Insight Dialogue teacher Gregory Kramer

New Zealand is blessed next month with the arrival of Gregory Kramer, an American practitioner and teacher of Insight Meditation.

Gregory is also the co-founder and director of the Metta Foundation, Portland, Oregon, a center of Buddhist practice in the Insight Meditation tradition. He has developed a practice that takes meditation off the mat and into interpersonal relationships, as outlined in his book Insight Dialogue.

One review of this work from Joseph Goldstein, author of Insight Meditation and One Dharma states:

In this pioneering work, Gregory Kramer breaks new ground in applying the Buddha’s teachings to our lives, relationships, and meditative understandings. This book will be of tremendous benefit to all those seeking freedom in their daily lives.

Gregory teaches Insight Dialogue at retreats and workshops extensively throughout North America, Australia, and Europe. The Yoga Lunchbox recently caught up with Gregory to find out more about Insight Dialogue.

You teach a practice called Insight Dialogue, what is this?

Insight Dialogue is an interpersonal meditation practice. It is based upon traditional Buddhist insight meditation, and involves cultivating the same qualities of mindfulness and calm concentration.

These qualities are cultivated while in relationship, while speaking and listening with one or more people, and as such, the keen and settled mind can gain insight into the nature of suffering and ease, identification and freedom.

The topics of the dialogues are intended to invite the meditators into direct experiences of impermanence and selflessness, love and compassion, the suffering that comes with clinging and the release that comes with letting go.
The wisdom of selflessness and the compassion of the shared human experience become immediately present. The integration with our lives is revealing, challenging, and liberating.

How did you develop this process?

The practice began with a colleague, Terri O’Fallon, when we were exploring online dialogue practices together in the early 1990s. I subsequently developed it as a weekly group practice and then a retreat practice. Over the last fifteen years, this retreat practice has been maturing and gaining depth. It continues to surprise me with insights and enigmas, and has shed light on the Buddha’s teachings. I now see how profoundly relational they were, which has been nearly completely overlooked in modern Buddhism of all schools.

How did you personally make the leap from meditation on the mat to applying meditative process to relationships?

Like everyone, I sought greater integration of deep meditative experiences into my life as a householder. I am a father with three sons (now grown) and know how easy it is to get lost in the constructing mind and frantic heart. The leap came about from my early work with Terri. It has been the long hard work of methodical development and rigorous integrity to the Dhamma that has been the real challenge.

Also, I have to say, it is sometimes a bit challenging to be out on the frontier of Buddhist developments. People who have not experienced Insight Dialogue cannot quite understand how this can be such a rigorous and profound practice, nor how deeply rooted it is in the early Buddhist teachings. So the leap is one thing; the consistency and dedication to development is another. The latter has been more difficult.

Do you think that spiritual practices tend to ignore ‘real life’ – life off the mat or the cushion, or beyond the retreat?

To some extent, yes. I also believe, however, that most teachers recognize and try to address this problem. The gap is not in the desire, but in the method. Relationships have been nearly completely separated from deep meditative practice. As a result, insight has been confined to intra-personal practice. So there is always a gap between deep practice and relationship. So the problem comes up of non-integrated practice because we spend nearly all of our lives in relationship, and we are essentially relational beings, social animals. That is a huge gap, isn’t it?

You use a six part process that sounds deceptively simple:(1) pause, (2) relax, (3) open, (4) trust emergence, (5) listen deeply, and (6) speak the truth. Isn’t this just the way we’re meant to relate anyway?

Sure. But aren’t we also “meant” to be loving, aware, generous, and compassionate?

What you say is useful: we are tapping into something native, something basic to the human experience. But like so many qualities natural to our intelligence, we have lost contact with the mindfulness of the Pause, the ease of Relax, the mutuality of Open, the flexibility and mystery of Trust Emergence, the receptivity and compassion of Listen Deeply, and the courage and deep presence of Speak the Truth.

Put another way, we NEED practice.

Insight Dialogue retreats provide a clear and deep practice opportunity, together with the support of a teacher, meals, time away from everyday demands. So under extraordinary circumstances, we can do extraordinary work. This is precisely what we bring home to continue with our loved ones and work mates. This can gradually become natural…. again.

Why do you think it’s so tough for people to relate like this?

Well, consider the pain and confusion in your own life. Do you long to be seen and appreciated? Do you have some fear about being exposed or hurt? Are there tangles in your heart? Welcome to the human race!

Just as the Buddha’s teaches about our craving for sensual pleasure, we also crave relational pleasures. We crave existence, including relational existence, which is being seen socially. But life is complex. We poke our heads out; we get hurt. We reach out to others and sometimes we are grasped and sometimes we do the grasping. It all hurts. This wanting, this fearing, it’s not petty psychological issues. Everyday, the heart feels this as life and death. Our brains are wired that way.

So we construct personality traits that help keep us safe, that help us get “fed” by others, and this craving, this hunger, drives us through life.

This is not just people who are seriously dislocated; this is all of us, except perhaps the enlightened ones among us (and some would argue even this point). Hunger, craving, is part of being born into a body, part of being born into a social frame.

We can’t get what we want? We hurt.

We lose what we have? We hurt.

Wherever there is clinging, there is pain.

But we don’t know this. Doesn’t all this wanting seem natural to you? Maybe even good, fun, the stuff of real life? Well, that is a root delusion the Buddha teaches us about.

Do we need to remain stuck in this “normal suffering”? So that’s where it comes from.

Maybe we need to ask, “Where is it going? Can it change?”

I’d say, “Yes.”

You talk about interpersonal suffering – what is this?

Everything I said above is a pointer to the causes of interpersonal suffering, which is hunger, craving. The suffering itself has a thousand names.

Loneliness, fear, envy, jealousy, anger, hatred, social anxiety… the list goes on. Read any novel, any history: this is what it is about.

Look at the one-on-one interpersonal level next time you’re with someone. Do you want to be heard? Are you? When you visit a family member, are there old hurts still chiming up in the heart? Can you spell “d-i-v-o-r-c-e”? Interpersonal suffering is all around us.

And it gets more subtle than this, when we look at how the self, the “I” is built moment by moment. Here is the root cause of suffering: creating the self, believing in “me” and trying to fill the hole of all my wants. Moment by moment we sustain this world built up of a lifetime (or more than one) of patterns of ignorance. Can we see through this to something more beautiful? Is there a possibility of something we might call freedom?

