Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Enlightenment Therapy

I finally got around to reading the Enlightenment Therapy article in the Sunday NY Times Magazine.

My first thought is "alienated awareness". You can meditate a lot without integrating, if you force yourself. That's why it's important to look at the total being. Beware claims of spiritual advancement, it takes time.

You can also misread the theory of no-self, and use it to attack the self and nor nurture the self. In the FWBO there is the phrase, you have to be somebody before you can began to dismantle identity. Or something like that. There's a story where a man stands on a chair and says, "I don't exist." Somebody kicks him in the shins and he winces. You exist.

I've never read any Jeffrey B. Rubin. There is a plethora of Buddhism and psychotherapy integration, of varying quality. I can't say how deep he is yet. But there are 3 articles on line which you can read. I'll have to check him out.

1 comment:

simon jacobs said...

I deal with "no-self" by indeed
reminding myself that I exist,
but not in the way that "I" thinks.

Meaning we are not what we think.

I see emptiness a being "empty"
of our conditioning.

Pete.