Christiaan Neeteson, Author at Meditation Mind https://meditationmind.org/author/christiaan-neeteson/ A thriving community of people with a passion for Mindfulness Sat, 19 Oct 2024 13:08:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://meditationmind.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/cropped-Webp.net-resizeimage-1-50x50.png Christiaan Neeteson, Author at Meditation Mind https://meditationmind.org/author/christiaan-neeteson/ 32 32 The Benefits of Meditation https://meditationmind.org/the-benefits-of-meditation/ Sat, 16 May 2020 15:39:37 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=11195 “Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.” James Allen The Science of Meditation While meditation has been a mindfulness practice for thousands of years and is known for putting people in a peaceful and relaxing state, there is scientific evidence to suggest that meditation can cause changes to occur in different […]

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“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.”

James Allen

The Science of Meditation

While meditation has been a mindfulness practice for thousands of years and is known for putting people in a peaceful and relaxing state, there is scientific evidence to suggest that meditation can cause changes to occur in different regions of the brain. For example, Sara Lazar, a Neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, has tested the benefits of meditation and mindfulness by using brain scans.

Lazar’s research was examined in the online site Ideapod, where she conducted a study that showed an increase in brain volume of meditators who meditated every day for eight weeks.Lazar discovered from her study that there was thickening in four regions of the brain, which included the following:

1. The posterior cingulate, which is involved in mind wandering and self-relevance.
2. The left hippocampus, which assists in learning, cognition, and memory and emotional regulation.
3. The temporo-parietal junction or TPJ, which is associated with perspective-taking, empathy and compassion.
4. The Pons, where a lot of regulatory neurotransmitters are produced.

Lazar research was ground-breaking, even proving that the part of the brain responsible for people experiencing anxiety, fear and stress, was greatly reduced through meditation. With the support of scientific research, people seeking support through guided mediation for self-harm or guided mediation for depression can experience the benefits of mindfulness and a better quality of life.

Functional MRI (left) showing activation in the amygdala when participants were watching images with emotional content before learning meditation. After eight weeks of training in mindful attention meditation (right) note the amygdala is less activated after the meditation training. Courtesy of Gaelle Desbordes

Benefits of Meditation

According to “How to Cure,” the benefits of meditation include the following:

• Meditation helps manage stress
• Through guided meditation you can find inner peace
• Meditation improves mental function and abilities
• Meditation helps to cultivate self-awareness
• Practicing meditation helps to build compassion and empathy
• Meditation enhances psychological and physical health
• Meditation improves your visualization skill
• Practicing meditation boosts overall cognitive ability

The benefits of meditation are compelling and for people who suffer from anxiety, for example, deciding to pursue guided meditation for anxiety can be an effective way to ascend to a new path in life. The following statistics show why meditation can be a positive force for change:

• The Anxiety and Depression Association of America states that 322 million people worldwide, live with depression.
• According to AnxietyCentre.com, anxiety disorders affect 18.1 percent of adults in the United States (approximately 40 million adults between the ages of 18 and 54). – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
• HuffPost reported that workplace stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century.

Everyday, people are under a great deal of pressure and find it extremely difficult to experience a sense of calm and wellbeing. Meditation offers an amazing outlet for the direction you desire to go. 

Sources
1. Guided Meditation for Relaxation: Benefits and Helping …
https://howtocure.com/guided-meditation-for-relaxation
2. Facts & Statistics | Anxiety and Depression Association of …
https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics
3. Anxiety Effects On Society Statistics – anxietycentre.com
https://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-statistics-information.shtml
4. Workplace Stress: The Health Epidemic of the 21st Century …
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/workplace-stress-the-heal_b_8923678
5. Harvard Neuroscientist Demonstrates That Meditation and …
https://ideapod.com/harvard-neuroscientist-demonstrates-meditation-mindfulness…

Extensive list of the benefits of meditation

Neuroscience Findings

Physical Benefits

Cognitive Benefits

Emotional Benefits

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]]> Music that can change the world https://meditationmind.org/podcast-with-mark-romero/ Sun, 19 Apr 2020 19:39:13 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10665 In this episode I have a talk with Mark Romero. Mark is a sound therapist, but no ordinary one. Mark found out his music has the power to heal, transform and empower people's lives. He educates people on the science of energy related to our functioning. Simply said, he helps people create a positive difference in their lives through his guitar play and voice. Music helps people deal with loss, grief, anger, pain and much more. It helps people achieve a better and deeper sleep and can change someone's state of mind from negative to positive. We also talk about music in a way of transporting energy, as a vessel,where intention carries through frequencies and melodies, and impacts our daily lives. What are you really listening to?

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Podcast Transcript

Christiaan: joining me today on the podcast is Mark Romero, and Mark educates people worldwide on the signs of energy and its relation to human functioning, using music as a way to empower us. So, welcome to the podcast. Mark, happy to have you here.

Mark: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Christiaan: Yeah, starting the journey in your own life, how and when did you stumble on meditation and mindfulness?

Mark: You know, it’s interesting, I used to get really harassed by my co-workers and people, and old business partners, because it’s something that’s always kind of been there for me. There’s always been this part, even through my whole, you know, 19-year career in the high-tech industry, there was this aspect that I really started to want to go within. And I think it was really kind of inspired by a book that was given to me by a friend, many years ago, called Illusions by Richard Bach. And in that book, it talked about the power of imagination, and how to tune within to start creating, you know, what it is that you wanted to manifest in your experience, and I was kind of intrigued by that. So, that was really a big catalyst for me to start looking at this aspect of going within. And then of course, as I kind of fed this passion, I started getting introduced to things like meditation, creative visualization, all these things in working in this internal world, and having a passion and a deep desire to kind of like figure out this thing called life, you know, how do we play the game of life? What’s it all about? How do we access our power? How do we, you know, quiet the craziness of our own minds. And, of course, in that research, in that study, I got introduced through meditation. But it really kind of all started with that little book, and this is going back to the early 80s. You know, that really challenged me to start looking within. And it was from that particular experience that meditation and all kinds of different things begin to open up for me.

Christiaan: Yeah, and so from that you, at a certain point, really connected it with sound and music. Like did you play music back then already, when you read that book, and you’re still working in this high-tech industry?

Mark: Well, you know, it’s funny because I was mesmerized as a kid, I went to go see Pink Floyd in concert. I’m like, oh, my gosh, I got to get a guitar. And, you know, I started harassing my dad, you know, way back in high school. You know, Dad, you got to give me guitar Dad, you got to give me a guitar. You know, hi, son, how are you doing? You know what dad, you got to give me a guitar. Finally, you know, he got me a guitar. And I just picked it up and started playing it. But it was never, you know, I didn’t have this, like, you know, dying dream to like, become a rock star or something like that, I just wanted to play. And throughout that whole career and everything, it was my stress reliever, it was my solace. And an interesting thing in talking about meditation and stuff, when I play music my mind goes silent sand it’s a magical experience, you know, going into that. So, I really kind of used it as my own way to, you know, to cope and deal with the twists and turns of the human experience. So, something that even throughout my career, now I had a roommate that played bass, we played music, we jam hours upon hours on end, I’d get up early in the morning and play before going to work, I’d come home in the afternoon, play some more and it was just something that was passion, but never really this desire to get out and, you know, play or do public performances or anything like that. In fact, I was kind of a shy kid, when it came to music. I could speak in front of 1000 people and feel like a fish in water, but put a guitar in my hand and two people in the room and I became the shy kid so, I used to have the best concerts in the safety of my bedroom at home.

Christiaan: Right and starting your journey in spirituality and meditation and getting, you know, more and more involved in these inner workings, what was the moment that connected with your guitar playing? Or was it always there but did it open up? Where did it open up at a certain point to play in front of other people?

Mark: Well, I was, you know, of course, it was interesting, because I came out with an album in the early 2000s. And I wanted to have the experience of going into the studio and making an album. And my neighbor was a professional drummer and finally got on my case one day, and he said, you know, dude, come on, you’ve been talking about making this album for a year, let’s just do it, I’ll help, I’ll play drums on it, I’ll produce the album, I’ve got a buddy, you give us a bro deal on the studio time, let’s make the album. So, we went in and made the album. Like I said, not even with the intention of selling CDs or anything, I just wanted to have the experience. So, I produced the album and came out the CD and that CD ended up getting in the hands of a guy from NASA, who discovered frequencies in my music that actually put listeners into a higher state of consciousness and actually helped the body to heal and harmonize the energetic fields that make up the human being. And so, it was out of that, kind of that discovery that it really became this connection between the two. At that particular point in time, I was already practicing meditation, I was already doing inward processes, visualizing different things like that but that, out of that discovery really became the catalyst for, how can I merge the two together? And how can I start utilizing my own meditative experience while playing? You know, to plant the seeds for what I wanted to manifest in my experience, to really get connected, you know, to that space between the thoughts, you know, when I tap into our true essence, and that it was really out of that whole experience and getting connected and learning about quantum physics and consciousness that really opened up and really drove the connection between the two but my constant to, fueling that desire to go within even deeper, and then how I could help other people get into that space also transform their lives.

Christiaan: And so, the person was invited NASA, he heard your music and then he heard something that could– What exactly is it, like what is it in the music you play and then maybe some music that is made that has such a genuine effect on our mind?

Mark: Well, it’s interesting because Dr. Jones, he was the gentleman from, former top consultant from NASA. And he was involved in a study of how we can rise people above energy disruptors in our environment, you know, they were very concerned about, you know, cell phone signals, EMS, Wi-Fi, smart meters, 4g, 3g, 5g, now, of course, coming out. All these different things that we’re disrupting in the body’s energetic fields, causing stress, causing mental disharmony, all these different things. And in the course of their studies, somebody had given him a recording of Paramahansa Yogananda chanting, who is an Indian monk from the early 1900s, who came to the United States trying to bridge this gap between Hinduism and Christianity and, you know, really supporting people and going within. And when this man chanted and people listened to him, there was a shift in brainwave activity, a shift kind of that they had identified with athletes in the peak performance zone, people in the zone. And so, doc was kind of a comedian guy, he say, you know, I love Paramahansa Yogananda and like the next guy, but nobody’s going to listen to this guy chant, you know, from these early recordings and stuff, let’s go see if we can find music that will do the same thing. So, they went out and started testing thousands of music CDs, Mozart music, different things, and they were looking for a certain response that would take place in the physical aspect, but also in the mental aspect and in brainwave activity. So, right around that time, while he’s out searching, I’m playing music for a wellness studio, local in town, and after I’m done playing for their open house, a woman comes up to me, she goes, oh, my God, I hear these tones in your music, and I’m looking at her like going, oh, my God, this, this lady’s going to get weird man. And then she gets right up in my face and she goes, and nobody can hear the tones, but me. And I’m like, kind of going, oh, I knew it. She goes, let me get a CD I know the scientists. So, I’m like giving her a CD, maybe she’ll go away, maybe she won’t bother me anymore. And then I didn’t think anything more of it. Well, a few weeks later, I get a call from Dr. Jones and he said, man, he goes, we’re, like, so excited that we’ve been introduced to your music, we want you to come to this lecture, and bring your guitar and I’m like, okay, you know, I’m thinking I’m going to show up there and play during donut time or something. I had no idea what I was going to go step into. But really what it was introduction to quantum physics and energy 101. And I was absolutely mesmerized by what I was witnessing and then what really took it to a whole other level was they were demonstrating up on stage how things we use every day, like furniture polish, or laptop computers, or a cell phone, actually compromise our energy and put us into a weakened state. And but what really got interesting was when they said halfway through the program, Mark, come up, bring your guitar, we want you to start playing. And I start playing, and I see people’s physiology, their physical energy shift instantly in front of my eyes. I mean, I was like, what the heck is this? I’m blown away. Quite honestly, I didn’t even really know how to compute it within my own mind. Because up until that particular point in time, I’d never thought of myself as being anything more than flesh and blood and what I experienced through my senses, and what I saw in the mirror, and I realized, oh, no, there’s so much more to who and what we are, what we see through our senses is just the tip of the iceberg of who we really are. And so, that’s when, you know, I was like, kind of going, oh, my gosh. And then a few weeks after that, Doc called me up and he said, listen, we’ve discovered frequencies in your music that actually tune and harmonize listeners energy fields. And I said, well, what does that mean, Doc? He said, well, when your music plays, it actually puts people in a state of harmony, when they’re in a state of harmony, they have an increase in their strength, their flexibility, their endurance, or coordination and balance, we improve their memory, their focus, their creativity, their intuition, they’re actually able to quiet the mind and rise above the static and noise of everything that we’re being exposed to in our environment. And I still don’t understand what that means. He said, well, what it means we want to buy 1000 CDs from you don’t start selling them. I said, well, okay, now that I can relate to, I’m not so much sure about the other stuff. But that was when I really started learning about, you know, energy and consciousness and quantum physics and how my music could actually restore harmony within people’s lives and help them really kind of, in essence, play more beautiful music through their life expression.

Christiaan: That’s super interesting and I wonder when you play, is there something going on? Like you talked about, like, if I can call it so, state of flow that you get into when you play music, I can really relate to that you, you get into a certain, somewhat it’s a trance, like state of playing or doing, where everything naturally follows each other. And there’s no real yet like disconnection or disharmony, so to say, but when you start playing or when you play something, what is going on inside you? Do you have a certain intention that you set, for instance, like this is a song that’s going to be for healing or this a song for you know, anxiety or depression or is it something that you just let it happen?

Mark: Well, initially, way back when with that first album, there was no intentions that were in that album, the only intention was to go into the studio, have fun and make music. And so, and then it got obviously this discovery but then, as later as I progressed on my own journey and my own evolution and kind of peeling back the layers of my gift, one day, I was in the office with Dr. Jones, and he said, Mark, what’s the most powerful energy disruptor in the whole universe? And you know, I didn’t know, I figured it’s got to be something like radiation or something like that. And he said, no, he goes, would you believe the most powerful energy disruptor in the universe are our own limiting thoughts, beliefs and perceptions, the stories of lack, limitation, not good enough, I’m anything but divine, all these belief structures that we’ve imprinted into the operating system software of our minds. And out of that discussion, I mean, I was intrigued by the answer. And I’m like, kind of go, well, heck, if this music can eliminate energy disruptors in the environment, maybe it can also eliminate energy disruptors within our own minds. And so, out of that particular discussion, I got this idea, you know, I’m going to start composing pieces of music with different intentions behind them, to help people create ships. And what I further kind of embodied this idea was one day I was watching a video about an upcoming sound healing conference and one of the scientists’ guy says that music is the carrier wave for intention. And I thought, oh, okay, I can put frequency, I can put it intention into music, and then have people play that music in their environment, and have it create that vibrational shift within themselves if they were truly willing to change. And so, I started experimenting in my coaching sessions, I’ve been doing coaching sessions and stuff for years and I had a young lady who came to me with a very common issue, you know, 10 years, creating all the wrong kind of relationships. Excuse me. And, you know, I realized that she was holding onto a lot of resentment ended up that she really held a lot of resentment against her father. And I said, listen, are you open to forgiving your father? She said, you know what I am. I said, I’m going to play a piece of music with the intention of forgiveness. And so, out comes, this piece of music, I’d never played it before, it was almost like the guitar played me and I recorded it in the studio. And I sent it to her, I said, here, play this in your environment, let’s see what happens. And she called me up two days later, she’s going Mark, oh, my God, you’re not going to believe this, my dad called me today, out of the blue and say, you know what, 10 years way too long to have unresolved issues, be open to sitting down and talking about reconciliation and forgiveness. Because you don’t understand, my dad’s like macho man guy, he would never do anything like that. I say, you know what the biggest lesson that we all need to learn is that the outer world is a reflection of the inner world, you set the intention to forgive and you started working with this piece of music infused with the energy of forgiveness and lo and behold, what shows up? An opportunity to forgive what absolutely needed to be forgiven, before she was ever going to be able to create that healthy relationship. So, out of that whole experience, I’m like, Ooh, you know, I’m thinking I’m onto something here. I started building a library of different pieces, as I started doing more and more session work, I would see people maybe need self-confidence for maybe to love themselves more, or maybe to build faith and trust or maybe to relax and let go. I mean, I started building all these different pieces. And then really, in essence, prescribing them to my clients, to help them to shift vibrationally, to move past different things and to create, you know, align themselves with what they really want to create in their lives.

Christiaan: Yeah. I mean, when I listen to music, sometimes I don’t listen necessarily, to, to the lyrics always, like, it’s very actually common to listen to music, to not pay attention to the lyrics. But usually, when I don’t do that, I find that after listening to something for a week, it has an impact on me. And it’s not because I listened to the lyrics, but as you also know, talked about these frequencies, but also when I then look up the lyrics, and I see what they’re actually talking about. It’s like, yeah, I sort of felt that all along, even though I wasn’t necessarily aware, it’s not even, you know, you can even listen to a different language, it doesn’t matter, the transmission, so to say, of these emotions and intentions, are carried through music, and that’s so mind blowing for me.

