Assignment Higher Power: When we start to spend time each day in weaponisin...

When we start to spend time each day in weaponising our responses caption

Assignment Higher Power: When we start to spend time each day in weaponisin...: When we start to spend time each day in weaponising our responses, resting in our awareness, observing the flow of the breath and the acti...

Bringing into action weaponised mindfulness can lead to new levels of insight and understanding about ourself

Bringing into action weaponised mindfulness  can lead to new levels of insight and understanding about ourself, our body and our reaction to societal norms, which distraction and escape can never do. Understanding and insight, of course, are an extremely important part of the process of coming to terms with our condition and really learning how to live with it, not just endure it.

Our weaponised relaxation response is the physiological opposite of hyper arousal

Our weaponised relaxation response is the physiological opposite of hyper arousal, the state we experience when we are stressed or threatened. We hypothesis that if the relaxation response is elicited regularly, it will have a positive influence on health and protect us from some of the more damaging effects of stress.We start to weaponise our response against stress and stressful people or agencies.

Assignment Higher Power: The science of meditation is in its infancy.

Assignment Higher Power: The science of meditation is in its infancy.: The science of meditation is in its infancy. We need decades more study. People talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning, b...

We have addiction limitations.

We have addiction limitations. They are worth befriending. They teach us a lot. They can show us what we most need to pay attention to and honour our deep cognitive damage. They become our cutting edge for learning and growing and gentling ourselves into the present moment as it really is in our life.

Living with pain in a weaponised mind

Understanding is an extremely important part of our process of coming to terms with our pain filled condition and really learning how to live with it, not just endure it. One of the ways we speak about it is that the sensory, the emotional, and the conceptual dimensions of the pain experience can be uncoupled from one another, meaning that they can be held in awareness as independent aspects of experience. Once we see that our thoughts about sensations, for instance, are not the sensations themselves, both the experience of the sensory and the cognitive dimensions of the pain experience may change independently. This is true for our emotional reactions to unpleasant sensory experience. This phenomenon of uncoupling can give us new degrees of freedom in resting in awareness and holding whatever arises in any or all of these domains of experience in an entirely different way, and dramatically reduce the suffering experience.

We might become aware of how addicted we can be to our devices

We might become aware of how addicted we can be to our devices, and to that 24/7 connectivity that has us always available and immediately responsive to everybody else, clutching our phones as if they were our oxygen line to life itself, and in the process, perhaps losing touch more and more with ourselves and with our moments—so that, ironically, some of the most important connections of all, namely, with our own deepest analog self, with our body, and with our present-moment experience, can be seriously eclipsed.

No, but I understand something about this not knowing

Socrates was famous in Athens for saying, “Know thyself.” It is said that one of his students said to him: “Socrates, you go around saying ‘Know thyself,’ but do you know yourself?” Socrates was said to have replied, “

No, but I understand something about this not knowing.

It is who we truly are.

No matter how many scars we carry from what we have gone through and suffered in the past, our intrinsic wholeness is still here: what else contains the scars? None of us has to be a helpless victim of what was done to us or what was not done for us in the past, nor do we have to be helpless in the face of what we may be suffering now. We are also what was present before the scarring—our original wholeness, what was born whole. And we can reconnect with that intrinsic wholeness at any time, because its very nature is that it is always present. It is who we truly are.

If this is a selfless act, why are we focusing on ourself? On our own feelings of safety and well-being? On our own happiness?

If this is a selfless act, why are we focusing on ourself? On our own feelings of safety and well-being? On our own happiness?

But, you might object, if this is a selfless practice, why am I focusing on myself? On my own feelings of safety and well-being? On my own happiness? One response would be: because you are not separate from the universe that gave rise to you and so are as worthy an object of loving-kindness as anything else or anyone else. Your loving-kindness cannot be either loving or kind if it does not include yourself. But at the same time you don’t need to worry. It’s not limited to yourself. Because the field of loving-kindness is limitless. If you like, you can think of the loving-kindness practice, as we’ve been engaging it up to this point, on a relative level at least, as tuning your instrument before you play it out in the world. In this case, tuning the instrument is itself a huge act of love and kindness not a means to an end.