Post by laughter on Sept 26, 2014 22:54:50 GMT -5
There seems to be alot of material that links the two topics, and I know that I was drawn to yoga years ago because of chronic back pain, and that had a huuuuge impact on my ability to cope with the situation. Never got all that advanced in the practice, I just used it to get better. 
I also bought "The Power of Now" because I was a chronic insomniac.
Both have funny backstories to them, but this is the extent of my intersection between the two topics. The link between sitting meditation and health seems really obvious, and a big selling point, but my initiation into it had nothing to do with that, so I can't say either way other than I do enjoy most of the physiological sensations involved.
I've got to say -- and this is definitely my old conditioning at play here -- that lots of the material that links health and spirituality has seemed to me to border on the batsh!t crazy. Maybe some of that opinion would change these days, but the absence of skepticism ain't necessarily the presence of gullibility. I'll refrain from specifics in this regard so as to refrain from offense! 
Health, as a topic, runs a spectrum, from life and death issues on one extreme, to the obviously personal improvement-focus of say, for example, bodybuilding, on the other. Regardless of that spectrum though, generally speaking, improving one's health is improving one's experience.
As far as ending the spiritual quest goes, I'd guess a likely consensus here on the forum that no single improvement of experience, in and of itself, will result in that. There is of course wide and deep controversy over the relationship between improvement of experience and the end of seeking, but my interest in this essay is only tangentially related to that.
What is obvious is that some disease is definitely apparently caused by a surfeit of integration between body and mind -- various addictions, lack of exercise and poor eating habits all are identified by the machine-model of medicine as causes for everything from high blood pressure through to cancer. It also seems common knowledge for the past few decades that it is habits of thought and attitude that can impact these self-inflicted risk factors positively, and it seems to me at least, that the breadth of awareness of this knowledge has been increasing over time here in the States, despite the potentially demand-reducing impact on our health industrial complex of illness prevention.
It is on this point -- the potential for integration of body and mind -- that some spiritual practices, memes and cultural structures can actually be helpful, and that's where I find the most interesting link between the two topics. Some spiritual cultural artifacts -- such as meditation, devotional practice, a supportive community and even opportunities for works of service -- obviously can lead to a better integrated and more wholesome individual with a higher probability of better health than before that integration was the case.
One of my old correspondents used to hold the opinion that a seeker had to have a healthy ego and a steady, established sense of self before self-inquiry and direct insight could be used to dismantle the false movements of mind and body that obscure the natural state. The theory went that otherwise, fear and shock to the system of someone weakened and unable to cope because of stressors in life would simply send them into a spiral of defensiveness and despair.
While I see the general point of that idea, and have seen a few likely potential examples of that play out in the two forums I've participated in, I'd have to say that ruling out the possibility that someone might wind up suffering their way into realization from that position is probably going too far.
Instead, what I find interesting is that if someone is suffering severely because of poor health, and that person's spiritual involvement is a factor in improving their health and reducing the suffering then I guess I see some value to that, despite the fact that it's very possibly employing some falsehood and in some senses reinforcing the sense of separation that the individual feels.
Consider also the hypothetical of a strongly personally-identified health nut that gets up at 5 AM to run and watches their diet obsessively. Now such a person, despite having zero clue about the fact that his mind is running a meme machine, might just be a very healthy and thereby happy and productive member of society. If part of their life plan includes prayin' to God for forgiveness and confessing their sins, then isn't that state of ignorance potentially the source of less suffering than a dedicated seeker in the same situation?
A major focus of the sources reviewed on Shaun's site, which tends to correlate with the discussion here, is on recognizing the false as false ... but if the everyday experience of an individual who is unlikely to ever engage in existential questioning and find the truth via insight includes a spiritual practice that results in greater mind-body integration, then what's the point in even trying to dismantle the dream machine?
Personally, I've always been willing to welcome contributions here on the forum that tend along the lines of what might be termed positive and humanistic, but unfortunately, from what I've seen, the types of challenge that those contributors are, as a matter of course, subjected to here, are not challenges that are easily or readily suffered.
