Jinji Willingham Psychotherapy

05/21/2024

Reposting this article - having done so many times before, because of its frequency in conversation this week, and because it benefits so many. Worth reading the whole article on this never-ending topic.

"The trance of unworthiness, sustained by the movement of blaming, striving and self-numbing, begins to lift when we stop the action. The Buddha engaged in his mythic process of awakening after coming to rest under the bodhi tree. We start to cut through the trance in the moment that we, like the Buddha, discontinue our activity and pay attention. Our willingness to stop and look—what I call the sacred art of pausing—is at the center of all spiritual practice. Because we get so lost in our fear-driven busyness, we need to pause frequently."

Meditation, Emotional Healing, and Spiritual Awakening from Tara Brach, PhD - Psychologist, Author, and Meditation Teacher

05/21/2024

Reposting because everyone benefits from this Ted Talk with Gabor Maté.

Canadian physician Gabor Maté is a specialist in terminal illnesses, chemical dependents, and HIV positive patients. Dr. Maté is a renowned author of books a...

02/20/2024

01/05/2024

To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.
The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.
- - Heidi Priebe

12/14/2023

11/02/2023

Gabor Mate talks about how our mind has all this ideas, plans, stories, and even solutions that are not even true or necessary; all of the things that go in ...

10/10/2023

The existence of love, trust, respect, and safety in a relationship is often dependent on moments you might write off as petty disagreements.

09/20/2023

09/14/2023

09/13/2023

To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness. ~Heidi Priebe

(Book: This Is Me Letting You Go https://amzn.to/465sSwc)

09/06/2023

Does anyone in ATX have a handheld tesla ball or a plasma ball that I can borrow for a day or so? Anytime in the next few days would be best! Unrelated photo of tender clouds “lightly string.”

09/04/2023

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little p**g.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered. ~Aldous Huxley

(Book: Island https://amzn.to/47WawPU)

08/28/2023

I'm heading to Thailand in a few weeks to participate in a conference on Buddhist Psychotherapy & Chaplaincy in Asia. Organized by the International Buddhist Psychotherapy and Chaplaincy, the conference will focus on su***de prevention in Asian countries, which have the highest su***de rates in the world.

I joined the group in 2017 for their First International Conference on Su***de Prevention in Yokohama and Kyoto. Since then we've been meeting monthly to exchange ideas and practices, and explore how Buddhism and and western psychology work together when counseling those with cultural, political, and psychological trauma, and su***de ideation. I gladly to wake up at 6am for our 2-3 hour meetings where we present, explore, and experience how Buddhist psychology and practices can impact mental health around the world.

I'll be in Thailand from Sept 21 to Oct 2 to participate in our first conference since before the pandemic! I'm so looking forward to re-connecting with colleagues whom I deeply respect, appreciate, and learn from each month. Together we are from Japan, Sweden, India, Taiwan, and the United States.

Those attending the conference will be counselors, chaplains, psychiatrists, and buddhist monastics from Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Korea. Bhutan, Myanmar, Ladakh, Tamil Nadu, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia, who counsel and minister to patients suffering from a wide variety of trauma, psychological distress, and su***de ideation.

This is a volunteer effort, and we will travel across the world at our own expense to participate. The conference organizers is raising money to offer scholarships to some of those attending. All of us would be very grateful for any financial support you or those you know can offer. I'll put the Global Giving link in the first comment below.

Much love to all,
Jinji

The International Buddhist Psychotherapy and Chaplaincy working group (IBPC) is a group of Buddhist chaplains, Buddhist-based psychotherapists, and Buddhist activists engaged in a wide variety of mental health issues. Evolving from engaged Buddhists in Japan confronting the su***de epidemic, in 2017...

07/17/2023

After busting down doors and expanding on pop music with uplifting songs like "Everybody Is A Star", "Hot Fun In The Summertime", "Dance To The Music" , Sly ...

07/13/2023

Noteworthy photos from the Danish Design Museum, shared by a friend. Wondering which tinctures I’ve been sipping.

06/19/2023

"When people allow you to know about their pain and talk about it, take your shoes off. It’s a holy place. Be humble, be kind when someone shows you vulnerability."

- Amani Albair | Artwork : alterlier

Follow us : instagram.com/1mindandheart1

06/10/2023

“Our mental universe (which contains all we know, feel or are afraid of in the real world we live in) may be enchanting, happy, tragic, comic, etc.

“We are capable of transforming it and giving it a charm which makes life more valuable. More valuable since life becomes more joyful, thanks to the extraordinary effort needed to create this charm.

“Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so. It is an easy task, because people who are intellectually lazy are convinced that this miserable terror is “the truth”, that this terror is knowledge of the “extra-mental” world. This is an easy way out, resulting in a banal explanation of the world as terrifying.

“Creating enchantment is an effective means of counteracting this depressing, banal habit.

[…]
“We must go in search of enchantment.”
Rene Magritte

06/06/2023

The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive. They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions--sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments--both physical and emotional--unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss--another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly. ~Susan Cain

(Book: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking https://amzn.to/3OLKmYX)

(Art: Painting by John Singer Sargent)

06/01/2023

05/11/2023

The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment. ~Joseph Campbell

(Book: The Power of Myth https://amzn.to/41dSUue)