Wherever there is Attachment…

Where there is attachment there is unconsciousness. Attachment means that we hope for something good to happen, and at the same time we are watching out in case something bad happens. We’re on the look-out for the favourable outcome and we’re also on the look-out…

The Art of Losing

We are all very familiar with the ‘self-empowerment’ model in popular psychology which basically puts across the idea that ‘you can do anything you want once you put your mind to it’. Success and positive living are the key words here and we are encouraged…

Far From Equilibrium

An excellent way to study the thinking mind is by seeing it as an equilibrium system – once we understand equilibrium systems then we will understand the rational mind. To start off with we can say that the key thing about an equilibrium system is…

The Dark Father

The ‘Dark Father’ of unbridled rationality eats his own children, just as Cronos did in the ancient legend. He might not actually physically eat them as Cronos the Titan did, but by the weight of his controlling and stultifying authority he represses their psychological growth…

Imaginary Work

If we say that psychological work is where we have the capacity not to automatically resist our own inner state (i.e. not to try to make it different to the way it actually is) then clearly ‘non-work’ is where we aren’t able to draw upon…

The Sun Doesn’t Shine With An Agenda

• A good way to understand mindfulness is by thinking about light – where the light is that is mindfulness, and where the light is not, that is not mindfulness! The light is our gentle non-judgmental awareness.   • Our normal way of dealing with…

Escaping From Ourselves

How can the tyranny of a fixed repeating pattern ever bring itself to an end? The answer to this question is simply that it can’t. The pattern has no way to bring itself to an end – whatever the pattern does is the pattern and…

The Prison of Purposefulness

The cruellest prison we could ever find ourselves in is the prison of purposefulness. What could be crueller than this? The funny thing is though that we are more than likely to have very little (if any) appreciation of the truth of this statement. We…

Life Is A Risk You Have To Take

There is an Indian saying which says “What you don’t give away, you lose”. This is not too far away in its meaning from the basic principle behind Western psychotherapy, a principle which can be expressed as follows: The more you risk, the more you…

The Secret of Transformation

  The secret of transformation is to be where we don’t want to be. This – needless to say – isn’t necessarily how we would usually see it. Usually we have an idea of how we’d like to be and then we set out with…