Don’t Ask Me Why
Why (Photo credit: openpad) Although I’m kind of a knowledge junkie, I’ve always argued for the limits of human understanding. I’ve been railing against the pointlessness of trying to figure out why...
View ArticleSelf-Observation Isn’t for Wimps
In order to know ourselves, one of the things we need to be able to do is observe ourselves. But observing ourselves doesn’t come naturally. It isn’t that we lack opportunity, since the object of...
View ArticleCuriouser and Curiouser
Curiosity (Photo credit: Wikipedia) In his book, Waking Up, Charles Tart points out that most people, especially in the West, aren’t taught self-observation skills at an early age. What if we had spent...
View ArticleAttention Is Essential
English: Attention (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Intention is a great catalyst. It gives us something to aim at, a focus, a goal. But after creating an intention to do something, we also need to pay...
View ArticleMusic Will Save Me from Myself
(Photo credit: Wikipedia) Having declared an intention to maintain my equanimity—and why didn’t I think of this before now?—I have been looking for ways to keep reminding myself that this is my...
View ArticleThe State of a Mind
(Photo credit: dek dav) State of mind—the state of our cognitive processes—is a kind of framework within which we operate any time we’re awake. Some basic states of mind are: Distracted Mindful Focused...
View ArticleMindfulness vs. Habits: Game On?
(Photo credit: kenleyneufeld) According to the respective press they receive, habits are bad, and mindfulness is good. We ought to be as mindful as we can, as much of the time as we can, and do what we...
View ArticleDo You Ever Find Yourself Chewing Your Mental Cud?
That’s my definition of rumination—chewing your mental cud. A more elegant definition, provided by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema of Yale University, is “a tendency to passively think about the meaning, origins,...
View ArticleBuddhism, the Enneagram, and Neuroscience
I got up so tight I couldn’t unwind I saw so much I broke my mind I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in —words by Mickey Newbury, vocals by Kenny Rogers The “human condition,”...
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