Trudy mitchell-gilkey is currently a lay (but aspiring) monastic, a licensed clinical social worker, a meditation teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, and a writer, drawing on nearly 20 years of private practice as a mindfulness based cognitive therapist and 15 years as a Vipassana (insight) meditation teacher. Trudy also holds a leadership position in the civil service, where she trains other clinicians to integrate mindfulness into their practice and remain faithful to evidence based practices in the treatment of mental health, substance related and co-occurring disorders.
In September of 2010, Trudy founded the MAAD Dharma Project: a 12-step adapted, deepening practice meditation program for persons suffering with mood, addiction, attachment and anxiety disorders from which her workshops are conducted and her spiritual booklet and memoir are emerging.
In 2012, Trudy completed the Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leader Program - IV, a two-year training embedded in the ancient lineage of Theravada designed to encourage creative, intuitive and innovative responses that enable the Buddha’s timeless teachings to be applied to modern, contemporary life and reveal a path through the complex difficulties of our world in a spiritual, social, political, cultural, interpersonal, and personal contexts. Over the past 15 years, mitchell-gilkey has committed over 500 nights to silent, residential refuge, and aspires to fully ordain in the coming years.
Trudy received her Bachelor of Science in Business Management from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Social Work from the Catholic University of America.
Anger disguises itself as raw energy and gives us a false sense of power and control, keeps us from facing the real root of our suffering, and destroys. Metta is the raw energy of anger cooled down and transmuted into love. Metta heals, guides right action and moves the world.
So often the times when I make the most progress on the path is when I work with the most suitable skillful means for me (without judging or comparing); when I reflect on lessons learned (without looking away); and when I practice mindfulness as The Path (without exception).
The Buddha's solution to suffering does not involve driving away desire or pushing it underground. The strategy that frees us is right understanding - seeing things clearly as they are - and right intention - shifting our perspective from war to loving kindness. Our untrained minds are conditioned to go right from feeling to craving, stimulus to response. But the wise investigate all phenomena with clear seeing and so learn to bear with whatever arises without need for struggle. This is our practice.
The Buddha taught the four great endeavors in the application of wise effort. What we learn is that unwise effort uses the "white knuckle" approach to gain insight and ignores feedback, while wise effort uses wisdom to do the heavy lifting.