There's nothing to be done about this state of affairs of course, it's just something that came to mind.
I also bought "The Power of Now" because I was a chronic insomniac.
Both have funny backstories to them, but this is the extent of my intersection between the two topics. The link between sitting meditation and health seems really obvious, and a big selling point, but my initiation into it had nothing to do with that, so I can't say either way other than I do enjoy most of the physiological sensations involved.
I've got to say -- and this is definitely my old conditioning at play here
-- that lots of the material that links health and spirituality has seemed to me to border on the batsh!t crazy. Maybe some of that opinion would change these days, but the absence of skepticism ain't necessarily the presence of gullibility. I'll refrain from specifics in this regard so as to refrain from offense! Health, as a topic, runs a spectrum, from life and death issues on one extreme, to the obviously personal improvement-focus of say, for example, bodybuilding, on the other. Regardless of that spectrum though, generally speaking, improving one's health is improving one's experience.
As far as ending the spiritual quest goes, I'd guess a likely consensus here on the forum that no single improvement of experience, in and of itself, will result in that. There is of course wide and deep controversy over the relationship between improvement of experience and the end of seeking, but my interest in this essay is only tangentially related to that.
What is obvious is that some disease is definitely apparently caused by a surfeit of integration between body and mind -- various addictions, lack of exercise and poor eating habits all are identified by the machine-model of medicine as causes for everything from high blood pressure through to cancer. It also seems common knowledge for the past few decades that it is habits of thought and attitude that can impact these self-inflicted risk factors positively, and it seems to me at least, that the breadth of awareness of this knowledge has been increasing over time here in the States, despite the potentially demand-reducing impact on our health industrial complex of illness prevention.
It is on this point -- the potential for integration of body and mind -- that some spiritual practices, memes and cultural structures can actually be helpful, and that's where I find the most interesting link between the two topics. Some spiritual cultural artifacts -- such as meditation, devotional practice, a supportive community and even opportunities for works of service -- obviously can lead to a better integrated and more wholesome individual with a higher probability of better health than before that integration was the case.
One of my old correspondents used to hold the opinion that a seeker had to have a healthy ego and a steady, established sense of self before self-inquiry and direct insight could be used to dismantle the false movements of mind and body that obscure the natural state. The theory went that otherwise, fear and shock to the system of someone weakened and unable to cope because of stressors in life would simply send them into a spiral of defensiveness and despair.
While I see the general point of that idea, and have seen a few likely potential examples of that play out in the two forums I've participated in, I'd have to say that ruling out the possibility that someone might wind up suffering their way into realization from that position is probably going too far.
Instead, what I find interesting is that if someone is suffering severely because of poor health, and that person's spiritual involvement is a factor in improving their health and reducing the suffering then I guess I see some value to that, despite the fact that it's very possibly employing some falsehood and in some senses reinforcing the sense of separation that the individual feels.
Consider also the hypothetical of a strongly personally-identified health nut that gets up at 5 AM to run and watches their diet obsessively. Now such a person, despite having zero clue about the fact that his mind is running a meme machine, might just be a very healthy and thereby happy and productive member of society. If part of their life plan includes prayin' to God for forgiveness and confessing their sins, then isn't that state of ignorance potentially the source of less suffering than a dedicated seeker in the same situation?
A major focus of the sources reviewed on Shaun's site, which tends to correlate with the discussion here, is on recognizing the false as false ... but if the everyday experience of an individual who is unlikely to ever engage in existential questioning and find the truth via insight includes a spiritual practice that results in greater mind-body integration, then what's the point in even trying to dismantle the dream machine?
Personally, I've always been willing to welcome contributions here on the forum that tend along the lines of what might be termed positive and humanistic, but unfortunately, from what I've seen, the types of challenge that those contributors are, as a matter of course, subjected to here, are not challenges that are easily or readily suffered.
There's nothing to be done about this state of affairs of course, it's just something that came to mind.
yeah, better luck next time!