This two-part series offers a clear and fresh understanding of practices that cultivate mindful awareness. The first class examines our attitude towards practice and gives guidance on posture, establishing an anchor for attention, and learning to concentrate and collect the mind - “coming back.” The second class focuses on the practice of mindfulness - “being here,” and the component qualities of clear recognition and an allowing non-judgmental presence.
In this talk we explore the "relative" reality of kinship - patterns that harm (blindness, silence, and sameness) and mindful practices that heal and bridge separation.
Our conditioning is to pull away from our physical experience when it is difficult. When we regularly dissociate, we are removed from the source of our power, intuition and capacity to love in a full way. This talk looks at the ways we leave our body and the path of homecoming to living loving presence.
In any moment, our intention - what we are energetically wanting - shapes our life experience. While our deepest intention may be to realize and live from loving awareness, we are often driven by egoic fear and grasping. This talk explores how mindfulness can recognize our prevailing intention, and by staying present, kind and accepting, we can reconnect with the deeper longings that carry us to awakening and freedom.
Bringing presence to our relationships reveals our connectedness and essential Oneness. This talk explores two domains of this awakening with others: Realizing our shared vulnerability - that we’re in it together - and recognizing the inherent goodness or sacredness that lives through everyone.
The three classic refuges of Buddha (awareness), Dharma (truth) and Sangha (loving relatedness) are each expressions of our deepest essence. This talk reflects on the refuges and includes guided meditations and a closing ritual that helps us remember the pathway home in our daily life. (note: to participate in the ritual you will need a piece of red string about 28 inches long)
The bodhisattva path involves a training of our hearts to abandon unskillful states and cultivate qualities of love, compassion, and forgiveness--and envision actions to transform the suffering of others and the world. In the Rwandan genocide and the triumph of freedom and democracy in South Africa we see the suffering that comes from cultivating fear and hatred, and the potential for freedom and peace that results from cultivating forgiveness, compassion, and love. These recent events remind us how much our actions matter, and invite us to become bodhisattvas, committed to the awakening and freedom of all beings.
While we have evolved to experience a defining sense of separate self, our potential is to awaken to the formless dimension - the pure awareness is our shared source. This talk explores how we can undo the identification with thoughts, emotions and feelings that keeps us landlocked and unable to trust and live from our naturally loving and radiant essence.
NOTE: beginning poem is "Landlocked in Fur," by Tukaram, from “Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West” (Ladinksy, 2002)
This meditation shifts attention from form to the formless source of all Being. Discover and rest in continuous space, filled with the light of awareness.
