The art and science of meditation is older than historically recognized time. Human beings have been practicing the components of contemplation and meditation forever and doing so in ways available and germane to their existence and environment, their circumstances and conditions of Awareness. The same is so now.

Secular mindfulness practices that support relaxing of the mind, easing of stress, or appreciating the fleeting nature of the moment came into vogue 20 years ago because the pace of modern life started to stress people out. (!) Psychologists, behaviorists, and teachers in classrooms readily saw in their clients and students that something was changing quickly in the emotion-mind response to a rapidly changing world. Secular mindfulness practices, or affirmations, or breathing with attention to it came into the vernacular of coping mechanisms, as did the idea of coping.

Here in this online practice, and all the years of offering meditation online and in retreat through Spirit Fire Meditative Retreat Center, coping has never been the focus or the intended fruition. Awareness, living awareness, has. The beauty of Awareness and learning to live from it, live in it, and be that luminous presence in your moments and local world is that it’s easy. Easy if causes, conditions, application, focus and desire are brought to it. Learning to truly meditate, such that Awareness -your essence of Being- is what a person increasingly lives from and discovers more and more, follows a natural course as does all in Nature.

We enter another deepening of our practice today and will stay with this for a while. We are growing our meditative ability and doing so such that this skill becomes a vibrant part of your mind stream for all lives to come. Of course, meditative ability pervades one’s life, emotions, mental perceptive processes, and how one IS every moment. As such, you, those you live and interact with, and every type of being affected by the ever increasing thoughtfulness and empathy that you live are benefited now, in this life.

We enter the phase of precise knowledge: prajna.