The Mystery Of Transcendental Being

1984 has arrived. If you haven’t noticed, you are the frog about to be boiled to death as the water you are in has slowly and imperceptibly heated up over your lifetime.

After the horrors of the second world war, an unprecedented stretch of 50-60 years inspired Western countries to embrace the principles of liberal democracy. Prosperity ensued, and with increasing numbers of humans on this planet, we faced globalization. Liberal democratic values meant that we opened the door to multiculturalism like never before. There was a sense of importance about knowing the truth.

Unprecedented advances in science and technology amidst a population explosion with insatiable needs, have now seriously jeopardized our ecosystem. Greed has lead to economic polarizations with an erosion of the middle class, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. By opening our borders to other cultures and people in need, many have started to feel that their values and culture became compromised and watered down. With their cultural identity and economic stability threatened, many people lost faith in liberal democracy and are looking to strongmen to put the genie back in the bottle and deliver the good old times of strong national identity and economic prosperity. Meanwhile, strongmen are dictators with no regard for truth, freedom or people’s wellbeing, as they take control through ultra-nationalistic or ultra-collective agendas over what they perceive to be the chaos of democracy.

Strongmen heading up nationalistic political trends and their supporting crowds are now emerging everywhere, seriously jeopardizing liberal democracy and ushering in dangerous dictatorial tendencies. Trump has just publicly admitted that he has the right to interfere with the judiciary. Make no mistake, no country is immune to what happened in Nazi Germany, including the United States and Canada. Trump symbolizes everything that can be wrong in a society, and we should not forget that Trump can only occupy the post he does when a majority of citizens collude with what is emerging now as a collective psychological madness, which includes ‘pathological lying, habitual and institutionalized corruption, dishonesty, serial groping, casual racism, glorification of violence, winking to Nazis, laziness, impulsiveness, childish tantrums, bottomless ignorance, vanity, insecurity, vulnerability to flattery, bullying, crudity, indifference to suffering, incompetence, rabid narcissism, chaos in the White House, attacks on America’s allies and support for its foes, contempt for experts and for expertise, for truth and the press, for norms and conventions, for checks and balances, for limited government, for the very rule of law’ (adapted from Andrew Coine: The virus of Trumpism and his infectious moral failings – Globe and Mail, Saturday, February 8, 2020).

In China, technological surveillance has now reached Orwellian proportions, allowing the ruling few to monitor their citizens’ every move, and categorize them according to a scale that quantifies their devotion to party creed. Depending on the score, their freedom to move around, do business, prosper professionally and take advantage of life’s opportunities is strictly controlled, curtailed or enabled. All over the world, through technology our children have lost the skill of sitting still, reading extensively and reflecting on the complex narratives of human history, thereby discovering where truth and lie are. Nonsensical information bits that can be combined in any which way one wants are now the currency of our short attention spans and impoverished faculties of reflection. The narcissism of social media makes it now possible for everyone of us to become legends in our own minds, believe them and mistake them for reality or truth. People are losing their faculty to discern truth from lie. Even more worrisome is the trend to not even be concerned about or interested in truth – all that matters is to feel ‘I am right’.

And we are guilty of destabilizing our planetary ecosystem and raping our very mother earth, which sustains us.

In medicine, evidence-based science is forcing us to be treated like robots and machines, thereby robbing us of the huge potential for healing embedded in the vast complexity of our brains and minds. A shocking case in point: In the new insurance- and money-driven medical industry psychiatrists are not trained in psychotherapy anymore, and they are unable to see patients regularly and do psychotherapy with them. Psychiatrists are only there to consult and prescribe medications. Psychotherapy is relegated to professions that command lower fees and don’t even have the kind of extensive training psychiatrists used to have in the past. The mind, never mind our deep nature beyond mind, are not topics of conversation anymore. Human beings are encouraged to become robotic machines with disembodied beliefs if they so want, without having anywhere to turn to for wisdom. Our wise women and men are temporarily becoming extinct.

As mindfulness meditation made its way from Eastern cultures to the West, it got hijacked by the rational mind into a discipline to achieve gains of several sorts, from relaxation to stress reduction, better health, better professional productivity, symptom relief etc. In other words, in the West meditation became like medicine a tool to do good things for the bodies and minds we objectively have. What got lost is the fundamental principle of working with our subjective experience of being alive in all its forms, thus exploring and practicing how to gain access to the body and mind that we subjectively are. The physical body, which is amenable to scientific analysis and which we attempt to fix through medication, surgery and other interventions, is the body that we have. The somatic body that goes beyond the objectively quantifiable, and that we subjectively experience as who we are, I call the soma that we are. Karlfried Graf Duerckheim originally made that distinction by using two different words for ‘body’ available in the German language. He called the body that we have ‘der Koerper, den man hat’, and the soma that we are ‘der Leib, den man ist’.

