Here's the beginning of Siegel's upcoming book Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. The book's beginning can be found on the Upaya Zen Center Web site; here's an excerpt:
Diving into the Sea Inside
Within each of us there is an internal mental world – what I have come to think of as the sea inside – that is a wonderfully rich place, filled with thoughts and feelings, memories and dreams, hopes and wishes. Of course it can also be a turbulent place, where we experience the dark side of all those wonderful feelings and thoughts -- fears, sorrows, dreads, regrets, nightmares. What happens when this inner sea seems to crash in on us, threatening to drag us down below to the dark depths, can make us feel like we are drowning. Who among us has not at one time or another felt overwhelmed by the sensations from within our own minds? Sometimes these feelings are just a passing thing – a bad day at work, a fight with someone we love, an attack of nerves about a test we have to take or a presentation we have to give, or just an inexplicable case of the blues for a day or two. But sometimes they seem to be something much more intractable, so much part of the very essence of who we are that it may not even occur to us that we can change them. This is where the skill that I have called “mindsight” comes in, for mindsight, once mastered, is a truly transformational tool. Mindsight has the potential to free us from patterns mind that are getting in the way of living our lives to the fullest.
What Is Mindsight?
Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. ...
Within each of us there is an internal mental world – what I have come to think of as the sea inside – that is a wonderfully rich place, filled with thoughts and feelings, memories and dreams, hopes and wishes. Of course it can also be a turbulent place, where we experience the dark side of all those wonderful feelings and thoughts -- fears, sorrows, dreads, regrets, nightmares. What happens when this inner sea seems to crash in on us, threatening to drag us down below to the dark depths, can make us feel like we are drowning. Who among us has not at one time or another felt overwhelmed by the sensations from within our own minds? Sometimes these feelings are just a passing thing – a bad day at work, a fight with someone we love, an attack of nerves about a test we have to take or a presentation we have to give, or just an inexplicable case of the blues for a day or two. But sometimes they seem to be something much more intractable, so much part of the very essence of who we are that it may not even occur to us that we can change them. This is where the skill that I have called “mindsight” comes in, for mindsight, once mastered, is a truly transformational tool. Mindsight has the potential to free us from patterns mind that are getting in the way of living our lives to the fullest.
What Is Mindsight?
Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. ...
Click to read the rest of the book's beginning.
Also at the Upaya site is a very thorough review of the book, an interview of Siegel, and a podcast of Siegel talking about "Mindsight and Personal Transformation."
On a somewhat related note, here is an online class in MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) offered by emindful.com.
Image credit: LA Times.
Comments