This is part two of a two-part series. Find part one, hear.

A Deeper Union

Although – as noted in the introduction to this essay – the two wings of psychological growth and contemplative practice are often seen in a kind of tension, actually they support each other profoundly.

A Single Great Wing, Really

For starters, they intertwine in multiple ways that make them “non-dual.” For example, the repeated act of simply being with something – the smell of an orange, the sensation of the breath in the belly, a memory of summer camp – cannot help but cultivate many wholesome qualities in the mind and heart, such as mindfulness, concentration, detachment, and wisdom. And just being with difficult experiences – really experiencing your experience – is one of the premier methods in psychology for helping them to release from the mind and body. Similarly, working with anything skillfully requires mindful awareness as well as close attention to the details of inner experience and the outer world.

We should be with what it’s like to work with something; then the act of working with itself becomes the object of spacious  attentiveness. For example, in meditation you are often aware of the skillful (and not so skillful) efforts in your mind to remain aware. On the other hand, we should cultivate and thus work with the capacity to sustain choiceless awareness – a faculty of the mind (and certainly the brain) like any other.