The collective insanity I described has its roots in the human mind and how we use it. Mind-boggling scientific and technological advances, combined with lifestyles that have become increasingly remote from nature, rely on brains that have been trained to curtail their vast (right-brain) potential, and cultivate the narrow belief that nothing else but left-brain rationality, practicality, functionality and productivity matter. This alienation from dimensions of existence that are not rationally, verbally or otherwise graspable, results in clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress, which can only be addressed by re-connecting with the whole complexity our brains and minds have to offer, and not just a part of it. Ultimately, we are now challenged to reclaim our full potential as intelligent, sentient beings by imbuing science with sentience, remove the mist from mysticism, relinquish the tyranny of words and reconnect with the wholeness of full presence.

Originally, in Eastern cultures meditation was steeped in the exploration and knowledge of the soma that we are. This opened the door to vast possibilities of healing beyond the rational, scientifically known body that we have, by giving us access to the nameless, timeless and transcendental essence of Being. It is this dimension of Being and transcendence we will learn to reclaim and I will focus on in the upcoming winter/spring sessions of the Mindsight Intensive – not only because it involves teachings that are being lost, but also because lack of access to this dimension can cause seemingly intractable symptoms and suffering. These can be mitigated and much better managed, when we know how to access what lies beyond the rational, problem-solving mind and tap into the vast, open plane of infinite possibilities of energy flow. We have to learn to relate to nothingness and emptiness as the vast context of existence.

Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

Your Mindfulness  Journey in a New Year – 2020

As we begin a new decade and continue on the mindful path, on behalf of the Mindfulness Centre team I wish everyone a wonderfully wholesome, healthy, successful and peaceful new year. As we leave 2019 behind, we also leave some times of difficulty and other times of excitement behind.

For me personally, as many of you know, I have been somewhat out of sight as I had my right hip replaced in the summertime and required time off to heal. Unfortunately, the complication of a torn muscle required me to undergo a second surgery in December 2019. It has been quite a painful and at times anxiety-provoking experience that has been and continues to be both physically and mentally challenging. This has lent itself to much mindful learning, but not much teaching, writing or blogging. Fate seems to call me to listening duty rather than teaching, which is why I had to postpone teaching the Mindsight Intensive. Before the end of June I hope to still be able to present a series of advanced, intensive mindsight sessions, which will undoubtedly be imbued with some new insights from my ordeal. I am in the process of formulating several topics that swirl in my mind. Out of sight, however, does not mean out of mind, and with the help of our wonderful, small, but mighty team I have continued to contribute to the shaping of our Centre, while the team members were keeping the ship afloat.

In fact, it has been quite a productive year as three new programs were introduced at The Centre in addition to our MBSR-X programs. These included the Mindful Self-Compassion Program led by Linda and Marlene, Mindfulness for Low Sexual Desire in Women led by Alexandra and Marlene, and Mindfulness and Art led by Maria. These programs were very well received. Depending on teacher availability they may be offered again this year.

Particularly exciting for me was the re-writing, revising and editing of the new Dynamic Mindfulness manual which accompanies the MBSR-X program. This also included the re-recording of guided meditations and teachings we use in the program. Many thanks to Dr. Linda Macdonald for walking this at times arduous, at times exhilarating, path of writing with me. The complementary synergy between us has allowed our Centre to flourish and grow, in addition to helping illuminate our personal growth edges as individuals.

We are most excited also to announce the arrival of Dr. Jackie Ang to our team. She has begun assessing for the MBSR-X programs and will be continuing to train with us. She is a most welcome addition to the team and we look forward to the new life she injects with her kind, receptive presence.

So, cheers to the new decade with its offerings of new frontiers of possibilities, as we allow our minds to open to their inherent spaciousness and fill us with creative ferment and musings. This continues to be the core principle of our modus operandi, to meet challenges of our work in creative ways, challenge or modify accepted theories on the basis of our own experiences and re-formulate our discoveries through improved frameworks of understanding.

