Spirituality

Spirituality for Depression

psyjdc 3 Comments

 

“Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.”- Chuck Palahniuk
Depression is widespread and debilitating. It is the most common mental illness affecting about 4% of the population worldwide. Unfortunately, the word depression is used in everyday language to mean both the clinical disorder and simple sadness. So, someone who for example is grieving about the death of a loved one is often labelled as depressed. That is simply not the appropriate use of the term.

 

Depression is not rooted in an event, a situation, or a characteristic. Sometimes the depressed individual will point to something as the cause, but the tipoff that it’s depression is that once that something goes away or is fixed, the depression still remains. Hence, the permanence of depression in the face of an improving environment suggests that it is more physically than environmentally based. But what to do for the legions of depressed people?

 

The most common solution is drugs. But they have troublesome side effects, are not always effective, and even when they are, can lose effectiveness over time. So, there is a need for other solutions. A number of contemplative practices have been shown to be effective in relieving depression. These include  mindfulness training (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/15/spiraling-up-with-mindfulness/), mindfulness based cognitive therapy (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/dealing-with-major-depression-when-drugs-fail/)  and yoga  (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/03/keep-up-yoga-practice-for-anxiety-and-depression/).

 

It has long been reported that spirituality and religiosity are useful in treating depression. In today’s Research News article “Effects of religiosity and spirituality on the treatment Response in Patients with Depressive Disorders”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1097990470224878/?type=3&theater

Kim and colleagues studied depressed patients before and after undergoing 6-months of anti-depressant drug treatment. They found that the personal importance of religion and particularly spirituality were excellent predictors of successful treatment outcome. In other words, being high in spirituality was associated with better treatment response and lower depression at the end of treatment.

 

These results are interesting and potentially important, but how can spirituality improve anti-depressant drug treatment outcomes for depression? If we consider depression as biologically based, then the drug treatment may be addressing the core problem. But, years of depression produces a negative outlook on life that is so entrenched that it continues even after the core brain chemistry problem is addressed. The formerly depressed patient still maintains an expectation of a negative future. Spirituality, by way of giving a positive purpose to life may well be an antidote to the dour expectations of the formerly depressed patient. It provides hope for a better future.

 

Regardless of the mechanism it is clear that spirituality assists in recovering from depression.

 

“Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. 
It is also insane.” ― Eckhart Tolle

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Concepts are not the solution. They’re the problem

psyjdc Leave a comment

 

“The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.” – Saint Augustine

 

Human beings rely on thinking. It’s responsible for human race’s ability to create the tools that have allowed us to dominate our planet and reshape it to suit our wants and needs. Much of thinking is conceptual. It is a mental manipulation of ideas and thoughts represented by concepts which are represented by words. We are reliant on our concepts to process information. This is and effective but very limited strategy.

 

We need these concepts because our minds are not capable of working with large amounts of information at the same time, as computers can. In fact, it’s been estimated that we are only able to work with about seven pieces of information at a time. That doesn’t give us much to work with unless we can somehow compress the information. In psychology this compressed information are called chunks. Words and concepts are examples of chunks.

 

There are many varieties of these chunks from the concrete, like ‘car’ to the abstract variety like ‘justice’. The word ‘chair’ is a concept, a chunk. It represents a wide range of different entities that have a common purpose to allow humans to sit comfortably. They range from solid wood hardback chairs, to patio chairs, to reclining chairs, etc. If we wish to think about chairs we are not capable of holding all the different kinds of chairs in our mind at once, so the concept chair is used instead and only comprises one piece of information. This frees the mind to consider other pieces in information along with the chair in processing information.

 

The use of these concepts has worked wonderfully for our everyday and scientific purposes. But, unfortunately they are interpreted as real, rather than the useful tools that they are. Concepts have no reality unto themselves. They are simply symbols. In fact they are always inherently incorrect. There are many, many, different objects that we call chairs, but the concept chair doesn’t really accurately describe any of them fully. There are many, many, different forms of actions or outcomes that we call justice, but the concept justice doesn’t really accurately describe any of them fully. So, the concept, although convenient, is never truly accurate or comprehensive.