When, in a moment, the mind is still, and that mind, that heart, is present with another,and both minds are resting in spaciousness,open, luminousan echo of the freedom that has never left us might be heard.

See what I mean?

Finally, something on a larger scale – what do you see when you look at the world?

I’ve been speaking about the interpersonal, one-on-one, or oneself with small groups. The aggregate of this craving can be seen throughout our culture.

What drives the incredible explosion of communication technologies, bandwidth consumption from text messages, to chat, to facebook or myspace, twitter, blogs, mobile and land line phones, and so on?

It is the immense web of both hunger–the social urge, and compassion–giving to each other the temporary food to fill the hole.  It is directly related to immersion in television, alcohol consumption, overwork. it is directly related to corporations and governments out of control. It is human beings that drive these institutions. It is our hungers as individuals that drive the pressure of our commercial and national appetites. So this is where the work has to begin: in our own hearts.

But it does not stop there. This is not about self-satisfaction. The Buddha spoke of effacement, not attaining selfish bliss.

The diminishing of social dysfunction must occur at the level of personal and interpersonal effacement.

The brilliance of lovingkindness must replace the oppression of our profound hungers and the patterns they have built in our hearts. There is great joy in this. It is a turning towards our brilliance. It is an awakening of the heart of compassion that is latent in each of us.

But it won’t happen without intelligence, without profound Right View. it won’t happen without work. Fortunately, when we meditate together, this work unfolds with our own highest aspirations AND the irreplaceable power of each other’s opening heart.

Gregory will lead two retreats and deliver two free talks on Insight Dialogue during his time in New Zealand. He will be assisted on the retreats by Mary Burns, a psychotherapist and meditation teacher who has been studying with Gregory since 2004.

Auckland, free talk and experience of Insight Dialogue
31 March 2010, 7 – 9 pm
Mt Albert War Memorial Hall, corner New North Rd and
Wairere ave. (Bring sitting cushion/mat. Chairs provided)

Bella Rakha, Oratia, 5 day retreat
1 – 5 April (Easter plus day before)
$320, plus teacher Dana
Contact Viv: lesserart@gmail.com

Wellington, free talk and experience of Insight Dialogue
8 April 2010, 7 – 9pm
The Home of Compassion, Rhine St, Island Bay

Riverslea, Otaki, 3 day retreat
9 –11 April
$ 195 plus teacher Dana
Contact Caz: caz@buzz.net.nz ph 04 389 4831

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Meditation Teacher Tarun Kumar

Meditation. Why is everyone getting so excited about it?

Could be because it works – on many different levels.

In March & April of this year New Zealanders will have a chance to find out why meditation is so powerful from India-based meditation expert Tarun Kumar.

Back by popular demand, Tarun is touring the country for the third time.

“I have hosted Tarun a number of times at the Albany Yoga Room,” says teacher Sue Grbic. “Tarun has a lovely gentle energy and a humble sincerity that shines through his teachings. In a world filled with self-important so-called spiritual teachers it’s very refreshing to come into the sweetness and light of the real thing.”

Tarun is being brought to New Zealand by Waiheke-based charitable organisation Baleno.

Founded in 2007 by Toby Ruckert and Margit Brusda, Baleno’s mission is to offer support, create awareness, provide education and fund research into the way we experience emotional, mental and physical issues, diseases or crises.

This four-pronged approach is intended to help people experience better health and well-being. It works on the idea that physical disease is no accident, and that the causes for many problems are mostly a combination of not only physical but also mental and/or spiritual imbalances.

It means that one of the practice Baleno wants to promote is meditation – hence sponsoring Tarun’s trip to New Zealand.

The Yoga Lunchbox had a chat to Tarun about his own meditation practice and his upcoming visit to New Zealand.

What was it that got you first interested in this subject and when was that?

I started meditation when I was 16 years old. I don’t know the exact reason why I started this, but since my childhood I like yoga.

What’s the link between yoga and meditation?

Meditation is a part of yoga. By doing meditation one can attain a calm state of mind, which is a basic qualification for practicing yoga properly anyway.

What have you observed for yourself in your own meditation practice?

Initially I was very short tempered and this has become much better. But I am not saying that it is completely vanished as of yet

Why would you recommend meditation to others and what are its benefits?

For me, if one can meditate, it relaxes the mind and decreases stress which we can meet everywhere in our daily life.

Meditation also increases our immunity power. Most of the diseases originate from mind level. If a person stays calmly without stress and strains, he is less vulnerable to diseases – at least to some extent. Thus one can often perceive the real essence of problems before they manifest physically and that they are not there to make you sad, but to ignite your passion in facing and overcoming them in victory. They are like exams to a student, merely to test your skills.

There are already many meditations available and the beginner may have difficulties in choosing. What is there to look out for, and maybe even be careful about when starting meditation?

Anyone can do meditation, but proper guidance is advisable. Don’t do anything forcefully or something you are not comfortable with. Often even some seemingly simple things like chanting mantras, rapid breathing or breathing with focus on certain body areas – and even doing meditation in certain asanas can lead to unpleasant experiences if proper guidance and knowledge is lacking.

Common sense suggests never to stop questioning the use of a specific posture (asana), sound (mantra), breathing or visualisation. A good teacher should be able to give good reasons why to do things in a certain way. The students benefit may just be that through asking such questions, his meditation practice may become more effective also.

You have been teaching in different countries but been to New Zealand three times already. What is it about New Zealand that you enjoy coming back so often?

I love New Zealand’s external beauty and the inner beauty of my friends there. I also enjoy the students questions and feedback very much as they don’t learn meditation just like a weekend project, but they really enjoy learning to practice, which is like a great gift for me.

There are different subjects which you have taught such as Heart-Soul-Meditation, Cord Healing, Angel Healing and others, do you have favourite ones from a teacher’s perspective and if so, which are they?

Hmm, that’s difficult. I guess it depends a bit on what the individual group combination currently interests the most. But ultimately each subject has its own knowledge and key to “enlighten” us in physical, mental and spiritual levels. So from that perspective I treat all subjects equally.

What is it that you like particularly well in the Heart Soul Meditation and why?

This meditation is not only meant for the personal development of the practitioner. It also helps other people and beings on earth. It gives a feeling of Conscious evolution from “I” to universe via “our” feeling.

