Fifth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Calm and Tranquility [recast]

This talk explores how to open to more subtle felt-sense awareness through mindful breathing. Whole Body Breathing is yet another tool for drawing attention to the play of energy and sensations within and can dramatically heighten awareness of what is arising and how you are relating to it. This talk includes a guided meditation on this technique.

This is an adaptation of the first talk of a five day retreat at the Art of Living Center in Boone North Carolina.   You’ll learn some practical suggestions for embodied meditation and how the body can be an ally in your practice.

This talk explores who you are free from the wanting mind.   You’ll learn about the nature of desire, strategies for working with a greed-filled mind, what can arise as desire lessens and finally, some thoughts on being desire-free and enlightenment itself.

This talk explores who you are in the absence of ignorance and confusion.   You’ll explore the nature of delusion, strategies for overcoming delusion and being more clearly into the nature of reality and what it means to be awake beyond the fluctuations of emotions, thoughts and beliefs.

This talk explores who you are beyond the reach of  aversion.   You’ll learn about how, in our relationship to hatred there can be a rush to premature transcendence and how, by turning toward aversion, what is possible when hatred ceases, namely the arising of inter-connectedness, compassion and love.

This talk explores who you are beyond the conditioned self.   You’ll learn about what arises with the dissolution of the ego:  A greater sense of interconnectedness, an increased flow of compassion and empathy and not least, a more tangible sense of freedom from stress and suffering.

This talk explores the seventh factor of awakening.   You’ll learn how this factor is the the complete expression of all and as you cultivate both spaciousness and steadiness, wisdom and compassion can flow unrestricted.

This talk explores the power of sustained attention. You’ll learn about the consequence of chronic distraction, the levels of concentration you can achieve in your meditation practice,  how to balance concentration with deep relaxation and how to bring more sustained focus into your life.

This talk explores how to cultivate a calm and relaxed presence.   You’ll learn how tranquility is critical to mindfulness practice and sets the stage for more and more intimate awareness of what is happening and how you are holding it.

This talk explores ways you can bring more joy into your life. You’ll learn about the two essential forms of joy and how practicing ‘yes’ to life can cultivate more aliveness, radiance and upwelling of well-being in your life.