 

These concepts can prove obstacles for creative thinking as they so compartmentalize things as to make it difficult to see them as something else, or reconfigure the concept to include or exclude various objects. The concepts themselves tend to separate things and thereby make it more difficult to see a wooden chair in the same category as a wood boat even though they are both objects created out of wood. We were once on a camping trip and ran out of gas. We had lots of camp stove fuel, but were unable for over an hour to realize that it was gasoline and could be used to fuel the vehicle. Once we broke through our conceptual fixatedness we filled the tank with camp stove fuel and drove off.

 

Concepts also freeze things in time which does not accurately portray the actual nature of the thing. This is most obvious with perishable items, like fruits and vegetables, although actually true for all things, they are impermanent and every changing. So, a lemon is soil and water, it’s a seed, it’s a tree, it’s a bud, it’s an unripe fruit, it falls from the tree, it is a ripe fruit, it begins to rot, it transforms back for simple chemicals, soil and water. The lemon is all of these things at some point or another. But the concept neglects the dynamic ever changing nature of the lemon and its connection to all other soil and water derived things.

 

If you follow this reasoning deeply you can begin to see that concepts and categories are artificial and, in essence, all things are the same thing. Not only is the lemon soil and water but so is the chair, and so is the car, etc. It is this problem with concepts that causes us to miss the oneness of all things. This is the cornerstone of enlightenment. Enlightenment experiences are highly varied, but they all have the common strain of an experience of the oneness of everything. Under normal conditions we miss this completely due to the operation of our compartmentalizing (dualistic) concepts.

 

The Buddha realized this and taught about it extensively. The “Diamond Sutra” is entirely concerned with how concepts can deceive and prevent you from attaining enlightenment. He stated that “the living beings to whom you refer are neither living beings nor not living beings. Why? Subhuti, all the different kinds of living beings the Buddha speaks of are not living beings. But they are referred to as living beings.” He is clearly recognizing that the concept ‘living beings’ can be seen in many different ways and just sticking to the actual concept itself is a deception or as he would say, a delusion.

 

To see the world as a Buddha you must fully understand a thing in all its glorious forms, varieties, and stages before the concept can be used appropriately. To see the world as a Buddha, concepts are the problem, not the solution.

 

“Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.”  ― Anthony de Mello

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

The Miracle of Awareness

psyjdc Leave a comment

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” – Aristotle
Probably the aspect of existence that is taken the most for granted is awareness. Additionally, it is also the least noticed and understood. I believe that this stems from the fact that awareness has always been there throughout our lives. It is a truism in Psychology that we learn to ignore things that do not change. Our nervous systems are tuned to note change and ignore constancy. So, our brains are designed to not notice our ever present, constant awareness.

 

But truly, our awareness is arguably the most miraculous component of our existence. Without realizing it, it is the presence of this awareness that convinces us that there is more to life than the physical and leads us to spirituality and religion. It is also our most mysterious component. It is extremely difficult to characterize, measure, or study making it almost impossible to explore in a scientific manner.

 

If one looks at their own awareness closely (in fact your personal awareness is the only one you can look at) you find that it’s your awareness that’s now looking for your awareness. It’s kind of like your ears trying to hear your ears. As we search, looking carefully and deeply, we don’t find anything there. The whole Buddhist notion of emptiness stems from this fact, that when you look you can’t find anything. But, it’s no wonder that nothing is found as what’s looking is what’s being sought.

 

Carefully looking at our awareness we can also come to realize that awareness is a seeing without being seen. It’s an unexperienced experience; a perceiverless perceiver; an effectless effect! In other words it’s an end point of thought and sensory experience. It’s having an experience but nothing is experiencing it. It is in essence the end point on a causal chain, with no further causes and effects. How remarkable!

 

Our minds are designed to analyze cause effect chains. That is what has given us the ability to analyze our worlds and learn to control them. Identifying the cause of something provides the ability to control the occurrence of the effects, making us masters of our environment. It’s no wonder that this ability was favored in evolution.

