Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.
Mark EpsteinRead
If aspects of the person remain undigested-cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated-they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred and delusion attach themselves.
Interpretation
Unacknowledged parts of ourselves can lead to negative emotions and behaviors.
In this quote, Mark Epstein suggests that when we do not accept and integrate certain aspects of ourselves—whether they be emotions, traits, or experiences—we create fertile ground for negative feelings like greed, hatred, and delusion to manifest. This highlights the importance of self-acceptance and the potential consequences when we fail to confront our inner complexities.
In practice
During a workshop on personal growth, to emphasize the need for emotional integration.
Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.
While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.
Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully.
It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a sense of absence without turning that absence into some kind of presence
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
We are looking for a way to feel more real, but we do not realize that to feel more real we have to push ourselves further into the unknown.
Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior.
Psychology teaches us at every step that though two types of activity can have the same external manifestation, whether in origin or essence, their nature may differ most profoundly.
Psychopaths are social predators, and like all predators, they are looking for feeding grounds. Wherever you get power, prestige and money, you will find them.
People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has, and I hope that REBT teaches them how to do it.
I'm all for 'tools,' not 'schools,' of therapy. To me, the schools of therapy compete much like religions, or even cults, all claiming to know the cause and to have the best method for treating people.
People have a range of capacities to deal with overwhelming experience. Some people, some kids particularly, are able to disappear into a fantasy world, to dissociate, to pretend like it isnt happening, and are able to go on with their lives. And sometimes it comes back to haunt them.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.