I created this new professional Page to join the two currents of my teaching work: the promotion of mindfulness through my book Meditation for Dummies, the mobile apps Mindfulness Meditation and Freedom from Stress, and online classes and webinars; and the presentation of the direct approach to spiritual awakening through the nondual teachings of Zen and Advaita in the School for Awakening and the book Wake Up Now. Some in the spiritual community suggest that meditation is counterproductive or antithetical to the truth because it supports identification with a separate someone who meditates. In my experience, meditation--the practice of present moment awareness--is a potent method, a skillful means, a raft that can carry us wherever we happen to be going If you use mindfulness to calm your mind, increase your focus, work with your emotions, and improve your health, you benefit yourself and those around you immeasurably. You may even have a glimpse of a deeper dimension of being. If you take present moment awareness as an opportunity to let go of goal-oriented doing altogether, at least for the moment, come to rest in the here and now, and just be present for what is, without manipulation or resistance, it can take you all the way to enlightenment itself. Another way to talk about this distinction is to say that mindfulness meditation involves the practice or cultivation of awareness. If you consider awareness to be a tool that you can use for your own purposes, you can practice mindfulness for better focus, concentration, compassion, and presence and all the benefits this brings. If, on the other hand, you come to recognize that awareness is your natural state, your true nature, your original face, then mindfulness dissolves into present moment awareness, timeless presence, without a separate someone being aware. Awareness is what you are fundamentally; meditation is an invitation to realize this truth.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:38:16 +0000
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