 

But what can we make of things at the beginning or end of these chains? Our mind boggles at the notion of a causeless cause or an effectless effect. We end up inventing gods as the beginning point, the prime mover, that which has always existed without beginning, the causeless cause. For that matter we’ve also invented the notion of soul as the everlasting thing without end that has no further effects, the effectless effect. But, a moments reflection, clearly reveals that this doesn’t resolve the issue at all. It simply places a label on it and doesn’t explain it or add any understanding to the issue. This should make it clear that we have no chance of understanding these phenomena though using the minds tools of logic, reason, or science.

 

So, our minds cannot analyze or understand our awareness. This underscores the fact that our minds are very limited, which is why Suzuki Roshi referred to it as the “little mind.” Our awareness, on the other hand he termed the “big mind.” It encompasses the “little mind” but is itself vaster. It makes sense that awareness, the “big mind” cannot be analyzed by its subcomponent, the “little mind.”

 

So how can we look at awareness? The answer is that we can’t, we can only experience it. This is why the Buddha called his teachings Dhammaehipassiko, which means “Come and see for yourself.” Don’t try to understand it, just see it for yourself, just experience it.

 

If you take this frame of mind and just kick back and let the experience happen without thought, analysis, labels, or judgments, you begin to see the amazing miracle of your awareness. Every moment becomes magical. You revel in its ever changing diversity and beauty. You realize how precious this existence is and how special you are to be able to have it. Every moment is unique, a never to be experienced again treasure.

 

This is why the great modern sage, Thích Nhất Hạnh, states that “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” 

 

There is some controversy as to whether Einstein actually said this but, it’s so meaningful that I’ll repeat it anyway; “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

 

So, stop ignoring it and pay attention to the greatest miracle of existence, your awareness. Jesus said that “The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth but men do not see it.” I would contend that what Jesus was referring to was our awareness. It is heaven on earth, but we don’t see it.

 

So, open our eyes to awareness and experience the miracle of heaven.

 

“Spirituality is meant to take us beyond our tribal identity into a domain of awareness that is more universal.” – Deepak Chopra

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Add Spirituality to substance Abuse Treatment to Amplify its Benefits

psyjdc Leave a comment

“What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that’s toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay.” – Moby

 

Substance abuse and addiction is a large and difficult problem for all groups. But, it is especially a problem for Native American and Alaska Native populations. The rates of binge alcohol use and illicit drug use are higher among American Indian or Alaska Native adults than the national averages (30.6 vs. 24.5 percent and 11.2 vs. 7.9 percent, respectively) and  the  need for treatment is higher than the national average for adults (18.0 vs. 9.6 percent). But only one in eight (12.6 percent) in need of treatment received treatment.

 

There is a great need for effective treatments for substance abuse overall, but particularly for the Native American and Alaska Native populations. Mindfulness based treatments have shown promise. The mindfulness based therapeutic technique Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has been demonstrated to be effective for the treatment of substance abuse. Similarly, spirituality has also been shown to be beneficial in recovery from addictions and alcoholism (see links below).

 

In the treatment of Native American and Alaska Native populations there has been a glaring lack of incorporation their spiritual beliefs into the therapeutic process. This is a problem as these spiritual beliefs are critical and central to their cultures and integration of them into therapy is critical in working with this population.

 

In today’s Research News article “Dialectical behavior therapy with American Indian/Alaska Native adolescents diagnosed with substance use disorders: Combining an evidence based treatment with cultural, traditional, and spiritual beliefs.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1091066804250578/?type=1&theater

Beckstead and colleagues integrate Native American and Alaska Native spiritual beliefs into the evidence based treatment Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and applied it to treating substance abuse and addiction in Native American and Alaska Native adolescents. Remarkably they found that 90% of the 229 patients treated showed clinically significant improvement and 6% more showed improvement. No patients demonstrated deterioration.

 

These results are remarkable as reflected in the very large calculated effect size for the integrated treatment. This suggests that integrating culturally appropriate spiritual beliefs into treatment greatly amplifies the effectiveness of the treatment. As we discussed previously (see links below) spirituality has a number of positive characteristics that make it effective in recovery from addiction. So, its integration into secularly based treatments appears to have an amplifying effect, making these treatments even more effective.

