Meditation is the Key to Unified Mind

Life is complicated and we are often conflicted in trying to deal with its many complications.

Part of what makes it complicated is we often think one way, but feel another. Or we are sometimes captives to feelings we cannot think our way out of.

In the West there is a classic split between the head and heart. The head does our thinking for us and the heart does all the feeling, but our minds are often caught up in the confusion of which one to believe. This conflict is longstanding and conventional, reaching back into the age of Elizabethan poetry even, in which a lover was torn between what his heart told him (I feel love for a woman) and what his head told him (Hands off! Married women are off limits). 

In Western thinking, the mind is usually seen as aligned with what the head knows. This is the rational sphere, and we go to school for many years to train this rational capacity.  Set apart from this rational sphere is the heart, which proclaims a different kind of knowing, something intuitive and wild and something usually untrained. Yet something known in the heart is somehow known more deeply, more authentically and more personally. Thus, the head is the province of society and the rational, while the heart is the dominion of the self and personal feelings.

Moreover, while the head knows about or of something, the heart knows without separation from what it knows. It feels continuously rather than thinks about things, and feeling is intimate, while thinking is detached and dispassionate. These are two radically different kinds of experience.

We all know people whose minds are in their heads and others who live in their hearts. Each sees and experiences life differently, whether detached or emotionally engaged.

Meditation introduces a third element, the breath or spirit, which is another dimension entirely, more ethereal and intuitive than either head or heart. Moreover, breath is the key to reunification of head and heart. It is through the breath that we calm our thinking heads. It is through the breath that we allow our hearts to open more fully and compassionately toward others. Thus a triad of mind is created, and spirit (or breath) integrates and unifies the head and heart, holistically. Meditation is the key to unified mind.

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Looking for some peace and balance amidst the busy pressures of everyday Island life? More harmony at work and home? Meditation classes with Elliott Dacher MD can provide the tools. Registration is underway for spring classes eight consecutive Wednesdays beginning March 27, 6 to 8:15 pm., at the M.V. Hospital Medical Staff Library.

More than 300 Islanders have participated in Dr. Dacher’s meditation and life skills training classes in the past six years. The course offers an introduction to meditation set in a context of history, tradition, health, and psychological/spiritual benefits. Classes include step-by-step meditation instruction. Students are encouraged to develop a home practice. Past students have reported a range of benefits including increased patience, compassion, ease, humor and appreciation to less anxiety, worry, and negative reactions.

Dr. Dacher, a practicing physician for some 20 years who now dedicates himself to teaching and studying traditional mediation, is the author of “Aware, Awake, Alive” (Paragon House, 2011), a guidebook for meditation practice, as well as several books on holistic health and healing.

http://www.elliottdacher.org/aware-awake-alive.html

Dr. Dacher believes that mediation practice is the key to a more harmonious, joyful life free from suffering. In his view, suffering takes place in the mind and can be changed by using appropriate techniques.

"There is a cause for the overactive mind, stress, distress, and suffering," Dr. Dacher said in a Times interview. "And just as with any 'medical problem,' if we identify the cause we can apply the proper remedy.

“In these classes we examine the underlying causes for these common mental disturbances and learn the remedies or inner practices that can diminish them and allow for a life of greater peace, happiness, and well-being of body, mind, and spirit."

The classes are sponsored jointly by the M.V. Hospital and the YMCA.

Tuition: $150; $130 YMCA member; $95 M.V. Hospital staff. Text (“Aware, Awake, Alive”): $20. or purchase elsewhere.

For more information or to register contact Brooke Emin: MVHmeditation@partners.org or

508-862-1940