Most Recent Articles
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The Mind in Meditation
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on Monday, December 28th, 2009 What do I do with my mind in meditation?
The first problem we encounter when meditating is that our minds do not want to cooperate. We want the mind to focus on the breath but it runs off in every direction. We need to learn how to manage and relax the mind to in [...] -
Too busy to meditate?
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on Friday, December 18th, 2009 It’s ironic that the #1 reason (we hear) people don’t’ meditate is “I am too busy.” “I will start meditating when things calm down a bit,” “I will start my meditation practice when things are less hectic, when my children get a little older and there is more peace and quiet in the house.” Hey, [...]
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Winter Solstice Meditation
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on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 In the northern hemisphere, winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, the time of stillness, quiet, death. It is also the time of renewal, it marks the shortest day but this leads to December 22 which promises more sunlight and the 23rd promises more again. The solstice is a great [...]
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The Breath in Meditation
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on Friday, December 11th, 2009 When we are meditating we do not alter or change the breath in any way. One of the greatest reasons to meditate is to see things just as they are, same with the breath during meditation – we just observe it, we do not change it. During the first two steps of [...]
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Is one recurring thought keeping you fat?
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on Friday, December 4th, 2009 Confession: I love the Biggest Looser. I know it totally manipulates our emotions and the product placement/commercials within the show are atrocious. But as I watch their journey’s; the hard work and the personal vulnerabilities and realizations they share with the world, it confirms for me that with access to, an understanding of, and ability to [...]
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What Brings Us To Meditation?
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on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 Most of us come to the spiritual path because we are experiencing something in life that we don’t like, something that we want to overcome. At some level we have a dissatisfaction, a pain, some form of suffering. Perhaps we have already tried various ways of overcoming the suffering. We found that some methods helped [...]
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Resistance, a most common approach to life
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on Friday, November 20th, 2009 I watched as my brother started the process of putting his son to bed. His then two and half year old screamed and cried – seems he really didn’t want to go to bed. My brother inquired without judgment, “you can do this the hard way or you can do this the easy way, it is [...]
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The Constant Interruption of Thoughts
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on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 The first question that I asked to Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo when I met her was “is it possible for any and every westerner to achieve the state of shamata?”* Her answer was quick and precise…”Yes”. I was a bit shocked that she answered without making any further statement like ‘if they try hard enough’ or [...]
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“The hardest thing to do in the world is to show-up”
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on Friday, November 6th, 2009 I was watching Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness lecture to Google employees on Youtube and as he spoke these words or something like them I thought “that’s it, isn’t it?” It seems for most of us, or the people I hang-out with, once we start whittling down our wants and needs, once we get past the “once X [...]
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Meditating from the Heart
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on Friday, October 30th, 2009 Meditating from the Heart Because our brain is in our head, and we are used to thinking in our head, we often meditate from our head. Try meditating from the heart. At first this instruction may seem unclear – so how do I meditate from my [...]
