
The Trauma of Everyday Life

“the unbearable embeddedness of
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
Before saying a word, he motioned to a glass at his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked us. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shel
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Do not grasp after the pleasant or push away the unpleasant, but give equal attention to everything there is to observe, taught the Buddha.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
In his careful elucidation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, he established the means by which implicit memories can be converted to narrative ones.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
Traumatized people are left with an experience of “singularity” that creates a divide between their experience and the consensual reality of others.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
Clinical studies of such children reveal that a preponderance of them have parents who have related to them in either a helpless and fearful way or a hostile and self-referential one. The children of helpless and fearful parents, in particular, have a very difficult time later in life. Their parents tend to be sweet and fragile, not hostile or aggr
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“Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.”
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
“a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream,”
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
Our humanity resides in our feelings, and we reclaim our humanity when we direct our curiosity at that which we would prefer to avoid.