EFT and Meditation Center
‘Sense’ can be described as: ‘a feeling that something is the case; an awareness or feeling that one is in a specified state’ (The New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1999:1693). ‘Identity’ can be described as: “the fact of being who or what a person…is” (The New Oxford dictionary of English, 1999:908). Members of the experimental group in this study who practiced CSM reported effects that signified the experience of a greater sense of identity as a consequence of the practice of CSM.
Increased Willingness to Venture
Increased Realistic Self-Expectations
Increased Personal Integration
Increased Tendency to Take Up a Standpoint
Increased self-confidence and improved self-image
Effects in the Intra-Psychic Context
The category ‘Effect of increased sense of identity’ and its subcategories are formulated from the following direct verbatim quotations:
Participants reported that they experienced an increased willingness to venture in order to face challenges, to find these challenges less threatening and to set new aims for themselves.
NOTE: (The comments by Afrikaans regarding their meditation experience have been translated freely into English and are expressed in terms of a symbol assigned in accordance to the speakers’ name/surname (for example T, TS, B et cetera.)
AS: [I have… also more courage to uh, ‘to face challenges’.]
R: [You don’t see a concern as a problem or a burden or a thing, it is nice do something that might have other wise been an inconvenience.]
E: [Things were always like a mountain that I had to climb and now, I don’t know, I climb more easily. I get easier to the top.]
T: ‘I know I’m quite an adventurous person … things like where appear to be zero possibility, these are the things that I like. But, I felt lately that I must please back out of these things, but after starting this thing (CSM), I found that I go where I know myself to be.”
H: [Yes, one learns not only to live with other people – you manage your own life.]
RC: [I also think more positively … I have new aims, new things that I want to tackle.]
D: “With studying – I can’t wait to do it – I used to be very scared – I used to be very scared – I had put off studying for two years and because everyone said you mustn’t --- I can’t actually wait to get started.”
TS: [I’ve had more opportunity for especially other things.]
Participants reported that they experienced more realistic self-expectations in the sense that they felt they had to make time for themselves, felt less driven by own and other’s expectations and felt comfortable with these changes.
AS: [I’ve also (realized) definitely throughout this whole thing (impending divorce), as a person I am allowed to have time for myself. I don’t have to feel guilty about an hour that I use for myself, and not spend on my children.]
J: “I’ve got insomnia – when I go to sleep at night I practice it (CSM) sometimes (to help me fall asleep).”
L: “I still know I can do wonderful things, but right now I don’t have to do anything. I just feel comfortable in this sense. To me that was a move. I can’t describe to you how much it means to me.”
E: [I could drive myself a lot. Now I take the golden mean and I still do the same work. I do not drive myself any more like a slave. Things come more easily.]
D: “I still work hard, too hard sometimes, but I know where hard and too much – where the line is drawn.”
“I still expect a certain standard, but I don’t push myself past that any more.”
H: [I have been teaching for 40 years and every year when the school breaks up (for the holiday), I had another three days work at school … until 6 o’clock in the evening – I only realize it now that when the bell rang, I locked my door and forgot about school… And then I thought what is happening to me now – am I getting bad or what? But it is actually a good thing.]
RC: [I always wanted to do something right, do it perfectly, and now if I don’t do it perfectly, then it doesn’t bother me so much.]
TC: [One is not so emotionally dependent any more.]
Participants reported that they had experienced more personal integration in the sense that they felt a oneness and contact with themselves and to be themselves.
D: “I think it (CSM) … gave me sort of oneness with myself and a wholeness.”
T: “It (CSM) makes one, as I said, to be, oneself.”
L: “I don’t feel bad for not applying for any posts, because I don’t have to. Right now I just want to be myself.”
R: [I shall say it (CSM) brings you in contact with yourself.”
A: [For me it (CSM) is about being yourself and to find yourself at the end.]
AS: [I needn’t have myself broken down – I can be the human being that I want to be.]
Participants reported that they experienced greater self-acceptance in the sense that they were more comfortable with themselves and their abilities and less reliant on the expectations and acknowledgement of others.
AS: [I honestly feel it (CSM) helped, it is something that I struggled with a lot – feelings of guilt that I could not measure up to certain standards and things. I realized actually I have only to comply with the standards that God expects of me.
TC: [You cannot always be on medication to handle crises.]
R: [What I can truly say is, I have learned to know myself again. I took time to dedicate myself, in a different way as … previously.]
L: “The school, it give me so much joy, I have so much time in the afternoon to enjoy my own children, not only did I , haven’t committed myself to any meetings at all.”
D: “I realize I can only do what I can. I have stopped trying to push myself ‘over the limit’.”
EC: [I can actually say I like myself now. I have always criticized myself, found fault and now I can’t, it has totally changed. Now I cannot believe I have judged myself so negatively.]
Participants reported that they experienced that they were more assertive in the sense that they were more able to express their opinions where their personal situation was at stake and they were able to say no.
B: [The biggest thing is … I would have confronted somebody and so, but I wouldn’t have looked fro confrontation…, but (now) I shall much quicker, if I feel I am entitled to, stand on my point of view and think for myself and others.]
E: [There isn’t a rubbing of the shoulders with colleagues – I also don’t take the golden way, the easy way, I say my say if I have to say it.]
L: “They (at school) asked me to be on some committee, and I said; ‘I’m very sorry, but on Tuesday evenings I go for a walk, ‘klaar’ (finish). I can’t be there.’ It’s so wonderful – I’m able to say no, and it doesn’t make me feel inferior at all.”
H: [Now I just cut the people out (…who enjoy it that you have to be dependent on them ...) and I don’t feel bad about it – where in the past I would have gone to rack and ruin. Now I have o issue with it, it is finished and I go my own way.]
AS: [I am never alone in the toilet … in the bath, but now I lock the … dorr and say: ‘Scram’. If they (the children) knock I shal say: ‘Go away’. I feel entitled to my privacy.]
Participants reported that they experienced a greater tendency to take up a standpoint in the sense that they were more able to take up and state their standpoint in a persistent manner.
RC: [I can also say as far as standpoint is concerned, I can (take a standpoint).]
B: [Where I earlier would have stood back and have said, man let’s reach a compromise, we cannot make everybody happy – where I now take a standpoint a lot quicker.]
L: “My husband was the mother as well (because of being an absent mother due to depression). I just threw my arms into the air, go and lay on the bed, sulk, phone my mother, now I am able to persist and let them (the children) complete the task if I give them something to do.”
Participants reported that they experienced greater self-confidence and a better self-image in the sense that they were more independent and developed better self-confidence and self-images.
H: "[Iwas a very dependent person - dependent on other persons, family and so on and have suddenly at one point realised I am not at all like that any more.}"
B: “{Although I think that I have never had a problem with my self-image or self-confidence, but I do think it has got stronger.]”
J: “[Because my Christianness is very closely associated to my whole life, I think the deepening that occurred in it, had a flow-through on my self-image]”
CSM had the effect of an increased sense of identity which was indicated by an increased willingness to venture, increased realistic self-expectations, increased personal integration, increased self-acceptance and improved self-image.
It therefore seems as if CSM had a positive effect on the intra-psychic context of human existence in members of the experiment group – the promotion of psychological well-being.
Return to Meditator’s Reports Abstract
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