Daodejing, Verse 35

Daodejing - Other Voices

The Role of Meditation in the Contemplative Approach to Mental Health
“Hold fast to the Great Form within
And let the world pass as it may
Then the changes of life will not bring pain
But contentment, joy and well being”
Tao Te Ching, Verse 35

My client walks in and begins crying; covering her face, she is looking down, searching for some thing, some words to identify her experience. She speaks in anxious circles, words revealing nothing but the space that she cannot find comforting. She admits that her life is “dominated by thoughts” and that she is constantly mining for a jewel that will explain what is going on.

As she seeks to find meaning, to understand, I feel her pain and suffering, but am also aware that I do not want to add to her experience with probing questions that would distract her. And I don’t wish to take away from her experience by offering soothing words that would only serve to temporarily mute her inner noise. Instead, I just sit with what is revealing itself, with what is arising in the present moment. In this being together, it is understood that nothing needs to change, that there is no pressure to interpret or to understand.

She squirms while watching me as we sit in this process of not adding to or taking away from her experience. She reports as she sits looking down, “It’s like I wake up and am in this body, and I wonder, ‘Is anything there if I’m not obsessing?’” She elaborates, “I’m looking for a mental formula that proves I exist, but I can’t find it!” She is genuinely curious about her experience of confusion.

In this act of being present to one another (without an agenda that something needs to be different) there is a sense of completion despite her conflict, her anxiety, and her questions regarding what signifies an experience of being alive. This sense of completion arises from not needing to change or to maintain a condition. Just like in meditation, we view our thoughts, our emotions, and our sensations as passing conditions and don’t need to do anything about them.

The two main benefits of meditation are the attainment of another way of perceiving and relating to reality and more enjoyment in life in general. These benefits are cultivated by quieting the mind through concentration and insight practice. Sitting quietly, we place all of our attention on watching the breath go in and out. A few seconds later, we notice our leg feels stiff, our nose is running, there is a pain in our forehead. We are wondering what’s for dinner. We notice we’ve been thinking with a sense of dread that there may be a problem in our relationship. As soon as we see we are distracted, we gently pull our attention back to the breath.

There is no attempt to explore or understand any of the experience that distracted us. Instead of analyzing any “thing,” that arose, we work with the structure of the mind itself by strengthening its ability to not attach to the passing phenomena of experience with any emotional reactivity. The ability to learn how to rest and to feel at home in our body is cultivated in the practice of meditation. This practice is an invaluable adjunct to the psychotherapeutic process...
~ from GoodTherapy.org, author Linda Jame, LCSW, original post date: 2/24/10 ~

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