To find out more about Baleno, and the many free events and classes that they offer, including confirmed dates and venues for Tarun Kumar’s New Zealand Tour, please check out Baleno’s website.

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Meditate to raise awareness of climate change

by guest author Christine Dann, writer, researcher, teacher and Green activist

October 24, 2009 is a day with a difference, one that will go down in history as the first international day of grass roots action on climate change.

Hopefully it will be the last such day, because the world leaders meeting at the December climate change conference in Copenhagen will get  the message – stop protecting the profits of big business and start protecting people and other living beings by committing to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions now.

All over New Zealand groups will be taking action – you can read about them at 350.

In Wellington, some members of Wellington’s insight meditation community plan to hold a space in meditation, contemplation and silent prayer for 350 minutes, and they are hoping to have 350 people participating throughout the day.

Why 350?

Because 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the upper safe level for a stable climate. It is already at 387 ppm – and rising.

But what is the connection between meditation and stopping climate change? Is it more than just a cute way to get publicity for a good cause? How could sitting still and being quiet ever change anything? Of course it won’t do so by itself, but think about this – when the 350 people who participate in this action in downtown Wellington on October 24 are sitting still, what will most of the other people downtown at that time be doing?

They will be engaged in acts of consumption – buying and selling things, eating and drinking things they have bought, filling cars with petrol, and so on. Now up to a certain level, consumption is a good and necessary thing – everyone has to eat, and we also need clothing, housing, fuel for cooking and heating, transport, medicines, tools and cultural treasures. But at a certain point – the point at which the atmosphere went above 350 ppm of carbon for the first time in history – humanity reached a global tipping point where unfettered consumption ceased to sustain us, and has started to kill us.

By this point, unfortunately, the industries devoted to producing massive amounts of consumption goods as cheaply as possible (cheap only because they do not pay labour a proper wage, or pay the true social and environmental costs of the energy and resources used in production and distribution) had been joined by an industry devoted to stimulating consumption by using every psychological trick in the book.

The advertising industry is in the business of creating not products but desires – endless desires, insatiable cravings – for the newest, flashest, sweetest, biggest, fastest, whatever stuff. Watch The Story of Stuff to see and hear just how much damage all this unnecessary stuff is doing to society and the environment.

Even if over-consumption weren’t trashing the climate and endangering lives, ecosystems, homes and livelihoods through droughts, floods, storms, sea-level rise and the rest of the climate change catastrophe, would it be a good thing?

Are we, for example, happier if we have lots of stuff, and can easily get more? All the scientific research on this subject finds that having a materialistic approach to life and being focussed on getting more stuff, rather than being content with enough, leads to less overall happiness, not more.*

Why is this so?

Over 2,500 years ago a man living in what is now northern India worked it out.

Coming from a very privileged background, where he had been cosseted and protected, he had all the stuff he could possibly want. Yet this did not seem to him to be a truly satisfying or worthwhile way to live. He went to the opposite extreme, depriving himself of food and all creature comforts, and realised that didn’t make any sense either. He went around asking others for their opinion on how to lead a good life, and was not convinced by their answers.

Eventually he decided to sit down and not move until he had sorted it out for himself.

He inquired into the nature of reality, and saw that all things born or created are impermanent, subject to death and decay. Nothing stays the same forever, while some things change very quickly.

Yet we try to cling to things, both mentally and physically.

We desire objects, people and experiences, and we suffer when our desires are not met. But we also suffer when they are met – and then the  novelty wears off, or we lose what we had.

We live in the past, where we had a toy, a pet or a lover that was perfect but is now gone, or in the future, when we will have the object or person of our desire, that will be even better than what we had in the past.

We have very little experience or training of being fully in the present and appreciating what is here now, in all its totality. Consequently we have little understanding of how the cultivation of desires is the surest route to unhappiness, while the cultivation of contentment with what one has, and more especially of what one can offer to others, is the source of true happiness.

The man who uncovered these truths (and others) so long ago shared them, and he also shared the technique by which he uncovered them, so that anyone could experience this for themselves and not have to take his word for it.

The technique is called insight meditation, or vipassana, and it has been passed on by teachers in the Buddhist tradition for over two thousand years.

An experienced insight meditator knows how the mind works.

But so does the advertising industry, which uses the latest findings from academic psychology – and it has your mind in its sights.

It has you surrounded – on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, on TV and radio, in shops and cafes, in schools and hospitals. By sitting still and doing insight meditation on October 24, or any other day, not only are you not shopping, you are also doing the best possible thing for strengthening your mind against the illusion that more discretionary consumption will improve your life, and that of others.

The best possible thing, therefore, for strengthening your resistance to what is – ultimately – causing climate change.

Too much greed and craving for too much money – and too much stuff.

* See, for example, Juliet Schor’s book Born to Buy and Susan Linn’s Consuming Kids on how the US advertising industry targets children to get them onto the over-consumption treadmill, and how this negatively affects their wellbeing. Plus Benjamin Barber’s book Con$umed on how adults are being infantilised and citizens disenfranchised by the ideology and practice of marketing.

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Mudra on the beach

This was the easiest sadhana (daily spiritual practice) I’ve done. Simply sitting cross-legged and repeating four lines (in English no less!) over and over.

May I be filled with loving-kindness
May I be well
My I be peaceful and at ease
May I be happy

I finished yesterday, with a twenty minute meditation. Yet this morning, getting stuck into work, I couldn’t wait to do my meditation. So I did. Day 41. This may just be a daily practice for me until… well who knows?

It’s had a profound effect on my level of awareness, and on my general state of calmness. Initially, I started this meditation because I wanted to be more open and connected with people in a heart-filled way. I’d identified that I had a habit of being distant and aloof, and often critical and judgmental.

Yet paradoxically, I also knew that I had a high degree of empathy and in the right circumstances was easily able to open and connect to people. I stumbled across this article earlier this week, and it was like all the jigsaw pieces fell into place. 

Is Overactive Empathy Ruining Your Life? details exactly what empathy is and how it can create people who are both cold and distant – self-protection from being over-whelmed by other people’s emotions – and caring and connected.

In short, Anna Conlan says:

Empathy is the ability to temporarily step out of your experience and step into another person’s experience, and perceive it as they do, whether it’s an emotional, mental, physical, intellectual or spiritual experience.