Mark: One, it’s not only music, but it’s also how we show up in the world. It’s an expression of who and what we are, how we talk, how we interface with people, how we connect with people, you know, we’re vehicles for this expression. And, you know, music is, you know, along with any other type of art form, or any type of self-expression is an excellent, you know, medium for conveying intention and it really kind of opens up to the door to just how powerful we truly are.

Christiaan: Right and I mean, I imagine that when you started to play guitar, and you said, you played it mostly for yourself that– Is the truth that there was also a healing going on when you played the guitar in your own time and was it throughout this time that you played it that you came to a sort of state where you could start to help others, if that makes sense?

Mark: Well, I think, you know, in essence, I really was doing sound healing and meditation at the same time for myself, because it was a guitar that helped me through some of, you know, the dark nights of the soul. It was the music in those times that helped me to deal with the stress levels that I was dealing with in my career, you know, it was that, but I didn’t put it together. You know, I didn’t like oh, there’s something you know, cool about my music, I just thought, you know, it’s pretty music, it’s just helps me to relax. It wasn’t until after that discovery that I really became purposeful in how I used it, not only on myself, but how I could share this with others, and combine it with things like meditation and different processes, really, to help people compose extraordinary lives was just something I’ve always had a passion about.

Christiaan: And so, for you personally, as a musician, doing this, is there a way that you can, sort of say, sharpen the tool that you’re using? I mean, I imagine you play and practice every day, but is there like a cultivation or a certain state that you get in before you play?

Mark: I think it’s about, you know, I think, you know, every morning, you know, I get up and I do have my meditation, and I do my internal process work and when I go and I play out, or I’m working with a group of people, I will always take a moment to breathe and connect to my breath, and tune in. And, then when I do, like, I do keynote concerts and bigger events too, I’ll take a moment to tune in and imagine light coming in through the top of my head and lighting me up like a light bulb, you know, with love and compassion and possibility, and then reflect that out as I go about my work. But you know, so those are just kind of some of my own internal practices that I do. And then of course, there is the physical aspects, you know, I practice with a metronome every day, my scales, my chords, my strumming, everything is to sharpen on a physical level, but there definitely is a mental internal practice that needs to take place also.

Christiaan: Yeah, it’s something that I find alchemy music group or for that you work on this sort of alchemy, this sort of cosmic soup, which needs ingredients sometimes and like your bacteria is in your body or creating an environment, you know, where your food can be digested, good, or actually not that beneficially. I feel it’s the same with your mind, you’re creating conditions for your, basically your whole life to process through that space of yours in a beneficial or not so beneficial way. And unfortunately, yeah, even music I feel is, use a lot in a way that doesn’t create a very healthy mental environment.

Mark: You know, once again, it comes back to the intention aspect, what’s the intention? I mean, if anger and hatred and things like that are put into the music, well, what’s it going to do to you energetically? What’s it going to, how’s it going to impact you? I mean, even if you look at sound healing itself, there’s a lot of study that’s been done on, you know, today, the standard for tuning instruments is at 440 hertz, which, according to some of the different pieces and studies that I’ve read is disharmonious in nature and out of alignment with the universe was really a standard that was established after World War Two. But prior to that instruments were tuned to 432, which was in harmony with the universe, and mathematically in harmony with the universal and with pie. And so, you know, like, for example, for I would say, probably the last five years, I’ve been tuning my instrument to 432 and there is a difference. There’s a difference that I noticed in how, not only how the instrument plays, but it’s like adding another layer of frosting or something on top of the cake, of what I was already putting out. It’s something kind of magical. So, you know, it’s a great vehicle but certainly, there’s music out there that gives us energy and empowers us and lifts us to new heights, but there’s also music, as in anything in life, that takes energy away, and brings us down.

Christiaan: Right and so this tuning to different frequency, is that is your guitar standard tuned in that tuning?

Mark: Yeah, I tune into 432.

Christiaan: And so, the difference is that, for instance, just so our listeners also understand, if you would now play a song that is composed in the standard tuning, and you would play along with it, it wouldn’t harmonize right, your tuning is a little bit, is it below?

Mark: Yes. And so, you know, my first albums that came out, though, they’re those were tuned to 440. And the scientists still discovered this healing energy. So, this energy is like something that comes through me. It’s something, I guess it is kind of like my innate gift. I remember sitting down with Dr. Jones, and he said, you know, he goes, it’s really kind of amazing, you have an innate ability and gift to harmonize this harmonious energy. He said, I don’t know how you do it, he said, but that’s your gift. And I mean, I certainly didn’t know, I didn’t, I mean, I wasn’t consciously aware of what I was doing. I just became consciously aware of how I could use the music after the gift was discovered. And, you know, because, in essence, we’re kind of like guitars, all of us are, you know, we have these facets of our lives, those are the strings. We take action through the facets of our lives, we produce results, that’s, you know, the strumming in the plucking in the music that we play. And you know, I could play like Andres Segovia, but if my guitar is not in tune, or in harmony, am I going to make beautiful music? No, I’m not going, it doesn’t matter how well I play. It doesn’t matter how will I go to work and do all the things that I need to do, if you’re out of tune, you’re never going to reach your full potential. And that’s the beauty of things like meditation, sound healing, these internal processes, they help us to tune the strings of our life experience, and tune in ourselves so that we can truly step into bringing the next higher expression of who and what we are out into the world.

Christiaan: Right. It’s like tuning into harmony instead of disharmony in your life.

Mark: Correct.

Christiaan: Yeah, incredible. Yeah and so you talked a little bit about, you know, the noise, so to say, that is around us and what is actually the impact of the static and noise caused by our modern way of living? And is there something we can do about that?

Mark: Well, yeah, you can rise above it. So, you know, and this is kind of like, because, you know, our technology is not going away anytime soon. You know, looking at how much we’re distracted by our cell phones and smartphones or whatever they want to call them and, you know, it’s not going away, we’re only going to be further entrenched in it. So, if you think about, if you think in terms of energy, and that everything’s energy and produces a frequency of vibration, kind of like a AM, FM radio dial, you know, those old radio dials, where you would see all the frequencies. You know, everything that’s disharmonious in the world is broadcasting, let’s just say for simplicity sake at 88.5, you know, it’s like if you tune your station 88.5, you get static and noise. Well, most of us are tuned to 88.5 but what if there was a way to move from 88.5 to 90.7, you’re not going to receive the broadcast of those disharmonious energy producers. So, how do we do that? Well, once again, this is where meditation comes in, this is where sound healing comes in, this is where eating good quality foods comes in, this is where drinking good quality water comes in, when we do those things, we feel better. Why? Because you’re actually raising your frequency and your energy up to a new bandwidth. And that’s what I do with this energy that comes through me that comes through the music is it raises people from 88.5 to 90.7, where they’re no longer being negatively impacted by those negative influences in the environment. And ultimately, that energy can be used to let go of these negative belief patterns that we’ve all imprinted into the subconscious mind where they no longer negatively impact us and their broadcast no longer limits us from being who and what we are.

Christiaan: Right, it also reminds me of like all these different structures around us have, sort of, a frequency that they resonate more, you see that with the, I think it’s the crystal wine glasses, or like these wine glasses that resonate with a certain frequency, and even can make them burst. And I think two days ago, I was laying on my floor, and I heard my neighbor speak, but only at certain frequencies would it really get through to the ceiling. And it just made me realize, like, wow, you know, even our body and all the internal organs that we have, in our mind, it has all these frequencies that we respond to and that cause different things. And I think that’s so fascinating to be aware of that, but also work with that, as you do.

Mark: Absolutely. And then for all of us to realize, you know, we’ve all been blessed with this gift to move energy. You know, we’re all doing it every day anyways, just most of us are unconscious, of what it is that we’re moving, what the conscious mind is thinking, you know, I think thousands of thoughts every day, how many of those thoughts are empowering versus disempowering? You know? And if we think the same thoughts repetitively, which of course we do, they create vibrational thought patterns and get imprinted into the subconscious mind. And then the subconscious mind is kind of like, okay, I’ll take whatever you give me and then so whatever you program in there, and then it just says, okay, I’m going to do my job, I’m going to broadcast it to this field of energy that makes up everything in the universe. And then of course, that field of energy just goes, hey, I’m going to take whatever you broadcast, and then I’m going to mirror back to you what you’re broadcasting, what a great way to experience yourself. What a masterful game of life and then we kind of go, gosh, I wish I’d read the fine print before I came here to play the game of life, you know? But it really is a masterful design and then now more and more we’re becoming aware of our own power and our own innate ability, and then becoming aware of how it’s necessary for us to rise above these negative influences so that we can quiet the mind. You know, I love meditation, and it’s been around for thousands of years but yet thousands of years ago, they didn’t have 80,000 man-made chemicals in the air, food and water and ceaseless, limitless amount of electronic waves being bombarded through our energetic fields and through our body. You know, that impact how the mind operates. Dr. Jones was always convinced that the reason why we see the huge amount of neurological disorder, you know, disorders showing up in the world today was because of all these energy disruptors. I mean, look at Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, autism, you know, all these different things that have become so much part of the modern day world, he was convinced it was tied to all these disruptors that were being exposed to and the out picture of disharmonious energy.

Christiaan: Right. And so, let’s say, I’m looking for healing, I have, let’s just name something my relationship is not going that well, we have a lot of fights, and I stumble on your sound healings, is there like a specific one that that I can pick? Is it like– How does it work, if someone comes up comes up to you and then they asked, you know, like, I have these things, do you always have something about ready for that? And how do you connect that in a way that works for them?

Mark: Well, there’s really three steps and this is what I’ve kind of defined over the years. The first step is we must tune our energy, you know, and that means we need to rise above all the negative effects of the stuff in our environment, because that impacts how we, you know, really navigate and operate in life. And then to use your example, for example of the relationship, disharmony showing up in the relationship aspect. Well, I can guarantee you that a reoccurring negative pattern in the area of relationship is always has to do with the belief that you hold within yourself. So the second steps really about harmonizing your energy, and that’s about releasing and dissipating these old limiting beliefs that you have about yourself, about the world, about, in this case, the area of relationship, the area of relationship always has to do with the relationship with yourself. You know, you got to take a look within. And so, I have music, you know, I have, literally have music playlists and series that are really creative for each facet of your life. So, if you have a relationship thing, here, play the relationship music, if you have a prosperity thing here, I’ve got prosperity music, if you have a, you know, a work thing, and maybe a lot of disharmony at work, you’re always stressed out or whatever, hey, there’s a career and work music. Maybe you’re having trouble connecting in and getting connected into your spiritual aspect of who you are, well, there’s spiritual music, to help you to connect into those things. So, I started putting together playlist and series that would address each of these facets. And because you know, I’m kind of this creative guitar guy, I thought, wow, I could just like, I could break it down to the six strings, or the six facets, you know, why should Einstein get all the credit for string theory, I’m going to come up with my own string theory and say, you know, hey, well, you we all have strengths, we have our relationships, we have our health, we have our prosperity, we have our careers, we have our joy, our happiness, our fulfillment, you know, and our health, these are the six strings. The strings go out of tune, we experienced a disharmony in that particular facet. And that’s when you have to work on that particular thing, either through engaging in series or in sessions, of course, where I deal directly with the individual and what’s showing up for them or these general playlist and series that anybody can use to help the process of tuning that particular facet or string within their life.

Christiaan: Right. And, Mark, I’m so happy you actually brought your instrument with you, the guitar and we talked about it just before starting the recording. But it would be incredible if you could play something for our listeners. And I wonder like, what is something that you believe at this point you want to play?

Mark: Well, I’ll preface it with this. I remember, there was a point after this discovery that I  was really kind of lost, I wasn’t really sure what I should do with this gift, or how I should express it and bring it forward to really have the most positive impact upon people’s lives. And one day, a friend of mine sent me a video and I was listening to the video and I heard this one comment, and it just like, you know, have you ever heard something it just resonates, it’s complete truth. You kind of go, oh, my gosh. So, I read the quotes to you, it says, you know, people think we need to seek enlightenment, no, we are enlightened, that is our natural state. The unnatural state is what we have been put into, we don’t have to seek enlightenment, we have to remove the vibrational barriers and the limiting beliefs that systems that have held us in a state of unenlightenment. It’s not about seeking it, it’s about removing what is stopping us from being what we already are. See, you already are a masterpiece, you already are defined, you already are unlimited in your power and your ability to compose the life of your dreams. And it’s kind of like, you know, the comment from Michelangelo and how he carved David, he said, you know, I didn’t carve David, I just remove the pieces that were hiding David within the block of marble. Well, right there, that’s the game of life. That’s, you know, for us to experience our true masterpiece. So, it’s interesting that you asked this question, what would I want to do? And this is a little process in music about revealing the masterpiece that’s within you, you know. And once again, this is a collaborative dance, I could play the best piece of music in the universe but if you’re not open and willing to set the intention to reveal the masterpiece within you, it’s not going to matter. Kind of reminds me of my favorite email that a woman sent me, is there any way you can make a song that will make my husband a better man? You know, I laughed, I’m like, oh, my gosh, I’d be retired by now, my wife would be playing that song in the house all the time. And I just said, you know, I could play the most masterful piece of music in the universe but if your husband doesn’t want to become a better man, it’s not going to matter. 

Christiaan: Yeah, make sense. 

Mark: This piece is all about revealing, so it’s kind of a little bit of a guided piece. So, just take some nice deep breaths and kind of tuned in to that inner place. That place where we truly do discover our mastery. Let’s take a deep slow inhale. Just open mouth, exhale, let it go. Just relax. As you breathe, set the intention to unveil the masterpiece that’s within you. So many of us spend our whole lifetime looking outside of ourselves. Everything you need is right within. And we take those moments to connect to the spaces between all of our thoughts, we unveil another possibility, another opportunity to reveal the masterpiece within. So, just to the best of your ability, imagine breathing in the notes. Take another deep, slow inhale. This is all you have to do to activate your greatness. There’s nothing to figure out. No certain level of worthiness that must be achieved to access it. Take another deep breath, just take another deep cleansing breath. And setting intentions are great. And as much as I’d love to say that all we have to do is just go sit on the sofa and meditate and that things will magically manifest in our experience, we have to combine that with physical action. So, I want you to just come up with the act of self-love, something that you can do just for you, get out in nature, get a massage, take a bath with crystals and candles, whatever works for you, write in a journal, take some time to meditate. Make that your committed action step and then look to see what shows up in your experience. Look to see what breadcrumbs show up along the pathway to lead you to revealing more and more of your magnificence and your unlimited potential. So, there you go.

Christiaan: Thank you so much, very beautiful. And yeah, I definitely notice, you know, just the space of awareness that is created through music and also through your words. It’s very grounding. I love it. 

Mark: Thank you. 

Christiaan: Thank you so much for playing.

Mark: My pleasure.

Christiaan: Yeah. And so, when you play in front of people, and you also play private sessions, or how do you work usually?

Mark: So, there’s a couple different ways I do, do keynote concerts and then I do group healing sessions, you know, where sessions of musical meditations, people lay down and I take them through processes. The interesting thing is, I’m actually starting to have more and more opportunity to do this in the corporate world to help reduce stress and increase mindfulness and enhance performance. And so, that’s kind of an interesting thing. And then I work, I do sessions with people where I listened to hear where they’re out of tune, then I compose pieces of music or process, that’s vibrationally designed to support them in a way to help transcend some of these obstacles or reoccurring negative patterns in their lives. And then I have a coaching program that I do, it’s called, my harmonize your life coaching program, where I take people to different layers of frequency and energy and process work to help them to unveil this greatness that’s within them. And that kind of opens up to the third step. So, we talked about the first two about tuning energy and harmonizing energy. And then the third step is really about learning how to orchestrate it, and shape and shift it into whatever it is that we desire. That’s our gift and our innate ability to do this. So, I have a coaching program that takes them through all steps, three steps of those processes, it really empowers them to become the conscious composer of their life experience. And then I do licensing programs, I do music for other people who are doing you projects that are, you know, up to good work in the world, that are looking to empower humanity, I offer that particular aspect also. And then, but my passion is really about just working with people, whether it be in a group or one on one thing, I love that whole aspect, and doing live events and stuff. So, it continues to be a huge, tremendous blessing and a lot of fun. So, those are kind of the main ways right now that I’m expressing.

Christiaan: Yeah, very cool. Yeah and actually, you talked about how a book sparked your journey, so to say, and what is a book you are reading right now, that’s next to your bed, for instance?

Mark: Gosh, I have a book and I’m like, going to go, what is the name of it, it’s such a cool book. And I’d have to go run and get it to get the exact title, but it’s about and I kind of like it because the woman who wrote it is kind of spicy. And it’s about really getting in touch with the bad assets within, I mean, that’s really the title of a book, it has that in it, I wish I could give you the full name. But it really is about, you know, tying into that true essence, that spirituality, that divine expression and shedding all those old belief structures, you know, all the old stuff, you know, it says that, you know, we’re not deserving of life’s blessings, you know, those are great works of fiction. So, it’s kind of a book to help support that particular aspect. So, I love reading all kinds of personal development books and things that kind of inspires me in my own journey, because I still get to deal with my humanity and, you know, constantly looking to process and move things through. So, I wish I had the complete title for you. 

