistance to experiencing how quickly everything really is changing all the time. And even when we're doing nothing, you know, in meditation, trying to look for it, our egos are there so that it's actually very hard to see. So what meditation is really is sort of seeing the defenses against the realistic view. As we see them, they kind of melt away if we can learn to see them with some kind of objectivity.
Please Support The Show with a Donation
Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in NYC and the author of many books about the intersection of Buddhism and psychotherapy. He's currently the clinical assistant professor in the postdoctoral program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University. His most recent book, Advice Not Given; A Guide to Getting Over Yourself is what he talks about in this episode. His wisdom is so incredibly practical, applicable, and helpful. Ideas like whether or not naming your feelings would be a helpful strategy for you and how to work with clinging in its many forms - even the clinging to inner peace - abound in this discussion. Take a listen and enrich your inner life.
Visit oneyoufeed.net/transform to learn more about our personal transformation program.
In This Interview, Mark Epstein and I Discuss...
- The Wolf Parable
- His book, Advice Not Given; A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
- The duality that we all struggle with
- Freud and the Buddha's nearly identical conclusion
- What it means to take personal responsibility for our selfish concerns
- The clinging to that which gives us a sense of control over life
- The clinging to that which nurtures our ego
- The eightfold path of the Buddha
- The conversation with his terminally ill father that inspired this book
- Right View - being realistic about one's self and the nature of things
- How change and death is happening all of the time, moment to moment
- Trying not to try as it relates to meditation
- "Take the backward step" in meditation
- FInding balance in "right effort"
- Exploring the feelings that we are otherwise afraid of through psychotherapy
- The link between being with uncomfortable feelings and empathy to others
- How anything that's happening in the body or mind can be the object of meditation
- How useful it is to name a feeling
- Making a feeling "intelligible" by naming it
- How useful it can be to find where feelings show up in the body
- When your mind is not aware of what's making you act this way (in addiction, compulsive behaviors etc) it's important to put the words on the feelings
- Whether or not all emotions show up in the body
- How clinging takes many forms - even the desire for inner peace
- "Don't chase her, let her find you."
- That our lives are made dull by our efforts to over control things
Please Support The Show with a Donation
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