It’s a great skill to have – especially as a yoga teacher! But if you’re unskilled at being an empath, it can also be as confusing as all hell.

There’s been many a time I’ve been feeling great, and rocked into a social situation where no one knew anyone and all of a sudden felt really uncomfortable. Yet I don’t get uncomfortable in situations like this… it took me ages to figure out what was going on… I was feeling the emotions of the other people, and assuming they were my own, so reacting to them as if they were.

Anna goes on to say:

Overactive empathy in relationships: Do you have (or have you had) any of those relationships where you feel what someone is going through so much, when it’s something they’re struggling with, and you really want to help them?

That’s all good and well, but what if you want to help them so much, you start taking on their ‘stuff’ and their problems?  What if your boundaries become blurry and you take on responsibilities that aren’t yours?  What if you stop allowing them the responsibility and the opportunity to create change and want to create it for them, directly or indirectly?

Overactive empathy is linked to co-dependence and poor boundaries in general and healers have a hard time with this because they’re so often empathic.

Um, tick, tick and tick! Yep, this was why I was having such a hard time in my relationship. I was feeling my partner’s emotions and feelings as my own and doing my best to be aware of what was going on and trying to “fix” it… when it wasn’t even my emotions! Needless to say, a huge light went on.

Now what’s really interested about all of this is I had worked it out by myself before I came across the articles – Anna’s writing just laid it out clearly and compactly for me.

Her second article goes on to explain How to Turn off Overactive Empathy.  When I started my meditation, I was doing it thinking I needed to be more empathetic, when actually what I needed was to be more centred and clear about which were my emotions and which were other people’s emotions.

Like the second article goes on to explain, I needed to know how to turn off my empathy as such. Well, not really, more like being able to hold my centre while being open and compassionate too.

And this turned out to be the biggest benefit of my forty day sadhana.

Somehow, it changed things within me so that all of a sudden I can see and perceive other people’s emotions still, but I don’t feel them as my own anymore. I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am for this. It’s a huge watershed for me.

In her second article, Anna Conlan outlines three steps for working with your overactive empathy:

1. Centering yourself – as an energy management tool, to learn to turn off your empathy in the moment and to train yourself to be more centred in general.

2. Raising your awareness of empathy triggers – Understanding your external empathy triggers – that’s to say, understanding which situations and people trigger your empathy in any given moment.

3. Moving from unconscious empathy to conscious choice – understanding why you may not be turning your empathy off; overcoming limiting beliefs and unconscious choices around empathy and setting new intentions for the management of your energy.

Simply doing meditation every single day gave me all of these three things.

It centred me, it raised my awareness and it shifted me from a place of unconscious empathy to conscious choice.

Coming to this awareness about myself has shed enormous light on my patterns of relating to my family during childhood and beyond, plus my patterns in relationships subsequently. I have tended to be a “rescuer” in my relationships, always wanting to help my partners “improve” and “suffer less”. I see now this stemmed from a purely selfish urge to help them move into a better place so I wouldn’t have to keep feeling all of their awful emotions.

How convoluted is that! If I can fix you, then I don’t have to feel your negative emotions anymore. All of this happening on an unconscious level of course.

How much better is it instead to just figure out how to find my own centre, my own boundaries and my own ability to not feel your emotions while still remaining compassionate and open?

Anna sums it up beautifully when she says:

Overactive empathy is an act of self-sacrifice. Is it fun to absorb a load of negative energy that isn’t yours? No! What is negative and what does not serve you cannot serve someone else. It’s called spreading the fear instead of the love.

So, no more self-sacrifice for me. No more absorbing other people’s negative energy and then having to process it myself. And definitely no more spreading the fear!

This whole experiment has confirmed to me just how much a part of each other we truly are, and how important it is that each of us finds out own strong centre so we can radiate out light to each other, rather than absorb each other’s darkness.

Because remember, darkness melts away when you shine a light on it.

The light of meditation has worked in my life – it might be the light of asana or pranayama that works in your life.

I feel like I still need some time to integrate and understand the impact this meditation has had, but I do know I can highly recommend it to anyone who would like to drastically shift the way they experience the world.

Competition Winner

When I began this meditation, I offered three books out of my library to anyone who signed up to participate. I had eleven people join in via the comments on that first article, so the numbers 1 to 11 went into a bowl.

And the winner of the three books is… Commenter #2, which was Zanet Stader.

So congratulations Zanet, you’ve won three books of your choice from my new age library. Thanks to everyone else for entering, I hope you got as much out of the meditation as I did.

Related posts:

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Kundalini, or prana, rising up the spine

Meditation is a cumulative experience.

That is, the more you do it, the more you get it, the more you want to do it, the more you get out of it… creating this constant feedback loop of encouragement.

Unfortunately, it also works the other way. We begin to meditate, never having done it before, likely with many expectations of what meditation is “supposed” to be like.

Read the first post in this series here.

We come up hard against these expectations. We come up against our mind. We come up against our sore legs and fidgety body. We don’t know if we’re doing it “right”.  And so we quit.

Waste of time anyway, this sitting around doing nothing business.

But like anything in life, meditation takes cultivation.

And like anything we do, it’s helpful to have no expectations at all. To just be present with whatever is.

And what is when we start may be a whole lot of thought, fidgeting, anxiety, resistance and even nasty feelings. It’s all part of the process.

After all, if you’d inherited a parched block of dusty dirt and wanted to create a lush garden, you wouldn’t just toss a few seeds on the ground and then start complaining that they didn’t grow, would you?

No. You’d spend time preparing the soil, finding out what type of plants are best suited to that climate, planting seeds & seedlings, nurturing & watering them, pruning & cutting back. The first year your harvest might be so-so. But by the second or third, your garden would be flowering and fruiting in abundance.

This is the path of meditation.

It’s one I began a long time ago, in haphazard ways. But it’s something I have spent a lot of time doing over the years. I do it all the time now. On the bus, walking, driving…

Now, when I sit down to do twenty minutes of loving-kindness meditation, I’m able to sink down into a still state of awareness with ease. I’m aware of the three central spinal nadis along which prana flows – ida, pingala and sushumna. I can sense prana wending it’s way along these nadis, and many of the other 72,000 pathways within the body.

This yogic description of the way energy moves around the body – prana flowing through 72,000 different nadis, which create “wheels” at the places where many nadi intersect, i.e. chakras… it’s not metaphoric. It’s experiential. That is, spend enough time in meditation and you will sense the flow of prana with in, and you will sense the pathways that it flows along.

