Taming the Drunken Monkey: The Path to Mindfulness, Meditation, and Increased Concentration by William L. Mikulas PhD

Author:William L. Mikulas PhD [Mikulas PhD, William L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: stress relief, yoga, mindfulness, eastern paths, mind body spirit, energy work, meditation, mind body soul
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2014-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

[contents]

Level IV

Adept

If you have completed the warrior level, you are now quite advanced in the practices and way ahead of where you began. However, there will always be more to learn; this is one of life’s beautiful things. At this level you will learn some advanced practices and perspectives, and you will do more weaving together of what you have learned. You will be on the continual path to become more expert, more adept.

At this level you will come to appreciate more how everything is interrelated. Concentration and awareness were treated as separate skills at first, but by now you realize they are highly interrelated in complex ways—they always influence each other, and changes in one produce changes in the other. Hence, at this level it is usually best to work with them simultaneously. Similarly, concentration and awareness are intertwined with mental flexibility. For example, becoming more aware helps to reduce attachments, and reducing attachments improves the clarity and breadth of awareness. And concentration, awareness, and mental flexibility are all intertwined with attitude and breathing, as you have already discovered and will learn more about. At this level we will add in practices related to opening the heart. Although it is not specifically mental training (the focus of this manual), you will discover how opening the heart is totally intertwined with concentration, awareness, mental flexibility, and breathing. All of these are intertwined with ethical behavior. For example, the more ethical you are, the easier it will be to quiet the mind, reduce attachments, and open the heart. Finally comes the understanding that body, mind, and spirit are all totally intertwined. So the mental training of this manual will improve the health and functioning of the body and spirit as well as the mind. The most advanced understanding of this reality includes how all these are interwoven and affect each other.

A very powerful dynamic at the adept level is readiness to hear, the ability to personally understand in a deep and profound way because of one’s life experiences and development. What this means is that the novice, student, and warrior will understand the practices and perspectives of the adept level in very different ways! Because warriors have had extensive experiences and discoveries with the practices, they will understand and appreciate many of the instructions

of this level in ways that the novice can not yet understand. A strong example of this is the upcoming discussion of “not-doing.” Most people can easily read this section and get something out of it. But the warrior will understand it in a much more profound way, and it will resolve some fundamental concerns. For the importance of not-doing is very pervasive and often very subtle. For example, not-doing is basic to Western control and acceptance therapies, as well as the central practice of philosophical Taoism, an essential Zen approach to meditation, a practical conclusion of Hindu/yogic advaita vedanta, one of the highest teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, and a core revelation of many relatively recent spiritual teachers (e.

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