Our Fear of Silence

The cultivation of mindfulness requires periods of focused attention.  Many proponents of mindfulness maintain that this is best developed through seated, silent meditation.  So, in exploring how to focus the attention, we must first consider our relationship with silence.

Whether in the center of a city or deep in a forest, the cacophony of sounds around us makes it apparent that true silence is impossible.  Composer John Cage wrote music that included long periods of silence.  When the musicians stopped playing, concertgoers were quickly confronted with the shuffling, shifting, and coughing sounds in the concert hall.  So what is silence?  I like to think of it as the absence of intentional sound.  Intentional sounds are the things we turn on such as TVs and phones, the words spoken or heard in a conversation we are engaged in, music we make such as humming or tapping, and the noise of tools, keyboards, or other objects we are interacting with.  Sounds that remain are unavoidable.  So silence is when we are purposefully quiet.  For many of us, this can be unsettling.

Getting Older with Bipolar

I'm writing a new blog for PsychCentral called Getting Older with Bipolar.  It deals with issues of aging and mental illness.  I'll cover everything from the long-term use of medication to living successfully with bipolar disorder; from relationship issues to financial planning and more.  Please have a look:

Getting Older with Bipolar

I'll still be posting here on this site each week as well on meditation, movement, and meaningful work.

How Guided Meditation Can Become A Distraction

I come from a long line of seekers, my mother’s side of the family known for trying on various spiritual traditions in a search for truth.  My mother herself has been experimenting with meditation recently, and has tried several forms of guided meditation.  The one that has worked best for her is Oprah Winfrey's and Deepak Chopra’s 21-day meditation challenge on the computer.

Last week she wanted to share with me a meditation she finds beneficial.  It was a busy day at her house, with much of the family in and out, so we escaped to her office to follow the guided instructions.  While I am glad so many people are following this program and finding relaxation in meditation, I found it too distracting to be truly mindful.

State Your Intention

Mindfulness Meditation, or working with the breath and releasing thoughts as they arise, has been very helpful to me for many years.  The health, cognitive, and emotional benefits of this practice are well documented.  But sometimes, to the horror of my teachers, I pull out a notepad and start paying closer attention to the thoughts skipping through my mind during meditation periods, turning each meditation into a period of contemplation on goals and intentions.  Meditation has demonstrated that it makes us more open to more ideas, and more noticing of novel thoughts.  So why not put this to use every once in a while?

Taking the Opportunity to Come Apart

I’ve cited James Austin in a post about counting breaths, and often come back to the things he taught in a retreat I attended with him.  It was at Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskills.  Austin spent most of the day Saturday presenting information from his book Meditating Selflessly, and from other research he and others have conducted on Zen and the Brain.  His exhortation to get out of the meditation hall and spend some time in nature looking at birds, or, if early morning, the planets and stars, led me to leave the retreat on Sunday and disappear for a few hours into the woods (Austin’s presentation was over).

During the retreat I asked Dr. Austin what he thought about people with a serious mental illness practicing meditation.  I have bipolar disorder 1 and had scheduled a very intensive, silent retreat.  Austin said that people with a “mental defect” should not undertake intensive meditation.  I was surprised at both the language and the sentiment, especially as I have gained so much from my meditation practice.  But I have respect for Dr. Austin’s work, and was so influenced by his retreat, that I decided to take his caution under consideration.  

I went on the silent retreat anyway.

Healthcare For All? - part four

The debate rages over whether or not healthcare is a human right and, in the United States, we’ve ended up with a patchwork of private providers and public assistance.  It seems no one is happy.  For those of us with coverage from an employer it’s still difficult.  My family faced open enrollment this month and it took hours, and a spreadsheet, to choose between options.  I gave up, poured a bourbon, and sat staring out the window at an early snow while my wife struggled on until we could make a choice.  But we’re still unsure what it’s all going to cost.

Healthcare As A Human Right: The Case Against

Healthcare For All, Part Three

The Bill of Rights establishes rights that are not to be restricted by government.   Freedoms of speech and assembly, the rights to bear arms and to due process, and prohibitions on the government from occupying or seizing most private property are all enumerated.  Doctrines of human rights also set out to guarantee liberties from government oppression.  What these long-cherished freedoms have in common is that they each limit government action.