Creative process is a really interesting subject to me. All creatives seem to have one, but the only commonality is that there is one. The details vary considerably. “Find your own way,” seems to be the imperative. Find out by doing and then reflecting on the doing. Maybe then you can extract some rules or guidelines, some…
In meditation and in life, notice when you’re hooked and return to the present moment. Keep doing that and after a while the notice doesn’t require a return. Just noticing is enough. The consistent and natural presence of awareness to the hookedness allows it just release and disappear back from whence it came. What I’m…
Episode 30: Meeting in the Depths In this episode we explore how in our daily lives we often struggle to truly meet others and be present with the full breadth of their experience. Consumed by the chatter of our minds, we miss subtle emotions, sensations, and the depths of our inner lives. While pleasant feelings…
It’s always interesting how destructive expectations can beParticularly in the event that reality fails to meet them That’s the secretHave low to no expectationsAnd if reality happens and you feel demoralised by itThen it’s a sure sign there are expectations present It’s better to take each step as it comesAnd not get ahead of oneself…
Nothing lasts for ever, but many things persist for a long time. So if your answer to unwanted experiences is to wait them out, then you could be enduring something for a long time, and that holding-out itself becomes a source of suffering. You must find the acceptance of each moment, every moment in itself.
We can think of the Garden of Eden story as being about a perceptual and conceptual shift that can be reversed any moment. If we’re chewing on that Forbidden Fruit then we’re all full of judgements: good, bad, right, wrong. It’s exhausting and life becomes work and misery. But if we just stop judging in…
Buddhism has this notion of Dharma Gates. It means that there are ways of entering into this primordial state of freedom and joy. And what’s important is that these gates are plentiful, diverse and always present and available in every moment. In other words, paradise is right here and now if only you’d ‘enter into…
The beginning and end of this whole existence and the arena of ‘The Work’ and the unfolding of the so-called ‘process of awakening’ is this present moment. The past shows up here as memory, the future as imagination. Cognition, mentation, sensory arisings, all happen here. It’s this now-ness, this such-ness that constitutes Reality. And liberation…
We don’t know what we’re going to do or what’s going to happen. We can only speculate. It’s knowing that we don’t know that’s the trick. And it might be that this constitutes powerlessness. But it also amounts to freedom from the need to control. There’s this deep mystery around what we ‘choose’ to do….