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#Post#: 17--------------------------------------------------
The Integrated Heart of Cultural and Mindfulness Meditation Prac
tice in Existential Phenomenology an
By: StircrazyReality Date: July 29, 2017, 8:42 pm
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Source:
HTML https://www.academia.edu/26291242/The_Integrated_Heart_of_Cultural_and_Mindfulness_Meditation_Practice_in_Existential_Phenomenology_and_Humanistic_Psychotherapy<br
/>
CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) is what introduced me to
meditation and mindfulness, and thus I find this analysis of the
interplay between existential phenomenology and third wave CBT
of interest.
Irvin Yalom, whose work is referenced here, was my first study
of Existentialism.
Mediation is becoming part of our Australian culture. What role
does it play? What form does it take? From where did it emerge?
I would be interested to hear your personal interactions with
meditation. I wish to get a sense of how meditation and
mindfulness exist in our culture, so that I can understand where
it is heading. Looking at the place of mindfullness and
meditation in our our culture may actually form part of my
honours study.
The paper looks at Heidegger among others (Husserl,
Merleau-Ponty, Rogers), from a therapy development perspective.
It particularly focuses on the movement from the existential
individualisation towards socio-cultural awareness. Obviously a
therapy cannot properly treat an individual without reference to
the phenomenon of the sociocultural world in which humans are
imbedded. A human is not so individualised that culture can be
discarded; think of the 'they' of Heidegger.
A therapy should not be reductive. How can it be individual but
not a-cultural, because cultural is not fundamentally
individual.
"Existential phenomenology and humanistic psychology (PHP)
approaches have, after all, distinctively favoured
individualized service to clients as whole situated persons in
contrast to reductive views that client suffering is better
addressed as decontextualized signs or parts that are to be
served by symptom-based approaches to care. "
The writers are rather poetic at times, which I enjoy;
"…culturally situated experiences carried forward in the
life-giving breath of countless present moments."
"Indeed, it is from the affirming, heart-rich, and sky-drenched
earthiness of PHP’s mindfully meditative experiential
perspectives that individual sociocultural experiences are
safeguarded from being reduced to pre-judged categories of
understanding or dominant race-based hierarchies of value. "
Third Wave Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
CBT lacks the integration of vipassana with bare mindfulness of
the present. CBT lacks the integration of meditative insight
into mindfulness, where insight can be understood as the exact
thing philosophy aims for, wisdom.
The word meditation, as an English word, is used in association
with philosophy, e.g. Meditations on first philosophy.
It is important to remember that 'meditation' is not Buddhist,
it is an English translation of a Pali term (sati), or perhaps
more exactly a catch all for multiple Buddhist terms (such as
anapanasati and vipassana, translated respectively as breathing
meditation and insight meditation).
Task: look at the history of the word 'meditation'.
In any case, meditation as it has entered our culture through
CBT is bare. I have felt this bareness, which is why I left CBT
meditation for Buddhist meditation. It should be noted that CBT
plays a huge role in our society, as any person who has fallen
from the norm, or otherwise has mental health issues, and has
thus come under the care of a psychologist or psychiatrist, has
most likely been introduced to CBT, and thus bare mindfulness
meditation.
Which again raises the question, what introduction have you dear
reader had to mindfulness?
" In a general sense, it is the integration of meditative
experiential inquiry with the bare awareness of mindfulness that
is relatively under articulated by the CBT third wave, but
comparatively well developed in various existential
phenomenological and humanistic core texts. "
"As Martin Lumpkin (2014) has alternatively observed, “When
reading [Rogers] today, it is clear that he was writing from the
perspectives and values of mindfulness before it was coined as a
term” (p. 148)."
When was the word mindfulness coined? The term is not old? How
were we mindful before we thought of being mindful?
"In comparison to CBT third wave mindfulness-based approaches,
the empathic acceptance and nondirective stance of the PCT
therapist allows for a relational experience of mindfulness in
contrast to CBT third wave skill development through the
techniques of guided mindfulness exercises or assigned
mindfulness practices."
In CBT mindfulness always becomes an exercise, not a way of
being (a way of dwelling).
"Mindfulness can be viewed as intrinsically phenomenological,"
which is why my study of phenomenology and my practise of
Buddhism have developed in tandem.
'Husserl’s epoché requires abstention from viewing
phenomena through the natural attitude biases and filters of
personal, conventionally patterned, or scientific assumptions
and judgments.'
A nice summery of phenomenological reduction. This can also be
used to explain why Descartes was not radical enough in his
reduction, he viewed phenomenon through a scholastic (? I don't
concretely understand the term) and geometrical, mathematical
and logical framework/pattern.
"At the same time, the MMHEP therapist may also want to simply
notice the client’s style of being and communicating during
sessions."
I like the term 'style of being'; It is linked to style of
communicating, which is a commonly understood concept. My
thoughts jump to the essence of technology as a determining
factor for a specific style of being. I would say that my style
of being has developed to be very meditative, letting be and
letting go, abandoning my will to the self-stream of causes and
conditions (which means not 'fighting', resisting or attaching).
I can perhaps expand on what letting go means another day (the
key is it is in no way resigned, nihilistic or negating).
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