 

So fight substance abuse with spiritually appropriate treatment.

 

“All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

LINKS

Spirituality improves recovery from addictions

http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/spirituality-improves-recovery-from-addiction/

Spirituality improves recovery from alcoholism

http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/spirituality-and-alcoholism-treatment/

 

 

Yoga’s Lost Spirituality

psyjdc Leave a comment

12004150_1087230814634177_898156537513386681_n.jpg

 

Yoga developed in India millennia ago as a deep spiritual practice. It developed as a contemplative practice that unified body and mind. Yoga was known to have physical benefits, but the most important benefit was seen to be spiritual development. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in has address to the United Nations proposing an International Day of Yoga stated that “yoga is not just about fitness or exercise, it is about changing one’s lifestyle.” It is “a holistic way of life that stresses harmony between man and nature.”

 

Yoga was engaged in as a meditative practice. Awareness was focused on the movements, the postures, the sensations from the muscles, joints, and tendons, and in coordination with an aware controlled breathing. It was more complex, but in essence, no different from the simple meditative practice of following the breath. It was a mind-body focused attention practice, one that has immense subtlety and beauty and that can lead to profound insight.

 

But, as yoga emerged and was practiced in the west it was secularized. This was for good reason, as western society was not ready to accept an ancient eastern spiritual practice. In a sense, the tactic of secularization worked and resulted in an unprecedented and rapid acceptance of yoga in western culture. I commented to my yogini spouse that a clear indicator of yoga being not only accepted, but adopted by western culture was when yoga attire became a fashion statement.

 

There are many forms of yoga and many practitioners who are focused on the spiritual aspects of yoga. But, to the vast majority of westerners yoga is an exercise for physical fitness. It is a means to mold the body to look good, as a health promoting practice, and as a strategy to help loose weight. These are good and reasonable goals. But, they have replaced the far more important spiritual development promoted by yoga. As Jon Kabat-Zinn has remarked, ‘there is the potential for something priceless to be lost.’

 

Our research has demonstrated that a typical western yoga practice produces significantly less spiritual benefits than a meditation practice does, that spiritual awakening experiences are far less likely to be associated with yoga practice than meditation practice, and when people practice both yoga and meditation, it is the meditation component that is responsible for spiritual development. In fact, the way western yoga is practiced, it produces smaller increases in mindfulness than meditation.

 

Fortunately, the recognition that spirituality is being lost may very well be the first step toward the recovery of the spiritual nature of yoga. People who practice yoga feel something special has happened during the practice, but don’t have the understanding of what it is. Yoga practitioners do show increased mindfulness and spirituality, but far less than meditation practitioners. They interpret these feelings, not as spiritual but as relaxation, as a high, similar to a runners high, or as a physical arousal. It is not a great leap to reinterpret this as the beginnings of a deep spiritual experience.

 

Now that yoga has been accepted in the west and not looked on as some kind of pagan or demonic ritual, there is the potential to slowly and gently reinsert the fundamental spirituality of yoga practice. The promotion of deep and relatively lengthy yoga nidra as the conclusion of each yoga session is an important beginning. The return to a deep focused awareness being preeminent in yoga practice is another important step.

 

There also needs to be teaching that yoga spirituality is not a religion. It is entirely different and does not in any way contradict the religious beliefs or practices that are common in the west. This is a subtle teaching that cannot be taught without the groundwork being completed of the experience of the spiritual feelings that are the outgrowth of focused awareness yoga practice. But, once in place, a new understanding can emerge that is entirely acceptable to western sensibilities. It can lead to a return to the true spiritual nature of yoga.

 

So practice what Prime Minister Modi termed “India’s gift to the world,” and become healthier physically, psychologically and spiritually.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Let Spirituality Help You through Tough Times

psyjdc Leave a comment

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” ― Albert Einstein

 

Bad things happen even to good people. These negative life events and the distress that comes with them can damage mental health unless the individual has a means to cope with the distress. Religion/spirituality is often used as a refuge during challenging times. Does it actually help? There is some evidence that it does. It has been shown that spirituality works with mindfulness to relieve depression (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/does-spirituality-account-for-mindfulness-anti-depressive-effects/) and can improve end of life (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/spirituality-improves-end-of-life/).

