Oftentimes, people come to learn how to meditate because their lives have been overtaken by stress, they can’t focus, they can’t sleep, they feel anxious or depressed. These are wonderful reasons to begin a meditation practice. But meditation is much more than a good feeling.  Most don’t realize that meditation is part of the 8 […]

Our preconditioned views often distort reality. I’ve been doing a little reading on some of the Shamanic and Toltec traditions recently and I came across a concept they refer to as “the Smokey Mirror.”  The Smokey Mirror refers to the filter we all have when we view reality. When we see the world through a […]

I thought I was pretty relaxed, chill, easy-going and relaxed on a normal day-to-day basis. That was until I returned this week from my first weeklong vacation since prior to the pandemic feeling completely drugged by nature's effects. Nature is a restorative drug. I spent six nights whitewater rafting down the Middle Fork of the […]

Finally getting life going again after so much time sidelined by the pandemic? Did the downtime of the pandemic give you a different perspective on your life and how you would like to live it going forward? Perhaps you’ve decided to make some significant changes to your life, your relationship, your job or even your […]

Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply sit down on our little cushion to meditate and instantly drop into the stillness, our internal chatter quieted, our bodies relaxed, not a care in the world? No doubt it would! But it doesn’t happen like that. But did you know that meditation changes your brain? It takes a […]

One of the greatest benefits of meditation is that it allows us to stop the insanity of our daily lives if only for minutes at a time. Have you ever stopped to notice how we are all essentially caught up in an endless tug-of-war with the way things are?  Think for a moment about just how […]

It’s tough to acknowledge our distress and admit our vulnerability. Instead, it’s so much easier to allow ourselves to fall into whatever story we have been telling ourselves on repeat than to stay with our experience. The way you speak to yourself matters. What are the messages you've been sending to yourself? Take responsibility for the […]

If we walk around believing everything we think without question, particularly the not so pleasant self-doubting thoughts, it’s pretty hard to see any other viewpoint than our own. If we tell ourselves certain things about ourselves long enough, it may never even occur to us to question our own thinking.

Meditation isn’t about trying to stop thinking. Instead it’s about noticing the thoughts as they arise and allowing them to be. To be able to have access again to our ground state of being which is already whole and complete, we must recognize how we’ve allowed ourselves to be hooked by the stories and conversations we tell ourselves in our own minds. Most times, we don’t even question the thoughts, perceptions, judgments or beliefs and instead believe our own thinking.

What if your happiness, joy, peace and fulfillment is just covered over by an old mindset of limiting beliefs and assumptions? Making positive changes starts with a shift in mindset. Once that takes place, the rest will follow.

he truth involves letting go of those long-held perceptions that keep us imprisoned in patterns of behavior and ways of being which prevent us from living a life of freedom, peace, and joy. Letting go of those beliefs involves looking at ourselves deeply. Understand that for any concrete and lasting change to occur, we have to be willing to change. Without this willingness, we may simply be seeking a change that doesn’t actually involve us!

Many people come to spiritual practice or learn meditation in an effort to induce positive emotional states or to at least minimize negative emotional states. But those feelings of happiness and joy are byproducts of awakening, not the actual awakening itself. The problem is, as long as we chase the byproducts of awakening, we might miss the real thing.

Many of us search for happiness though our achievements, successes, and relationships. But that’s not really where happiness comes from, is it? Genuine happiness comes from healthy states of mind and from your gracious heart. In short, happiness comes from within.

As humankind is in need of more widespread and global empathy and altruism, we find ourselves desperately cultivating compassion. Learn more about the Dalai Lama and his role in raising awareness of the healing power of compassion.

Many people believe that an awakening will make us blissful, joyful and happy all the time, as if the state of awakening gives you these feelings permanently. But those feelings of happiness and joy are byproducts of awakening, not the actual awakening itself. Learn more about the striving and seeking we all do on our path to spiritual awakening.

Consider that most of your mental suffering actually comes from how tightly you hold on to your beliefs. What if you were to discover that your stories do not fully define who you are and what is actually happening to you? With mindfulness, we can step out of the story we tell and simply notice the telling of the story.

How in the world was last week already Thanksgiving? This year has zoomed by (but thankfully, not on Zoom every day, lol!) I took some much needed time with family and friends to reflect on all that we have to be grateful for. I hope you did the same. While there are many areas of […]

Meditation is not about ridding yourself of your thoughts, since that's virtually impossible for anyone to do. Meditation instead, is literally about noticing that your mind has drifted into thoughts and then practicing bringing your mind back to a place of stillness - over and over again. The noticing IS the practice.

Through the practice of meditation, you develop what is known as “witnessing awareness” which allows you to observe your thoughts, feelings and stories with greater objectivity and distance, rather than getting pulled into the drama and emotional reactivity. Over time, you will begin to notice that some space has been created around difficult emotional states. You will start to see that there is more to who you are than your moods or thoughts, and you may also observe that the sensation associated with the negative feelings dissolve altogether. I like to say that you begin to develop a sense of responding as opposed to reacting.

The practice of meditation is about training our minds simply to allow things to be as they are, not organizing the world around us to fit our picture of what it “should” look like. Invite distraction. Invite noise. Invite challenge. This is where the true benefits of your meditation practice will show up. When we let go of our ego and let go of trying to change or manipulate our environment to suit us, that’s where the path exists.