Being aware of this is largely a process of surrender, of dropping down into the experience and letting prana do it’s thing, seeking out knots and tension and dissolving them away.

As this process unfolds within my awareness, another part of me is reciting the four lines of meditation over and over and over. If I begin to identify too much with the movement of prana, I lose where I am with the lines, and it’s a reminder to come back to that place of witnessing.

Usually by the end of the twenty minutes, I can feel prana rising unimpeded up through the central spinal channels,  from about anahata chakra up towards anja chakra. At times I even feel the cycling back and forth between the chakras that you see in illustrations of Kundalini Rising. Prana really does do this. About at anja chakra I sense a block, kinda like a pot lid sitting over top of a chimney. But even that pot lid seems to be moving slowly upward towards the crown of my head.

All of this phenomena is, in and of itself, nothing at all. It is like the rain falling from the clouds, the sun burning up the morning mist, the thunder rolling in from the hills. It’s just what life force does within our body once it’s activated. Nothing special.

Yet to be aware of this, to watch the process, gives me a sense of the world – of reality – being far greater than we generally like to perceive.

We are not separate discrete beings walking on this planet. We are all part of one giant unified field of consciousness. And I feel this in meditation. A melting of my perceived exterior boundaries of skin and flesh, and an opening into all that is.

So how does this meditative experience translate over into day-to-day living?

More and more, I am beginning to understand that people lash out at others when they feel hurt within themselves. It’s just what we do when we’re unaware. The pain is so damn awful and we don’t want to feel it do we suck it up in our words and spit it out at those closest to us.

Realizing this helps me to get to a place where I don’t take those words personally. What you say to me is all about you and where you are at – not me. And that includes whether you praise me or condemn me. Neither has anything to do with my stillness within.

Your words reveal to me what’s going on inside of you, and while those words can be nasty and hurtful, or  perceived as an attack on the self, in reality, there is no “self” you can attack. Meditation teaches this, just as it teaches us not to react to the words and hurt.

Just being aware of something allows it to be… and then to dissipate. When you listen with awareness to someone, you literally allow them to get “something off their chest”, as you hold the awareness which allows that “something” to melt away. aAwareness is a circuit breaker really, which interrupts the great drama of life. It’s even more powerful when you can respond with loving-kindness.

I like to think of how the Dalai Lama, or Buddha, or Jesus would respond to someone who’d say… thought they’d been cut off in traffic and launched into a road rage tirade. Hard to imagine any of them fighting/arguing back. In my imagination, they’d simple listen with awareness to what was said, and respond with a smile and maybe a gentle word or two of compassion.

These are just some of the impressions, understandings and experiences that are coming up for me in meditation, and as a result of meditation. It’s inspiring me to continue, and to “work” harder even…yes, the more I do, the more I want to do, the more reward, the more I do…

Eleven days to go until this meditation is complete – see the final update below.

Part 4: Completion of the loving-kindness sadhana, Day 30 to Day 40

Related posts:

1. Part 2: Inside the experience of meditation – loving-kindness sadhana to Day 20 This practice was inspired by many things. A conversation with...
2. Part 1: How to connect to other people while holding your centre – a new loving-kindness sadhana Perhaps my biggest discovery this year has been the power...
3. Part 4: Completion of the loving-kindness sadhana, Day 30 to Day 40 This was the easiest sadhana (daily spiritual practice) I’ve done....

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Expressions of joy

This practice was inspired by many things.

A conversation with friends after a heart-opening Bhakti practice about the nature of the spiritual path.

An understanding that opening the body was all very well, but unless the heart also opened, essentially meaningless.

A desire to experience more equinimity, more joy, more bliss, more love.

And a book called A Path with Heart.

Read the first post in this series here:

Which brought me right back to the true nature of the spiritual path, and a desire to take my yoga practice beyond proficiency with the body, beyond even proficiency with the breath, and into proficiency of the heart. I wanted a practice that would teach the art of intimacy.

For in essence, isn’t that what all of life about?

The way we relate to each other.

The way we listen to each.

The way we respond to each other.

The way we love each other.

Jack Kornfield says in his book:

Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we can not be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we can not touch each other and the life we have been given with our hearts.

And this is me. I’ve had intense spiritual and meditation experiences where the Universe has enveloped me and whispered all the secrets of all time into my ear. I’ve come to profound understandings about the true nature of reality. I’ve felt the movement of kundalini within as shakti dances her way up my spine.

Yet despite all of these openings, all of this clarity, all of this knowing… I crashed back down to earth in my ordinary life to discover that I was just as up-tight and constricted and closed-off and cold and analytical as I had ever been. I was still living out of my mind and afraid to even look into the gifts of my heart.

Even worse, having experienced oneness, bliss, samadhi, knowingness… I’d had a taste of what it was like to have an open heart and mistakenly thought that that was it, I’d done it, I’d made it, life was going to be cruising on easy street… I was officially Awakened.

As the Tui billboards say… Yeah right!

Instead, I was profoundly aware of all of my faults, of the way I’d always been and still was. I could see it. I could no longer deny the pain this way of being caused me or those close to me, so I felt more pain, more emotion than ever before…

Life wasn’t easy street at all, suddenly it had got a whole lot tougher, and there was nothing I could do to put the genie back in the bottle. Once a little awakened, one can not deny the truth and fall back asleep. The only choice is to face up to one’s demons and chart a course through the perils of a spiritual life.

Which brings me back to Jack, and my loving-kindness meditation. At the end of Chapter One, where he discusses this all-too-common experience of spiritual seekers, he suggests this meditation, gently reminding us that all other spiritual practices are in vain if we can not love:

The happiness we discover in life is not about possessing, or owning, or even understanding. Instead, it is the discovery of this capacity to love, to have a loving, free and wise relationship with all of life… out of love, our path can lead us to learn to use our gifts to heal and to serve, to create peace around us, to honour the sacred in life, to bless whatever we encounter, and to wish all beings well.

And so the meditation.

Simple.

Powerful.

Effective.

Is it “working”?

Hell yes.

No doubt about that. I feel it on the inside, I see it’s results on the outside. I’m eager to do it every day. I usually sit for longer than my proscribed ten minutes, and even fit in an hour on Sunday.