It is with much gratitude that I am able to realize the vision for the Mindfulness Centre through the collaborative efforts and interchanges of the wonderful team at the Centre. Thank you Dr. Linda Macdonald, Marlene Van Esch, Alexandra Peterson, Maria Hernandez, Reena Mathur, Barbara Boodhan and Dr. Jackie Ang.

Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

A new year, brings new mindfulness programs for 2019

When we sing “auld lang syne, my dear” to bring in the New Year, we are essentially cheering to days gone by, which is why we sing the song to remember the good times. The song is a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song – now world famous. A rhetorical question is asked at the beginning of the song: should old times be forgotten? The answer is that ‘a cup o’ kindness’ should be had, in order to look back on the past. For all of us here at the Mindfulness Centre in Oakville that sentiment seems really appropriate this year-end, as we look back on our work in 2019 and reflect on all that was accomplished by our staff, patients, and participants in order to improve what we do. We eagerly send out each newsletter throughout the year and we appreciate those of you who read and review the information we provide. It was a busy and active year: we increased both our staff and the number of programs and workshops we present. This year has just flown by and it is hard to believe that in just a few weeks we will be entering into a new year.

PSYCHOTHERAPY

In addition to Dr. Treyvaud’s longstanding psychotherapy practice, in 2019 we were pleased to formally announce that we now also offer psychotherapy with our two therapists Alexandra Peterson and Marlene Van Esch. People seek therapy for a wide variety of reasons, from coping with major life challenges or childhood trauma, to dealing with depression or anxiety or simply desiring personal growth and greater self-knowledge. Depending on the client’s needs and personal goals for therapy, client and therapist may work together for as few as two to three sessions or as long as several years.

Our psychotherapist’s unique approach:
• Incorporates mindfulness and the latest research from Interpersonal Neurobiology into the psychotherapeutic process,
• Dives deeply into how the mind interacts with the brain and how disorder and rigidity can be transformed by rewiring the brain into integration and harmony,
• Facilitates the use of empathy and insight to foster a deeper understanding of self and others within relationships, and
• Promotes the development of a coherent life narrative that facilitates a shift towards health and wellbeing.

NEW PROGRAMS LAUNCHED

We successfully launched two new programs in 2019!
Mindfulness Through Art: This six-week (18 hour) program is led by Maria Teresa Hernandez. Participants are immersed in artistic expression as a way of exploring the foundations of mindfulness, including aspects of Interpersonal Neurobiology. Open to all from beginners to experienced artists, participants experience the benefits of mindfulness by cultivating creativity and art-making. The first offering of this program was well received and we look forward to offering it again in 2020.
Mindfulness-Based Treatment for Low Sexual Desire: This eight-week (18 hour) program for women is taught by Alexandra Peterson and Marlene Van Esch. It is an evidence-based, mindfulness therapy group for treatment of low sexual desire in women. Participants are encouraged to reconnect and engage with their sexuality while learning a variety of mindfulness exercises that cultivate present-moment awareness.

A FEW FUN FACTS

The numbers below illustrate how valued and sought after our services are, as we constantly strive for excellence in providing the most current and up-to-date information and transformative techniques possible.

In our programs, groups and workshops we welcomed 398 participants. Barb, one of our administrative assistants, made us aware that our doors opened 5,368 times as patients and participants attended our programs and groups. Assessments and individual patient appointments saw our doors opening another 633 times. Luckily, our hinges are still intact!

We are pleased to announce that another doctor will be joining our team in 2020, and we will formally introduce her in our newsletter and on the website in the New Year.

We wish all of our newsletter readers all the best of the holidays and a happy new year – and don’t forget the “auld lang syne, my dear” to bring in the New Year! Our team looks forward with optimism and confidence to serve our patients, participants, and the community in 2020.

Best Regards,
Your Mindfulness Centre team (in alphabetical order):
Barbara Boodhan, Dr. Linda Macdonald,
Reena Mathur, Alexandra Peterson,
Dr. Stephane Treyvaud, Marlene Van Esch

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Understanding the Dream Experience

Wherever you look, there is mind, and wherever is mind, the opportunity for mindfulness presents itself – that means everywhere and all the time. It is not just about meditation, but about insight into one’s inner world, empathy for others, and integration of the energy flow within ourselves and between each other. The stories we tell are part of the landscape of mind to be mined for the hidden treasures of meaning our illusions have so deeply buried.