 

In today’s Research News article “The effect of spirituality and religious attendance on the relationship between psychological distress and negative life events”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1083437271680198/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157065/

Kidwai and colleagues investigated this very question. They studied the relationship between attendance at religious services, spirituality, and distress in an urban population. They found that people who were high on spirituality were less likely to be distressed following negative events as compared to those who were low on spirituality. They also found that high levels of spirituality were associated with attendance at religious services and that religious attendance was associated with lower distress. So, spirituality seemed to work indirectly on distress through increasing religious attendance that in turn reduced distress.

 

It appears that spiritual/religious coping is a powerful coping mechanisms that has the potential to buffer the damaging effects of negative life events on psychological functioning. There are a number of processes that could account for this. But, from the results it appears that religious attendance is primary and spirituality works by encouraging religious attendance.

 

It is possible that religious attendance provides social support when traversing difficult life situations. The common belief system connects individuals and promotes support and understanding during problems. In fact, this is precisely what Kidwai and colleagues found. Religious attendance was associated with higher social support which in turn was associated with lower distress. Hence, religious attendance can go a long way toward relieving distress directly and also by recruiting social support.

 

Regardless of the mechanism it is clear that spirituality and religious attendance can be helpful to the individual in difficult times.

 

So, be spiritual to help get you through life’s challenges.

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

 

 

Look Inside

psyjdc Leave a comment

 

The following story was used as a teaching by the great Sufi teacher, Nasrudin.

His friend, Mansour, comes to visit him and sees Nasruddin on his hands and knees, crawling on the sidewalk under the street lamp, obviously searching for something, appearing frustrated.

 Concerned for his friend, Mansour asks, “Nasruddin, what are you looking for? Did you lose something?”

 “Yes, Mansour. I lost the key to my house, and I’m trying to find it, but I can’t.”

 “Let me help you,” responds Mansour. Mansour joins his friend, kneels down on his hands and knees, and begins to crawl on the sidewalk under the street lamp, searching.

 After a time, having looked everywhere on and around the sidewalk, neither Nasruddin nor Mansour can find the lost key. Puzzled, Mansour asks his friend to recall his steps when he last had the key, “Nasruddin, where did you lose the key? When did you last have it?”

 “I lost the key in my house,” Nasruddin responds.

 “In your house?” repeats the astonished Mansour. “Then why are we looking for the key here, outside on the sidewalk under this street lamp?”

 Without hesitation, Nasruddin explains, “Because there is more light here . . . !”

 The great teaching contained in this story is that we are constantly looking for what is important to us outside of ourselves. It is easier to see outside and so this is where we look for happiness, truth, understanding, and love. We believe that we will be happy when and if we can obtain something, be it a promotion, raise, or new position, an object such as a new car or house, or an experience such as a travel or a vacation. We believe that we will find the understanding and love that we seek with a new relationship, or once we change a significant person. We believe that we will find the truth by following a particular religion or spiritual teacher, or by studying what great thinkers and scientists have discovered.

All of these things can be beneficial, good, and useful. But, after a while after obtaining them we discover that they were not the answer. They may have been briefly satisfying, but that satisfaction did not last. So we seek something else outside of ourselves leading to the same outcome. So we try again on what psychologist’s term the hedonic treadmill. It’s amazing that many people never realize that this strategy is simply not working.

The problem all along has been that we’re looking in the wrong place. Like Nasrudin we are searching outside when the key can only be found inside. We can only find happiness, truth, understanding, and love within ourselves. Contemplative practice is the means for internal exploration. It allows us to carefully view our mental and emotional landscape seeking the keys.

With practice we can begin to see that happiness is a choice that we can make. It’s everywhere around us and in us if we only appreciate life for what it is and cease to fight against it. If we accept things as they are and then look deeply at them we will see the splendor and glory of life as it transpires moment to moment.