See, when you take the time to still the mind, sit with yourself, and repeat heart-felt truths over and over you are reminding yourself of what is real, of what is true. You are reminding yourself that you are filled with loving-kindness. You are well. You are peaceful and at ease. You are happy.

And in the silent affirmation over and over of what is already true.

You remember.

You wake up.

And suddenly, there you are. Feeling those truths at your very core.

Loving, kind, well, peaceful, at ease, happy.

Just like magic…

Part 3: Inside the experience of meditation – Loving-Kindness sadhana to day 29

To enter the draw to win three books of your choice from my library, and commit to a daily practice of this meditation for five minutes minimum a day for forty days, please add a comment below.

Related posts:

1. Part 3: Inside the experience of meditation – Loving-Kindness sadhana to day 29 Meditation is a cumulative experience. That is, the more you...
2. Part 1: How to connect to other people while holding your centre – a new loving-kindness sadhana Perhaps my biggest discovery this year has been the power...
3. Part 4: Completion of the loving-kindness sadhana, Day 30 to Day 40 This was the easiest sadhana (daily spiritual practice) I’ve done....

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Wellington Meditation Teacher Stephen Archer

A great gain for the Wellington meditation community, Stephen Archer has recently moved here with his partner Annie Chapman. They were previously involved in the running of a retreat centre up in the Coromandel, and Stephen is now involved with the Original Nature Mediation Group.

Stephen has a long history with meditation – he first ordained as a monk back in the early eighties. He now brings this depth of knowledge and understanding to retreats all over the country.

1. What style of meditation do you practice and where do you teach?
I practice Insight meditation in the Buddhist tradition, which involves responding to the great demand of conscious life and working to honour my heart through all the conditions of existence. I work as a meditation teacher and mindfulness trainer in Wellington, and lead residential retreats nationwide.

2. How did you come to meditation?
A very strong instinct has drawn me to spiritual practice since the age of 14. At 22 I ordained as a Buddhist monk and learnt meditation from my teacher Ajahn Sumedho. Currently my spiritual life is catalyzed by my relationship with Sri Yanchi-ji.

3. When did the meditation bug really get you?
When I did my first week-long meditation retreat at the age of 22. I have never recovered from the experience!

4. How has meditation transformed your life?
Meditation has helped me relax enough to be more connected with what I intuit to be most real.

5. What is your home practice like?
I have discovered that natural environments greatly assist me to feel mindfully aware, along with developing loving relationships. I value time to meditate alone and also within community.

6. When people ask you, “What is Meditation?” what do you say?
The practice of recognizing who and where we really are, and animating this radical awareness.

7. What can people expect from one of your classes?
I like to offer people both a cognitive and heartful explanation of what meditation is, along with a period of guided meditation and time for questions.

8. What do you love most about teaching meditation?
It’s truly new every time. It is both thrilling and deeply satisfying to be alongside people as they open to the deep of their being.

9. What do you wish everybody knew about meditation?
That the body/mind itself contains the natural resources for well-being.

10. What role do you see meditation playing in our world?
It can assist us to respond to the spirit of this world by cleansing our vision, so we see things as they really are – in their sacred context.

11. Where can people find you?
I have a private practice and see clients one-on-one, and also run workshops and retreats.

If you want to connect with me or be put on my database please contact me on stephenarcher@wellness-solutions.co.nz, 0r call me on 0274 356352.

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Hugs at Paekakariki

Perhaps my biggest discovery this year has been the power of sadhana. I started my new years with a Forty Day Sadhana of Sodarshan Chakra Kriya. It took me a bit longer than forty days to finish it, as I missed a day at day 35 and had to start all over again… but boy was it powerful when I finally finished.

I was super excited when I started my next sadhana – all about accessing infinite energy and prosperity. Unfortunately, I had to stop that one at Day 15 because I discovered I was pregnant. With stomach pumps a vital part of the meditation, I just couldn’t do it anymore!

While on holiday in Arrowtown last week, I stumbled upon my next sadhana in Jack Kornfield’s book A Path with Heart.

My biggest struggle, and therefore greatest opportunity at this time, has been in relationship – primarily with my partner, but also with all people in general. I have had tendencies to feel disconnected, separate, judgmental, critical… and have found it hard to be relaxed, open, warm and heart-centred… except when my heart does feel open. The stark contrast between these two states of being has inspired and motivated me to find practices that help with heart opening.

So when I read all about a loving-kindness meditation, I just knew that was the practice for me right now.

Exceedingly simple, it only requires that I sit in a comfortable pose (cross-legged on a cushion works great), and silently repeat four lines over and over:

May I be filled with loving kindness

May I be well

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be happy

I decided to commit to 10 minutes a day, but in reality, I’ve been doing 20 to 30 minutes. It’s such a simple practice. Sit down, say four lines repeatedly, in English no less, and that’s it. How could it possibly have any effect on the body, mind or soul. Yet effects it does have!

For one, I don’t want to stop sitting – I usually wish I had more time to extend my meditation period out. I’d like to be able to sit for an hour to see what that was like.

Usually in seated meditation, twenty minutes leaves my legs numb and cramped by the end. Lately however, the states of numbness has been getting less and less, and sitting has become more and more easeful… and yes, peaceful!

I feel a greater sense of balance and equaniminity within. Events just don’t effect me as much as they once did. Something can happen which would usually see me get frustrated, or pissed off, or have a rant and rave to let off steam… but instead, I may note those types of sensations arising within, but I just let them go, stay calm, and know that it will all work out, one way or another.

My attitude towards other people is softening and opening. I am definitely becoming much less judgmental – those old thoughts that used to arise as I’d watch other people react to life ‘They should do this, they should do that…’ just aren’t popping up anymore. I beginning to get a real sense of how all people are just doing the best they can in their circumstances with the level of awareness and understanding they have.

My life has a number of things going on it which many would label “stressers”, a great deal of uncertainty, pressure, change… yet I have this clear sense of connection to my core and an understanding that all I need do is breath in this moment, be in this moment, respond with awareness in this moment… and all is well. it’s such a powerful thing to experience.

A friend, fellow meditator and ex-monk Peter Fernando was sharing some of his meditation experiences with me over coffee the other day, and he said he’d done this same practice for nearly four months during his time at the monastery. In fact, his teacher had directed him to drop all other practices, and only do the loving-kindness meditation. Peter said after that time, the whole world changed. Nothing was ever the same again. At only 2 weeks into this meditation, I get a sense of it’s power, and how what Peter says is true.

