Ecstasy By Cutting off the Shadow
I was asked to give a quick response to why mindfulness practice is not reflection in the sense of shadow work. I have very often addressed this but here i go again. I will just react on this description of it (mindfulness practice) randomly picked off of a website. The description is:
“Mindfulness meditation practice couldn’t be simpler: take a good seat, pay attention to the breath, and when your attention wanders, return. By following these simple steps, you can get to know yourself up close and personal.”
Not letting the attention wander off of breath is really, in terms of shadow work, dissociation. as it is cutting off what is coming up and taking away the attention from the breath. so this would be the inverse of shadow/self awareness based reflection. Because it would be/mean cutting off the content coming up to compensate the control of the conscious which wants to manage and lock the attention from being compensated by the shadow. In general the ego controlled conscious will do anything and especially apply many techniques for managing and controlling attention and the shadow. to stop it from compensating it.
So in effect this would be the same as controlling the dreams to stop the shadow from compensating. Which is what the dissociative version of lucid dreaming is or inception. So there’s been a whole wave of New Age approaches to shadow work and integrating shadow work with mindfulness meditation practice. But these 2 do not mix in the way now is being attempted.
See my writing where I argue that Jungian psychology is psychological Buddhism or the right psychological practice of Buddhism for the western psyche. the other way is going ever more back to the natural process of mind, not trying to manage mind. till as the Buddha himself said: we reach back the fully pure natural level or state of mind. there there’s nothing to ‘manage’ anymore.