Engaging the Ineffable: Toward Mindfulness and Meaning

Integrates mind and brain sciences on 21 topics to catalyze insights on a meaningful and happy life.

Every day we use words like "desire," "time," "story," "hope," and "mastery," thinking we know what they mean. But these concepts are beyond words--ineffable. Understanding each concept passes through neuro filters shaped by our societies and life stories.

Each concept, ubiquitous and elusive like Rorschach's inkblots, shows that it is not just what we think but how we engage the inexpressible that matters. Engaging the Ineffable is unique in that each of the 21 topics is treated from the perspective of a psychoanalyst, neuroscientist, and Mentor Coach.

The 21 topics discussed are desire, time, memory, nostalgia, belief, hope, story, serendipity, synchronicity, self, feelings, mastery, gender, secrets, attachment, empathy, psychoanalysis, unlived, joy, fairytales, and death.

These notions are ineffable, in part, because there is no single place in the brain you can point to and say, "This is the location of memory, hope, nostalgia, mastery, desire, or serendipity." Nor are these functions even located in a single hemisphere of the brain.

Standard psychoanalytic literature tends to focus on the pathological aspects of the subjects of these chapters, but not to address happiness, creativity, hope, humor, inspiration, joy, and other positive transformations. The insights in this book will lead to mindfulness and meaning, guiding us to perspectives that will lead to rewarding choices and happiness.