I'd Like to Lose this Baggage at the Airport

When I was deep in the trenches of working on my PTSD* I really felt I was dragging around a ton of extra baggage everywhere I went. I've always had a sense of humor that matched my pragmatism, so I'd occasionally quip about it. Now when I work with people who have PTSD I'll walk them through a visualization exercise of losing their baggage at the airport. It's fun, it's funny. It's vivid. It helps.

Responsibility

Dr. Viktor Frankl, father of Logotherapy (a specific school of psychology), said the Statue of Liberty should be balanced by the Statue of Responsibility.

Remembering

Memorial Day is a time of remembering, so I thought I would write about memory itself.

I have a particular psychological disorder that affects perception and memory. On the spectrum of this disorder, I am for all intents and purposes minimally impacted, but there are ways that my peculiar way of storing memories impacts my daily existence.

Inner Voice or Outer Voice

In meditation we get quiet with ourselves.

When we are quiet, we can access messages that are not usually accessible. Some may call it our "conscience" or our "intuition", some may simply think it's another layer of our own thoughts.

It's all in the Mind

In the normal modern consciousness, we are often caught up in the next moment, the next day, the next week. We’re always planning and preparing, thinking through the future, criticizing our past, reminiscing, acting in habit while our mind wanders elsewhere. A mindfulness meditation is the opposite and cure for the act of living outside the moment. A mindfulness meditation involves being completely in the current moment, acting with deliberation and clear consciousness, bringing the mind back time and again to the present and what is actually going on. This is a tool we should all have in our consciousness arsenal. There are times to plan, and times to focus on the present moment. It is possible to find a place in every moment where you are completely aware of your surroundings and your place within them, and of nothing else. We should each take some daily action without being focused on what we’re about to do, or going over what we’ve already done. The act of being fully present to what you’re doing helps relax us and calm the mind. This quiet time for our mind can bring us to profound peace with the world and with whatever is going on right now in our lives. Please join us this Monday evening at 5pm EST for Let’s Heal the World Together and we’ll discuss our experiences with mindfulness meditations.