A Joyful Practice

How Do You Deal with Your Answers?* June 13, 2023

Happy Pride! Many blessings to everyone!!!

“I am using the term [existential] in a very simple, straightforward way; simply to refer to existence. [As an adjective] Existential Psychotherapy means simply, a therapy focused on concerns emerging from the nature of existence.”

– Dr. Irvin Yalom, speaking at a 2009 Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference

Existential therapists, like Dr. Irvin Yalom (who turns 92 today), are concerned with the same questions as existential philosophers: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? You know, those easy questions. The therapists, however, may be more concerned (than the philosophers) about how we answer the questions. Or, we could say, they are concerned with the actions that come our answers.

Born today in 1931, Dr. Irvin Yalom is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford and an author of fiction and non-fiction that deals with the mental and emotional workings of the mind (and heart). He pioneered existentialist psychotherapy and was featured in the 2003 documentary Flight from Death, which explores how people deal with what Patanjali highlighted as the fifth afflicted thought pattern: fear of loss/death. (YS 2.3)

Dr. Yalom’s therapy and research are based on his belief that “we are here, through random events; that we are here alone…. that we are responsible for carving out own life pattern, our own meaning… we have no predestined fate, most of all it means that we are finite… we all have to face inevitable death.” Like Virginia Satir and Dr. M. Scott Peck, he focuses not so much on a “presenting” issue/problem as on how we deal with our issues and problems. He outlined four givens: Isolation, Mortality, Meaninglessness, and Freedom (which comes with responsibility). According to Dr. Yalom we deal with inner conflict around the four “givens” and our responses are either functional or dysfunctional. Dr. Louis Hoffman added a fifth “given” to this idea: we have an emotional, embodied experience.

In the Yoga Philosophy, what Dr. Yalom calls “functional or dysfunctional” is described as klişțāklişțāh (“afflicted and not afflicted”). Philosophically, we can see the correlation between our dysfunctional or afflicted thoughts and actions and our suffering (and/or the suffering of others). Of course, this takes us right back to the root or bedrock of our suffering: the first afflicted thought pattern, ignorance.

Yoga Sūtra 1.5: vŗttayah pañcatayyah klişțāklişțāh

– “The tendencies that cause the mind to fluctuate (or rotate) are fivefold, and are either afflicting or non-afflicting.”

Yoga Sūtra 2.4: avidyā kṣetramuttareṣāṃ prasuptatanuvicchinnodārāṇām

– “Ignorance is the ground for the remaining afflictions, whether they are dormant, attenuated, disjointed, or active.”

Yoga Sūtra 2.13: sati mūle tadvipāko jātyāyurbhogāḥ

– “As long as the root cause [i.e., the five afflicted thought patterns] persists, karmas must bear fruit, and that fruition determines birth in a particular species, life span, and life experience.”

Please join me today (Tuesday, June 13^th) at 12:00 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Today’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “06132020 Yalom’s Big Day”]

“‘Lads, your needs are few, they are easily attained, and any necessary suffering can be easily tolerated. Don’t complicate your life with such trivial goals as riches and fame: they are the enemy of ataraxia. Fame, for example, consists of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish. To achieve and maintain fame, we must like what others like and shun whatever it is that they shun. Hence, a life of fame or a life in politics? Flee from it. And wealth? Avoid it! It is a trap. The more we acquire the more we crave, and the deeper our sadness when our yearning is not satisfied. Lads, listen to me: If you crave happiness, do not waste your life struggling for that which you really do not need.’”

– the fictionalized Franciscus van den Enden speaking to his students in The Spinoza Problem: A Novel by Dr. Irvin D. Yalom

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.)

*Some quotes were added after the initial posting.

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