A dream I recently encountered comes to mind: “I see this woman approach me”, recounts the dreamer, “and there is nothing threatening about her. While dreaming I remember that in the past seemingly harmless people appearing in my dreams would suddenly turn nasty and attack me or even try to kill me. So I make a proactive decision to preempt such a possible development (you may call this a lucid dream). Instead of waiting for her to approach me further, I begin to take initiative to approach her. In doing so the atmosphere of the dream becomes very windy and a strong gale blows against me. I have to fight the wind force against me but do manage to make progress in getting closer to her and find out who she really is. This is when I woke up, feeling satisfied that I had overcome the danger of being attacked, and relieved to have been able to take control of the situation.”

It used to be a common occurrence in his dreams – seemingly harmless people suddenly turning against and threatening him, causing him to wake up in a panic from these nightmares. After lots of psychotherapy and meditation practice, this rarely occurs anymore, and in this dream, we see further development in his strength of consciousness, as he takes charge of getting closer to dissociated contents of childhood conditionings. The fact that he is able to reflect while he dreams and choose a different path than he would have in the past speaks for his developed capacity to be strongly aware of being aware and not see himself anymore as a passive victim. Dissociated and non-conscious content being unknown, in dreams it tends to present itself as something foreign, other than oneself, often other people we don’t know or animals. In this case, this woman is a non-conscious aspect of himself that represents some problematic energy and information flow he has not mastered yet since in the dream the mind’s attentional system focuses a spotlight on her.

The dreamer is prescient and experienced, knowing himself well enough that what appears harmless can suddenly turn nasty if he is not attentive. It is almost a cliche to mention that in his childhood his mother was emotionally somewhat unpredictable and his father rather angry and aggressive. That is an old story he knows well and has worked through ad nauseam. But attachment conditionings run deep and take a long time to be undone. The dream shows how the dreamer can see behind appearances of his own mind’s productions and has achieved the capacity of observation and some objectivity about his own mind processes. On some level, he realizes while dreaming that the dream is dreamt up and a production of his mind. He is able to transcend the childlike naïve trust in appearances that very often used to betray him. He can take on the potential enemy before this hidden part of himself has a chance to evolve into an enemy, because he knows the woman to be just a hidden part of his own information processing. His intention to pay attention to the hidden intention of this almost invisible part of himself opens up a whole new relationship dynamic to himself, a whole new state of integration.

The gale strength winds tell us that there is more to do, more awareness strengthening to practice, or maybe they simply tell us that being fully transparent to the unknown of the non-conscious will always be a challenge to be reckoned with. While fighting these winds there was a tinge of anxiety, because he knew that the hidden power of this woman could kill him. But he also knew that it would be nothing more than one aspect of him trying to kill another. He was ready to die to see the truth, the truth of what this woman hides because he somehow knew that all that would die is a constructed illusion about himself.

This reminded him of a dream 15 years ago, in which he saw this stupendously beautiful iguana sitting on a large branch of a tree. It was mind-bogglingly colorful, displaying shimmering shades of blue, green, red, orange, and yellow. He was awestruck by how beautiful such a creature can be, when he suddenly discovered a tiny little handle on its side, suggesting that there was a door he could open. He did open this door, and to his amazement and deep disappointment, he discovered that the inside of what seemed like the most beautiful living creature he had ever seen, was simply a mechanical clockwork. Of course, the archetype of the Wizard of Oz comes to mind, but the echo from this old dream is quite audible in his present dream. It is frightening to discover that what seemed alive is in fact lifeless, and at the time he could identify with the sense of living a life driven more by internalized expectations of others than by his own authenticity. Not now anymore, but he now knows very viscerally how toxic illusions can be. He knew that ultimately the gale-force winds, the touching of that woman could fully dissolve the magic of this play he had written that night, in order to show more of himself to himself. Fifteen years ago the clockwork was the disappointment of discovering lifelessness in beauty; this time the woman turned attacker would have revealed her clockwork nature to a dreamer much stronger and more self-assured than then. It would not have been a beauty to be debunked, but dangerous enmity.

The iguana was too beautiful to be real, and this woman as a potential killer was too dramatically dangerous to be a real enemy. All this is, all these nightmares are in the mind in conflict with itself creating unnecessary fireworks.