Christiaan: Well, I’ll make sure to mention, like, put it inside the blog post and description of the podcast, so people can always look it up later. And I’m, just this idea of abundance and I remember, gosh, it was a long time ago, I read, I think it was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I don’t remember the writer. And it was like a book about how this kid had two dads, one was rich dad, and one was a poor dad, and he learned sort of, to have these two perspectives on life and the difference that makes inside your life. And like, before that I sometimes heard about the, like this idea of, you know, prosperity and abundance and viewing these things in a way of saying, like, don’t feed them in a way of that you don’t have enough, feed them in a way that you have an abundance. And I think that’s such a powerful thing. But for a long time, I couldn’t understand that. Because it was like, yeah, but life is life, right? You know, you can’t change it. But it’s really, about changing this perspective, and changing your view of what is possible. And I think this perspective of abundance of seeing, like, I have enough, you know, and I have enough to give and enough to, there’s enough opportunity for me and you know, also in rejection, if you get rejected, there’s like, there is so easily this tension coming up, of keeping everything for yourself, you know, like ,that typical, something in my life, that rejection is such a strong thing that sometimes when it happens, I can like, mentally crawl up into a ball thinking like, I need to protect everything. And, but that does the opposite, it creates actually more rejection and more negativity.

Mark: Well, and that’s a, you know, and that’s something I’ve certainly have had to work through. I mean, you know, my inspiration for playing music was Pink Floyd, The Wall that was all about living behind a wall. Yeah, that was kind of my, you know, that was my, you know, national anthem, so to speak, because, you know, if I wasn’t accepted, or rejected, or whatever, and, you know, I started as a kid, believing I wasn’t good enough. So, I hid behind the wall and find, if I’m here behind the wall, I don’t have to worry about being judged or whatever. Well, you know, that model doesn’t work very well. And I certainly wouldn’t endorse it as a behavioral pattern and it’s interesting, because we were talking about the book I’m reading, and she addresses that very aspect. And by the way, I found the name, it literally is, You are a Badass, How to Stop Doubting your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, author’s name is Jen Sisera. And I mean, it’s and I like her because she’s kind of spicy, as you can tell by the title of the book, but she addresses that very same thing. Not everybody’s going to like you, not everybody’s going to love you, but what is it that, you know, if you’re trying to find your sense of self-worth, self-love and acceptance based on how people react to you or the outer world is towards you, you’re never going to find it, you find that place within, you find it within, just like you find your greatness, you find your self-acceptance, your self-worth, your self-value, all that comes from within, you can’t buy it on the grocery store shelf, you can’t buy it at the Mercedes dealer, you can only find it within yourself. And that I think is, you know, getting people to open up to the possibility of living life from the inside out, but certainly backwards from how we were raised and taught and you’re talking about Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Richard Kiyosaki is the author of the book, you know, and he talks about that, you know, is that you have to live life in a completely different way to how we’ve been programmed.

Christiaan: Yeah, makes a lot of sense to me now, it didn’t back in the day. I love how you sometimes can look back on these things, or books or movie, you sometimes, you see a movie again, you’re like, what, I missed that the first time. You just, you know, you’re so dynamic, everything keeps changing. And I love that, that 10 years ago, I wasn’t where I am now, and I won’t be where I am 10 years from now. It’s like–

Mark: Oh, thank God, right? That will be pretty boring, right? If my perspective would never change in my life, I mean, that’s such a, I love that about, you know, like meditation is that you find out that even this sort of identity that you think is, you, it’s just changing all the time too, you can’t sort of say, this is who I am. I love that. Well, we’re, you know, and I think what really kind of changes our level of awareness, you know, our awareness changes. And therefore we start we’ll go back and watch a movie, like, you said, and see something that we didn’t see or go back and read a book that we read 5, 10 years ago, oh my gosh, it’s like a completely different book. You know, because our level of awareness and literally who we are, is transformed didn’t change.

Christiaan: Yeah and going back to what you said about these frequencies, you know, I remember a friend of mine suggesting the power of now from 53:09 [inaudible], like, I don’t know, way back. And, like, I knew that he was offering something that was valuable, but I was not tuned into that. So, I didn’t read it up until I don’t know, maybe five years later or something. And then it hit me, you know, and it was always like, it for me, that’s so magical, because it was like, okay, so there’s always people tune into different things. And they might offer you something, but you might not be able to receive it yet and you need to, you know, get into that, do the work and cultivate that frequency, or as you said, actually remove the ones that are blocking you from tuning into that to be, sometimes able to experience that and like opening up or letting go is such a powerful one.

Mark: Absolutely. It’s so funny you mentioned that book, because I think the first time I read it, I like fell asleep, I’m like– Next time later down the road, I’m like, wow, this is like such a cool book, you know, I’m like, oh my God, this book is like, I don’t need to take sleeping pills, I just read this book, and I fall asleep. But it wasn’t until later, you know, once again, perfect example of what happens when your awareness begins to shift, you look at things differently.

Christiaan: Yeah, so Mark, first of all, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast as a sort of tradition, on the podcast, we ask our guests for a piece of advice and I would like to ask you a piece of advice for our listeners who might actually be struggling, you know, for by tuning into that frequency of abundance and prosperity and what is your advice for them, if they are struggling with that, if they’re, you know, in their daily lives, they don’t notice prosperity, they notice the opposite, like they didn’t notice they don’t have enough money, they don’t have enough love, they don’t have enough care?

Mark: Well, boy, there’s all kinds of different things we can tap into and focus on. But I think one of the biggest pieces that really helped me in dealing with the challenges, and the obstacles that I have encountered in my journey, is first of all, one, you know, we kind of tend to resist them, you know, we curse them, we don’t want to pay attention to them, my God, why am I having this problem? Why am I having, you know, challenges making money or whatever and stuff and we get angry, and we fight it and we resist. And you know, Carl Young said, you know, his famous quote, you know, “what you resist persists in your life”. And so, rather than resist in curse, and use colorful metaphors to describe your challenges in life, why don’t you inquire with them and ask them, how is it that you can help me to elevate my life to a new level? That’s somewhere within this challenge, and this obstacle in this thing that I’m encountering is a blessing. In fact, the challenges in life are like the rungs in the ladder, you can use them to raise yourself to new heights. And if we view them in that particular way, then we can transform them and use them as a catalyst to transform our lives. Otherwise, you know, if we’re complaining and you know, being in a state of, you know, just no gratitude whatsoever, you know, we get stuck in it, we resist it, you know, we want energy to flow. Life will always have its ups and downs, its high tides, and its low tides, and its new moons and its full moons but when we remove resistance from them, we’re able to flow through them so much easier and effortlessly. And then when we start to use those challenges and those obstacles as a rung in the ladder as a catalyst to change our lives, we can really leverage them to continue this process of revealing who and what we are, revealing our own greatness and moving forward from there.

Christiaan: Fantastic advice. Thank you so much, Mark, for your playing and your talk. It was a pleasure having you on a podcast and yeah, I am, thank you so much for joining us.

Mark: Well, and thank you, thank you so much for what you’re doing and the platform you’ve created. It’s so important and you know, all those cool people have things to say or music to play and whatever, you know, it doesn’t do any good if we just stay at home and play. So, thank you for providing the vehicle to get the message, the music and this great conversation out to the world today. Thank you, I appreciate it. 

Christiaan: Thank you.

The post Music that can change the world appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Becoming a Successful Leader https://meditationmind.org/becoming-a-successful-leader/ Fri, 09 Aug 2019 14:54:26 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10641 In this episode I have a talk with Marc Lesser. We talk about his current book, Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, a book about the most important lessons Marc took away from being in a Zen monastery kitchen for 10 years and working as a CEO afterwards. His work involves collaborations with companies such as Facebook and Google. The episode talks about mindful leadership, the importance of habits and emotional intelligence.

The post Becoming a Successful Leader appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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Marc Lesser is a business leader, executive coach, storyteller and visionary whose ability to deeply touch the lives of his audiences comes from a 30-year daily meditation practice and managing a Zen monastery.

Marc was co-founder and CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute and on the team that developed the “Search Inside Yourself” program within Google. He has led multi-day trainings at Google, SAP, Disney, Genentech, and Fortune 500 companies throughout the world.

Marc has an MBA degree from New York University and is the author of 4 books, including Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen, and Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less.

In this episode, Marc Lesser joins us for the full-hour to discuss relationship between mindfulness, meditation and business. Also, we discuss:

  • From Dishwasher to Meditation Teacher.
  • 7-Practices Helpful to Becoming a Mindful Leader.
  • The Complexities of Meditation in a Business Environment.
  • Navigating the Compromises between Meditation & Money.
  • How Meditation Improves Employees, Increasing ROI.

Join us as we learn more of Marc Lesser’s journey and what he seeks to create in the future.

Leave a comment and get involved in discussion!

Podcast Transcript:

Christiaan: Welcome to the Project Mindfulness Podcast, we’ll take you on a journey across the globe and talk with other meditators about their practice, the lessons they’ve learned and what they want the world to know.

Good day and welcome to season two of the Project Mindfulness Podcast. This is episode number two of season two and I’m Christiaan Neeteson, your host, thank you for joining us. In this episode I have a talk with Marc Lesser. We talk about his current book, Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, a book about the most important lessons Marc took away from being in a Zen monastery kitchen for 10 years and working as a CEO afterwards. His work involves collaborations with companies such as Facebook and Google. The episode talks about mindful leadership, the importance of habits and emotional intelligence. Before we dive into the episode, I want to announce the winners for our giveaway, congratulations, Dylan Whitehurst, Melissa McKinstry and Mica Shord for winning a signed copy of the Mind Illuminated by Culadasa. We will be in contact with you and the other prize winners of plane and the meditation albums to ship this incredible prize towards you. If you didn’t win anything, we will soon have another giveaway with incredible prices. Keep an ear out for that in the podcast. Thank you everyone for participating and enjoy the episode. Today on the podcast we welcome Marc Lesser. Marc Lesser is a speaker, facilitator, workshop leader and executive coach. He is the CEO of ZBA Associates, an executive development and leadership consulting company. Marc has led mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs at many of the world’s leading businesses and organizations including Google, SAP, Gene and Tech, and Kaiser Permanente and has coached executives and led trainings in fortune 500 companies, startups, healthcare and government. Marc founded and was CEO of three companies and has an MBA degree from New York University. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, Marc.

Marc: It’s my pleasure to be here.

Christiaan: To learn more about your journey, leading up to where you are now, how and when did you encounter meditation and mindfulness in your life? 

Marc: Oh, I think I first learned about meditation when I was an undergraduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey here in the States and started to get quitea curious and even passionate about wanting to know more about mindfulness, meditation, Zen, spiritual practice. And I took a one-year leave of absence and went to San Francisco and then when I was in San Francisco, I was part of a small community, kind of a program, that’s no longer around, called the Humanist Institute, a small meditation study community. But while I was there, I found out about the San Francisco Zen Center and I walked into the Zen center one day and, and it immediately felt like home. And my one-year leave of absence turned into 10 years of living at Zen center. And, yeah, so that’s, you know, that was my introduction to practice.

Christiaan: That’s incredible. And you, so you train 10 years at the Zen Center in any particular, like, thing or was it– Because I know that for instance, in Zen you have a Koan or you have the, just sitting and what was your main practice there?

Marc: Well, what’s interesting, that’s a great question. I would say that, of course I, you know, was steeped in the meditation practice and Soto Zen doesn’t emphasize Koan study, but there’s, but it does study, study of Koans and stories and relationship with a teacher, very important and being part of a community, very important. But one of the things that ended up very much surprising me and in some way being a core part of my practice was work. And that, you know, from, I found myself, I’m working in a Zen monastery kitchen when I was very young, I got asked to be on the kitchen crew. And then the following year I was, Tassajara and there’s a very rich tradition of being a bread baker and several books have come out of Tassajara. And a few years after that I was the assistant to the head cook and, and then I was the head cook, in a very, kind of well-developed work and practice tradition of, and it’s interesting how in the Zen tradition and in the Soto Zen tradition, there’s a well-known, kind of piece of writing by Dogan who was the founder of Zen in Japan in the 13th century, a piece that’s translated as, instructions to the head cook. So, super interesting, I think that from, you know, 7 or 800 years ago, there was this document about how, very detailed instructions about how to practice, how to integrate practice in this role of running a Zen monastery kitchen. And then, a couple of years after that I was asked to be the director of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and it was even kind of upped up to the, the ante up the challenge of leadership role and integrating leadership and Zen. And, I ended up deciding that this would be kind of the course of my life, of my work, career and practice. And I ended up going right from that role of being director of Tassajara to going to business school and getting an MBA degree. And, then I ended up starting a couple of different companies and much of my life has been this aspiration and integration of kind of practice, mindfulness practice in the world of work and in the business world.

Christiaan: Right. And the role of a head cook, that’s not you something, right? It’s a very important thing and actually in a, Zen temple or monastery.

Marc: Yeah, it’s called the 07:38 [inaudible].  And that piece of writing I’m referring to is called the Tenzo Kyōkun is translated as instructions to the head cook. And just as an example, one of the core teachings in that essay by Dogan says that the head cook should always be bringing three minds to the work of running the kitchen, joyful mind, grandmother mind and wise mind, right? So, the mind of, you know, joy of appreciating everything, the grandmother mind, again, this is a translation, but basically the mind of unconditional love and, and wise mind, you know, kind of the mind that is steeped in a sense of kind of impermanence and this, kind of intention, aspiration of seeing reality as much as we can and, that this was a core part of practice in the kitchen.

Christiaan: Right and one of the sayings from Zen is, chop wood, carry water, which emphasizes this applying of awareness in just daily activities. And that I imagine is something that really sparked this, bringing mindfulness into the workplace, this attitude of Zen towards work, which is almost, I wouldn’t say a holy act, but it is a very important act to just do what you got to do. You know, wash your bowl, do the dishes.

Marc: Well that’s another, you know, very, kind of famous a Zen story about the student that comes to the teacher, you know, arrives at the Zen Temple and says, you know, to the teacher, you know, teach me, I’m here, you know, I’m ready for the teaching and the teacher asks the student, have you had your breakfast? And, the student says yes and the teacher response, then go wash your bowl. And this is, this, I think very much sets the tone of, of Zen practice as that if you want to learn, that the way to learn is through doing, through activity. You know, it’s not about sitting in a lecture hall and having me tell you something, but it’s like learn from your experience, like have breakfast and, and notice what you can learn by the, the sensations, the act of your relationship with your bowl, your relationship with your mind as you’re washing your bowl and, you know, and I was 24 years old when I was the dishwasher my first summer at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. And, it was washing dishes by hand in the kitchen and there was this, I think the experience of kind of collaboration and learning and connection and love that I felt that as dishwasher, I felt that as baker, I felt that when I was on the kitchen crew, that there was something about the how, kind of intimate and magical and ordinary, right. That of working, working together, a caring for each other, and also this very high bar for attention, for care and for results. You know, that it was, you know, no messing around of producing really, beautiful, healthy, high quality, vegetarian meals for because Tassajara is, you know, it’s a traditional Zen practice place, Zen monastery in winter, but then it turns into a conference center in the summer and there are 70 or 80 overnight guests and there’s a reputation for the quality and the quality of the vegetarian meals. So, there was some, a good deal of expectation, pressure, even stress, right in the midst of this, kind of practice place and practice community. So, and I, it was really lovely, and I remember, you know, asking myself like, why isn’t everyone working in this way? And you know, all these studies that I was reading about the kind of stress and lack of engagement there was in the workplace, and I thought, maybe this is a place where I can contribute.

Christiaan: Yeah, that’s incredible. And you’ve gone to writing incredible book on mindful leadership called Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen. So, how did that book come about? How did you come to the seven practices?

Marc: Yeah, well, I, you know, after business school I ended up starting and running a publishing company for about 15 years. And I also did some other, started a couple of other startups, but I found myself doing some executive coaching at Google with the Google engineers. And then, in the midst of that, was when a Google engineer had the idea of creating a mindfulness program within Google called, Search Inside Yourself. And I got asked to be the, kind of, the initial part of a team of people who developed that program. And, then several years after that, this program became really, really popular within Google that we decided that we would create an organization to take this, these teachings, mindfulness and emotional intelligence teachings out outside of Google and started a nonprofit called the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. And, at the same time, we were looking for how to scale these trainings inside of a large company like Google and we’re training a group of about a dozen, Google engineers and a few other people to be mindfulness teachers inside of Google and to teach mindfulness. And, these seven practices kind of emerged within that context of, the question was, how, what do you need to know what are the core teachings and core values of being a mindfulness teacher and these seven practices, love the work, do the work, don’t be an expert, connect to your pain, connect to the pain of others, depend on others, and don’t be an expert. I’m sorry, the last one is, keep making it simpler. They emerged within the context of training these Google employees, and then they kind of broadened beyond that and that’s how the book emerged,

Christiaan: Right and Google and Zen monasteries, what do they have in common when it comes to leadership?

