The Inheritance of this Moment: An Exploration of Temporality, Subjectivity, and Liberation in Non-Dual Contemplative Practice and Psychotherapy

This dissertation considers the meaning of “present-moment awareness” and its role in psychological healing and transformation. The current conversation around mindfulness, a secularized practice with roots in Buddhist contemplative traditions, has largely unfolded within a dualistic framework in which subject and object are separate from one another as well as from a discrete entity called a moment. While widely appreciated for its capacity to foster well-being and insight, mindfulness as construed above remains disconnected from Buddhist psychology’s non-dualistic view of experience, which radically challenges our ordinary understandings of subjectivity and temporality. In the current project, I sought to explore this non-dualistic perspective phenomenologically, and to highlight its potential intersection with psychotherapeutic theory and practice. To this end, I worked with Peter Fenner, Ph.D., a non-dual teacher and former Buddhist monk, exploring contemplative instructions from a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as Dzogchen. These so-called pointing-out instructions involve a teacher “pointing-out” to their student “the nature of mind,” the non-dual reality held to be already present but habitually unrecognized in their experience. Over 11 meetings, I worked with Peter as he abided within the recognition of non-dual awareness, reading and commenting on five different pointing-out instructions from masters in the Dzogchen lineage and spontaneously engaging me in conversation regarding my own understandings. I wrote phenomenological descriptions of what it was like to work with Peter and the instructions, and then analyzed the different texts in terms of what they might suggest about subjectivity, temporality, suffering and healing. From this analysis emerged four themes that cohere as a single way of being: Immediacy, Letting Go, Not Knowing, and Relating Intimately. I then explored how these might already be implicit within the psychotherapy process. Through a consideration of psychotherapy in terms of the relational context, the client’s experiencing, and shifts in understanding, I suggested various ways that effective psychotherapy can be understood as an attenuated expression of non-duality. Insofar as we realize that the gap between ourselves, experience, and time is in fact imagined, and we can never truly be separate from “this moment,” we might discover novel possibilities for psychotherapeutic theory and practice

Making Sense of Feeling

(Statement of Responsibility) by Jeremy Axelrad(Thesis) Thesis (B.A.) -- New College of Florida, 2011(Electronic Access) RESTRICTED TO NCF STUDENTS, STAFF, FACULTY, AND ON-CAMPUS USE(Bibliography) Includes bibliographical references.(Source of Description) This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.(Local) Faculty Sponsor: Graham, Steve

On The Possibility Of Ill-Conditioned Covariance Matrices In The First-Order Two-Step Estimator

This paper is being submitted to the Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics. estimates. This paper presents an analysis of the cause of this problem and derives a numerical test for the location of the ill-conditioned first step state covariances. A covariance matrix with very low or zero eigenvalues indicates that a strong correlation has developed between the states and that some linear combination of the states can be known almost exactly. The problems for which the two step filter was developed, however, are non-linear. For a nonlinear function relating the first and second step states there would not exist, in general, a linear combination of first step states which could be known exactly. The analysis presented in this paper is interpreted as identifying a problem with the linear approximations used for the first step covariance propagation in the filter, not to imply that it is possible to find some linear combination of first step states which truly have zero error. TWO-STEP ESTIMATOR OVERVIE

IL-17RA-signaling in Lgr5+ intestinal stem cells induces expression of transcription factor ATOH1 to promote secretory cell lineage commitment

The Th17 cell-lineage-defining cytokine IL-17A contributes to host defense and inflammatory disease by coordinating multicellular immune responses. The IL-17 receptor (IL-17RA) is expressed by diverse intestinal cell types, and therapies targeting IL-17A induce adverse intestinal events, suggesting additional tissue-specific functions. Here, we used multiple conditional deletion models to identify a role for IL-17A in secretory epithelial cell differentiation in the gut. Paneth, tuft, goblet, and enteroendocrine cell numbers were dependent on IL-17A-mediated induction of the transcription factor ATOH1 in Lgr5+ intestinal epithelial stem cells. Although dispensable at steady state, IL-17RA signaling in ATOH1+ cells was required to regenerate secretory cells following injury. Finally, IL-17A stimulation of human-derived intestinal organoids that were locked into a cystic immature state induced ATOH1 expression and rescued secretory cell differentiation. Our data suggest that the cross talk between immune cells and stem cells regulates secretory cell lineage commitment and the integrity of the mucosa