Inviting a Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind and Discovering Lasting Contentment, Paperback/Nancy Colier

Descriere

To "invite a monkey to tea" is to befriend our own mind-which is often compared to a drunken monkey for all its mad twists and turns. A wild monkey is full of irrepressible desires, and thus chases its own tail in its search for happiness This book is about learning to welcome the mind as ally without fear or resistance, thus relaxing that frantic search and resting in the joy of who we already are. As a psychotherapist, author Nancy Colier has accompanied hundreds of people in their "search for happiness" for nearly two decades. She has watched her clients try everything under the sun to be-and stay-happy. Witnessing and participating in this process, she has become an expert in happiness, or more specifically, in the monkey-mind's search and demand for it, and the unhappiness that all the striving ultimately creates. Along the way, the author has come to understand the workings of the mind-both from her clients and by her own diligent practice of meditation and self-observation. This book distills the wisdom and experience of her dedicated work, and offers readers a roadmap of the territory of mind, plus a toolbox of practical means for identifying and working gently with the unrealistic expectations that keep us from the enjoyment of who we are. Inviting a Monkey to Tea explains how to: Identify addictive (and dead-end) approaches to happiness Build a new relationship to self-caretaking, putting aside the tyranny of blame, fear, neglect and perfectionism Befriend the mind, with gentleness and compassion Enter and stay rooted in the present moment Live with genuine wellbeing and lasting contentment This book takes the wisdom of Eastern philosophy and presents it in a way that people can feel safe to approach, understand, and ultimately apply within their lives. The book is a handshake between self-help and dharma (spiritual teaching). The author walks the reader, step by step, through the process of spiritual change toward and into a new identity-free from dependen