MEDITATION FOR ANXIETY DISORDERS TREATMENT: LEARNING ABOUT OURSELVES
Another positive aspect of the dynamics of meditation is that it can teach us even more about ourselves. Over a period of time and with continued practice, meditation begins to work on many subtle levels. The quiet of meditation gives us the chance to integrate many aspects of ourselves. This happens subconsciously and we don’t become aware of this process straight away. Slowly and subtly the integration breaks through into our consciousness. We begin to see changes in how we perceive and react to the various day-to-day situations which arise.
A helpful analogy is using the ‘sort’ command on a database. The database contains a lot of data which needs be sorted into alphabetical order. The computer operator presses the ‘sort’ key, and the computer sorts and rearranges the information into strict alphabetical order.
Meditation works something like this. It helps to process all the information we are holding in our ‘database’. It begins to sort everything into a more ordered view. Sometimes the process of meditation will ‘throw out a file’ for us to look at, other times it gets on with what it has to do without any reference to us. Just like a computer! The result is a changed and more ordered perception of ourselves and our environment.
This is part of the reason why meditation and psychotherapy ‘complement’ one another. One study of meditation states that ‘meditation may facilitate the psychotherapeutic process’ (Task Force on Meditation 1977).
*65\94\8*
