Tag: control
These are very personal questions: What is spiritual to you? When and where do you feel spiritual? How do these spiritual feelings get blocked or expanded?
We can carry these questions throughout our lives. Spiritual practice aims to refine and deepen our understanding of them.
I will focus on three specific spiritual practices: psychological relationships, meditation, and psychedelic plant medicines, including cannabis.
Spiritual practice is about psychological relationships because if our spiritual practice doesn’t improve our relationships with others, what’s the point?
The practice of psychological relationships with others and with one’s inner life is a personal experience with spiritual meaning. This involves experiences of vulnerability, hurt, and confusion that teach us the depth of human love and kindness.
Spiritual practice is not only personal but also universal and objective. We need to look at our minds as they are, our human instincts as they are, and our relationship with the natural world. We are born, go through all the developmental stages, and then die. Life is both precious and painful. We cannot change most of life, but we can learn to connect with it gracefully, little by little.
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Silent Treatment Abuse or Shunning
“Silent Treatment Abuse” is the ancient practice of shunning using modern terminology to describe how it appears in our present relationships. It can be most confusing and frustrating because it feels like there is nothing that can be done about it. Many people have experienced abandonment, helplessness and loss when they have been shunned by…
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Todays Therapist | Raising a Teenager Infographic
Raising a teenager is confusing for everyone in the family, so, how as parents can we guide our children through this time of life? First, we have to learn of few new parenting skills, because parenting a teen is very different than parenting when the kids were young. What use to work when they were…
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God, a Useful Definition, page 2
In a previous post: God, a Useful Definition, I closed with another quote from C.G. Jung: “Religion is a defense against the experience of God.” God, a Useful Definition, page 2 is about our experience, pure and simple. It is obvious in the world today how “Religion is a defense against the experience of God”. …
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God, A Useful Definition
Jung’s definition of God: “all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.” There are so many assumptions when the word God is tossed around. It is difficult to even say or read…
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Time for a Little Help
In a 2001 World Health Organization mental health report, it was estimated that, in the year 2000, obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD was among the top 20 causes of illness-related disability, worldwide, for individuals between 15 and 44 years of age. http://www.ocdeducationstation.org/ocd-facts/incidence-of-ocd The Mayo Clinic describes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in the following: Obsession symptoms OCD obsessions…
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Meditation with Obsessive Thoughts and Feelings
Shunryu Suzuki in “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” wrote: “When you are practicing meditation, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you…
