EP345: Willfulness and positionality dissolve into silence

There’s a progression that seems to happen.You might say it’s from gross to subtle.  Where attention shifts from being absorbed in abstractions, thoughts, representations, and relationships…to attention moving to much more subtle energies like sensations, sensory input, and maybe something like intuition or perception.Identity is viewed in these different ways. From gross thought and beliefs The post EP347: Unraveling ego at the feeling level appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

This week’s episode is a portion of a Community call with guest speaker Shenan Charania. This was one of my all-time favorite guest speaker calls and several in our community said the same.Shenan and I talk about silence, presence, regret, thought, and much more. Shenan shares his past as a gang member and his experiences The post EP346: Extremely This with Shenan Charania appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In my recent silent retreat we explored the fact that nothing was happening.  All retreatants had to do was show up when the gong chimed and be quiet. Literally nothing else. Their entire day from 10am to 10pm was scheduled for them. Meals were prepared and served. Life for 6 days was unbelievably simple. And so The post EP345: Willfulness and positionality dissolve into silence appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In this episode, I talk about how I work with common phobias.  First we look at what you’re really afraid of – It’s what you think (literally), not the thing you think you’re afraid of (flying, spiders, vomit, germs, etc.) Then, we look at the feeling aspect of the fear. The combination of imagination + feeling is The post EP344: Phobias – What are you really afraid of? appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

Following has been an important pointer for me over the years.  Following, or yielding to what’s already here, looking toward what wants to happen, absorbing, immersing, disintegrating, or melting into what is, being overwhelmed…these all have the flavor of following.And sometimes there’s a flavor of leading. Not following what the world says in terms of The post EP343: Following and leading are the same thing appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In this episode, I address a series of questions sent in by a listener. Hannah says she has performed horribly in past work environments and that’s not a thought, it’s a reality. Isn’t it that reality that’s causing her depression?She also gets that the past is over, but it still happened and it was still The post EP342: Being a failure, forgiving yourself, and the reality of the past: Questions from a listener appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

Those thoughts that aren’t yours…yes, that’s all of them…you don’t have to pick them up.  If you don’t want them and you didn’t order them, you don’t have to take delivery of them. Let it be this simple. The thoughts that want to make it more complicated than this also don’t need to be taken delivery of. ***Beginning The post EP341: Don’t take delivery appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

Peace is not in something else. It’s not in adding more or changing what’s here.It’s actually here, in this, now. How can that be when what’s here now is difficult and unwanted? I’ll talk about the difference between an abstraction (e.g., I’m going through a divorce, my country is at war, I have cancer) – there’s The post EP340: How do I find peace in reality? appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In this episode, we explore the desire for more of a specific feeling, particularly joy. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Of course you want more joy. Of course more joy is available. Perhaps joy is even our “default state”. We obviously want to experience more of it!As innocent and obvious as this may seem, perhaps The post EP339: Is more joy available? appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In this episode I walk through a practice in unbound consciousness I learned from Angelo Dilullo’s book, Awake: It’s your turn. This is something I’ve been practicing for a few years, and it’s my primary practice on silent retreat.This practice allows you to “get underneath” experience – to see from beyond the confines of content The post EP338: A practice in unbound consciousness appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.