Two years ago we launched the Meditation Teacher Training Institute with 60+ participants. This weekend we completed our final last big gathering with a graduation ceremony coming up in a few weeks. The DC / VA / MD area doesn't know what's going to hit it with these folks unleashed.
This was an intensive program that was quite rigorous and challenging. I'm honored to be part of it and share guiding the experience with fellow teachers Tara Brach, Pat Coffey and Hugh Byrne.
Back in the mid-Atlantic, there is nothing quite as thrilling as the movement of the geese up and down the river. Here goes one crew…
I arrived here in Boulder at the tail end of the storms. I spent four days 'underground' in the Sounds True studios recording a six-CD set called Body-Centered Inquiry (due out next year). Huge thanks to everyone at Sounds True for making this such a great experience.
Boulder dried out pretty fast, but the surrounding area was truly devastated.
It's getting busy on the river.
Fall classes are starting up this week. Last night I kicked off the first session at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington on the topic, "The Three Reasons I Meditate."
It's been 41 years since I first learned Transcendental Meditation and I've had an active meditation practice ever since. Over the years I've had the great fortune to study with amazing teachers and in a wide variety of philosophies and traditions.
Perhaps the greatest realization is that in any given tradition, you're bound to find another tradition that will give you the exact opposite instruction.
"Meditate with your eyes closed."
"Meditate with your eyes open!"
"Give full effort!"
"Relax!"
Ultimately all techniques are like fingers pointing at the moon. As the saying goes, "Don't seek to follow great teachers. Seek what they sought." When you do that, your path becomes rich and deeply personal.
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here, stitcher here.
Rocky Mountain National Park at sunset.
I'm away from weekly talks for a month or so, but thought I'd share this one from the IMCW Spring Retreat. It's a somewhat hazy memory, but I felt pretty good about it afterward.
As it's a retreat talk, I may be using some Buddhist terminology that should be pretty self-evident and there will be mini-meditations embedded in the talk.
Weekly classes start again in September. I'll be anchoring the class in Arlington and only occasionally coming to Capitol Hill.
Stay tuned for a second class in Arlington.
We'll be offering something for those who'd like more time practicing and more time for questions and discussion.
Here's the blurb:
While I'm on summer hiatus I thought I'd share a talk from the Spring IMCW Retreat.
Life seems to be a dance of stimulus and response.
The gap between what happens and how you react to it is precious. It is the difference between endless predicitable reactivity and the realm of new possibilities.
As a 'contemplative artist you have multiple strategies as to how you bring your attention to that space.
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here, Stitcher here
I've been playing more sakuhachi these days, putting in some hours with this finicky instrument. For some reason, KD always scampers into the room where I'm playing, settles in and loves to join in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxJEdug7b94
Gotta love working from home. A great mid-day break today.
1. Toss the board in the car2. Head for the river
3. Blast upstream
4. Do a call
5. Float back.
This last Saturday 76 folks filled our room at St. Luke's Episcopal in Bethesda for a day of practice. The program was called, "A Meditative Journey: Mindful Movement, Deep Relaxation and Meditation. As the day contained two long "lying down meditations," there was a palpable sense of stress racheting down and softening. As we practiced silence for most of the day, there was also a sense of 'being alone together' I enjoy so much on retreat. The silence tends to amplify the experience.
Here's a shot at the end of the day when we finally started talking again:
It was the last day on big water and a consistent and blustery onshore 19mph wind had the water whipped up into a froth of whitecaps. Within minutes I regressed to about six years old, smashing through waves and catching the occasional well-formed one in. I paddled to exhaustion. Carrying my board up the hill, a guy about my age was coming down with his swim goggles in hand.
"You're going to swim in that?!?," I asked.
"Yeah, he said. I know it's crazy, but I'm heading out in the morning and I have to get one last shot in. You were out in that?!?"
"Yeah," I responded. I know it's crazy, but I'm heading out in the morning and I had to get one last shot in."
I had the honor of sharing the Still, Small Voice Within Retreat with Clint Piatelli, who joined the adventure a day into it. If you're interested in reading an irreverent, refreshingly honest and authentic account of his time at Kripalu and on the retreat, look no further. This is an ongoing series. You can start here: A Virgin at Kripalu and read on from there.
Having practiced and led many, many silent retreats, I loved his account of the experience here:
Posted: 01 Aug 2013 06:28 AM PDT
I had never heard the term “social silence” before, but I immediately didn’t like it. I was at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, taking a course on meditation. Social silence meant that, outside of our scheduled class, I wasn’t suppose to talk. To anyone. About anything. The phrase actually scared me. Within a microsecond of hearing it, my mind projected isolation, loneliness, depression, and despair. Plus, it had a bad ring to it, like the word “rash”. And it sounded like an oxymoron.