I am so excited about this particular meditation practice that I want to put a call to action out to my readers to commit to doing this sadhana along with me. You don’t necessarily have to do ten minutes – perhaps just five minutes a day (and I say that because I just know once you commit to that daily five minutes, you’ll want to do more.)

But not only do I want you to do the meditation, I’d like you to publicly state you’re going to do it, down in the comment section below. Just leave me a line or two, and say ‘Yeah KL, I’ll join you in the loving-kindness meditation’, or something similar   I’m going to give away three books from my personal library to one person who leaves a comment. When I finish my sadhana (26 more days to go), I’ll randomly pick a winner, and send them three books of their choice.

So please, join me. Commit to a loving kindness sadhana, and change the way you experience the world – and watch the world change as a result.

You can commit to this down in the comments below (and go in the draw to win three books of your choice from my library).

Read the next post in this series: Inside the experience of meditation – loving-kindness sadhana to Day 20

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1. Part 2: Inside the experience of meditation – loving-kindness sadhana to Day 20 This practice was inspired by many things. A conversation with...
2. Part 4: Completion of the loving-kindness sadhana, Day 30 to Day 40 This was the easiest sadhana (daily spiritual practice) I’ve done....
3. Part 3: Inside the experience of meditation – Loving-Kindness sadhana to day 29 Meditation is a cumulative experience. That is, the more you...

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Kara-Leah in meditation

This is a question a reader posed to me this week:

How do I know what type of meditation will suit me?

How will you know?

And possibly more interesting, how can I possibly know what meditation might suit you, especially when I don’t know ‘you’ at all?

So there is really no answer to this question at all. There are many, many different ways to meditate, and the only way to figure out which one is going to work for you is to dive in and do it.

Just do it. Just meditate.

But before doing this, take a moment to consider what your criteria is for the “right” meditation?

• Is it a meditation that you can easily do, knocking it off in no time flat and ticking the “meditation” box for the day?
• Is it a meditation that looms so ominously in your mind that you do everything you can to possible avoid it, putting it off until another day which never seems to come?
• Or is it the middle way – a meditation conceivable for every day, yet challenging enough so that when you sit within it you edge out of your comfort zone and explore areas of discomfort?

Think about:

• How much time you want to spend in meditation.
• Where you want to meditate.
• How often you want to meditate.
• When you want to do it during your day.

Be realistic about the nature of your lifestyle, and choose a length, frequency and place that is doable, but also a slight stretch. Better to master a five minute meditation daily than to struggle with a sixty minute meditation weekly.

Once you’ve considered all this, make your intention clear and set a sankalpa.

I intend to meditate daily for ten minutes whenever I can fit it in

or

I intend to mediate as soon as I wake up every day for ten x ten breath counts

With a clear sankalpa set, examine the types of meditation that you know about. Do some research on the internet, borrow a book from the library or attend a local meditation class (if you live in Wellington, I recommend Wellington Insight Meditation with Peter Fernando – he’s awesome!).

Notice what types of meditation you’re drawn to, and what types you feel like you want to avoid. Often the ones we want to avoid hold the greatest treasure for us, but the ones we’re drawn to can help us establish habit and routine.

Select your meditation, commit to trying it out for a week, or two weeks, or even forty days if you want to turn it into a sadhana.

Then do it. And pay attention to how it makes you feel – in mind, body and spirit. Gather this data, and respond as needed, adjusting length, frequency and type of meditation as required.

Meditation is a crucial part of yoga – indeed it is one of the eight limbs. While I can forgo asana practice one day and not notice too much, if I don’t do a daily meditation practice, I really notice the adverse affects on my mind and centredness.

My personal top three meditations are breath counting and mantra meditation. Each of these gives the mind something specific to focus on, and helps to still the thoughts down.

1. Breath counting is the simplest, while seated in easy cross-legged, I count my breaths all the way up to ten, and then back down again. Sometimes I do this for a set time (using a timer in meditation is crucial!). Or sometimes I set a number of 10s to do – like 10. Eyes can be open or closed.
2. Another meditation I like to do while on the bus is So Hum. As I inhale, a nice deep yogic inhale, I silently repeat So for the entire length of the inhale. As I exhale, I silently repeat Hum for the entire length of the exhale. As well, when I inhale, I’m aware of drawing the entire world into my being, and as I exhale, I’m aware of exhaling any small sense of self, or the ego identity. Eyes are open for this one, ad I generally softly focus on something directly ahead in my field of vision.
3. The final meditation I often do is an Om meditation. Seated cross-legged with a timer set for 10 or 20 minutes, I focus on inhaling through my navel and up my spine while silently chanting Om. As I exhale I breath out my forehead centre while silently chanting Om. Over, and over, and over. This one is likely my favourite, as I do it four or five times a week. It really helps me to see clearly, to get my ego mind out of the way and perceive what is really true. In this meditation, the eyes are closed and focused softly upward on the inside of the eyebrow centre.

Hopefully this is enough information to make you feel comfortable about charting a course into the waters of meditation. It is the most rewarding journey you will ever take.

If you had to choose between asana (postures) and meditation… meditation is actually more vital. In fact, the entire purpose of practicing physical yoga, or asana, is to get the body open enough to be able to comfortably sit in meditation for long periods of time.

So if you already practice asana, add some meditation at the end. If you don’t do either, consider diving right into meditation.

Happy meditating!

Related posts:

1. Day 1 to 15: Forty Day Sadhana of Infinite Energy and Prosperity Meditation These are interesting times. It’s getting harder and harder...
2. Wellington Meditation Teacher: Peter Fernando When considering whether or not yoga is for you, it’s...
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Cherry Blossom

These are interesting times. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that we live on a finite planet, yet continue to promote a consumerist, throw away society that generates money for the few while decimating the planet.

These were my thoughts as I sat outside this morning on my deck, eating porridge, watching the sunrise, and enjoying the presence of a handful of sparrows attracted by the stale bread we’d thrown on the lawn.

They pecked and chirped, hopped and nibbled.

Read the first post in this series here:

When startled, they’d retreat to a near-by weeping cherry blossom tree we planted a few months ago, bouncing up and down on it’s slender limbs. As soon as they gauged they were safe, they’d fly back down to the bread and peck away again.