Marc: Yeah well, I like to call it the, you know, the dirty little secret of the business world is that it’s all people, all human beings, people working together with a common, a common intention, a common aspiration. And, I think it’s, you know, there’s a lot of commonality that I found with working in a Zen monastery kitchen with a group of people all trying to do their best to produce great meals. And, I think at Google I found myself working with groups of people on different teams, engineers and leadership, people working together, you know, trying to do their best, to implement particular visions and lots of the same challenges and lots of this same kind of opportunities. And I felt like, there was something in that Zen monastery environment that they were not quite aware of what the possibility was of mindfulness and emotional intelligence and bringing practice into Google was, kind of wonderful kind of challenge and opportunity that I had. And I still, I was just, I did a talk a few days ago at Google and pretty interesting to see the openness and curiosity in that large, you know, behemoth organization. But when you are there, it’s just a group of people who I think are trying to do their best.

Christiaan: Right, and from the side of the Zen Center and, you’re a teacher there, did they approve of this use, like sort of mixing of business and Zen? Is that something that they are behind?

Marc: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. I was just reviewing some notes, you know, I think I get brought in from time to time to work with the leadership of the San Francisco Zen Center who, again, you know, they, it’s interesting, it’s a practice place. It’s primarily a place around, meditation, mindfulness, you know, study and practice of Zen. And yet, there’s an organization, you know, the San Francisco Zen Center has a complex leadership structure where there are people managing the administrative side. There’s another group of people managing the kind of the spiritual and practice side and they very much have to be integrated and work together. And again, it’s people in teaching roles and leadership roles and so I think there is a good deal of interest and passion in this work that I’m doing and that many people are doing. I was just reviewing some notes, the Zen center is, San Francisco Zen center is involved in a project now of creating a, kind of a senior living facility, looking at, you know, the Zen center has been around for more than 50 years. And there’s a quite a few people who’ve been practicing there for a long time who find that they’re getting older and that there’s this need, not only in the Zen center, but you know, in this question of, aging and an aging population, and there’s some, there’s a project, around creating a senior living center, not just for the Zen center community, but for people anywhere who want to be part of, a kind of a Zen inspired or Buddhist inspired senior living center. And, I’m meeting with a group of people who are developing that to kind of, talk about, do, a kind of advice, explore some of these questions about, how do you integrate Zen into many different environments from a business environment? What does it look like when people are living together in community, out outside of a traditional Zen community?

Christiaan: Right and because the reason I asked the question is, in a lot of spiritual traditions and sort of say, you know, when it comes to spirituality, there’s this sometimes this idea of like, yeah, but you know, it’s not about money and you can’t make money. And there seems to be almost, like, I don’t know, it’s like there has to some sort of separation between making money or, you know, pursuing a sort of spiritual path. And for me, that never resonated because, well, for a time I did believe that it, you know, it was sort of, you have to give everything up in a way, which I still believe in a way, but you have to give everything up, you know, to find ,sort of that deepest inner you. But yeah.

Marc: Yeah, you know, there’s definitely tension there and there’s tension there and there’s paradox there. But I mean, that tension exists, you know, even within, you know, like, I talked a little bit about the Tassajaras and Mountain Center, which is a Zen monastery and then turns into a kind of a conference center. And, in some way, from a certain perspective, it looks a lot like a business, you know, that people pay money and there are, you know, there’s income statements and balance sheets, you know, with just like any other business and yet, there needs to be a sense of not looking at it like a business, but looking at it from a, what are we offering of practicing together? And the business aspect is there, but the core values and core tenants are around practice, are around generosity, are around mindfulness. And, at the same time, you know, there’s money involved, there’s leadership, and issues involved. And again, this is true, this tension I think, exists in any business and in any practice place. I think it can serve businesses well when they, if they could more and more realize that they’re primarily there to serve people, primarily are to solve problems. And it’s easy to get confused and think they’re primarily there to maximize wealth, their shareholder wealth. And, I think businesses that get too much on that kind of wealth production will generally find that it’s hard to create a good culture and it’s hard to be sustainable when that’s your, a kind of primary motivation. So, there’s, again, there’s many motivations, there’s tension, there’s paradox and something potent about the practice, letting it all go and the practice has kind of, as you were saying that this need for and I think this is why, you know, meditation practice is such a core practice embodying this sense of letting go, of needing to accomplish anything. And, you know, Shendro Suzuki, the, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, you know, often spoke to about the paradox of moving from attainment to non-attainment, which sounds so, you know, in contrast to how we normally think about business or leadership. And yet there’s something within that ,I think that is, a really valuable tension and really valuable paradox for any organization to better understand and embrace.

Christiaan: Right. I mean from the last thing that you said about attainment and non-attainment, I think this fits in well because for many people having a job and going to work means they come home and are tired of the workday, they’re drained and with an incredibly busy mind, maybe still at work. So, how do we do the work without struggling for it?

Marc: Yeah, well, again, it’s, I love the paradox around effort and effortlessness. So, I think, you know, one of the things I do, I do have a fair amount of executive coaching. I also do a fair amount of trainings and speaking inside of companies and I think what you just painted doesn’t have to be right. We don’t have to be exhausted and depleted, we can end the way, we cannot be exhausted and depleted is by bringing more, a sense of attention and intention, like to pay attention. What is our energy level? How are we best using our energy? What gives us energy? What does take away from our energy? How can we work with our– How are we working with our energy, with our state of mind? How can we, be, you know, give what we have to give, but at the same time, to find a sense of practice. And again, going back, even going back to Dogen’s instructions, how can we find and practice with joy and unconditional love and wisdom in whatever we’re doing.

Christiaan: Yeah. It’s funny for me because the practice when, like, I’ve been doing it for some time now, like a few years of Zen practice and, and reading about these texts and learning about, you know, the early Zen masters and more and more I noticed that I became sort of it a little bit of energy management. Like what you said, you start to manage like what am I, like dedicating my attention to, my focus to, how can I use that in a more efficient way? How can I maybe reduce it a little bit there so I will feel less strained here? And it seems like you become a manager of your own energy.

Marc: Yeah. Well, your energy and in a way your state of mind and your emotional life. Like, again, I think the, okay, noticing the gaps between, you know, how you want to be showing up and how you are showing up, noticing what people are, you find are, really give you energy when you’re around certain people when you’re doing certain tasks and other people and other tasks you’re feeling are, are really a struggle and really hard work and to be pay attention to what is that, what is it, what filters, what attitudes am I bringing that are influencing my energy, my state of mind, my feelings? And this is, to me this is the, this is the a on the ground practice, you know, we talk about, you know, it’s interesting how what I notice is it’s easy to feel like you’re a victim, right? That you were describing, right? You go home from a day of work and you’re depleted, and you have trouble being with your family and you have trouble concentrating. Well, yeah, that’s a great starting place for practice. Like, what’s that about? And what, instead of being a victim mentality, how is it that I’m doing that? How am I acting in such a way that I’m depleted, that I’m unhappy, that I can’t concentrate? What do I need? How can I shift that? What can I do to shift that?

Christiaan: Right? Yeah. And as you said, you worked on this Search Inside Yourself program for Google and why does Google embrace mindfulness and mindful leadership?

Marc: Oh, for many reasons. I think for one, you know, Google would say that it is a core part of their initiative around wellbeing, right? That they notice, you know, they do a lot of collection of information and they find that there is a good deal of people feeling stressed, people feeling depleted, people feeling like they, as you were describing that they are unable to leave their work and be with their friends or families in a healthy way. And they found that these practices, meditation, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, practices were quite successful, were quite impactful in helping people’s states of mind there, their emotional intelligence, bettering their wellbeing. I would say that, what I’ve noticed, not only at Google, but in other places, there is a tremendous need for people to collaborate, to work with greater listening, greater empathy, greater understanding, and that these practices help with that. And I would also say that, you know, people who are, in a better state of mind, feeling more centered, more sense of appreciation are generally more creative, are able to be better at whether it’s sales or product development or the various activities that make up successful businesses.

Christiaan: Right. And so, mindfulness basically can cultivate success in our work, in our careers?

Marc: Yeah, definitely. I think there’s, I know a German based company, SAP is one of a handful of companies that are doing a good deal of data collection and research. And I think they’ve come up with, I think it’s on their website now, some of the statistics about the ROI that they found in mindfulness and meditation programs. You know, in terms of, sales and product development and wellbeing and those kinds of numbers and data that they’ve collected.

Christiaan: Right, so it just works. Mindfulness is something that we can use to create success in our career and our personal life. But from what I get from you is that it’s a lot about priorities, right? It’s about making a priority out of mindfulness above some things that actually may feel more important.

Marc: Yeah, well I think it is about priorities and it’s also, I think, kind of seeing and feeling the power and relevance of practice, of having, you know, it has to be more than, maybe it starts with an idea. Maybe it starts with a hunch. Often again, it starts with pain. It starts with feeling depleted, feeling disconnected and looking for what are some of the ways that I can be more engaged, less depleted, more connected and these practices, this kind of, this practice of, you know, of listening and just paying more attention, of being, of shifting this shift. I think in some way, a core part of practice is shifting from this passive, kind of victim that I’m a victim of my situation to being a more, taking more, kind of a radical responsibility for my own state of mind, for my own feelings, for, you know, for my energy, all those things,

Christiaan: Right, to quote, I’m Steven Kovey about the circle of concern versus the circle of influence, our mind and our awareness is in the circle of influence then?

Marc: Yeah. No, his work is, was from 20, 30 years ago, still quite relevant. And of course, you know, I borrowed the number seven from him, right? He wrote The Seven Habits, I wrote The Seven Practices and, I think habits are really, really important, right? His concept of having really healthy habits. And, at the same time, I really think there’s something potent about practices, that practices have a bit more kind of intention and are things that are ongoing that will, you know, these practices that I talk about in my book, Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader are all meant to be kind of ongoing, kind of lifetime practices. We never, you know, we’ll never achieve something like, you know, don’t be an expert or, you know, depend on others or keep making it simpler.

Christiaan: And these seven practices, it’s important to daily put them in your life, right, to put them in your practice? When you take a moment in the morning, for instance, to meditate, to maybe contemplate them and throughout the day and how would your advice like these seven practices to take them up and really absorb them in your life? Because I sometimes hear from people in the community, you know, that they get very motivated to do something for a few days and then they lose that, and they get overwhelmed with life and they lose it again. And I feel that, you know, this habit building is so important. And how would your advice like, making it a habit to, to implement these seven steps?

Marc: Well in some way, I think the first and the seventh are good places to start. The first is to love the work right, is to lean into and feel how primary, how primal important, having a regular meditation practice is, having an integrated practice, a mindfulness practice of paying attention, of actually paying attention to one’s energy level and state of mind and feelings and taking this kind of responsibility. So, in a way, this is the first practice of, you know, love, the work, the work of developing self-awareness. It’s interesting, I was just reading this morning, one of my habits is reading the New York Times each morning and there is some study I just saw that said, 95% of people described themselves as highly self-aware and yet the actual, when people are tested for self-awareness, it’s much, much lower than that. But, then also the seventh practice of, keep making it simpler, which is to, you know, in a way to pick one thing, you know, to do, you know, maybe it’s just having a meditation practice of sitting for, you know, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, you know, taking a few breaths every day, but something that is consistent, something that’s doable or just one practice, like you know, paying attention to your energy level throughout the day and really noticing what is it that gives me energy, what is it that depletes my energy, so, keeping it simple I think is important as well.

Christiaan: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. I recently read the Culture Code from Daniel Coyle, which talks about successful groups like Pixar and Google and what makes them successful as a culture. And one of the skills he highlights is being vulnerable, which, you know, to me sounds exactly like don’t be an expert, that is so essential to being, to create a successful culture. And I’ve noticed in many workplaces, the opposite is actually done. A position of power is seen as some sort of authority that shouldn’t be questioned by the employees. So, how do we as leaders get to a place where we can be vulnerable with others without risking our position or our perceived influence?


Marc: Yeah. Again, it’s a bit paradoxical, right, the paradox between, kind of leadership success and finding your true sense of your own, kind of authority and power and empowering others and that the importance of vulnerable, of making yourself appropriately vulnerable, doesn’t mean that you’re giving up your authority. And in fact, there’s a lot more and more evidence that, transparency and vulnerability are correlated with leadership success and business success.

Christiaan: Yeah and I remember reading about Taoist leadership for instance, where they talked about, I think they quoted this part from the Tao Te Ching, where they talk about making yourself the lowest points so that all water returns to you. I think they use the analogy of water and how the river goes to the ocean because the ocean is lower than the rest. And, of course that’s like an analogy to say like if you lower yourself or, but I don’t connect that much with the word lower. I think it’s, as you said, it’s more being vulnerable at the right place. If you do that, then you will find that people are actually, they’re attracted to what you are doing and the way you approach things and, yeah.

Marc: I think, yeah, I think it’s primarily in some way a lot of it has to do with connection. And seeing, again, going back to my statement I made earlier, that, you know, the dirty little secret of the business world is it’s all human beings. I think, pretty much people get the importance of emotional intelligence in the business world, that there are wisdom, there’s real wisdom to our feelings and how much our feelings are connected and that there the need, the need for really healthy communication, the need to, this integration I think of ethics, of honesty, of transparency and the skills that it takes to have, to give good feedback, right, to deal with, difficulty, to deal with failure, to deal with working in a stressful, challenging situations and to, and as a leader, to be able to keep that connection, to keep the bar really high in terms of what we’re expecting of ourselves and each other’s, and to work in ways that are inspiring.

Christiaan: Right and can anyone become a leader or is it something that depends on character or emotional intelligence or talent?

Marc: Well, this word, leader, you know, I think on the one hand there is a role of a leader right in the business world and it is a very particular, has some particular challenges and opportunities, but, and, and I think there are many, many skills that can be learned. Mostly it’s, I think, team building and communication skills and how one expresses a shared vision and being able to connect and inspire and motivate people. But, I also think from another perspective, we’re all leaders in the sense that we all have influence, we’re all, whether we’re in a leadership role or not, maybe we were, maybe we will be, but we all are responsible, radically responsible for our own lives. And we all have probably a lot more influence than we tend to realize.

Christiaan: Right. And so, something like emotional intelligence, that’s not a fixed number. You can, it’s, you can work on that, is that correct?

Marc: Yeah, I think, and that this is a really interesting, relatively recent finding is that the connection between, being able to, well there’s the fact that, you know, that our brains are not fixed and always changing and that we can, you know, neuro-plasticity is a relatively new finding, right, that our brains are always changing and thus are our feelings and our ability to grow our self-awareness and, to better understand our motivation and to increase our empathy and our communication skills. These are all kind of, ongoing practices that we can develop and that, these are not things that we can just read about or study. We actually have to have some kind of a practice and some kind of a somatic or body practice. And this is I think why mindfulness practice and meditation practice have become so popular, why there’s so much interest in these, in the business world and in many worlds in that, there’s, I think more and more evidence that we can grow and develop our emotional intelligence, including our leadership capacities and that having this mindfulness practice and meditation practice are very valuable ways to do that.

Christiaan: Right. Hey, Marc, I really want to, I’m super interested about our guests, their habits and how they go through their daily routine. So, I would like to go through your daily routine of how you, what habits you have in the morning when you wake up and what are the ones that really get you ready for the day?

Marc: Yeah, I find, it’s interesting that I have a daily meditation practice, I sit for about 30 minutes every morning. I sit once a week with a group, I run a group here in Mill Valley called Mill Valley Zen, I sit with a group of people. I like to do a half day or a full day sitting, you know, once a month or once every other month and then I do a yearly, longer, like a five day or seven-day retreat. So, my sitting practice is important. I have a writing practice; I usually do a little bit of writing every day. Sometimes it’s more free and open writing. Sometimes it’s more directed if I’m working on a book project, I’m always studying something in the Buddhist or mindfulness tradition, sometimes in the leadership tradition, but, reading and studying. And that’s, I find I’m, I do a fair amount of teaching, so in some way, those practices for me of sitting, writing, studying, are really core. My exercise practice is pretty much every day, I’d say at least five days a week, I’m hiking in the hills here in Northern California, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes at a time, I’m often doing it with someone. I’m kind of combining connecting with a friend or sometimes it’s a more of a businessy meeting, but usually not, it’s usually pretty relaxed. And I would say, that throughout the day I’m, I find that I’m kind of tracking those questions that we were talking about earlier, noticing, what is it that gives me energy? What is it that is depleting my energy? You know, and my, a lot of my life is, bringing these teachings into the world of work and it’s quite a beautiful thing that I get to listen to myself. You know, I actually get to learn from the things that I’m teaching others about taking, you know, taking responsibility about tracking energy or like, I’m like, oh, yeah, I need to be paying more attention to this, I need to be doing this more. I would also say that cultivating close connection and relationship, spending time for me with my family members, spending time with close friends and cultivating those relationships I think is a really, core part of my own practice as well.

Christiaan: And what are you studying right now, if I may ask?

Marc: You know, it’s interesting. Last night I was rereading a book by Yuval Noah Harari called Sapiens, with which I find is actually a really interesting kind of book about, kind of combining history and kind of raising great questions about, influence and what is reality. And I’m also rereading a book by Robert Wright called Why Buddhism is True, which I think is a good kind of inquiry into, kind of core Buddhist practices and how the relevance of Buddhist practice in today’s work world.

