How is it possible for us living within one “reality” or paradigm all our lives to shift paradigm and gradually create a whole new set of beliefs, attitudes and values? That is a crucial question for the people of the Global Village because the worldview that most of us are currently choosing is tantamount to collective suicide. Is there a process or method of healing that would assist us in a radical change of direction? “Every therapist recognizes that the essential aspect of the therapeutic process is an understanding, or witnessing, or working through, or digesting, or giving awareness to this ‘stuff which comes up’ … a person has made it an object of awareness and thus is no longer exclusively and subjectively identified with it.”[i] What is Ken Wilber talking about?
Peter Malinowski, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Liverpool John Moores University in England has picked up the scent of the prey we should be chasing. “For some people who begin mindfulness training, it’s the first time in their life where they realize that a thought or emotion is not their only reality, that they have the ability to stay focused on something else, for instance their breathing, and let that emotion or thought just pass by.”[ii] In other words we are not trapped in the old story, the old identification with the body, mind and emotions but can create a new worldview and identity.
________________
Supplemental Reading:
Meditation, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
Meditation Again, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#49 Witnessing
[i] Wilber, Ken, The Spectrum of Consciousness. Wheaton, Illinois: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1977, p. 282.
[ii] Hurley, Dan. “Breathing In VS. Spacing Out.” The New York Times Magazine. January 19, 2014, pp. 14-15.