I can still hear them now, from inside my office, chirping away. The sound delights me. It makes me feel alive. Connected. Present.

The green movement is picking up pace. That is, the consumer green movement, where something’s green status is why you should buy it.  Try this new eco-widget, save the planet.

Problem is, an eco-widget is still a widget and like most of the stuff we buy… something like 99% of stuff in America within six months… it will end up in the trash.

Garbage. Rubbish. Whatever your lingo. Discarded. Burnt. Buried.

But people don’t care. Politicians don’t care. Most businesses don’t care – they just want to be seen to care. And most people don’t care, like you and me.

The problem is too over-whelming. Too big. Too much.

And besides, we want the latest winter boot, big screen TV, digital camera, cheap jewellery, mobile phone… and we want it for the best deal, never mind what that deal really costs.

It makes me sick.

The Warehouse makes me sick. Wal-Mart makes me sick. Raping the earth for resources and pumping the atmosphere full of pollutions to make stuff that we’ll only throw out makes me sick.

So I buy second hand 90% of the time. Everything. Clothes, jewellery, furniture, linen, kitchenware, bags…

I walk into a new store with all the shiny stuff and yeah it looks nice and I’ll walk around… but I struggle to buy stuff. Made in China. Pisses me off.

Businesses that do what they do in the name of profit. In the name of making money. How on earth can people own and run stores like The Warehouse without being aware they’re hastening the end of life as we now it on Earth?

So stupid! What the hell can you do with money? Buy more stuff?

Why don’t those businessmen and women think outside of the box and create a business because they want to create a certain kind of world – a world where manufacturers and producers take full responsibility for the entire life cycle of everything they make. Where businesses care about the people who work for them and the kind of life they lead and how they contribute to their life through the way they’re paid and treated.

I dream of a world of craftmanship. Where a pair of new boots is made by hand and to order and is guaranteed and will last ten years and may cost $1000 but you don’t care because you’ll know they’ll last and they’re made with love and care and they feel awesome. Where you buy from the person who makes them and there is a genuine relationship between you the buyer and them the seller and you both enrich each others’ lives. Them because they get to do something they love and earn a living, and you because you get this kick-arse boot which will last a decade.

Oh right – fashion. Fashion which dictates what was cool last year is not this year so everyone has to go and buy the new cool otherwise they’ll get laughed at in the old cool.

I don’t give a shit. Fashion-smashion. Lots of fun for those involved, which is great. Lots of creativity too, also great. But inherently unsustainable until some forward thinking designer figures out a way to stop people from shuttling through massive amounts of clothing season after season.

I yearn for a simpler time. One that likely didn’t exist, but I can still yearn.

A time when people had reverence for life – all life. This means you wouldn’t rip the guts out of a mountain to mine minerals because it would feel like raping Mother Earth.

A time when people didn’t value accumulation of stuff, but accumulation of relationships. Of family and friends. This would mean if you had two shirts to you name and your neighbour had none, you’d give him one. (Anyone need a book? I’ve got a few to give away.)

Living in such a way is the path of yoga, as laid out in Patanjali’s eight limbs. One of those limbs is the yamas (ethical tenets of yoga practice), which include ahimsa, often translated as non-violence but which can be translated as reverence for life.

I love this.

It’s what I feel when I recycle our bread on the lawn and watch the sparrows dip and dive. In that moment, feeling my breath and watching those sparrows flit about like the thoughts in my head, life is a marvelous thing.

The other four yamas are relevant too:

• Satya, or truth. As yogis, we tell the truth. Always.
• Asteya, or non-stealing. Best thought of as never taking what is not freely offered. Ever.
• Aparigraha, or non-accumulation, non-greed. This means you don’t buy the latest model widget because you just have to have it, you recognise that your old widget is serving you very well, and you use it until it dies, or no longer serves your needs. (But I want it… I want it… shut up, that’s your ego talking. Get over it and move on. Wants lead to suffering, don’t you get it yet?)
• Brahmacharya, which literally means ‘to walk with God’. I like that. A yogi walks with God. And don’t get hung-up on that G-word. Put in whichever word works for you – Divine Consciousness, Universe, Allah… whatever… All that Is. My take on it? It means being in harmony with life. A yogi walks in harmony with life – with the oceans, the forest, the birds, the animals, the stars and the moon. Not dominating. Not controlling. Not exploiting. Being in Harmony.

If everyone lived by these very simple practices, consumer society which implode.

And on days when I feel over-whelmed with the way the world is (part of the world, not all of the world, part), I sit on my deck and observe Life being Life and remind myself that simply by observing the yamas and walking the path of a yogi, I am contributing to a different way of being.

I am finding a new way to be prosperous. A way which includes reverence for life, being honest, not taking what isn’t offered, non-greed, non-acculmulation and being in harmony with Life.

Every day, as I complete my sadhana of Infinite Energy and Prosperity, I am reminded of what prosperity truly is. I’m up to eight minutes a day, and holding my arms in position takes commitment, it takes will-power, and it takes determination. But as I silently do my mantra of Har, and pump my stomach, I can feel all sorts of sensations in the body. Rising energy, releasing energy, heating energy, and expanding energy.

Afterward, as I breath, the entire back of my chest and heart has opened up into this huge spacious cavern of openness. I feel light, and joyful, and prosperous.

Yes, I feel prosperous. I see how prosperity is gratitude for my internal strength and resources. It’s gratitude for my ability to do what needs doing to get something done. It’s the way I feel connected to the flow of life, and able to both open myself to receive and also see where I can best give.

This is true prosperity. Not making money off the backs of other people. Not making money off exploiting the planet. Not buying more and having more and getting more.

But having enough within yourself to be able to connect to those around you.

Being sensitive to other people’s needs, caring and loving and giving.

And like the angel that dropped by today and left me two yoga books just because I thought I might enjoy them… being open to creating flow wherever you can.

So open up and give of your vision, and in doing so, know that you are prosperous, right here, right now.

And if you do care about the world and the way we’re living on it, check out the Story of Stuff, an amazing online movie.

Just 20 minutes.

Spread the word.

And then take some action.

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1. How to access infinite energy and prosperity using a sadhana I’m so excited! Today I started a new sadhana. The...
2. Part 3: Inside the experience of meditation – Loving-Kindness sadhana to day 29 Meditation is a cumulative experience. That is, the more you...
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