Christiaan: Right, it’s funny, we are also reading Why Buddhism is True right now in the community since a month or two. And it’s super interesting to hear about these, the evolutionary perspective on psychology and how Buddhism actually saw a lot of these things happening and we’re like, yeah, that’s what you need to work on.

Marc: Yeah, totally.

Christiaan: Coming back to the person that you were when you just started this journey of, you know, going into meditation and mindfulness and the person you are now, how do you feel it has changed your life?

Marc: Yeah. You know, my, I suppose my, I’m tempted to give you the Zen answer, which is no change, right, still the same person. And, that’s true in a lot of ways, you know, I can feel, yeah. I still, in fact, I still feel like, often I feel like I’m 20 years old starting out in this practice, and yet, you know, I look in the mirror and I’m not 20 years old and I also feel, I could say that I’m, you know, completely transformed, I’m completely another person. And, yeah, I feel tremendous gratitude for these teachings and teachers that I’ve had and, the many years that I got to spend a living in community and I love, now I feel this great honor to be able to go into places like Google or other companies or nonprofits and to help bring in these teachings and to help create a healthy kind of connection and community.

Christiaan: Right? Yeah, so a change is definitely happening in our working culture and a business mindset, so to say, your work is an incredible inspiration and example to pursue that change and use it effectively and successfully, a sort of testimony that mindfulness can and will change companies and the structures that sometimes hold us and hold these companies from achieving success in their business. How do you see the future of leadership in our companies and in our world, so to say?

Marc: Yeah, I mean, my hope is that more and more leaders will be drawn to this work and transformed by this work. And again, I think it’s, you know, to me, Zen practice and mindfulness practice is really about, how can we become more full, alive, conscious human beings, right? How can we become less ego-driven and more connected, more interested in healing and compassion? And I think that this is becoming more essential for leaders today, whether it’s issues around, you know, around bias and inequality and climate change, that we all need to be waking up in our various companies and cultures and whether it’s companies or government and I think essentially these practices are about helping us to wake up more as human beings.

Christiaan: Right. Well, thank you so much, Marc, for joining me on the podcast and sharing what you shared about these practices of a mindful leader and how to basically pick up this leadership in our own lives and create a change and cultivate success. Is there anything for our listeners that you would still want to like share as a giveaway or as an advice, if they want to start to well, cultivate leadership right now?

Marc: I seem to, there’s a few, I think of a couple of lines from a the poet David White who, 54:22 [inaudible], a poem of his, he says, “you must learn one thing, the world was made to be free in”.  And I think that leadership and being human being is ultimately about finding our real, the power in our, the freedom, freedom from our ego, freedom from our greed, hate and delusion, which have been very popular for thousands of years.

Christiaan: Right. Yeah, that is beautiful. Thank you so much Marc for sharing that advice and joining me on the podcast. 

Marc: Thank you Christiaan. And just want to let people know; you know that they can find me at marclesser.net. It’s and it’s M-A-R-C-L-E-S-S-E-R.net. 

Christiaan: Awesome. Thank you so much and have a great day. 

Marc: You too, thanks a lot.

Christiaan: If you enjoyed what Marc talked about, make sure to check out his website mentioned in the description of this episode. We’ve noticed there are people who cannot hear our podcast but still would like to be part of it and learn from it. We will start to transcribe every episode so that those who have a hard time hearing us can still be part of our podcast and read with us. Shout out to our donators, Amber, Jay, Chris, Justin, Joseph, Paul, Wendy, Patrina, Krish, Fizzy Elf, and Yuri. Thank you very much for supporting us. Remember to subscribe to our podcast. If you enjoyed this talk and give us a review on the platform you’re listening to, it helps us immensely. Next week I’ll be talking with Mark Romero, who is a sound therapist, and he will play something for us live on the episode. Thank you for listening and have a great day. 

The post Becoming a Successful Leader appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> What exactly is Awakening? https://meditationmind.org/what-exactly-is-awakening/ Sun, 04 Aug 2019 23:48:00 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10617 In this episode I have a talk with Dr. John Yates or Upasaka Culadasa. We talk about his current book, The Mind Illuminated. A book that bestselling meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg raves “brings the path of meditation to life.” We talk on why he wrote it and what are important things to know when reading it. We talk about his new upcoming book, what the buddha really taught, online internet forums and insights, the somatic and psychological aspects of human development and what exactly is awakening?

The post What exactly is Awakening? appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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Culadasa, John Yates, Ph.D., is the director of Dharma Treasure Buddhist Sangha in Tucson, Arizona and author of The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Using Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science.  With over four decades of dedicated experience in the Tibetan and Theravadin Buddhist traditions, Culadasa was ordained as an Upasaka in 1976 and received ordination in the International Order of Buddhist ministers in Rosemead, California in December 2009.

In this episode, Culadasa joins us for the full-hour to discuss his reasoning behind writing The Mind Illuminated, his optimistic outlook on the conjunction between neuroscience and meditation and his future book!  Also, we discuss:

  • Why some struggle to find success in meditation.
  • The difficulty in learning through escotericism.
  • The Mind Illuminated’s start on the Yahoo Discussion Boards
  • How we can use science to produce meditative states.
  • How meditative states can cultivate insight into permanent traits.
  • The problems with modern day “teachers” and the confusion they cause.
  • Some excellent advice for everyone!

Join us together as we unravel and discover more about Culadasa and his meditative guide, The Mind Illuminated.

Quick overview

3:05 – What was your experience with Transcendental Meditation back when you started?

5:00 – There have been manuals written in the past about how to work with meditation, what led you to write this specific book?

8:04 – Since the book has been written, has there been additional studies about meditation in the field of Neuroscience that uncovered more about how our brain works when meditating and deepening that practice?

13:58 – Can we use aids in our meditative practice like neurofeedback, apps, music or psychedelics?

18:42 – Is meditation a gradual process?

21:23 – Is there a way to ‘predict’ if someone will awaken?

24:10 – Is there something called ‘potentiality’ where someone is more ‘potent’ to achieve deeper states of meditation quicker? (Culadasa explains why the amount of hours meditated is a poor measure of development)

26:38 – With the internet and online communities, youtube videos, books, and podcasts, I’ve noticed there are people who don’t seek out a teacher in real life. What else, if anything, do people seeking awakening need to add to their practice if they have been using text-based resources and online forums, chats, communities as support but have basically been trying to figure things out without a teacher and with no in-person interaction. Is this a valid way to practice the path of meditation?

28:04 – How important is a lineage or validation behind a meditation teacher? (Culadasa explains a bit about the historical background of lineages)

32:44 – How do we discern what a good teacher or lineage is for us?

34:06 – Do you believe different traditions, approaches and meditation masters should unify in a greater community to foster meditation and mindfulness throughout the world? What is your vision for this?

37:31 – Is there still a need for different approaches with an approach like The Mind Illuminated?

40:58 – Someone asked more about the somatic and felt emotional practices you do or recommend. How important are body-based practices to complement the TMI method? Do you have any advice on integrating qi-gong, yoga and aikido with TMI?

41:22 – Is therapy important on the path of meditation?

44:33 – How do we become a ‘complete’ human being if not through meditation?

46:58 – Is it possible to become fully enlightened in this life?

51:23 – Are the Siddhi’s mentioned as a result of meditation a byproduct of meditation or storytelling?

55:36 – What will the new book be about and what can we expect from it?

58:51 – When will the book come out?

63:09 – What could you give as an advice specifically aimed at those who practice according to The Mind Illuminated. (Some incredible advice for anyone practicing with The Mind Illuminated, talking about obstacles in the practice)

Full Transcript

Episode Length: 1:12:44

Christiaan: In this episode of the Project Mindfulness Podcast, we talk with the author of “The Mind Illuminated”, a complete meditation guide, integrating Buddhist wisdom and brain science.

Benjamin: Honest and open to all religions, all traditions, all ages and all levels of experience.

David: Radically accessible, pragmatic and an eye opening.

Benjamin: Simply for everyone. 

Christiaan: Welcome to the Project Mindfulness Podcast, we’ll take you on a journey across the globe and talk with other meditators about their practice, the lessons they’ve learned and what they want the world to know.

Good day and welcome to season two of the Project Mindfulness Podcast. This is episode number one of season two and I’m Christiaan Neeteson, thank you for joining us. In this episode I have a talk with Dr. John Yates or Upasaka Culadasa. We talk about his current book, The Mind Illuminated, a book that bestselling meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, raves, brings a path of meditation to life. We talk on why he wrote it and what are important things to know when reading it. We talk about his new upcoming book, what the Buddha really taught, online internet forums and insights to somatic and psychological aspects of human development and what exactly is awakening? Before we dive into the episode, I want to announce that we are organizing a giveaway. We have three signed copies of The Mind Illuminated that you can win if you participate, head on over to projectmindfulness.com/giveaway to find out more on how it works and how you can participate. More information can also be found in the description of this episode. On the 5th of August, we will announce the winners and end the raffle. Enjoy listening to this episode and make sure to listen all the way to the end where Culadasa shares an important advice from meditators wanting to improve their practice. Today, joining me on the podcast is Culadasa, who is a meditation master with over four decades of experience into Tibetan and Theravada in Buddhist traditions. As a former professor, he taught physiology and neuroscience and later worked in the field of alternative medicine. He’s the author of, A Physician’s Guide to Therapeutic Massage and the writer of The Mind Illuminated. The Mind Illuminated is a complete meditation guide, integrating Buddhist wisdom and modern science written for a Western audience. Thank you so much for joining me today on a podcast. 

Culadasa: Well. Thank you for inviting me. 

Christiaan: A pleasure to have you here, I would like to start from early on in your journey. In your book, it’s mentioned you’re always a seeker for the truth, you mentioned diving into Christianity and from that in the 60s, learning about transcendental meditation from the Beatles. Now I hear transcendental meditation come up regularly in our community where some say it’s a scam and other says it’s a cult. What is your personal experience with transcendental meditation back when you started?

Culadasa: Well, I found it very useful. I had been trying to meditate for a couple of years with very limited sources of guidance for those that are familiar with Patanjali’s, a yoga sutra. I was trying to use that book and some other books that I’ve gotten from the Vivo commander, the dances society and hadn’t, didn’t really have much success meditating on my own. And, when I was introduced to, TM, I found like, I felt like I was really meditating for the first time. So much so that, I became enthusiastic and was going through the process that’s required to become a teacher TM. My views on TM have changed since then, but at the time I found that, a wonderful introduction to what meditation was really about.

Christiaan: Right. And from there you mentioned you bought a sitar and found someone to help you fix it and you learned a about the Buddha Dharma and sort of made it your own, is that correct? 

Culadasa: Yes, that’s correct.

Christiaan: Yeah. And there have been like manuals written in the past about how to work with meditation, how to apply it. And what led you to write this specific manual?

Culadasa: Well, it was a discovery of how many people were meditating, had been meditating for very long time and, were basically by the standards that I’ve been practicing in, according to the standards that I was practicing to, and the instructions that I had had and the way my practice had developed over decades of study, I realized that most of these people, in spite of all the time that they’d spent in practice, wouldn’t even have qualified as a, well, they’re just still beginners. They wouldn’t be considered to be truly meditators yet. Well, I had no intentions of becoming a teacher, I did become involved in online discussions of Buddhism and meditation and, I ended up, sort of ,becoming a de-facto teacher online because people ask so many questions about meditation, which I was able to answer and help them. So, The Mind Illuminated grew out of a document that I had created and posted on a Yahoo discussion group. It covered the first six stages and then a few years later, let’s see, quite a few years later, I guess now that I think of it, I decided to go ahead and complete that and write it up thoroughly because yeah, I felt like I had something to contribute and there were a lot of people out there who needed the benefit of this kind of guidance.

Christiaan: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, for me, reading a bit about it and I know a lot of people in our community also benefit from using it because it seems to speak very clearly to a western audience as opposed to maybe a more, mystical or esoteric audience. It’s very straight forward and very pragmatic, at least that’s how I, yeah, how I find it.

Culadasa: And that was my intention.

Christiaan: Very good. Yeah and since the book has been written, has there been additional studies about meditation in the field of neuroscience that uncovered more about how our brain works when meditating and deepening the practice?

Culadasa: Well, there is ongoing work and there have been, new information has come out about some of the neural correlates and various meditation states. I say that one of the most interesting things is branch of study that is called a cognitive neuroscience or something, just cognitive science where, as much emphasis is being put on the different functional aspects of various mental activities as is the neurophysiology behind it. So, now this is an area where the interesting thing is that, many of the things that are described in the original Buddhist literature and many of the things that I discovered in my own meditation experience and described in The Mind Illuminated are subsequently being validated in a cognitive neuroscience. For example, the distinction between attention and awareness, which I was aware of from, the perspective of neuroanatomy and the kinds of functions that were associated with the two different sets of brain areas that were associated with attention and awareness. Well, subsequently there’s been a lot more work done, along the same vein and there’s a greater illumination of these different mental capacities that meditation has training. And I would add to that, I have recognized in some of the recent neurocognitive science literature, what I would describe as a very accurate description of what that particularly mental skill known as Vih-pah-sa-nah, would be the correct pronunciation but I think most people are familiar with the term being pronounced Vipassana, and there is a very widespread misunderstanding that the word Vipassana means insight and it’s often used interchangeably with insight. Grammatically there’s a degree, there’s a sense in which that’s correct, but in terms of our understanding, our normal understanding of the word insight, Vipassana does not refer to that, Vipassana refers to a particular way of using attention. And there is something that’s called, predictive processing and another area that’s called, information integration theory. This is a description of the way that the brain and the mind process information and different ways that attention can be used. And so, there’s been some significant clarification that’s come out of that work of what exactly is that the Buddha meant by Vipassana. So, yeah, there’s a lot of good work being done, there’s a whole lot more work needs to be done. A lot of people are interested in various forms of brain stimulation and neurofeedback, even experimentation with various psychoactive substances, basically trying to find a way to augment the meditation practice and to bring people to awakening, hopefully more quickly in the process of this. Of course, the same kind of work is revealing more and more about the underlying neural processes that are involved in, meditation development over time.

Christiaan: Right. And with these new neurofeedback methods like EEG or, other ones that possibly can assist us in practice, sometimes I hear that, you know, people, some people use music for instance, to start with the meditation practice or they use certain things. And then, there are certain people who say, no, you really have to do it yourself. And like with psychedelics and what with neurofeedback methods. It seems that there is a slight danger coming up that we become dependent on these, ways of doing it. Even simple meditation apps. What is your vision about that? Do you think it’s okay to use these neurofeedback methods to deepen your practice? Or would you say, no, you really need to do it yourself?

Culadasa: Well, ultimately you need to do it yourself. Now these things can be helpful. There’s, and when you say neurofeedback, there’s a broad range of, very different methodologies that are referred to there. There’s one particular form of neurofeedback that we have used and found was actually very helpful, in allowing people to progress more rapidly in the development of stability, attends of attention and more powerful mindfulness. Now, most neurofeedback is intended to induce a particular state, by providing feedback, based on the particular frequency of the EEG signal or combination of frequencies. So, it can help to induce a state, now that can be helpful and in some ways. But what we’re talking about with meditation is not states, we’re talking about eventually producing permanent traits on, the brain is rewiring itself when you are practicing meditation properly and the, if you’re developing the particular mental skills and capacities that are necessary for awakening, this involves a significant change in the way that your brain works. This happens over time. If you meditate for an hour a day and then you just shift those back to ordinary, you know, your ordinary way of thinking and behaving, then the time it takes for those changes to become significant is going to be very, very long. If you meditate for longer times or if you go into intensive retreats, it will accelerate that process because you’re asking the brain to do something that it does that it’s not used to doing in your normal daily life, and you’re doing it consistently for more and more time. So, although the brain can do that temporarily at a fairly high energy cost and inefficiently, the response to increase hours of meditation consistency every day and doing longer retreats can only, accelerate and enhance the changes in neural function that allow you to have the ability, to have insight, to see things more as they really are and to have this recognition penetrate deeply into your intuitive perception of the world. So, things that induce states like neurofeedback can be helpful with that, but more in the way of just showing the brain how they get to particular places. What has to happen is you have to ask the brain to do that over and over again until it changes itself in some fundamental ways so that that becomes your new norm. And then at that point, mindfulness and some of the other qualities that you’re developing in meditation becomes part of your daily experience. And as you can imagine, that in turn only accelerates the process even more.

Christiaan: Right and is it accurate to say that in a way your mentality training yourself as a weightlifter, lifting weights and is it true that you need to build that up and it takes time? Because I remember also from reading your work is that you say sometimes someone can suddenly go to a stage nine for a little while in a practice or that can happen, but ultimately it seems like a gradual process, is that accurate?

