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.
The Buddha's wisdom as expounded in the Karaniya Metta Sutta -2,600 years ago- is powerful medicine that still remains powerful and potent to this day.
The Buddha taught that the value of making direct contact with experience is liberation from suffering. We can use that teaching to make contact with the muddy water of our doubting minds and learn to practice beyond (even) reasonable doubt.
There is a space between craving and its fulfillment, and that space is the altar of our practice. This talk explores how the practice of mindfulness bridges that space and expands our capacity to stay in the present moment. For it is there, only there, that we can fully comprehend suffering, realize its end and cultivate the Eightfold Path.
