The Threads of the Ego Experience Pulled Free

"Due to its nature as a construction, rather than as a metaphysical entity, the sense of being an ego can be radically deconstructed. Accomplishing this deconstruction requires noticing and tracking the sensory phenomena that together make up the construction of the self, and then patiently untangling them from the whole. One by one, as the threads of the ego experience are pulled free, perception shifts to encompass all of creation."

~ Michael Taft, highlighting key themes from his talk "Deconstructing The Perception Of The Ego/self" at the Science and Nonduality Conference, October 26, 2013

See also: The Atomic Components of Narrative Elements

Getting a Better Night's Sleep Paradigm

Excerpt from "Help for Insomnia: Yet Another use for Mindfulness," by Shinzen Young, August, 8, 2013:

Insomnia by Tony HuynhDifficulty falling asleep or staying asleep is a very common complaint. Mindfulness can help but one must first radically revision the nature of the problem.

People tend to get into a negative feedback loop with insomnia: Not getting to sleep leads to worry, leads to further difficulty sleeping, leads to more worry, leads to...

What to do?

One possibility is to start thinking about the night in a different way. This is a conceptual reframing, a profoundly different paradigm regarding the issue of sleep.

The normal paradigm is:

"I have to get a good night's sleep or I'll be a mess tomorrow."

The new paradigm is:

"If I get a good night's rest, I'll be fine tomorrow."

Amazingly, it's possible to get a good night's rest without necessarily sleeping much or at all. 

Learn more...

Really Accepting

What is Mindfulness?

Able to Live in Two Worlds

Excerpt from The Science of Enlightenment (Session 9) by Shinzen Young: 

Freedom means the ability to have a complete experience when it's appropriate to.

Human beings are in some ways intended to be amphibians. We are intended by nature to be able to live in two worlds, to go back and forth between those worlds.

A frog is very happy because he is a creature of two worlds. When it's appropriate to be on dry land, it's completely comfortable on dry land. When it's appropriate to be in the water, it's completely comfortable in the water. It can go back and forth any time it wants, as frequently as it wants. And if it gets tired of the water, it can go to dry land. If it gets tired of dry land, it can go to water. There's no impedence in its freedom to traverse back and forth between two realms.

We human beings were also meant to be that way. To be able to go under the water of oneness, into the world of fluidity and connectivity. And then to come out into the solidity and aridity of dry land, for certain kinds of functions.

But the problem is, we forgot how to get back into the water and now we're stuck in the solid, arid, terrestrial zone. We have no way to refresh ourselves. We have no other perspective on things. And we can't really even appreciate the solidity and the aridity of the land because we have nothing to contrast it to.  

A liberated person is like the frog—they are able to appreciate the congealed world of separateness and individual self in an entirely different way because they have the option of going into the fluid, connected world of complete experience any time they want. 

Very Different from a Wandering Mind

Excerpt from David Vago's Buddhist Geeks conversation (Episode 262) with Vince Horn, "The Emerging Science of Mindfulness Meditation":

My contribution to David Vago's research study on rest. Boston, March 17, 2012Another project we’re working on [is] with Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young. You know, I have to admit I’m really attracted to his model of teaching because it really articulates a very specific way of mental noting and labeling. And because he’s sort of integrated a little bit of Zen, a little bit of Theravada, and a little bit of Shingon into his model, his way of teaching mindfulness. He’s created a very specific framework that is easily testable in science.

And so that makes it easier for me, for someone who’s trying to dismantle these processes into component parts to really understand, well what is it – how is it that when we’re resting and for example, he has a mental noting or labeling technique that allows us to know and label the arising, the experience of, the passing or the absence of multiple modalities of inner or outer experience.

For example he uses inner hearing or auditory modality, a visual modality, and a visceral-somatic [modality].

So the idea is you can hear your mental talk of here’s something from the outside; you can see something externally or you can focus on internal visual imagery. There can be somatic, visceral somatic states from inside or you can feel physical touch.

All those are going to be very different in the brain. And what you’re doing when you’re thinking about each one of those while resting, for example, or just noting and labeling the absence of those is going to look very different from a wandering mind that’s more discursive. And so now we’re really trying to understand using his methods what’s going on in a resting, resting mind that is focused towards a very specific modality that he uses in his system. And that’s going to just I think completely blow away our conception of what we think the mind is doing when it’s resting.

Listen to the entire interview...

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See also:

• Want to discover what Dave and Shinzen found out from their research study? Curious Habout how Shinzen’s meditation techniques affect the brain? They’ll be presenting their research findings for the very first time at this year’s Buddhist Geeks Conference on Sunday, August 18 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. 
• ContemplativeNeurosciences.com
• Mind and Life Institute
• The Dark Night Project
• Mapping the Mindful Brain
• Contemplative Mind in Life