Culadasa: Well, in order to become a permanent shift in perception, in way of perceiving, that leads to a permanent shift in the way you respond to life events and the way you behave, that is a process that appears to be much more global in the mind brain, and it does take more time. Yeah, it does take some time for that to occur. Now it is possible to temporarily enter states that correspond to insight or states that correspond to the advanced stages of samatha practice, samatha-vipassana. Yes, people can have an experience of stage nine, things like this. These are temporary states. You don’t know exactly what caused them, and so they’re not reproducible and not only that, but the brain hasn’t undergone the necessary changes in order for this to become a permanent trait. So, these states are wonderful, they give you an idea of what’s possible. Many people who come to meditation, come to meditation because they’ve had a profound insight experience. In other words, they’ve had a period of time where they perceive the world from the perspective of somebody who has mature insight, but it doesn’t last, it’s something that they’ve always wanted to experience again and so they’re attracted to meditation because this promises to be a way to make that a permanent part of their personal experience.

Christiaan: Right and this experience of awakening or genuine, is that something that just you can predict? It’s random? Is it like the one that you also talked about, so when someone really has a change of perspective, that leads them to start meditating? Because when I read, I practiced in myself and when I, you know, there’s this whole thing about gradual versus a sudden enlightenment that was, in the history of Zen, very important. And is there really no way, so to say, to predict when someone will awaken?

Culadasa: Well, let’s put it this way, at this point on, we don’t, you know, when I say awakening is an accident and practice makes you accident prone, and acknowledge the fact that sometimes people experience, awakening very early in the meditation process and sometimes even without that. What I’m doing is acknowledging that we don’t really completely understand, what is happening that leads to an insight and causes the insight to mature, to become awakening. Now I think I have a pretty good grasp personally of some of the essential features of that, but not enough so that I could predict whether a particular student is going to experience insight and awakening at stage four or stage six in the process that’s described in The Mind Illuminated. What I do find is that, by stage seven, sometimes as early as a, not infrequently, as early as stage six, people begin to have a profound insight experience. And these often set in motion the process of maturation of the insights. But I can’t tell when they start meditating, whether they’re going to be somebody who has experiences with that very early on or whether it’s going to, you know, take a little longer.

Christiaan: Right, because, the term potentiality is something my teacher uses to sometimes describe it. And I know that there is this idea that some people are so to say more potent, but there is, for me, it seems like such a mystery why. It’s like, it seems such a mystery to why someone seems more potent to, you know, get to the state of unified mind quicker than someone who maybe practices for way longer. It doesn’t seem to correlate necessarily always with the amount of time someone practices. And I think not only speaking for myself, but for other people too, that can be very frustrating to see that happen.

Culadasa: That is, yes, one of the poorest measures of somebody meditative development is how much time that they’ve spent practicing. Unfortunately, most of the research has been done on meditation has used that supposedly as a standard, somebody who’s had, more than a 2000 hours of experience compared to a group, a cohort of people that have more than 10,000 hours of experience or somebody who’s a beginning meditator compared to someone who has so many thousand hours of experience. It just doesn’t correlate. There’s a lot of individual variations. There’s also so many different things that are called meditation and the strength, each of these has certain strengths and weaknesses. If you’re lucky, somebody might be matched up with a form of meditation that something about the way their own mind has been conditioned, that will work better for them and, they’ll have more success with it. But okay, so there’s this fundamental difference in all of these different meditation systems. There’s fundamental differences within a meditation system of how well the teacher understands what they’re teaching and how well the student follows the instruction, the measure of how many hours somebody sits on a cushion tells you absolutely nothing at all about what’s going on in their mind as they’re sitting there on the cushion. So, things really serve as much of an indicator.

Christiaan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Another question is with the Internet and online communities, YouTube videos, books and podcasts, I’ve noticed there are people who don’t seek out a teacher in real life. What else, if anything, do people seeking awakening need to add to their practice, if they have been using text-based resources and online forums, chats, communities as support, but have basically been trying to figure things out without a teacher and with no in person interaction, and is this a valid way to practice the path of meditation?

Culadasa: Well, it’s a, I wouldn’t recommend it. I think that it’s best to practice with somebody who has personal experience of what they’re teaching and has been trained to teach in the method, not just to practice the method. Because you can attend a series of retreats and classes and things like this, you might have insight, you might reach one of the paths of awakening, but that doesn’t mean that you have understood that method you practice fully enough to teach it to someone else. So, then the, yeah, there’s all these different things enter into it, so.

Christiaan: Right, yeah, that makes sense. And how important is it that a teacher is validated because I think that has been happening in the East, but you also see it in the West that there’s people coming up who practiced for a long time and they claim a certain attainment or they claim a certain insight and they don’t seem necessarily connected to a lineage or to a person who validates that. How important is the validation or that sort of lineage behind it?

Culadasa: It’s very important Christiaan, not, well, that ,you’re not quite asking the right question here because the trouble with lineages is that when it’s not necessarily the case that the next person and the lineage really has understood fully what the previous teachers and that lineage have taught. And what we see with the entire history of Buddhism is that the content of what’s taught in these lineages does get distorted over time. And, many people aren’t aware that in the Theravada, a meditation almost disappeared completely, about a millennium ago, and that it was essentially rediscovered and reinvented during the colonial period and this is what’s referred to as Buddhist modernism. So, the meditation methods that we received from Japan, Thailand, Burma, all these other places are basically, are reinvented both versions of Buddhist meditation that date back only to the 19th century. Most people don’t realize that. So, this is a problem with lineages. So, even the kind of lineages that we look at today, only date back for a limited time. Even the Tibetan lineages don’t date back that far, although their contact with the rest and colonialism and the changes to their practices didn’t undergo the same kind of change that Buddhism did everywhere else during the colonial era. The problem is right now is that there’s a lot of people who don’t really understand, what the Buddha taught. And because they don’t understand it, they end up reinventing what it means to be awakened. So, you have a lot of people who are claiming to have obtained various paths anywhere from stream entry to hot, and they’re basing this on definitions that really don’t correspond at all to what the Buddha taught. Now, they can attract people to them as students because of their supposing attainments. But, you can, well, the best that you can expect from that is that you might achieve the version of awakening that this person has either invented for themselves or subscribes to. If you look at these discussions online, you’ll find, what will impress you most if you read them, first of all, there’s all these people speaking as though they’re very knowledgeable, but if you read enough of these online discussions, what will come across more than anything else is just how massive the confusion is out there.

Christiaan: Yeah, that makes sense. That has been my experience too sometimes and reading about it, how people also, they make such an absolute of certain teachers or lineages and, not to discredit it in any way, but is there a way for someone like me or someone listening to discern what is worth their time, so to say what working for them and what might be a good teacher or lineage to connect to? 

Culadasa: Well, I would say if you see the characteristics that correspond to what you would like to develop yourself in a lineage of teachers, and if over time, those characteristics are consistently manifested, then it makes sense that that’s a teacher to go with.

Christiaan: Right, makes sense. And it’s a very good advice. Thank you. So, in the book you talk about the 10 stages of meditation, which seems to indicate a common aspect to a lot of meditative traditions and approaches. You also mentioned, a sort of so to say, holistic approach to these traditions, incorporating different aspects into the method as a unity. Do you believe different traditions, approaches and meditation masters should unify in a greater community to foster meditation and mindfulness throughout the world? What is your vision for this?

Culadasa: Absolutely, I would love to see meditation teachers get together and discuss very openly with each other on the methods they teach, what they see, the kind of results they see ,to work together, to try to understand more thoroughly, what the particular techniques that they teach and use are intended to what affects they’re intended to produce and share that information. You talk about the 10 stages, now if you look at those 10 stages, they just follow a very, very straight forward developmental progression. The same way a child has to learn to crawl and then stand up, before they can walk and to walk before they can run. Or you could think of, I have so many other developmental progressions, everything from learning to play, learning a particular skill like playing an instrument or a sport or something like that. But I think the best comparison to me would be any kind of childhood developmental process that you want to look at. You know, you build, you start at the beginning, you build something that serves as a foundation for the next level of skillset. And the reason that I like childhood development models as a, something to use as a metaphor for meditation is that you are actually producing changes in the way your brain and mind work. Just as a child from learning to crawl, to learning to walk and then run is undergoing changes in their body and their brain to allow them to do that. And they’re achieving those changes by doing particular things. If you had a child and they were never given the opportunity to move around, they might reach the age of which most children were walking and running. But if you took them out of whatever container you kept them in and ask them to walk and run, they wouldn’t probably have a lot of luck.

Christiaan: Right, makes a lot of sense. 

Culadasa: It’s a developmental process and it has a logic to it. The more we can understand it, then if we look at the various techniques and we understand, we see what they do, then we can choose the ones that are going to best bring about this developmental process. The step further is to understand them so thoroughly that we can begin to tailor them to individuals. 

Christiaan: Yeah. And if this method works and it works for a lot of people, is there still a need for different approaches? Or is this the magic bullet? 

Culadasa: Well, from my point of view, it needs, I could expand on what I’ve written there, I could modify and clarify parts of it, expand and extend it. What, you know, I see some things that are obviously missing from traditional practices. There’s a somatic component which should be a part of these practices. Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, things like that, they are spiritual practices that tend much more toward the somatic and energetic. Related to that though, is that there could be a lot more in the way of psychological healing and practices that are conducive to psychological healing to dealing with emotions and things like that, incorporated into meditation. And I encourage, I have a 100 or so, students that are teachers in training and I’m encouraged as, many of them are therapists, many of them are much more, body centered than I am. And I encourage them to take what they learn from me and to improve upon and make the method more effective by introducing some other practices that emphasize both the bodily and the emotional aspect of ourselves. Ken Wilber has pointed out this, it’s a deficiency that he finds in meditation and mystical practices in absolutely every tradition, not just Buddhism, but every tradition. He refers to it as a cleaning up, which would be, which would correspond to dealing with your psychological and emotional baggage, growing up and showing up and all he’s pointing out that this was the weakness of these mind focused meditation practices is that they’re leaving out a lot of what is very important. So, there’s room for improvements, as well as just taking all of the various techniques and methods that have been developed in different places at different times and figuring out how they all fit together and how best use them.

Christiaan: Right and it seems to leave a lot of space actually for development. So, to say combining, a therapy combining these somatic practices into meditation, is that something that you also work with? Because from my understanding, The Mind Illuminated focuses very much on meditation, but do you have any advice on integrating, for instance, Chi Gong or yoga and Aikido in combination with The Mind Illuminated?

Culadasa: Well, all of those, I do encourage people to consider taking up those practices. I definitely do.

Christiaan: Right? And so, therapy is also still very much part of human developing. It’s not that through meditation alone we can come to a state of, yeah–?

Culadasa: The one of the things that we stress in The Mind Illuminated and you won’t find it to, near the same degree, if you find it at all in most current meditation methodologies. And that is dealing with emotional, psychological issues that arise, internal conflicts, things like this. This is an extremely important a thing. It has to happen. And in many meditation systems you’re encouraged to just, even though emotions and that kind of stuff come up inevitably as a part of meditation, you find some, many systems just basically tell the meditator to leave that aside and continue doing the practice. And so, they don’t get dealt with, then they can come up all at once in a massive form when a person begins to undergo the process of insight leading through awakening. And those insights can’t develop until a certain amount of that kind of psycho emotional baggage has been dealt with. So, they go through a very traumatic transition to awakening, which is not necessary. But, at the same time, meditation is not therapy, it, meditation produces a great therapeutic benefit. Sometimes it can be the equivalent of the years of psychological therapy and its benefit, but there’s sometimes, it just this, there’s some, sometimes it doesn’t work, and somebody has to combine it with therapy. Other times meditation clears out what needs to be cleared out in order for insight to develop and for awakening to occur but there’s unresolved stuff that remains in the mind and there’s nothing in these meditation systems at this present time to deal with that. So, this could explain some of the bizarre behaviors that everyone wonders about by people who are acknowledged or who claimed to be awakened.

Christiaan: I’ll be honest, my idea of the Buddha when I first came to know about Buddhism wasn’t`, maybe the best idea was really having a, a sort of complete human, which might be true. It might not be true, but I saw it as this sort of, complete human and from that I thought, okay, well if I practice, you know, these meditative aspects, I will become a complete human too.

Culadasa: Well, and you will. You know, there are four paths that are defined in Theravada in Buddhism and that the Buddha described in his own teaching. And actually, there are more paths than that, it continues on. So, these are degrees or levels of awakening. Now when you get to fourth path, you come to be in a place where, if you have unresolved psychological material and you get some help with resolving it, you can resolve it very quickly and very easily compared to someone else. But it still has to be done. There are still those things there that have to be dealt with if you want to become a complete human being. Now, when we look at the sutras, we find a lot of superlatives being applied to the Buddha. And then if you look at descriptions of what it means to be a Buddha in the, once Buddhism turned into religion, the Buddha began to take on more and more godlike properties and people expect a degree of perfection and somebody who is achieved, for example, a third or fourth path of the awakening, but it’s just totally unrealistic. But somebody at those levels can achieve a much greater degree of, you know, I hate to use the word, they can approach that ideal of perfection much more closely if they realize that there’s still some inner work that has to be done rather than just enjoy the place that that they’ve arrived at. 

Christiaan: Right. Yeah and from that, is it possible to become fully enlightened in this life? Is it?

Culadasa: Well, what does fully enlightened mean? Yeah, my experience is that, so far at least it’s open ended. And as a matter of fact, what I have learned, what I do, the deep knowledge and understanding that I have, it’s not conceivable to me that the kinds of things that people would posit as fully enlightened or fully awakened, would be achievable by a human being in the sense that there is always more, there are limits to the knowledge that our human mind and brain are capable of assimilating. Compare us to animals that lived 200 million years ago, you know? Oh yeah, capacities are just way beyond those or just to other animals that live in the world today, lizards. Now assuming that evolution continues and the same trend that it’s shown some, for the last billion years or so, a thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand years from now, there are going to be organisms with mental capacities that uh, exceed ours to the same degrees of ours exceed amphibians. And so, what does, do you get my point? What is about fooling them? Also, an essential part of waking up is realizing that you are not a separate self, you are a process within a much greater process that is unfolding. And once that fully sinks in, no matter how much you may personally be free from suffering, how much you may personally feel like you’re experiencing and almost godlike state being in human form. No matter when you truly realize that you are not separate, then you haven’t got over, you haven’t completely overcome your suffering Duka, until all sense of beings achieved that. And that’s exactly what the Maya Yana recognize. That’s what the Buddhist vow is all about, realize that you are going to separate then you know, over complete enlightenment if you are, if we really were separate entities which is antithetical to what it means to wake up anyway, you know, if we were separate entities then as a separate entity, you could achieve, some kind of a perfect, ultimate complete enlightenment. But since the most fundamental principle that you learn in this process is that you’re not a separate individual, well then, it’s pointless to speak about an individual achieving.

Christiaan: Right, yeah, that makes a lot of sense and from that, in the past, when you read about a meditation in the East, have been, you know, these, sort of say, cities mentioned as like supernatural powers that someone developed through meditation, is that a byproduct of, of storytelling or is there really some aspect that, you know, yeah. If that makes sense as a question?

Culadasa: Oh, yes, it does. Some of the higher powers are real and they may appear supernatural, but they’re not but they just, they appear that way because of limitations in our understanding of what is actually natural. Others are the product of storytelling and sometimes behind them, there is a truth that the story that’s being told is metaphorical. Now, the ones, part of our non-separateness, actually relates to, a kind of nonduality. I mean there’s a nonduality of self and others, but there’s a deeper kind of nonduality which is the nonduality of mind and matter of the physical and the mental. We recognize science has explored the interconnectedness of everything that is physical. If mind and matter are of the same stuff, then the same must be true of mind. And in fact, it is and this is one of the things that you will learn from meditation, it’s one of the things you will discover, is that a mind is interconnected. And so, things like being able to, essentially recall the lives of people that have lived in the past or closely related thing is to know what’s going on in the mind of somebody and somebody else in the present, what’s referred to as seeing at a distance or hearing at a distance or just different manifestations of the same thing, putting your mind into resonance with another mind. And even this is even true of a mind that, of someone who has already died because that is still part of the present moment, the entire history of the universe is part of the present moment. So, yes, since mind is interconnected, you can tap into that the same way that a historian or an archeologist or paleontologist or, a cosmologist or astronomer and things like that can tell the history from what’s present today. You can tell the history of the universe, of evolution, of everything else. So, yes, that’s true. Now when you get to tie things like, multiplying your body and being in multiple places at once, walking through walls and things like that, these are in the category. There’s just so many supernatural qualities that have been, oh, omniscience is another one that have been attributed to the Buddha and to highly awakened people. And as I say, some of these are really metaphors for something that is, it’s just a reflection of a much more profound understanding of reality that an awakened person has compared to most people.

Christiaan: That makes the most sense to me too. When I read about them and heard about them, some of them, like being able to read people’s minds seem to be more about someone so sensitive that they could understand from, for instance, body language or certain signals, what the other person really was trying to say or what they felt and those really made sense. But some of them, yeah. They go a little bit beyond the realm of–

Culadasa: Yes, it goes beyond the realm of body language and things like that, definitely.

Christiaan: Yeah, I’ve heard you talk about the process you are in of writing a new book. Could you tell us a bit about this book? What will it be about and what can we expect from it?

