A TMS book by Kevin Jarvis- perhaps to related to an earlier post

Wow, Mala, that sounds like such an amazing trip to Vietnam. I would so love to go visit there some day. It sounds beautiful. My only concern would be not knowing the language. Do you know it, and if not, was that much of a problem?

I've wanted to get in the habit of regular meditation, but I've always found it very difficult to bring my mind back when it wanders. What sort of meditation do you do, Balto?

Regarding this book's author, I'd agree with Balto that it is probably a different person than the recent post. I did Google the author, though, and it looks like he is a musician as well. In fact, I'm pretty sure I recognize his face in the following music video from the back cover of the book:

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The book is pretty solid. He was a police officer and describes his descent into depression if I remember correctly. He did a lot of work to claw himself out.

I'll take another look at the book when I get back home. Right now I've got a brief moment of downtime, babysitting my nephew in a hotel room while his parents go apartment hunting. Go wi-fi!
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/off-to-california-without-an-aching-in-my-heart.4294/

 

I know, right?! I'd love to visit with people. Enrique is here, too, but my brother and sister in law are super stressed out and I don't want to let them down. He's just three years out of school and they're also trying to sell the tiny little fixer-upper they bought in NH. They're pretty crazy.

I've probably read about a quarter or a third of the book, but I am a terribly slow reader and decided that I should finish reading Dr. Sarno's books first and got sidetracked. (My recovery was about reading success stories, reclaiming the activities that scared me, and learning to ignore my symptoms so they would eventually go away. I never started seriously studying the books until later - but that's just me.) I thought the book was well written and that it did a good job of showing Kevin's own personal journey - or, as the title suggests, his Personal Underworld."

I watched a very unique Vietnamese-French movie recently, directed by Trần Anh Hùng, called The Scent of Green Papaya:
https://www.google.com/search?q=scent+of+green+papaya
The movie is paced so slowly that it isn't for everyone, but after watching it, I felt like I had meditated for hours. It takes place in Vietnam with dialogue in Vietnamese and subtitles. I felt that it taught me a lot about mindfulness without ever saying the word or even showing someone meditating. It's just about a little servant girl as she grows up. Obviously, I'm no genius meditator, but it often feels like mindfulness meditation is a lot like TMS healing - it may be hard and one may want it terribly badly, but "trying hard" actually defeats the purpose. Instead you have to simply "allow." Somehow, the movie helped me elude this "meditation paradox" (that trying can defeat the purpose) by teaching me about being present without saying a word.

At least that was my take on it. Most of the reviews didn't even mention mindfulness or Buddhism, so it's tough to know. It just felt like it was so well embodied by the main character's existence.

 

Wow, Walt. I had no idea that anyone besides myself and Roger Ebert had watched that film. It's nice to come across someone else who watched it and liked it. After watching it, I think I remember feeling a sense of peace for several days after watching it.