Mindfulness

Life unfolds between moments of doing something and moments of doing nothing. One is the opposite of the other in the same dimension of external appearances. Life seems to pendulate between the polarities of activity and rest. But that is just the surface. There is a third doing belonging to another dimension: Non-doing at the core of both doing something and doing nothing. This non-doing is the secret bridge to life’s dimension that in its becoming and disappearing, arising and fading, is independent of whether we do something or do nothing. From the depths of this other dimension of life, or of Life (with capital L) if you so want, the law of Being manifests as one of the most essentially human characteristics – presence. [...]

Counteracting Our Mind’s Deceptive Ways in Meditation The Case For Careful Self-Monitoring We constantly intend many things in life, but all too often what turns out does not correspond to what we intended. We then blame factors outside our control, rather than noticing that we undermine our own intentions. How so? A very simple mechanism plays a predominant role: We forget to self-monitor, assuming that once an intention has run out of the gate, the stars are properly aligned for all concerned neurofirings to shoot in the same direction as they do the intention’s bidding. This could not be more wrong! Just because we intend something, does not mean that our actions actually follow what we intend at all. […]

Transcendental Being Let me preface this blog with a healthy dose of reservations and skepticism. This topic lends itself to idealizations and unrealistic fantasies of deliverance from suffering the human mind is all too ready to indulge in. […]

Transcendence is about the journey of discovering an infinitely wider context of our truth. I often use this word, which of course in strictly dictionary terms can mean many things, depending on context. You might be surprised to hear it from me, a psychiatrist with a solid footing in science, since from the sound of it, transcendence seems to denote an esoteric, far away place in some kind of spirit world you may or may not believe in. That is too vague a notion to be useful in our context of meditative explorations of the mind, which is why a clearer explanation is in order. […]

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. […]

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. […]

 Seeking treatment for mental health through psychotherapy. The Ontario government’s proposal to limit OHIP funding for psychotherapy has sparked worry and outrage. Two recent articles in The Globe And Mail by Norman Doidge (April 6, 2019) and Ari Zaretsky (April 22, 2019) have addressed the issue from different perspectives. What follows is a short summary blog about this topic. Please also refer to my other more comprehensive blog entitled ‘In Ontario, a core psychiatric treatment is endangered’. […]