The Life-Changing Power of Letting Go [Today, in Day 5 of the 10-Day Meditation Challenge, we explore the practice and principle of letting go with a reading, a short talk, and a guided meditation.] I spent 14 years, from the age of 25 to 39, living in a spiritual ashram. That’s the Hindu equivalent of […]
Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Japan’s 72 Micro Seasons
I don’t like it when the clocks change. It doesn’t feel natural to me. I do love thinking about that liminal line that spans the turning earth at all times, rolling everything up in the tide of darkness on one end and spilling it back into light on the other. The progression of that line […]
What Does Self Love Actually Look Like?
I know. The idea of self-love doesn’t sit so well with our Western sensibilities. But it hits on a topic that I’m eager to explore with you. Recently, I had an experience around self-compassion and self-love that was kind of a revelation for me. As a Mindfulness Meditation teacher, a lot of what I teach […]
Desire
One of the first things we learn on the path of meditation is that desire is an obstacle to our progress. And its inverse, avoidance (aversion), is an equal barrier to our evolution. But today, I want to talk about desire in a different way. Because, we can actually harness desire to deepen and ripen our mindfulness meditation. That’s right, desire can help […]
How To Break The Cycle of Self Criticism
In mindfulness circles, there’s a popular story about an encounter with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It goes something like this. HH the Dalai Lama is taking questions at a conference and a Western meditation teacher asks him about how to help people who suffer from self-hatred. There ensues a protracted and vigorous exchange between […]