How More Focus Can Transform Your Life, Part 1 [archive talk]

This talk explores how to embrace impermanence.   You’ll learn about the inevitability of change and how understanding your reactivity and biases can help you access a quality of awareness that can help you move from reactivity to wisdom, compassion, creativity and enthusiasm. 

This talk explores the nature of ‘true nature.’   You’ll learn more about the nature of ‘true nature,’ what gets in the way of experiencing this primal quality of being and some doorways of practice that can bring you into an intimate, embodied sense of presence.

This talk explores the mechanics for entering the flow state.   You’ll learn the role mindfulness plays in setting up the flows state, a review of triggers that can be helpful, how applying the principles of flow to meditation can deepen your practice and some cautions and concerns about the practice.

This talk explores what it means to be in flow. You’ll learn about the magic of being in the flow state, some distinctions between mindfulness and flow and how to be more aware of how you consciously or unconsciously sabotage the flow state.  

This talk explores the power of willful attention inwardly as well as in the world.   You’ll learn some strategies for inner focus in your meditation as well as some outer focus to cultivate sustained attention on what is most important to you in your life right now.  

This talk explores the power of willful attention.   You’ll learn what the Buddha said about concentration and liberation, some essential practices for deepening focus and how skillfully applying concentration can open up new inner worlds.    

This talk explores the power of streaming thoughts toward love, compassion, kindness, joy and equanimity.   You’ll learn about the origin of the heart practices, how here love starts as a thought and moves into an experience, the system for loving kindness and what it means to be awake both in heart and mind.

This talk explores the practice of Bare Attention and how suffering ceases in the experience of gratitude. You’ll learn about the distinction of the linear mind and the intuitive mind, the practice Bare Attention and a technique for opening to gratitude as a way of shifting the mind to a more fluid and intuitive state.

This talk explores how to deconstruct beliefs. You’ll learn about the origin of thoughts and beliefs, the art of interrupting the stream of thinking, the art of deconstructing beliefs and the importance, when you do this work, to err on the side of safety and self-care.

This talk explores the power of noting or labeling your inner experience. You’ll learn how you can cut through discursive thinking by training your attention to the sense fields, but also what it means to ‘take the seat of the witness’ and note or label what is happening inside.