. After hearing that they strongly recommend I practice social silence for the first few days of this new course I had just switched into, something inside of me got triggered. I wasn’t completely aware of what, but I suddenly became incredibly uneasy. All of a sudden, I completely regretted my decision to join this class.
. In the confines of my own mind, I reduced the term “social silence” to the acronym “SS” and began internally calling it that. Fully aware of the Nazi reference, it felt appropriate, considering the amount of fear and dread I was experiencing from hearing it.
, Moments before, I felt great about my decision to switch into this new course, believing I had landed just where I needed to be. Now, I literally wanted to bolt. Out the door. Out the class. Out of Kripalu. Out of what now felt like an insane asylum.
. Over the next few days, what started off as a fear became a reality. And an even bigger reality than I had first feared. I experienced not only loneliness and isolation and depression, but lots of other great stuff too. Self doubt. Self judgment. Self criticism. Pain. Self flagellation. What the hell had I gotten myself into? I didn’t need to come to Kripalu to experience that. I’m perfectly capable of creating that on my own, back home.
. Not only that, but because I couldn’t talk about how I felt with anyone, it was getting worse. I have always processed things through talking. The more I talk, and listen, and converse, the more able I am to move through stuff. And the more I’m able to connect. Now I wasn’t moving through anything, and I wasn’t connecting. At least it didn’t feel like I was. So I’m not only stuck, I’m lonely. All this shit is coming up, and I’m unable to tell anyone, save for my time in class, which offered relatively little room for that. I just had to sit with it. To be with it. To experience it. To allow it.
. And it was precisely in the being with it, in the allowing of it, that I got what I needed.
. Please stay tuned.
.
©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.
Clint is a great writer and he's got a wealth of creative expressions on his site.
Sunset photos from the beach get a little rote, but this one was pretty cool.
Since I started paddleboarding last year I've been on rivers, lakes and now the ocean, or rather the big bay here on Cape Cod. I was excited to try surfing, but it's been flatter than the river all week. The other afternoon it was both hazy and sunny on the bay and I headed straight west, into the light enveloped in a surreal glow reflected back in the waves.
My last class of the season at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington was a Question and Answer session.
Truly wonderful, thoughtful questions and I hope my responses may have come close to doing them justice.
Two more weeks of class then we'll start up again the fall.
The blurb:
Themes from this evening: How do we cultivate awareness of self and live with others?
Why is happiness so important?
What do I do when I meditate and 'feel worse?'
What is it about the moment that is so important in all these teachings?
How do I prevent experiences where I get overwhelmed and 'lose it?'
All these and more ...
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here and talks on Stitcher here.
A long, steamy drive from DC to Kripalu Center in the Berkshire Mountains left me pretty wrung out. But there was just enough light to inflate my paddle board and head out to the middle of the lake.
All alone. Finally.
Except for one horsefly.
I learned a new dance.
I call it the try-to-smack-the-horsefly-while -standing-on-a-board-in-the-middle-of-40-acres-of-water shuffle.
Days upon days of rain, the river is rising and the pup is happy.
Someone once asked one of my teachers, "If I'm going to meditate, I don't want to waste my time. So, what's the best meditation technique?"
My teacher paused, then said, "The one you do on a regular basis."
"Explore your purpose in life," he said, "then give yourself to it fully." The Buddha supposedly said, "Finding your dharma is your dharma" or "Finding your path is your path."
We each have unique history, preferences and character structures. Though there are plenty of traditions and teachers that will happily explain why their approach is the best, only you can truly determine the practices, observances and restraints that will cultivate greater understanding, wisdom and compassion.
To do that you need both clear intention and ruthless honesty as you evaluate your thoughts and actions.
That's a bit on the topic for this week's class. Here's the blurb:
There is no 'one size fits all' in spiritual practice. We each have our own path of healing and self-discovery. How do you determine your path? What do all paths have in common?
This talk explores the formation of your unique character structure and the process of discovering not only who you are, but what you are and what practices are the best match for you in your life.
iTunes podcast here. Online streaming here. Now on Stitcher here.
Morning walk in the woods along the river.
This weekend Tara and I led a daylong retreat on "Conscious Relationships" at Catholic University of America. A major theme of the day was exploring what gets in the way of intimacy.
It was quite the dance to explore the theme of intimacy in a group of 250.
Wonderful people and a wonderful day.
