Meditation

• Here is the link for the live online meditations at 9 am ET on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. All participants are muted upon entry as well as video cams disabled.

Meditation changes everything. A rhythmic meditation practice fosters well-being of oneself, the lives one interacts with, and the world. This is because meditation is about  truth of Being. Meditation fuels transformation through access to inner radiance and clarity such that one empties oneself of the superficial and engages the daring boldness of Awareness.

Meditation, the forms and methods of practice, particular emphases and their results have few sources. Sublime beings such as buddhas, bodhisattvas, and beings from other dimensions of existence have taught young humanity how to access the innate wisdom-compassion-awareness that is the very essence and nature of all that exists including ourselves.

Through various traditions or the implementation of a new tradition at some point in humanity’s millions of years of expressing here on Earth, these sublime beings brought the same wisdom:

• that you and all that can be perceived is of one nature which, itself, is beyond all thoughts and experiences; and
• the only way to go beyond frames of reference by which we designate everything that we perceive and experience is to experience more fully what, in fact, one is experiencing. This discovery process is Path. The discoveries are the result of Practice and openness to View. The results are within us all already and are the Fruit or Fruition, like a pinecone is within the nature of a pine tree.

I codified The Practice of Living Awareness meditation practice many years ago and taught it online daily through Spirit Fire and in retreats. The inspiration to do so came from my own meditation practice, leading meditations for years with a variety of groups, and being present to the unfolding of Awareness and compassion within people due to their meditation practices. The Practice collected components from the substantial path of Buddhist meditation practice, from Patanjali’s Raja Yoga, and from the Native American tradition. Having first-hand, sustained experience with all of these, the ingredients they had in common stood out. Equally significant, the groundedness and support in one’s life that these ingredients/or techniques could provide was obvious.

The intention of The Practice of Living Awareness is stated in its name: living awareness, off the cushion in our lives, relationships, endeavors, choices, presence and participation with Mother Earth and all of life. The Practice uses one’s life for ongoing illumination. To do so, one engages mindfulness as taught by the Buddha, sensation-rich participation in each moment emphasized by the Indigenous Path, Patanjali, and the Buddha, together with the feminine principle of embracing, accepting Presence -a tantric component. The result is meditation on and off the cushion that consciously interacts with daily life. Living this way is a life of living awareness.

Around 2015, The Practice, its online instruction and meditations, and its retreats at Spirit Fire Meditative Retreat Center, was handed off to my esteemed colleague, Steve Kramer, who brings living presence to every meditation. He continues to teach The Practice online through Spirit Fire.

I still offer meditations online. The foundation is the same as all my years of practice and providing instruction: presence and present Awareness. In truth, for me, everything is living awareness. That is my personal aspiration, my Path, and the support I humbly offer others.

If one’s meditation practice is working, one is inspired to serve trees, animals, people and the world because one has experienced that we are intimately interdependent to one another. The air we breathe comes from other beings, the food we eat is other beings, the substances that comprise our home and clothes are further kinds of beings. Life is one whole. Meditation ignites veneration of this interconnected interbeing within one.

This blog has myriad of the meditations from the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday online practice, from all the monthly Day of Meditation for the World which was begun during covid, as well as various three-day online meditation retreats.

I am at your service. May your meditation practice be a living one, off the cushion in your life.