From Anxiety to Love - Book Review
Anxiety is a common experience for many in our modern world. Anxiety disorder is the most common mental illness in the United States affecting 40 million adults each year. Anxiety can range from normal fears and worries to debilitating panic attacks and crippling fear. Inspired by author Corrine Zupko's own terrifying experiences with anxiety disorder for nearly thirty years, From Anxiety to Love: A Radical New Approach for Letting Go of Fear and Finding Lasting Peace offers new wisdom that allows each of us to discover the source of our own anxiety and heal the problem at the root.
French philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is attributed to saying, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” This very topic of perspective is the subject of Chapter One titled, "A New Way of Seeing the World." Corrine explains that we are not who we think we are and that we mistakenly take ourselves to be our fear, our anxiety, and our worry but these are not the things that define us because our true eternal nature is love. When we experience anxiety, we are not identifying with our true nature and that is our cue that we have gotten off course. Will we choose fear or love?
Inspired by the healing processes from A Course in Miracles, Corrine offers practical steps that readers can use to work though anxiety, navigate difficult relationships, and resolve any other problems that might be bothering them. This is not just a book to read but rather a manual for uncovering the root cause of suffering and healing ourselves. At the end of each chapter, quotations and activities provide the tools needed to take action and begin healing anxiety right away.
"Inner peace is not an event: it's a process. It's not something we attain once and keep forever, but rather an experience that continues to deepen to the degree to which you're willing to get out of the way and allow peace to move through you," writes Corrine. By replacing fear with love and remembering our true nature, we are able to release and move beyond anxiety and experience a life full of love that is constantly helping us grow and evolve.
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Grab your copy of From Anxiety to Love here.
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Cultivating Mindfulness: How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Cultivating mindfulness is the key to overcoming suffering and recognizing natural wisdom: both our own and others'. How do we go about it?
In the Buddhist tradition and in Contemplative Psychotherapy training, we nurture mindfulness through the practice of sitting meditation. There are many different kinds of meditation. For example, some are designed to help us relax; others are meant to produce altered states of consciousness.
Mindfulness meditation is unique in that it is not directed toward getting us to be different from how we already are. Instead, it helps us become aware of what is already true moment by moment. We could say that it teaches us how to be unconditionally present; that is, it helps us be present with whatever is happening, no matter what it is.
Mindfulness, paying precise, nonjudgmental attention to the details of our experience as it arises and subsides, doesn't reject anything. Instead of struggling to get away from experiences we find difficult, we practice being able to be with them. Equally, we bring mindfulness to pleasant experiences as well. Perhaps surprisingly, many times we have a hard time staying simply present with happiness. We turn it into something more familiar, like worrying that it won't last or trying to keep it from fading away.
When we are mindful, we show up for our lives; we don't miss them in being distracted or in wishing for things to be different. Instead, if something needs to be changed we are present enough to understand what needs to be done. Being mindful is not a substitute for actually participating in our lives and taking care of our own and others' needs. In fact, the more mindful we are, the more skillful we can be in compassionate action.
It's Still Such a Wonderful World
It's easy to lose sight of the beauty of the world in the midst of tragedy, political upheaval, injustice and suffering. While we continue with our practice, working to ease the suffering of others and living a life of compassion and Love, we also need to be mindful and grateful for the beauty of the world that still surrounds us when we choose Love. Like Pops says, "Love baby. Love. That's the secret."
"What a Wonderful World" [1970 Spoken Introduction Version] along with Oliver Nelson's Orchestra is a song written by Bob Thiele (as George Douglas) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1968. Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world (Thiele as a producer and Weiss as a composer/performer). Armstrong's recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Intended as an antidote for the increasingly racially and politically charged climate of everyday life in the United States, the song also has a hopeful, optimistic tone with regard to the future, with reference to babies being born into the world and having much to look forward to.
From Yama to Samyama
However, the ultimate goal of practicing yoga is to achieve transcendence and to break this cyclic existence. Dharana, dhyana, and samadhi are the three states that prepare one toward this transcendental goal. These three together is called Samyama (sam meaning total and yama meaning to control). “So Samyama means complete mastery over the psychic process or complete control of mental concentration.”