Culadasa: What it will be about is my understanding from the sutras and other traditional literature of Buddhism and to some degree of other traditions as well. And my personal experience and the experience of my students, of what insight is, how and why it develops, what’s necessary for it to occur and how insight leads to awakening. Why the Buddha chose to divide the continuing process of awakening into the four paths? And he defined those four paths on the basis of 10 fetters and it’s because those four paths, involve significant as in the same way that, TMI is developmental for developing, Samatha with Vipassana or you know, Samadhi, with Vipassana and Sati. These are the four paths of awakening and the 10 fetters that the Buddha described, they’re the same way. They’re just a basic fundamental, you got to do, first things first and then you do the next thing that you have to do. And then this makes it possible to do the thing after and so forth. So, it provides a very good description of how you arrive at the goal. So, what I’m going to be discussing is what it means to be awakened and what it means to have insight, what are the skills that we need to develop? And I’ve named the three main ones there is as Samadhi, Sati and well, Vipassana and explain the process from my experience, as I say, from the experience with my students and from everything I’ve read and studied in my lifetime, how this works, how it happens, maybe to help sort, of all these people on the Internet to sort it out where are they really are in the development of the paths of awakening and the development of insight. So, I’m not saying that this is the absolute ultimate answer and for the next 2,500 years, everybody should be following what I say in this book. Definitely, my understanding, my experience extended by the experience of hundreds of others and everything that I have been able to read and study and understand and something like about 50 years of working on this project. 

Christiaan: That’s incredible. And is there a date already set for that or a certain aim for when you would like to publish it? 

Culadasa: Well I’d like to see it be ready for publication within a year from now or say. But one of the things that’s happening in the process of writing this, is that, and I have a couple of people co-researching this with myself, is that we’re discovering so much of the new work in cognitive neuroscience and, we are going back to the sutras and we’re examining line by line and word by word, many sutras and, different versions of the same sutras and the picture keeps developing and getting clearer. So, just, you know, when I started to work on it, I was starting sort of with this assumption that, well, okay, I’ll just basically put down what I know and understand. But then of course you want to validate and verify certain things. So, you go back to the sutras, or you go to the corresponding neuroscience. Every time I’ve done that, I’ve opened up a whole new area that adds more clarity and illumination to what it was that I intended to do in the beginning. 

Christiaan: Right, so it keeps evolving. 

Culadasa: It keeps evolving and it’s wonderful and it’s so exciting. You know, it’s like the, what I mentioned earlier, the meaning of the word with Vipassana and the degree to which the misunderstanding of that word has created so much incredible confusion. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that I was wanting to be able to clarify but I didn’t, when I began, I didn’t actually, you know, I was making the same assumptions that everybody else was about what that word meant. We went back to the sutras and found there’s no way in the world it could possibly mean that, it doesn’t. We’ll say that it does, but it does, it’s more, that’s more importantly is it very accurately identified a particular mental skill and capacity that must be developed. And then we go to neuroscience and find, ah, it’s being described, cognitive science is describing it. There are theories of how the mind works that are actually laying this information out so I can go back, and I can put what was, I can say to myself, what was it the Buddha was really trying to communicate? He didn’t start using the term Vipassana, so it’s in what are referred to as the latest, straight of the suttas of his teaching. And it appears, not that many times, it only appears in, I don’t know, less than 20 suttas and it always appears in combination with the word Samatha except for two sutras. But it always carries a particular meaning that absolutely doesn’t correspond to what everybody is assumed it might. What that means is that based on that mistaken assumption, people have been prevented from recognizing in a clearly conceptual and articulable way exactly what it is, that you are trying to do when you were doing a meditation that is called the Vipassana meditation. So, you know, yeah, that’s exciting.

Christiaan: Oh, yeah, I’m excited to read that. And, The Mind Illuminated is also very clear guide on meditation and how to navigate our practice. There is already incredible advice contained in this book, but still I will like to ask you, what would your advice to anyone listening to the podcast right now? But in terms of what you found to be most important in your path along the way of practicing meditation, what could possibly help, you know, other people are practicing that they can take away from this talk and yeah?

Culadasa: Well maybe the best thing I could do would be to say, I do believe that anybody who chooses to follow the path that’s described in The Mind Illuminated is going to be successful, but the biggest obstacles to their success are going to be:

1. Striving First of all, striving, striving is self-centered. It assumes that there’s somebody that is making this happen and you will get in your own way and you will get stopped and you’ll become very frustrated. So, strive, there’s no place for striving. What is required is simply to form clear intentions around the instructions for the stage that you’re at, in terms of what’s actually happening in your meditation each time you sit down and meditate. And that can change even in the course of a single meditation, but it’s obviously going to change over time that corresponds to the stages. So, all you do is form the intention to follow the instructions for what to do and precisely those kinds of things are happening, and you’d be diligent about doing it. Most striving just trust in the process; the instructions are all really simple.

2. over-interpret And the other thing that holds people back is they will over-interpret, they will mistake the means for the end and, there’s a lot of different techniques and practices that we introduce for people to use at every stage. And what I find, a lot of type A personalities, especially that they will lose sight of what the goal is for the particular stage that they’re at and end up spending a lot of time trying to be absolutely perfect in the performance of the techniques that are suggested, not, as I say, losing sight of the end and focusing on the means and thereby holding themselves back.

3. Assuming from reading And another obstacle is when somebody assumes that they know and understand something because they read it and they don’t actually do the practice. Now the biggest problem with this is people who have practiced in some others tradition and then they come to The Mind Illuminated, they will read The Mind Illuminated and say, oh, well, I’m obviously at stage five. And so, they’ll start off practicing in stage five, but there are certain skills that are unique to stages two, three and four, but they haven’t developed to the same degree. And so, then this becomes an obstacle. Or sometimes people will just be in a hurry, you know, I want to get to these advanced stages and, so they won’t develop the skills that they need to the degree that they need. Fortunately, this is self-correcting, they’ll find themselves suddenly unable to practice it.

You know, the example of somebody that figured they’re a stage five and they started practicing that way and it seemed great and then they tried to move on to stage six, then they find all of a sudden, they’re back at stage three. Well, what happened? Well, they ran into a situation where it revealed the fact that they hadn’t developed a certain skill to the degree that they needed. So, that’s my advice about using The Mind Illuminated as a way to achieve the skill.

4. Surrendering The other thing that is really important is learning to, now there’s a variety of words we can use, and then this kind of relates to the striving thing, striving being an extreme form of it. But it’s, there’s a lot of letting go even to the point of surrender, just surrendering to what is happening rather than resisting or trying to mold your experience to meet some preconceived notion of what you think it should be, or this can be a tremendous problem. In terms of, in order to assimilate insights, you’re going to have an insight experience and you can say, oh, wow, right, this is the way things really are and then that kind of wears off and you have the memory of it. But, what you need to do is to let go of the tendency to chase after things and to cling to things and to think that you’re the one doing things and allow yourself to just allow these things to unfold in a very natural way and all the way along. And, you know, on that concept from the very beginning, we are telling people, notice that you are not in control of your mind. All you can do is hold intentions. Notice that there is no one part of your mind that is always, the, I, the who’s in control. As you go along in the process, give up, keep giving up this idea that I’m doing it, that there’s an agent here inside my head that is responsible for making things happen. And if you do that, by the time you get to stage six, stage seven, that aspect of self-paying has largely disappeared. This, and if you’ve been carrying your practice over into daily life, you’ve been discovering more and more in daily life, how much the idea that you’re doing things, that you’re the agent in charge, is just an illusion. But every aspect of insight, maturation and development involves a kind of surrender, a kind of letting go and a kind of relaxing into it. And so, that would be the most important pieces of advice that I would give to somebody regardless of what practice they’re following is. And the unfortunate thing about a lot of practices is that they’re all in the form of, do this, do this, don’t do that, don’t do that, if that happens, go back to mounting or whatever it is. You know, and rather than encouraging all the way along to notice the reality, to see that actual fact that there is no agent in charge. Ultimately the moment of awakening the first path is a way, as a moment of total surrender. And, the more a person practices that letting go, then the sooner that’s going to happen and the more easily that’s going to happen, more painlessly it’s going to happen.

Christiaan: That’s beautiful, Culadasa, thanks again for joining me on the podcast and for your interesting talk. There’s a lot to take away here and, I’ll make sure to relisten to it again and again to take it up in my practice. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

Culadasa: You’re most welcome and thank you Christiaan

Christiaan: If you enjoyed what Culadasa talked about, make sure to check out his website mentioned in the description of this episode. We give away three signed copies of his book in our raffle. Make sure to head on over to projectmindfulness.com/giveaway. Shout out to our patrons Amber, Xmgaw, Zjee, JupiterGirlX, Candace, Tim, Kate, Chris, Justin, Disies, Krish, FIzzy Elf and Yuri! Thank you very much for supporting us. Next week I am talking with Mark Lesser about Mindful Leadership. Mark worked together with Facebook and Google to implement mindfulness into the company. Remember to subscribe to our podcast, if you enjoyed this talk. We are able to do what we do because of your help. If you would like to support us without making any donations, you can leave us a review on the platform you are listening to. And this way, more people will be able to benefit from this podcast. Thank you for listening and have a great day. 

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]]> Is it healthy to be vegan? https://meditationmind.org/is-it-healthy-to-be-vegan/ Tue, 04 Jun 2019 23:50:07 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10513 In this episode, I have a talk with Isabelle de Burgh. She specializes in creating plant-based alternatives to recipes and teaches young teens the significance of nutrition for mental health amongst other things. She received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Southern California and has extensive training in health coaching through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. We talk about switching to a plant-based diet, a holistic approach to wellness, emotional eating and the effect of our metabolism on our everyday life.

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Isa Tales or Isabelle de Burgh talks about her experience and work with plant-based diets
“It really took a slowing down, listening to myself and unfortunately not listening to the western medical doctors who were putting me on a lot of prescription medications that ended up making me more ill.”

Is it healthy to be vegan? Why should you switch to a plant-based diet?
In this episode, I have a talk with Isabelle de Burgh. She specializes in creating plant-based alternatives to your favorite recipes, teaching young teens the significance of nutrition for mental health, helping eco-friendly & non-toxic brands gain awareness through social media, and functional nutrition for those with a lazy thyroid. She received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Southern California and has extensive training in health coaching through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. We talk about switching to a plant-based diet, a holistic approach to wellness, emotional eating and the effect of our metabolism on our everyday life.

We talk about nutrients, metabolism and a holistic approach to wellness
“Young children that were misdiagnosed with ADHD and sometimes Autism, just because they had Gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.”

Why move towards a Plant-Based Diet?

Synchronicity is what Carl Jung called it. In other words, meaningful coincidences. The day we released our podcast I check my Facebook, and I see Tara Brach post a short talk on the topic of moving towards a plant-based diet. The reactions on facebook were mixed, some enjoyed it and some were less positive about it. Central to her talk was the idea of compassion and how it applies to animals and the food industry. We will focus on metabolism, nutrients and the health benefits of eating vegan in this episode.

Is it really healthy to be vegan and only eat plant-based products?

What is a plant-based diet?

A plant-based diet or vegan diet means only eating food products made from plants and not animals. Isa recommends using organically grown products which use soil that contains essential nutrients for our body. This might sound like an expensive choice, but ultimately you will find the food sustains your body well. There are numerous health benefits to eating vegan, including; no animal fats, lower cancer risk, improved bone and heart health. Important is to be mindful of what you eat and which plants contain the nutrients you need to eat.

A holistic approach to wellness

Isabelle talks about 9 pillars of wellness that create an essential feeling of happiness in our life. Those can guide you in working out where something might be missing
1. Emotional Wellness
2. Career Wellness
3. Spiritual Wellness
4. Physical Wellness
5. Financial Wellness
6. Aesthetic Wellness
7. Environmental Wellness
8. Social Wellness
9. Intellectual Wellness

If one of these is out of balance, you will feel out of balance. These things are interconnected and will not function as seperate entities in our lives. If that doesn’t make sense, remember the video game “The Sims”? You have to keep making sure those bars are in the green, and when one is red, your sim will not feel happy. I’m not implying we are videogame characters, but it does illustrate the point quite clear. Be mindful of those categories and the current state of those in your life.

Healthy vegan recipes for paleo protein pancake
One of the many healthy vegan recipes, a paleo protein pancake.

Healthy vegan recipes

If you are still not convinced, maybe have a look at these amazing plant-based recipes. Central to moving from a meat-based diet to a plant-based diet is applying mindfulness in what you eat. What does your body need and how can you provide it. In our episode, we even talk about the significance of when to eat during the day. Is a healthy breakfast really the most important meal of the day? Is there enough protein in vegan food? Do you need supplements if you switch to a vegan diet? We got you covered.

Find out more

If you enjoyed what Isabelle talked about, make sure to check out here website here: https://www.isatales.com/

After this episode, I can really recommend getting in touch with a wellness coach. Figure out what your current diet is, what your ailments are and how you can work to improve it. Medicine can sure help, but if you keep on eating what is bad for you, it will be hard to stop the effects of that.

Let me know your experiences with plant-based diets. Did you like it? Do you still prefer meat and why? Write a comment below or simply join our Online Community here and @Christiaan me directly. I’d love to hear from you!

Warm regards,

Christiaan

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]]> Mindfulness & Psychology: Memory, Emotions and Aging https://meditationmind.org/mindfulness-psychology-memory-emotions-and-aging/ Wed, 22 May 2019 10:21:08 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10352 Today I have a talk with Robert J. Goodman, Ph.D., assistant professor at Northern Arizona University. Robert is a psychologist who examines the neurological, behavioral and psycho social consequences of mindfulness. In this episode, we talk about the influence of mindfulness on memory, regulating emotions, the practice of Satipatthana and aging-related memory decline. I'm sure this talk will help you understand why this practice is so important for each one of us. I'm joined by Tim Schofield from the UK, one of our community members who writes about non-duality and minimalism, who provides additional questions and input.

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Introduction to the podcast

In this episode, I have a talk with Robert J. Goodman, Ph.D., assistant professor at Northern Arizona University. Robert is a psychologist who examines the neurological, behavioral and psycho social consequences of mindfulness. In this episode, we talk about the influence of mindfulness on memory, regulating emotions, the practice of Satipatthana and aging-related memory decline. I’m sure this talk will help you understand why this practice is so important for each one of us. I’m joined by Tim Schofield from the UK, one of our community members who writes about non-duality and minimalism, who provides additional questions and input. 

Central questions to this podcast are:

  • What is mindfulness in Psychology?
  • How does mindfulness influence the way we experience and regulate emotions?
  • Does mindfulness affect the content and accuracy of our (episodic) memory?
  • Could mindfulness training be applied to seniors and buffer aging-related memory decline?
  • Are there any downsides to mindfulness?
Vintage, Brain, Advertisement, Idea, Memory, Psychology
“After doing these types of practices, it’s as if there is, like, a monkey that’s taken off your back that you didn’t even know that was there.”

Foundations of mindfulness

What is mindfulness? Is it non-judgmental awareness? Is there a wrong way to do it? Robert talks about Satipatthana, the practice of the arousing of mindfulness in Buddhism. Applied to four domains; the body, feelings/sensations, mind/consciousness, and mental qualities. Mindfulness can be understood as an open and receptive awareness of experience as it occurs in the present.

Bunch of Photo Print

Memory and the mind

One of the key aspects of Robert’s research is the episodic memory and the influence of mindfulness. To break it down in short, we can talk about the memory in several ways: Sensory memory (very short), short-term memory, long-term memory, and the long term memory contains several kinds of memory, divided into two groups. Explicit memory or conscious consists out of declarative memory which consists of Episodic memory (events and experiences) and Semantic memory (facts and concepts). So why specifically the episodic memory? Mindfulness is described in early Buddhist canonical texts as a capacity which facilitates the “ability to call to mind things that were done and said long ago”. With mindful practice, we can learn to direct our attention. Attention is needed for much of our active memory and thus influences our experience of reality.

Smiley, Emoticon, Anger, Angry, Anxiety, Emotions

Emotions and the mind

Emotions and feelings arose as ways to get us to approach things or avoid them, as they were important to our survival. Emotions can easily get out of control. We all can remember times when it would have come in handy to be able to regulate them. Contemporary psychology sees emotion regulation as a central part of mental health, and the imbalance to mental disorders. With the practice of mindfulness, we can regulate our emotions to experience less stress and be more resilient in daily life.

Pair, Seniors, Pensioners, Age, Silhouette, Old Love

Aging-related decline and mindfulness

I suppose some of us are familiar with a grandparent becoming less and less responsive to their environment. Their brain changes, their memory declines and their interaction with the world become staler. Can mindfulness help seniors experience reality in a more profound way? Can it help them stay in the present moment more, even if their memory starts declining? The full analysis of this study is not yet there, but Robert mentions a few amazing insights on this topic in the podcast.

“Using mindfulness to face existential things we all (have to) face.”

Is mindfulness dangerous?