This whole dream experience, and drama the dreamer authored for himself to gain more clarity about his inner world, includes every level of energy and information processing we humans have, from the physical/somatic to the emotional and cognitive. The dream reveals a story that was originally concealed and requires psychotherapy to be understood and integrated. At the same time, the dream is steeped in a whole nonverbal world of implicit energy processing beyond the reach of stories, requiring meditation to be penetrated and integrated. The evolution I expect to see some time in the future would manifest in a dream, in which the dreamer not only knows that this woman is a stranger not to be intimidated by and actively pursued for understanding. In a future dream, the dreamer would recognize himself in that woman and embark on a mediative action between two dream characters he would know beyond intuition are both aspects of himself.

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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Mindfulness is about how we live, not a theory to be indulged.

Having the opportunity to witness fellow travelers and students expressing with succinct beauty and force how the directly experienced journey really looks like from within, always touches me. It is a particular treat to be directly engaged in exchanges of such nurturing and healing richness. What follows is a recent example in the form of an email exchange (for reasons of confidentiality I will call the person I had this exchange with Suzanne)

Hi Dr. T.,

Something is coming up in my practice that I thought I would write to you about. I may not even do a good job of describing this to you right now, because it feels like I am very spooked by it.

Recently, in my practice, choiceless awareness seems to be the practice I naturally initiate. I am finding a good connection with my awareness, just seeing where it is and what that feels like, instead of getting caught up in the what’s and the why’s. I think this is where my freak out started.

In my psychological work, I have been noticing recently how narrow my definition of myself is and how greatly that limits me from having the kind of relationships and the kind of fulfilling and happy experiences I want to have. I am noticing how confining it is to limit my definition of self by past experiences and gyp myself of all that I could potentially be (or not). It feels a bit like I am trying to let go of my narrow self-identification in my practice as well and that is massively terrifying me.

I think about what about this could be so terrifying, and really it’s just a fear of the unknown. Some part of me recognizes from your teachings and what I know of this practice that what I want is likely on the other side of all of this – a sense of freedom, moving from one thing to another, without identifying with it or getting caught up with it, a sense of ease and some sort of liberation that I fantasize about.

I am trying to put all this together (the psychological and the spiritual (?)) and figure out how to move forward, but, to be honest, am a bit paralyzed by my fear. So I thought I would reach out to you. What do you think?

Hi Suzanne,

Yours seems like quite a classic stage in one’s growth towards wisdom. Assuming a definition of the spiritual as dealing with our relationship to the ineffable emptiness of Being, notice how the psychological can quickly and imperceptibly become spiritual and vice versa. From the conduit of direct sensory experience we move into the constructor of psychological insight, only to then have to transcend both into the vast emptiness of nameless Being. (When the spiritual is defined within the context of a personal relationship with God, things can become more complicated and confining, given that only the self or remnants of it can maintain such a relationship, and all identifications with a self are by definition limiting and confining, including how they limit the notion of God).

Coming back to the other definition of spirituality I much prefer, as you rightly point out, when you let go of conditioned identifications with old patterns of being and gain greater flexibility and freedom of Being, you encounter the ‘unbearable lightness of Being’, accompanied by the insight of the self’s illusory nature. The more you investigate the self, the more it dissolves into a puff of fleeting energy flow, leaving you with nothing of what you were used to have, and everything you never dreamed of being. In fact, from this perspective, psychology with all its formulations of a senses of self, quite generally seems to me like a verbal clothing worn over the indecent and therefore often unacceptable nakedness of its core called the emptiness of Being, so as to allow it to appear in public. Our work in mindfulness consists of trying to stalk this retreating nude – not an easy task, because it demands this constant shift between the tangible verbal world of energy manifested as form and the intangible world of the formless nameless.

As you know, freedom comes with responsibility, and responsibility is what prisons relieve us from. Freedom from prior prisons can routinely be first met with anxiety, until we get used to the larger landscape. Although ultimately liberating, new senses of self that are not as limited as the old ones can be very disconcerting at first.

I am sure there will be much more to explore, but I hope these thoughts may help clarify a few things a bit.

With kind regards,
Dr. T.

Hi Dr. T,

Thank you for your response.

It’s interesting, it’s been a few days since I sent this email and because I didn’t get a response “in time”, things became slightly more psychologically challenging. Or another way to say that is that a lot has come up that I am seeing and learning so much about myself from! It’s kinda cool, even though massively emotionally challenging to keep perspective at times. This being said, the spiritual and what I had said in my email seems to have retreated to the background a bit. To the extent that I even had to reread my own email to remind myself what I had said/felt. The connection with it isn’t much there now.

