Opening Yourself: Buddhist Insight, Existential Therapy, Dzogchen

Calm the mind and tune in to your inner sense

Deepen authentic presence and see through self-illusions

Open yourself to the natural ease and wonderment of being

The human predicament is such that we strive to fill an inner sense of wanting that afflicts and dominates us throughout our lives. The lifelong sense of discontent, fueling the desire for something less (bad) or more (enjoyable) than what is actually happening, gives rise to compulsive thinking and emotional reactions that cause us endless anxiety, guilt and despair. Opening Yourself presents an understanding of the human condition informed by Buddhist and radical Existential psychology. It details how the self we constantly strive to fulfill, promote and defend is nothing but a chimera, a mental-emotional construct no more real than an image in a mirror.

Respecting this dizzying truth, Dr. Ken Bradford presents a contemplative yoga approach to free ourself and others from self-illusions. This existentially-robust approach integrates the skilful means of experience-near therapy, Buddhist meditation and the nondual wisdom of Dzogchen - the highest Tibetan yoga - in the service of opening ourself to who we truly are rather than who we merely think we are.

In the service of broadening the range of psychological inquiry and deepening the reach of spiritual realization, this book offers a practical guide for therapists, therapy clients, Dharma teachers and truth seekers. It proceeds by tuning deeply in to innate intelligence, in order to see through self fixations to the unfettered freedom, effortless ease and ecstatic lucency of being as such.

Ken Bradford, PhD is a teacher, psychologist and contemplative yogin in the vanguard intertwining Buddhist, Existential Therapy and Dzogchen thought and practice. He formerly maintained a psychotherapy practice in the San Francisco Bay area and was Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University and California Institute of Integral Studies. He is the author of "The I of the Other: Mindfulness-Based Diagnosis & the Question of Sanity" (Paragon House, 2013), co-Editor of "Listening from the Heart of Silence: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy", Vol. 2 (Paragon House, 2007)), and numerous articles/book chapters. For more, visit www.authenticpresence.net.