Zen

My first Enlightenment Intensive – by Isis the psychic

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Isis2

I just came across this wonderful article, “Isis Speaks”, by Isis Coble (above).

Isis, also known as Meerkat or TarotMama, is an inuitive/psychic counsellor who does online tarot readings via her tarotmama.com website.

The article was published in Sojourn magazine (Vol 2, Issue 2), in 1998. Sojourn was a magazine for spiritually-minded women writers and artists based in Northern California. In the article—described as an “interview” although there are no questions—Isis tells her life story. The bit I want to relay is about Isis’s first encounter with an Enlightenment Intensive in the ealy 1970s.

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Self and no-self: the personality crisis of a Zen master

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- New York Times Mag article 26.04.09 -
- New York Times Mag article 26.04.09 -

Someone pointed me to this fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine (23 April). It’s about a 63-year old academic who has spent much of his life as a dedicated Zen practitioner – now a Zen master – but who has in recent years undergone a personality crisis. He went into therapy with Jeffrey Rubin, author of Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Toward an Integration, and had a breakthrough.

Basically, he realised that he had used the Buddhist concept of no-self to evade his inner process and unconscious traumas. All his ‘stuff’ came back to him, and with his owning it came a joyful rediscovery of self.

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