Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams that everything that we do is motivated by making pain less. This is why people follow the path of the Buddha or eat ice cream on a hot day. To reduce pain. Matthew Flickstein is a psychotherapist carrying a big stick in this book. The greatest classic in Insight Meditation is "Mindfulness in Plain English" by the Ven. Henepola Gunaratana. The preface to this book is written by him and it is full of accolades for this man and his work. So let's cut to the chase. Flickstein, Tara Bennett-Goleman , and Jack Kornfield hypothesize that NO MATTER HOW MANY HOURS YOU MEDITATE - IT WON'T DO ANY GOOD IF PAST ISSUES ARE NOT RESOLVED! As you can imagine, if this is true, a lot of people are wasting their time. Here is a quote from this book. Page 58. "This phenomena is similar to what happens during the sport of bungee jumping...the jumper falls through space, the bungee cord stretches to its fullest extent, then snaps back, taking the individual along with it. Similarily, if we jump into the context level of our minds without having dealt with our content issues, we can only go so far before we are snapped back by the issues to which we are emotionally tied." Flickstein explains that contextual issues are Insight Meditation. And content issues involve incidents in our past which simply cannot be resolved by meditation. But they can be resolved by exercises. I did the first exercises. I imagined my father coming into a room and I forgive him. We talk according to an algorhtym that Matthew has designed. And this exercise is supposed to resolve content issues. Today, I did the visualiztion exercise with my mother. I don't feel any different. But Matthew doesn't tell the reader whether he or she should do the exercise once, or five hundred times. The authour also states that low self-esteem is caused by faulty programming in the past. Both Zopa Rinpoche and Paramahansa Yogananda state that low self-esteem can be cured by helping and loving others. First. Then the self-esteem follows. The author wants you to sit for 45 to 60 minutes daily doing Insight Mreditation which deals with your contextual issues. Then he asks you to keep a journal in order to deal with your past "content" issues. But why would you even do Insight Meditation if it does very little good? If your past issues are not yet resolved? Matthew? Where are you?