I’ve asked Robert the question: “What are the downsides of mindfulness?”. We hear a lot about why the practice is healthy or good for you. We also explore some of its possible shadow sides in this episode. Mindfulness and Psychedelics have something in common; they are able to change your perspective of the world completely.
These are things that won’t come up with a few sessions here and there, but talk about a longer intensive practice. Having a guide that understands your process and is trained in the practice might be a serious aid here. Not everyone will go through the same phases, but if you continue to dig deeper… it might be useful to get in touch with an experienced practitioner.

Want to know more?

If you would like to get in touch with Robert Goodman and his studies, make sure to visit his website here: https://in.nau.edu/psychological-sciences/robert-goodman/

If you would like to read more about our co-host Tim Schofield, visit his website here:
https://twschofield.com

I’d love to hear from you what your experience is with mindfulness and the above topics. Have you noticed a change when you started to practice? What happened to your memory and emotions? Share it in the comments here or on our discord community online.

Warm regards,

Christiaan

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]]> Mindful Massage, Climate Change & Compassion https://meditationmind.org/mindful-massage-climate-change-compassion/ Wed, 15 May 2019 07:11:25 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10277 In this episode, I have a talk with Frank Leder about mindfulness, compassion and vipassana meditation. Frank Leder is the founder of the TouchLife School of Massage in Europe. Frank is a direct descendant of Ruth Denison and is a teacher in her lineage in Europe. One of the central questions in this episode is: How do we develop patience and loving kindness in these hurried and stressful times? He talks about his personal journey into meditation, his experience in the practice and his advice for each of us applying mindfulness in daily life.

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Frank B. Leder is a teacher of Mindfulness in the line of Ruth Denison

In this episode, I have a talk with Frank Leder about mindfulness, compassion and vipassana meditation. Frank Leder is the founder of the TouchLife School of Massage in Europe. Frank is a direct descendant of Ruth Denison and is a teacher in her lineage in Europe. One of the central questions in this episode is: How do we develop patience and loving kindness in these hurried and stressful times? He talks about his personal journey into meditation, his experience in the practice and his advice for each of us applying mindfulness in daily life.

Setting the intention

Setting intention is a way to direct our life. Where are we going? Where do we like to go? Compassion is all about setting the intention to have the best intent for every person. May they be safe, may they be happy, may they be free, may they find peace. Our mind is an incredibly powerful tool and the effect of setting intentions and repeating them has been studied in both Psychology and Neuroscience. Practicing compassion and loving kindness is a radical way to shape our lives into something different from our sometimes reactionary and uncontrolled behavior. Compassion has the power to change us into a more loving, kinder and more happy person. Frank talks about ways to achieve this.

Mindfulness and climat change, how do we deal with it?

Cultivating compassion in the midst of turmoil

Compassion is easier said than done, there is no doubt about that. One of my favorite quotes on that matter is from Ram Dass “If You Think You’re Enlightened, Go Spend a Week with Your Family”. It proposes an important question: how can we practice loving kindness in stressful and difficult times? With both environmental and political changes that aren’t always that positive for us, how do we keep close to compassion?

Starts at 1:10

Reflecting on interconnectedness

One of the main tools besides setting an intention is reflecting. Reflecting on the reason behind someone’s behavior. If someone hurts others, they are hurt themselves. Our interconnected state of being (made simple: monkey see, monkey do) means we are connected to the suffering of others. Take a moment to return to the breathe, and reflect on how you have behaved in times when you were hurt. Realize the change can only happen when setting the intention of compassion and doing it differently. “But aren’t they dangerous, shouldn’t they be stopped?” Mindfulness will give us the tools to respond in the best way possible in each and every moment.

Find out more

If you enjoyed what Frank talked about, make sure to watch the video above or visit his website here (in German):
http://www.achtsamkeitsmeditation.net/

I’m glad to hear what you think of this podcast. Leave a comment here or join our community and simply @Christiaan there in our chat channel. We are also uploading all of our podcast episodes to Insight Timer, so make sure to visit us there.

With warm regards,

Christiaan Neeteson

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]]> Meditation Retreats: 9 Tips to get Ready https://meditationmind.org/meditation-retreats-9-tips/ Sun, 05 May 2019 15:48:45 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10167 Together with Greg Jacoby, we talk about meditation retreats. Why should you join one? What should you look for? What are the benefits and risks? Greg has organized and been part of numerous meditation retreats such as the Vipassana 10-day retreats and retreats with Swami J. The summer meditation retreats are coming up and we give you some insight into why you should or shouldn't join a retreat.

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Meditation hall of Wu Artspace, Sjönevad Sweden.

Together with Greg Jacoby, we talk about meditation retreats in this podcast episode. Why should you join one? What should you look for? What are the benefits and risks? Greg has organized and been part of numerous meditation retreats such as the Vipassana 10-day retreats and retreats with Swami J. The summer meditation retreats are coming up and we give you some insight into why you should or shouldn’t join a retreat. Here are our 9 tips to prepare you for your first meditation retreat.

9 tips to prepare yourself for a meditation retreat

1. It’s going to be just you and your mind

Sure, you are together with other people. Yet, in a way, you aren’t. Especially if you are going on a silent retreat, it will mostly be you and your own mind. Your thoughts, emotions, and perceptions will be your main concern. Make sure you are fully committed to the decision of going to a meditation retreat. Make sure you feel comfortable attending a retreat. Don’t stretch yourself too much, if it’s not the right time yet, it isn’t the right time yet. It will be worth it, but simply be prepared to spend some alone time with your mind.

Check what posture works best for you. Most retreats will have opportunities to practice in the way that works best for you.

2. Sitting still is hard

Whatever meditation retreat you are going to attend, there will be a lot of sitting meditation involved. Some retreats do 10 hours a day, some do 5 hours a day. In any case, prepare yourself for some serious sitting. We can tell you, it will be hard. There will be times you might wish to be somewhere else entirely. We can only say, it will be worth it. Don’t worry about having the perfect posture too much, but do make sure your knees touch the pillow and your back is straight. If you can’t sit full lotus, just sit in Burmese. Don’t force yourself into something you can’t do for longer than 10 minutes. While it may seem like it, this isn’t a marathon race where you compete with others. This isn’t a time to prove yourself as an extreme athlete. Sitting still is hard, make no mistake about that.

3. It’s not a competition

No doubt at times your mind will start to compare yourself with others and their practice. You might see someone in front of you, or your teacher, sitting perfectly still without moving a single muscle. There might be frustration boiling up and a feeling that you aren’t succeeding. This is normal. Just because someone is sitting still doesn’t mean they are practicing well. Just because someone is moving often, same story. We all have our own things to deal with, our own path to walk, so take your time and accept whatever comes up. It’s not a competition.

Take care of yourself during a meditation retreat.

4. Take care of yourself

Food and a sleeping place will be provided for. You won’t have to worry about attending to your daily needs in this way. Make sure that you do attend to other needs that might pop up. We are not talking about desires here, but about simple practical things. Are your knees hurting a lot? Maybe try to put a pillow underneath them to make them touch the floor. Have an extreme headache? Try to drink more or possibly even ask for some small medication. While it seems hard to distinguish, you will still be operating under the laws governing our universe. Yes, meditation is training your mind but it’s not going to make you a superhero. Take care of yourself and your needs when necessary. Don’t force yourself too much.

Meditation teachers are humans too.

5. Teachers are humans

Weird right? Sometimes it’s hard to imagine someone with so much insight and a perfect posture is anything but a Buddha. We are not telling you they aren’t to be respected, but just make sure you keep your expectations in check. Teachers are humans too, and they will not always see everything and be able to attend to everything. If something they say doesn’t resonate with you, let it be for now. If they do something you feel strange about, just talk with the retreat spokesperson. There is no need to try to pretend they can’t make mistakes. Just keep a certain amount of respect and commit to following their instructions as much as possible.

Don't worry, everyone and everything will seem more annoying than usual in your practice.

6. Things might seem extremely annoying

Whether it is that coughing person behind you, or the girl who seems to move like a tree in walking meditation, you might get extremely annoyed by small things. Flies buzzing around your head, the lack of variety in food, your mind will try to find any excuse to get very annoyed. Don’t worry, it’s not them, it’s you. And we mean that in a loving way, it’s your agitated mind that can’t attend the regular playground. Without all the distractions, it will possibly get rather obsessive about small things. Just keep going, it will disappear by itself.

7. Check yourself before you wreck yourself

In the podcast, we talk a bit about the benefits and risks of attending a meditation retreat. What are the risks? Well, working with the mind can be a dangerous thing. If you have a past in mental health issues, especially relating to personality disorders, it might be a good thing to take that into account. Consult your doctor before jumping into this. Meditation isn’t a cure-all solution. It’s a tool to help you deal with life and the mind. So what are the benefits of a retreat? Our mind is constantly busy in daily life dealing and processing things, a retreat can be a time to process and allow yourself space to do this. A time to dedicate to yourself, to deal with unprocessed events and thoughts. A meditation retreat is a perfect time to relax, take a step back and observe what is going on.

Meditation retreats have different set ups. Some are silent, other aren't so strict. Some only do sitting meditation and others do walking meditation.
The main meditation hall at Dhamma Dhara, in Shelburne Falls, MA (Photo courtesy of Dhamma Dhara)

8. Not everything works for everyone

It can happen something doesn’t work for you. It might even be that it works for most people but not for you. They say “the exception confirms the rule”. There is no need to worry if something doesn’t work for you. Maybe there is something else on your path that needs attending to. There is a reason there are so many different traditions and teachings who offer meditation. If Zen doesn’t resonate, maybe check out Vipassana. If you don’t feel comfortable with Buddhism, go check out more secular meditation approaches. You don’t have to force yourself into some criterion. Just commit to what you are doing, give it a fair shot and simply move on if it isn’t for you at this time. If you find sitting crushingly hard, maybe find a retreat with more walking meditations. If you practice Hatha Yoga, go find a retreat that does Hatha Yoga.

9. Going back into the normal world after a retreat can be overwhelming

After time in a retreat, things are a bit different. There is probably a lot of calmness and mindfulness in what you do. You might not notice the difference that much, but once you head back into the ‘normal’ world, you will be able to tell the difference. After a silent retreat, you might be overwhelmed with everyone suddenly talking again. We recommend you don’t immediately start getting back fully into your daily life after a retreat. Just take a day or 2 of rest after doing a retreat. Allow yourself the time to process what happened and give it a proper place in your life.

Want to know more?

If you’d like to talk about this podcast or have comments and ideas, please let me know by joining our community on Discord
Simply use @christiaan or send me a DM! I would love to hear from you.

With warm regards,

Christiaan Neeteson

This podcast is available on…
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The post Meditation Retreats: 9 Tips to get Ready appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> What is the meaning crisis? with John Vervaeke https://meditationmind.org/the-meaning-crisis-with-john-vervaeke/ https://meditationmind.org/the-meaning-crisis-with-john-vervaeke/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2019 21:26:12 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=10038 In this episode of the podcast, I talk with John Vervaeke, Doctor of Philosophy and award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology. We talk about his practice, his journey into meditation, his unique approach to western philosophy, eastern philosophy and evidence-based science. Various topics will be talked about including the psychedelic revolution, what enlightenment exactly is and what the higher states of consciousness entail.

The post What is the meaning crisis? with John Vervaeke appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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“We have to give up the magic bullet.”

In this episode of the podcast, I talk with John Vervaeke, Doctor of Philosophy and award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology. We talk about his practice, his journey into meditation, his unique approach to western philosophy, eastern philosophy and evidence-based science. Various topics will be talked about including the psychedelic revolution, what enlightenment exactly is and what the higher states of consciousness entail.

Victor Swift, Jordan Peterson & John Vervaeke discussing the meaning of life.
Source: Mind Matter

Bridging the gap

John is passionate about bridging the gap between western philosophy, eastern philosophy, and evidence-based science. His practice includes a variety of methods and techniques. We go through his morning routine and talk about Tai-Chi, Qi-Gong, Pranayama, Vipassana, Metta practice, Prajna (a non-duality practice), Yoga and Lectio Devina. Don’t worry, we’ll dig into what some of those things exactly mean. Traditionally, Lectio Divina has four separate steps: read; meditate; pray; contemplate. We talk about the best way to approach this way of reading contemplative texts. John advised the book “Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina” by Michael Casey as an introductory read on how to approach this practice.

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor john vervaeke
“Neuroenlightenment: John Vervaeke at TEDxUofT”

What exactly is the meaning crisis?

John talks about the meaning crisis and zombies in the West. This theme of meaning has become very central in our podcasts. Finding your meaning, your purpose, your bliss. Even with the West turning away from religion, there is no way to turn away from meaning. Meaning is essential for our mental health and physical well being in the process. We talk about what might be a way out of this crisis. The following quote might describe perfectly what it entails:

“[Find]…what can we salvage, transplant and regrow from these [ancient] wisdom traditions so that we can cultivate a new ecology of practices that are directly engineered to be responsive to the meaning crisis so that we can awaken from it in a way that alleviates a lot of this suffering and perhaps give us some guidance towards how we can re-connect with a pathway both individually and collectively for seeking a flourishing way of life.”

– John Vervaeke
Brown Cathedral Interior
“Your meditative practice can be a source of self-deception.”

Give up the magic bullet

There is no way one thing is going to cure all. No one medicine or one way is going to save you and me from suffering. Instead, it’s a collection of approaches and methods that can benefit us. John calls for an examination of both Western and Eastern philosophy, it’s spiritual traditions and integrate it in our way of living. There is no need to return back to an old way. We can simply find a way to integrate this wisdom in our modern world and time. Whether it is Daoism, Catholicism or Paganism; it will have something that is worth extracting and applying in this time and place.

Want to know more?

If you’d like to know more about John Vervaeke, take a look at his YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpqDUjTsof-kTNpnyWper_Q

If you’d like to talk about this podcast or have comments and ideas, please let me know by joining our community on Discord
Simply use @christiaan or send me a DM! I would love to hear from you.

With warm regards,

Christiaan Neeteson

This podcast is available on…
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Podbean
Apple Podcasts
Stitcher 
TuneIn
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The post What is the meaning crisis? with John Vervaeke appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> https://meditationmind.org/the-meaning-crisis-with-john-vervaeke/feed/ 1 Finding Your Bliss https://meditationmind.org/finding-your-bliss/ Sun, 14 Apr 2019 21:20:00 +0000 https://projectmindfulness.com/?p=9254 In this episode I talk with Lou Redmond, who is a meditation teacher and writer. Central to this episode is finding your bliss, the hero's journey and belief in action. We talk how Lou went from addiction to alcohol to a complete change in his body and mind. He found his path and supposedly his destiny. We deconstruct what happened to him and why he had the courage to quit his job and go on a soul searching journey. We talk about his meditation practice and his teachings on Insight Timer.

The post Finding Your Bliss appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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From alcoholism to Meditation & Mindfulness, the story of Lou Redmond's transformation
“I once lived a life that was far different than the one you see here.”

In this episode, I talk with Lou Redmond, who is a meditation teacher and writer. Central to this episode is finding your bliss, the hero’s journey, and belief in action. We talk about how Lou went from addiction to alcohol to a complete change in his body and mind. He found his path and supposedly his destiny. We deconstruct what happened to him and why he had the courage to quit his job and go on a soul searching journey. We talk about his meditation practice and his teachings on Insight Timer.

Afbeelding kan het volgende bevatten: Lou Redmond, glimlacht, baard, buiten en close-up

The Leap of Faith

Faith, trust or belief. Three words that can mean something totally different for each person. In the west, we’ve started to associate the word ‘Faith’ with something resembling ignorance, prejudice and a biased view. When talking with Lou Redmond, we talk about faith in action. This means it is a faith that expresses itself into actions, and not just into sitting, wishing and waiting. There is no magical voice in the clouds telling us unreasonable things, this is a different thing. There will be times we feel like we are led into hard times or strange places, but with faith in our actions, we will be able to persist in what we believe. This belief can be love, hope or success. What is your leap of faith?

Lou Redmond published his own book called "Find your Truth"

Finding your Truth

“The truth will set you free.” Well, what if the truth is there is no one truth for every person? What if all our perspectives are valid in some way, and we all see reality from a different angle? The striving for truth and justice had some horrible consequences in the history of mankind. Again and again, we seem to desire a one-method-for-all approach, something to magically cure us of anything and everything. Time to find your truth, the thing that is valid and important for you at this point in your journey. Whatever any deity or teacher tells you, you have to find it to be your truth. You have to make it work and be the master of your own life and destiny. We talk about finding your bliss, finding what works and unraveling your truth.

Lou Redmond posts guided meditations on Insight Timer

Want to know more?

If you’d like to know more about Lou Redmond, take a look at his website:
https://www.louredmond.com/

If you’d like to talk about this podcast or have comments and ideas, please let me know by joining our community on Discord
Simply use @christiaan or send me a DM! I would love to hear from you.

With warm regards,

Christiaan Neeteson

This podcast is available on…
Anchor
Podbean
Apple Podcasts
Stitcher 
TuneIn
Pocket Casts
Overcast
Spotify
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Google Podcasts

The post Finding Your Bliss appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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