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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Psychophysiological Effects Of Increasing Awareness Of Nondual Consciousness In Young Adults With Depression And Anxiety, Milena Braticevic
Psychophysiological Effects Of Increasing Awareness Of Nondual Consciousness In Young Adults With Depression And Anxiety, Milena Braticevic
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
Young adults increasingly suffer from anxiety and depression during the time of transition into adulthood. This research study examined the effects of increasing awareness of nondual consciousness in young adults who were experiencing various levels of anxiety and depression. The methodology was mixed-method and included four 1-hour group-based sessions over 4 weeks. Increasing awareness of nondual consciousness through educational, experiential, and behavioural components resulted in reduction in the average depression score from 19.4 (borderline clinical depression) to 10 (normal), and reduction in the average anxiety score from 12.7 (moderate anxiety) to 6.9 (mild). Participants reported increased mental, emotional, physical, and …
Unexpected Side Effects: A Cautionary Note On Challenges Of Persistent Self-Transcendence, Elizabeth D. Stephens, Harris L. Friedman
Unexpected Side Effects: A Cautionary Note On Challenges Of Persistent Self-Transcendence, Elizabeth D. Stephens, Harris L. Friedman
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Self-transcendence is an ambiguous construct without consensual meaning, yet many claim that it relates to, or even causes, beneficial outcomes. Few discuss its potential deleterious side effects, choosing to focus primarily on positive effects. However, anything with sufficient potency to heal may have unintended side effects, especially when it leads beyond a transitory state to becoming an enduring trait, such as when self-transcendence (ST) becomes persistent self-transcendence (PST). With PST, evidence is overviewed here, along with two illustrative case reports, that people can suffer emotional difficulties, motivation changes, loss of self-reflexivity, anhedonia, dissociation, depersonalization, memory problems, and other psychological concerns. …
Psychotherapy In The Dream: A Phenomenological Exploration, Bustos, Nick
Psychotherapy In The Dream: A Phenomenological Exploration, Bustos, Nick
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
Post-materialist ontologies offer a transformed worldview whose implications point toward the illusory nature of the separate self, or ego. Aligned with the literature of mysticism and perennialist spiritual models, this portends a significantly altered backdrop for the practice and discipline of psychotherapy, the underlying premises of which assume a strict existential dichotomy between patient and therapist. Kenneth Wapnick, preeminent scholar of the twentieth-century spiritual document of A Course in Miracles, provides a relevant model toward integrating spiritually-based, ego-negative states within psychotherapy practice. The author studied the lived experiences of eight psychotherapists, both practicing and retired, who practice according to this …
Oneness In Everyday Life: Nonduality, Wholeness And Human Life After Awakening, Gibbons, Tom
Oneness In Everyday Life: Nonduality, Wholeness And Human Life After Awakening, Gibbons, Tom
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
In Advaita Vedanta a distinction is made between an experience of oneness and permanent awakening. The author argues that a nondual philosophy such as Advaita - as opposed to a direct experience of oneness – contains significant theoretical difficulties, which in turn are reflected in problems with actualizing nonduality in everyday human life. Alternative spiritual conceptions that might be more helpful in guiding the nondual aspirant in her spiritual life are examined, including the concept of “wholeness.” In the place of a reliance on an exclusive doctrine of nonduality, Jorge Ferrar’s concept of “Participatory Spirituality” and A. H. Almaas’s idea …
After Awakening, The Laundry: Is Nonduality A Spiritual Experience?, Jenny Wade
After Awakening, The Laundry: Is Nonduality A Spiritual Experience?, Jenny Wade
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Historically the exclusive purview of contemplative religious paths, awakening into nonduality was considered the pinnacle of human attainment, even if, in some traditions, it proved to be the threshold to even more sublime states. Awakening was traditionally available only to dedicated elite seekers, usually renunciates who practiced for years in monastic communities, their progress directed by the authorities of their lineage. Today technologies for creating the electroencephalographic signatures of advanced meditators are available for purchase, and esoteric religious practices like Zen meditation and asana yoga have been secularized as stress-reduction techniques and physical exercise, respectively. Increased numbers of teachers of …
Why Altered States Are Not Enough: A Perspective From Buddhism, Igor Berkhin, Glenn Hartelius
Why Altered States Are Not Enough: A Perspective From Buddhism, Igor Berkhin, Glenn Hartelius
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Transpersonal psychology has at times employed Buddhist terminology in ways that do not
reflect distinctions that underlie these tightly defined terms. From a Buddhist perspective,
attempts to equate Buddhist terms with language from other traditions are misdirected, and
produce results that no longer represent Buddhism. For example, it is an error to translate
certain Buddhist terms as referring to a shared universal consciousness; Buddhism explicitly
rejects this idea. Nor is it appropriate to assume that the generic, cross-traditional altered
state of nondual awareness postulated in some transpersonally-related circles is in any way
related to nirvana or other advanced states described …
Ecopsychology, Transpersonal Psychology, And Nonduality, John V. Davis
Ecopsychology, Transpersonal Psychology, And Nonduality, John V. Davis
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Nonduality is at the core of both transpersonal psychology and ecopsychology and provides a
means of finding common ground between these approaches. However, misunderstandings
and the lack of an adequate conceptual language for nonduality have limited the value
of this concept for ecopsychology. Nonduality is presented as a range of experiences and
stages of development in which particulars are perceived and understood as part of an allencompassing
totality. Specifically, nonduality is understood in terms of a self-identity
in which separating boundaries no longer isolate one from other expressions of Being. A
description of nondual dimensions of Being based on the …