Introduction to Mindfulness_349810_bookemon_ebook.pdf Coaching and Practising Mindfulness | Page 61

Dukkha
Dukkha is a state of psychological instability and the psyche will
always move in a direction that leads to the resolution of this
instability, if given the freedom to change. This automatic tendency
towards resolution, I call Psychological Homeostasis and which
corresponds to the same principle of physiological, biochemical and
immunological homeostasis that occurs spontaneously in the body.
However, the absolutely essential factor required for homeostasis to
work in either the body or the mind is FREEDOM: the freedom to
move and change in an intelligent direction that leads towards the
resolution of instability and the cessation of dukkha. Mindfulness is
the perfection of relationship to our experience that brings this
essential quality of freedom to dukkha and creates the ideal
conditions in which emotional conflict can transform and resolve
itself. A therapeutic space opens around the dukkha and the dukkha
responds by changing, transforming in a direction that leads towards
resolution. We can feel this process transformation as it is occurring
by monitoring changes in feeling tone. When transformation leads to
resolution there is a felt shift from dukkhavedana to sukhavedana, the
more positive form of feeling energy. Eventually, when resolution is
complete, the feeling energy changes further to a state of greater
stability in which the felt sense is neutral, balanced and in equilibrium
and this is called upekkhavedana. This latter quality of feeling is
accompanied by a sense of well-being and vitality as energy is released
back into the psyche.

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