The more we engage in contemplative practice and the deeper we go, the more the mind begins to quiet. Once settled, we can begin to see that the love we’ve been seeking is already there within us. When we learn to love ourselves first we will see that others love us but it has to be viewed through a compassionate understanding of the emotional upheavals within them. Eventually we may even have the revelation to see that love is the substance of the universe.

All of this can lead to understanding that life is to be experienced not opposed, that the truth of existence is always present inside us if we only allow ourselves to see it, that heaven is not a place but is everywhere, and that ultimate truth was there all along.

These revelations do not come easily. They require often years of dedicated practice. But, they are there. If we’re looking in the right place we can find them. If we’re looking outside, we’ll never find them. If we’re looking inside we’re on the right track. The keys are there.

 

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

The Purpose of Life

psyjdc Leave a comment

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We tend to make everything overly complicated. We do this repeatedly in our existence and particularly in our search for meaning in life, for our purpose in living. Rather than see its elegant simplicity we intellectualize it and attempt to construct some form of theoretical understanding in reference to what we’ve been taught and what we’ve learned from experience. In other words we use our intellects to make up a purpose. It is no wonder that we feel uncertain and confused about our purpose.

So we look to scriptures, the writings of great thinkers, or the productions of great artists to reveal to us the meaning and purpose of our lives. For some that seems to bring comfort. But, they are comforted only because they don’t invest significant time and energy in processing the logic of the solutions. They simply defer to someone else’s ideas. With a little reflection though, the purported purpose is realized to be unsatisfactory.

How sad, that our minds convince us that our purpose has to be difficult to discern. Our purpose in existing should be simple and patently obvious to all. Only our intellects would need to look for something obscure and complex. Simply put, thinking prevents us from seeing. So, let’s look without thinking. Let’s simply look around us.

The purpose of life should be revealed in the present moment, not in our hazily remembered and reconstructed past and not in our imagined and projected future, but right now. The only time that we can have a purpose is right now. So why not look for it there.

If we look carefully at what we’re experiencing right now in the present moment without thinking or reference to the past or future, we will experience an incredible panoply of sensations that arise and fall away, arise and fall away, arise and fall away. If we try to grasp ahold of any of them we fail and become unhappy. But, if we simply sit back and let whatever comes come and whatever goes go, we experience the beauty of the ever changing present. We can come to enjoy the pleasure and wonder of the richness of every moment. We can see it for the miracle that it actually is.

This quickly leads to the patently obvious conclusion that the purpose of life is simply to experience it. Nothing more! If we truly stop trying to make it complicated and simply focusing on experiencing what is there right in front of us, a revelation begins to dawn on us that our purpose is not to come up with an intellectual answer to produce meaning but simply to experience the meaning that is revealed in every single moment.

How wonderfully obvious and simple!

It’s not rocket science. It’s simply seeing the wonder of existence and allowing it to play out for us.

So, experience life in all its glory and fulfill your purpose.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”  ― Eleanor Roosevelt

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” -Dalai Lama

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Prayer helps Cancer Patients

psyjdc Leave a comment

 

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Depression affects approximately 15% to 25% of cancer patients. This is not surprising as a diagnosis of cancer can cause a number of patients to become depressed. The problem is, though, that depression can affect the course of the disease, with mortality rates 25% to 39% higher in cancer patients who are also depressed. So it would appear that the two are linked such that cancer diagnosis can induce depression and depression can reduce the prognosis for recovery.

Many cancer patients pray to help cope with the disease, but it is not known if prayer is in any way affective in helping the patients with either depression or with dealing with cancer and its treatment. In today’s Research News article “Types of prayer and depressive symptoms among cancer patients: the mediating role of rumination and social support”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1074914312532494/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183194/

John Perez and colleagues investigated the relationship between different kinds of prayer and depression in cancer patients and find that certain types of prayer are associated with lower depression in these patients.

They investigated eight different types of prayer—adoration, confession, reception, supplication, thanksgiving, prayer for one’s physical health, prayer for emotional strength, and prayer for others’ well-being. They found that more adoration prayer, reception prayer, thanksgiving prayer, and prayer for the well-being of others the lower the level of depression.

