Listening from the Heart of Silence

Like its companion volume, The Sacred Mirror, Listening from the Heart of Silence is both inspiring and instructive. To be fully appreciated, it needs to be read slowly and thoughtfully, studied even, because it's breaking new conceptual and practical ground regarding the integration of psychotherapy and nondual wisdom. We've understood for the last 50 years or so that the personhood of the therapist, his or her own maturity and authenticity, is extremely important to the healing process. But we're just starting to understand what it means when the mature and authentic psychotherapist is also a somewhat "awakened" being, when he or she can access a nondual state of awareness while sitting with their troubled client. That is the territory these two volumes explore. They offer us some valuable distinctions and language that will allow us to understand and discuss this new intersection more clearly. The opening essay alone is worth the price of the book. It's titled: Toward and Embodied Nonduality: Introductory Remarks. It provides a sorely needed overview of this whole somewhat confusing territory of nondual consciousness and the process of awakening. Most of the books I've read concerning nondual awareness, while helpful to varying degrees, represent the experience and viewpoint of just one person, who usually isn't that interested in articulating his or her awakening within a larger social and cultural perspective. Listening from the Heart of Silence asks the important question: What happens, what is possible, when we listen to one another with the spacious mind and compassionate heart which accompany our awakening? If you're only going to read one of the two volumes, read this one. But if you're trying to make sense of the nondual state of consciousness, and figuring out what difference it makes to the world, read Sacred Mirror as well. There isn't that much overlap, and we need to hear this stuff from as many directions as possible, to start making sense of it.

Until the 1980's and 1990's (with the important exception of Carl Jung), psychotherapy has been helpless to work with people in the realm of spirituality, and more specifically in the state of non-dualism. We are in an age where, to paraphrase Mark Epstein, spirituality has left the hands of the monastics and is now in the hands of householders -- and psychotherapists. To be able to enter, experience and know the state of non-dualism is to uncover an essential part of ourselves that is hidden from view because of our conditioned dualistic nature. From the state of non-dualism, the troubling emotions and psychological states of the dualistic self can be better understood and worked with compassionately. From this grows a sensitivity and kindness to all our foibles in our ordinary waking life, as well as an increased sensitivity to the subtle energies of the life force as it plays out between people. Experience in the non-dual helps us to accept ourselves and our lives. To learn to identify with our non-dualistic aspect is to awaken. This is what all the ancient wisdom schools know and teach. To know or understand the (dualistic) self is to disidentify with the self and to learn about one's true self through the state of non-dualism. This should be recommended reading for anyone training in psychotherapy.

Volume two in the Natural Wisdom & Psychotherapy series, Listening from the Heart of Silence is an anthology of essays by learned authors that apply the spiritual insights of Zen, Tibetan Dzogchen, Advaita Vedanta, and other sources of wisdom to modern psychotherapy. Individual essays include "Listening and Speaking from No-Mind", "Nondual Wisdom and Body-Based Therapy", "Walking the Talk: The Principles and Practices of Embodied Spirituality", and much more. A thoughtful demonstration of the positive benefits of nondual spiritual realization. "Moments of self being 'gone' often become noticeable to practitioners of certain kinds of meditation. This is the case especially in Buddhist meditative practice. The dissolution of the self then becomes the desires goal of practice. The practitioner, hoping to 'go into' nonduality, 'gets into' trying to dissolve the self instead. But the self cannot dissolve itself. It cannot really even allow itself to dissolve, for that, too, sets up a duality between the one doing the allowing and the state that is supposed to be achieved by doing it. Notice how 'allowing' can be a mental attitude that fixates the self.

Like its companion volume, The Sacred Mirror, this remarkable anthology brings the spiritual insights of Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta to bear on the practice of psychotherapy. The contributors, who are practitioners and realizers as well as clinicians, demonstrate how genuine nondual spiritual realization naturally applies itself in the therapeutic encounter. As a psychotherapist, I was especially impressed by how transformation consistently occurs when the conventional roles of therapist and client, self and other, dissolve and the truth is allowed to spontaneously move and reveal itself in the interaction, not as some interpretation imposed by the mind. The chapter titles alone reveal the richness and diversity of this collection: "Nondual Wisdom and Body-Based Therapy," "Spacious Intimacy," "Mystery, Mind and Meaning," Experiencing the Universe as Yourself." Listening from the Heart of Silence stands at the cutting edge of the emerging confluence of nondual wisdom and Western psychology. For humanistic and transpersonal therapists interested in taking their practice to a new level, as well as for spiritual seekers who want an understanding of how to work with the mind from a nondual perspective, this book is a must read. Highly recommended!

This book is overflowing with enthusiastic, pioneering, sparkling, nonduality talkers. Each contributor gives 110%. There's a sense of urgency to communicate. Thus this book is very alive. "Nondual consciousness is experienced as the basis of contact, the most intimate contact one can have, with oneself and others," writes Judith Blackstone, revealing the cornerstone of this book. The authors consider the paradox of nonduality: that you can talk as if you know the nondual, and there is no one to know it. Kaisa Puhakka says, "...that paradox is an antidote to seriousness, and so a gateway to openness and humility." This book is an excellent introduction to nonduality. Read it for that reason alone. The purpose though is to show how nonduality is inherently fused to psychotherapy. Buddhist teachings are mostly the backdrop for this work. Therapists will appreciate that the authors speak their language, and will benefit from the practical side of this book. All readers could benefit, as the pursuit of nonduality is often an intense psychological adventure. Jerry Katz