It’s amazing how much a narrow identification and the conditionings can take over and make an experience, which was so convincing and tangible a few days ago, seem just like theory now.

I’m glad at the very least I still have my awareness to watch this go back and forth, and though it gets emotionally challenging sometimes, I try to keep investigating the difference and the shift (as you said) just to learn and explore. It’s cool.

The only problem with this approach and also with what I had said before is “what do I identify with if I don’t identify with the emotional or the stories?”. I think back when I had written that email to you, at least I had a very small connection to my awareness and that calmed this down a bit. Now that’s gone and the psychological is a bit more anxious, so avoidance seems tempting.

The interplay between psychological and spiritual (definitely the way you describe spiritual, not the religious constructs of “god”) is very interesting and something I’ve been noticing for a while now! And how we need a stable healthy construct of “self” first as a tool to explore what’s beyond. Trying to build this and I see how the psychological can still cause fear causing me to retreat to what’s not the unknown, even if deep down there is always the knowing that it is a construct and the convinced “nagging” that it doesn’t stop there and there is more.

Thanks,
Suzanne

There you go, Suzanne, the retreating nude! And by the way, you write eloquently with a depth of insight.

The barrel of a gun (and the heat of emotions) always seem to bring the tangible of form and manifestation to temporary victory, and the shy nakedness of awareness itself is always ready to temporarily cede the limelight. Conditionings and attachments to form are powerful and superficially reassuring, and the stories we weave ensnare us like spiders catch their prey in their web. Ironically, there is indeed a lot to learn from these webs of meaning, and as you rightly say, a strong sense of self, however illusory it is from a spiritual perspective, is the prerequisite for the ability to withstand the pounding waves of existential insights that gradually dissolve our whole constructed world into its empty essence. Follow the shifts from substantiality to ephemerality without resistance, and flexibly surrender to the back and forth from the open plane of possibilities to the peaks of activation. Your sentiment that this journey to nowhere is cool, is a cool and useful bonus that motivates to press on through pain and resistance!

Your connection to awareness beyond identification with your stories does not mean identification with awareness. That’s the beauty of realizing the impermanent nature of everything: Identification is not necessary anymore, even if it arises and passes like everything else, and this movement from form to formlessness and back is the revelation of life’s mysterious ways. Fear disappears the moment the illusory is not taken for reality anymore. Then, we discover that who we really are is what cannot be known or named and grasped, not what we can define and put into a neat little cage.

With kind regards,

Dr. T.

Hi Dr. T.,

Your second paragraph brought me to tears, because running in the hamster cage is getting utterly exhausting, and being afraid of something that (somehow) seems peaceful isn’t making sense.

I appreciate your encouragement when needed. It is definitely interesting to watch it go back and forth. “Oops look at this, I’m wound up”, “ah, what’s this feeling of flexibility and okayness. Wow”.

I’ll keep looking and see what happens. It can get a little exhausting to yo-yo. I have some more giving in to do.

Thank you for your email,
Suzanne

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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The difference between aloneness and lonesomeness

Meditation is often misunderstood as a solitary activity – sitting alone in silence on a pillow. This could not be further from the truth.

Our brain is the relational organ par excellence. We are deeply wired to relate to both others and ourselves. More than any other species or animal on this planet we are shaped by relationships. Of all the animals we have the longest childhood spanning about 28 years, all of which revolves around learning to be human through relationships with our primary caregivers. Indeed, it is through our relationships to each other that we become who we are and come to know ourselves.

In meditation you attune your observing self with your experiencing self, engaging the resonance circuitry of the brain responsible for our fundamental relatedness. This same circuitry is the one responsible for our attuned relationships with others. This is why meditation harmonizes our relationships to others, and attuned relationships with others facilitate our meditation.

To learn and sustain a meditation practice we are continually engaged with teachers and other meditators, and it is through this meaningful and attuned engagement with a teacher and others that we develop via resonance circuitry the capacity to be attuned to ourselves. When we have internalized these attuned and healing relationships to our teachers, we develop the capacity to be alone. This means having the ability to be alone without feeling stressed about it, due to the fact that our aloneness entails our internalized relationships. Only through this capacity to be alone, paradoxically a deeply relational state of being, can our meditation reach the depths it is meant to reach, including the vast realms of emptiness.

Refer to my recent blog ‘Alone or Lonely?‘ for more on the difference between aloneness and lonesomeness.

Copyright 2019 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

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