Mind & Soul Travel Guide 1: Journey of Discovery

By Paul Whetham

Want to be a better captain of your mind & soul? This 1st travel guide shows you how Dr Whetham demonstrates how to transform suffering to meaning through authentic 2-way relationships and how that discovery is key for our soul and mental health. You’ll learn why dialogue, in neuroscience terms, stimulates neural growth and enhances me

• Language: English
• Publisher: Soul Food Cafe
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780994233011

Paul Whetham

Dr Paul Whetham is a clinical psychologist who has over 30 years' experience in mental and spiritual health. He is passionate about authentic spiritual experiences and is the co-founder of Soul Food Café.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION:

THE SEARCH FOR MEANING & RESILIENCE

What shall it profit a person, if they gain the whole world, yet lose their own soul?

Mental health is a state of well-being that is related to our psychological, physical and spiritual health.

Mental health is linked with the way we create meaning, how we see and feel about ourselves and the world around us.

A renowned neurologist and psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, argued man’s search for meaning (also his book’s title) is one of the most important adventures in life to take.

Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in life… This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

- Viktor Frankl¹

Meaning is a mystery because life is a mystery. We don’t know why we’re here. We don’t fully know others. And we don’t fully know ourselves. Some believe our existence is a cosmic accident, that there is no God. But while the vast majority of us believe there is a God (for example, 2 in 3 Australians believe in God or a higher power), the nature of this God is uncertain. Nevertheless, we all have to make sense of this life with the limited information available to us and our personal life experiences.

To add to this uncertainty sociologist Tim Freke² reminds us that our post-modern western world has left us adrift with a ‘soul crisis’.

Contemporary society is experiencing a ‘soul crisis’, caused by the demise of outdated religion and the rise of hard-headed science, which has left us adrift in a purposeless cosmos, waiting for a meaningless death.

- Tim Freke

Interestingly, eminent Professor Martin Seligman³ in his worldwide research has consistently found the pursuit of pleasure on its own had no bearing on increasing happiness and life satisfaction. However, the pursuit of meaning itself was the strongest factor in increasing your life satisfaction. For Seligman, meaning is defined as using our strengths in the service of something larger than ourselves.

The meaningful life is about finding a deeper sense of fulfilment by using your strengths in the service of something larger than yourself and nourishing others. - Professor Martin Seligman

There’s no doubt humans have to negotiate many challenges in life, and that includes the search for meaning. There are numerous questions about meaning but few tangible answers.

And we each have to live day-by-day with this uncertainty. This uncertainty is what Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and father of existentialism, calls the ‘angst (or anxiety) of living’. Basically, existentialism emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice.

Existentialism is the view that humans find their own meaning in life and can live out meaningful choices, despite life’s uncertainties.

Kierkegaard⁴ was interested in how people dealt differently with the ‘angst of living’ and outlined three stages of existence:

1.The Aesthetic

• Life based on pure sensory pleasures, intellectual or physical

• Want to look or sound good and live for the moment

• The world of senses

2.The Ethical

• Life based in moral codes and the infinite, the eternal

• Want to be good

• The world of ethical choices

3.The Religious or Spiritual

• The highest stage of personal commitment and subjectivity

• Understands that suffering, loneliness and despair can be transformed through the spiritual life

Now let’s now turn to a second key factor in mental and spiritual health: resilience.

Taking the journey of self-discovery requires choosing to not be a victim and, instead, becoming a resilient captain of your own mind and soul.

Resilience can be defined as: overcoming the odds; sustained competency under stress; and recovery from trauma. Resilient individuals can be described as people who: reassert control and mastery over their lives; regulate emotion and behaviour; reassess and resolve problems; have a realistic and optimistic outlook; and reach out and empathise with others.

Resilience research has shown three major themes that emerge as we move through suffering and adversity:

• struggle (this is what we’ll call chaotic mind)

• self (or contemplative mind)

• relationship (or compassionate mind)

In this book we aim to help you be a resilient captain of your mind and soul. We use neuroscience and spirituality perspectives to help navigate through the unknown.

In chapter 1 we’ll examine the chaotic mind, contemplative mind and compassionate mind. As we shall see, an understanding of all 3 minds is required if we want to renew our mind and soul and live out a meaningful life in the service of others. In chapter 2 we explore how we get stuck in chaotic mind and superficial relationships. In chapter 3 we journey through despair, suffering and meaning, and examine the hero’s journey.

Lastly, in chapter 4, we take a closer look at spiritual resilience and the importance of internal and external self-knowledge. We also turn our attention to the many different elements of our life journey using the metaphor of a lifeboat and its journey through stormy and uncertain waters. Knowing these elements and how they interact is essential for developing self-awareness and spiritual resilience.

Welcome aboard!

CHAPTER 1:

CHAOTIC MIND, CONTEMPLATIVE MIND & COMPASSIONATE MIND

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

The aim of this chapter is to explore what I call chaotic mind, contemplative mind and compassionate mind using basic neuroscience and spirituality perspectives. We’ll start with the chaotic mind and the importance of understanding our story and knowing what past, present or future struggles trigger the chaotic mind’s stress response. However, before that, we’ll need to understand some basic neuroscience principles.

Neuroscience in a nutshell

The latest findings in neuroscience (or brain science) are of great importance in understanding the brain, stress and loneliness. So, let me walk you through the key concepts.

To help us get started, think back to when you were younger. How would you answer the following three questions?

When you were in school were you taught

1.What the brain is and how it functions?

2.What stress is and how to cope with it?

3.What loneliness is and how to cope with it?

I’d guess that the vast majority of us would answer No, No, No.

Even if you were one of the very rare people who answered ‘Yes’ to any of the above 3 questions, chances are what you were taught back then was wrong!

Let’s take the first question, what the brain is and how does it function?

For example, if you sat in a psychology lecture on neuroscience over a quarter of a century ago, you would have been taught that the brain develops up until 25 years of age and then begins its slow and steady decline. Further, if an area of the brain was damaged, you would lose associated functioning with that region and generally not expect to get it back.

Both these assumptions have now been proven incorrect because neuroscience has made new and wonderful discoveries. First, the brain is always growing new