Brian O’Hanlon, retired psychologist

Today’s gathering of the PCNQ Explorers at New Farm was another excellent interactive discussion, this time including practical exercises.

Discussion leader, Brian O’Hanlon, is a member of the group, a frequent homily presenter at St Mary’s in Exile, South Brisbane and author of:

A Path to Peace based on his work with veterans experiencing PTS, and

Experiencing the Spirit

Brief notes from the session

• Scripture, especially the NT is often seeking enlightenment from a position of love
• Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is within and around you
• The Buddhist concept of Nirvana similarly calls for a quietening of the mind (taming of the ego)
• An enlightened person lives without judgment, with acceptance, awareness of the eternal dimension, the sacred
• Matthew Fox, from the recent Common Dreams Conference – What the world needs now is a sense of the sacred
• Eckhart Tolle’s concept of the mind is open to God/love when it is empty
• Damascus Road experiences are brain activities of experiencing enlightenment or liberation from/of the ego. But there are also many examples where the outcome of an experience of enlightenment where the ego is not completely managed leads to a dogmatic view of life – the ego has not completed the awareness experience. Many examples in history of people who have not managed their egos and taken others on pathways to destruction
• Dogmatic thinking comes from the left side of the brain – shifting this allows/prevents the spiritual ego stopping an advancement of awareness.
• Ego is your past insisting it is you now.
• Example from Philippians 2:7 – but emptied himself,
      taking the form of a slave
      being born in human likeness.
  And being found in human form
• Ego is a verb, a process and like power can be good or bad
• A balanced mature ego is found through silence/meditation/emptying the mind.

Brian took us through exercises to demonstrate to ourselves how this can be done. It was good to have a psychologist’s perspective entering our very diverse discussions.

Watch for a notice about our November gathering.

Paul Inglis 30/10/19

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