Rob Preece > Quotes

“When we look more deeply into emotional life, we will see that it does, indeed, color our view of reality. It does sometimes lead to delusions that project onto and distort our experience of reality. It also stimulates a huge amount of discursive conceptual chatter that can be extremely disturbing. However, as we become more familiar with the different ingredients of our emotional life, what will become very obvious is the complexity of our emotional patterning and its influence over us. It is this complexity that leads many of us either to go into therapy or to embark upon some kind of meditation practice, or both.”
― Rob Preece, Feeling Wisdom: Working with Emotions Using Buddhist Teachings and Western Psychology

“Our emotions, as the Latin origins of the word imply, move us into action; they become problematic only when we are dominated by their strength and allow them to rule us in unhealthy ways.”
― Rob Preece, Feeling Wisdom: Working with Emotions Using Buddhist Teachings and Western Psychology

“Jung defined the complexes of the unconscious as “psychic entities that have escaped from the control of consciousness and split off from it, to lead a separate existence in the dark space of the psyche, whence they may at any time hinder or help conscious performance.”
― Rob Preece, Feeling Wisdom: Working with Emotions Using Buddhist Teachings and Western Psychology

“The crux of working with emotional and instinctual energy is to recognize that neither repression nor being taken over by this energy transforms it.”
― Rob Preece, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra: Stuff and More Old Stuff

“Our limited insight into our own nature is part of the human condition, and leads us into confusion and suffering time and again. From a Buddhist viewpoint, our fundamental ignorance of the nature of reality leads us to circle endlessly in the cycle of death and rebirth. While we lack the insight to free ourselves from this cycle of existence, the teacher can offer us a way to break free of our ignorance and suffering. The Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions consider the guru to be the root of the path, the source of realizations and the one who liberates us from the bondage of ignorance. The tantric teachings of guru yoga say that the guru should be considered
synonymous with the Buddha, and emphasize that without the guru the student cannot proceed.
Because the role of the guru is given such emphasis, it is important to examine it closely, and in recent vicars awareness has grown of the hazards involved in the guru-disciple relationship. When students meet a teacher who touches them deeply, the experience can be overwhelming. They might become aware of their potential in a way they have never recognized previously. Disciples still captivated by the inspiration of their teacher often speak as if they have fallen in love, full of wonder and admiration. The teacher has opened their eyes, and they see him or her as fundamental to that experience. What empowers this experience is partly the quality of the teacher, who acts as a catalyst to awaken an inner quality that was unconscious.”
― Rob Preece, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra: Stuff and More Old Stuff

“If we are able to witness them without losing ourselves in them and becoming taken over by them, we then begin to disidentify and separate from them, to use a common psychological term. When we are able to look into the nature of our emotional life with awareness, we can also more readily separate out what is beneficial from what is potentially unhealthy or even destructive. Disidentification is helped by the process of psychotherapy; it can also be helped by an increased capacity for mindfulness developed in meditation. Unless we can begin to disidentify, however, we cannot move forward and transform the emotions. I will go into this in more depth in later chapters.”
― Rob Preece, Feeling Wisdom: Working with Emotions Using Buddhist Teachings and Western Psychology