In looking deeper at the pattern of results they determined that prayers of thanksgiving acted by decreasing ruminative self-focused attention which in turn reduced depression. It would make sense that prayer that helped focus the patient on what they are thankful for in life would result in an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in the time spent ruminating about the cancer, leading to lower depression.

They also found that that prayer for the well-being of others was directly associated with lower depression and indirectly by being positively related to social support which is in turn associated with reduced depression. Praying for others directs attention away from the patient toward the problems of others. This can help provide a perspective on their problems with cancer and thereby reduce the depression. People who are thinking of the well-being of others tend to be better cared about and liked by others. The increase in the social support for them may follow. If someone cares about others, others care about them.

Reception and adoration prayer are both forms of contemplative prayer which is a form of meditation. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve the negative psychological issues that can go along with a cancer diagnosis http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/tackle-cancer-with-mindfulness/. So engaging in these forms of prayer may work through the same mechanism as meditation in improving the mood of cancer patients.

Hence it appears that the common response of cancer patients to pray is more than just an expression of religious faith. It has a positive impact on the patient’s psychological well-being which is known to improve the prognosis for recovery.

So, pray when cancer is diagnosed, reduce depression, and increase survival chances.

CMCS

 

Why are we Spiritual/Religious?

psyjdc 1 Comment

Spirituality/Religion are characteristic of humans from the earliest recorded history. Even today in an increasingly material world with all of the advances of science, Spirituality/Religion persists and in some areas thrives. In addition, as people get older they become more and more spiritual or religious. What accounts for its pervasiveness? Why is it so ubiquitous in wide ranging societies from primitive to very advanced, widespread areas throughout the globe, and over wildly different eras of recorded history?

I believe that the pervasiveness of Spirituality/Religion results from an ever-present unchanging awareness. When looking at our sensory experience we come to realize that there is something that appears to be seeing, hearing, touching, tasting smelling, feeling. There is something that seems to be looking out through our eyes, listening through our ears, etc. There seems to be something there that is constantly witnessing whatever is going on in the environment. There even appears to be something there that is listening to our thoughts and internal speech, that’s observing us reviewing our memories, and that’s watching us plan for the future.

Whatever it is, it appears to be always present and always the same. As we’ve aged it’s always been there and has never seemed to vary. When we were a child we had the same awareness that we now have as adults. Our ability to think, our storehouse of knowledge and experiences, our wisdom, our bodies, and our emotions have all changed over the years. But that which is witnessing it all has never changed.

This internal entity appears to be making decisions and guiding behavior. It is the unseen chooser. It is the ever present director of our actions. It is what’s responsible for our volition, our free will. It doesn’t actually guide the details of action. These seem to be well learned and have become automatic. Rather, it appears to be what lies beneath making the decisions and guiding and directing the general course of our actions.

It is that never changing sense of presence, of being, of watching, of willing, of choosing that makes us feel that there has to be more than simply physical existence. We experience it as something that transcends the physical, something that cannot be simply explained by biology, physics, and chemistry, something that isn’t just a very complex computational device in action. It is the underlying awareness, presence, and being that just seems to be our spiritual self.

We are aware of this even if we can’t put our fingers on it exactly. There just seems to be something enduring and special about us that transcends the physical. This leaves us in a quandary. We can understand and work with the material world. But, how can we grasp awareness? What does it all mean?

This is where religion comes in. It provides an explanation for where it comes from what it is, and where it’s going. This can be very comforting. If we can’t quite accept someone else’s explanation as outlined in the texts or dogma of the religion, then the approaches of eastern spirituality become a solution. We can seek out an understanding through contemplative practices. These approaches do not provide answers but produce comfort by providing a methodology, the answers can be found through internal reflection.

All of this is not necessarily processed in a logical way or even in a conscious way. But regardless, the urge to grasp and understand our being is compelling. It motivates the need for a frame of reference for existence. Spirituality/Religion provides that. It always has and probably always will. Right or wrong, it satisfies a very basic human need and so is likely to continue far into the future.

CMCS