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Carolyn Durrant's avatar

I recently listened to an interesting podcast episode that had a bit to say about this. The wife of one of the guests, who was/is a spiritual teacher, is experiencing cognitive decline and he too saw her become more light and joyous. His hypothesis was that she was becoming free to experience the parts of her she’d denied through her life in order to appear credible to the mainly male spiritual teachers who were her peers at the time. Also had another interesting hypothesis, but not one I feel confident I can do justice to.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/buddha-at-the-gas-pump/id602578156?i=1000645709435

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Ruben Laukkonen's avatar

Thanks Carolyn, I’ll have a listen! Glad to hear there are others speaking to this, not something you hear about often. Almost taboo.

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Carolyn Durrant's avatar

It’s towards the end of the podcast, but there’s an interesting discussion of other things that precedes it.

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Sarra's avatar

Will your book deal with the phenomenology of inner speech? I am really intrigued by inner speech generally as it seems to be a major part of what we work with in meditation. How does it fit in to a PPF, how does it relates to attention developmentally (if inner speech is linked to learning to direct our attention and action in childhood) and how do we adjust its precision in meditation practice? It seems like such an extraordinary thing to have inner speech at all and yet we just take it for granted - the subjective experience of our own voice - and we assign it enormous weight. 🙏

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Ruben Laukkonen's avatar

Yes, it does, but perhaps not enough! You're right, though, it is a fascinating and all-important capacity to understand, if only because it can be so damn sticky and annoying.

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Sarra's avatar

Fantastic 👍

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Sarra's avatar

That is beautifully expressed. If we can cultivate a high level prior that we are, in some real and non-fantastical way, returning to the simplicity and naturalness of the source, as the daoists might put it, then as our faculties decline with age, we might suffer less. I suppose all religions offer some kind of high level prior that allows for minimising uncertainty as regards death and what comes after. That said, I love the complexity of what the human mind can conjure - that is also natural and beautiful. Provided we have a grip on that complexity and it does not have a grip on us. Very much looking forward to your book!! 🙏

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Ruben Laukkonen's avatar

Well said, thank you, Sarra!

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Paul Peterson's avatar

Ihan jees. I heard a similar sentiment in Bernadette's writings, in The Experience of No Self. Thank you, Ruben—please keep writing :)

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Ruben Laukkonen's avatar

Thanks so much, Paul.

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