New Moon Greetings – October 14, 2023 One of my favorite books on meditation and mindfulness is Eric Harrison’s The Foundations of Mindfulness, How to Cultivate Attention, Good Judgment, and Tranquility. The book is informed by Harrison’s 30 years as a meditation and mindfulness instructor in Australia. He was introduced to meditation in the 1970s … Read more
What of enlightenment? When I began meditating many moons ago, the workshops and books I was immersed in promoted a concept of enlightenment. They weren’t referring to The Enlightenment with a capital E that happened in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, but instead a spiritual shift in perspective. Since meditation has become mainstream, the … Read more
Happy Earth Day – April 22 2022 The meditation below is adapted from one in my book, Growing Mindful. It seems like a good offering on this Earth Day 2022. Our Human-Centric Culture Western culture’s human-centric view of the world emphasizes separateness from the web of life. That view has created many of our modern … Read more
My 2017 Intention It’s the last Sunday of the year and I’ve made it to a finish line of sorts. At this time last year, I set an intention to write a weekly blog on a word or a concept for mindful focus. My goal was multi-purposed. Setting a weekly focal point would give me … Read more
Listening with Intention Listening is the mindfulness focus word this week. It may seem like the easiest thing in the world and at first glance it appears that not much effort is required. Yet mindful listening is not a passive activity. Instead, we are actively participating but in a quiet and intentional way. Although there … Read more
“We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.”(1) Emptiness, spaciousness, openness – that’s the focus of this week’s mindfulness practice. A room is filled with space, but we focus on the objects. A doorway is simply space but we focus on the wood that frames it. … Read more
Mindfulness Experiment Week 3 “There is a journey between our steps that we always miss.” This idea was provided to me by Grand Master Samuel Copeland(1) and it led to my week three focus words. What is the space between our steps? Last week’s mindfulness focus was to be aware of each … Read more
“Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.” (1) I’ve chosen this idea from Thich Nhat Hanh as the intentional focus for the week. It is a body centered practice and can be a movement meditation. Focusing deliberately on the feet’s connection to the earth can take us out … Read more
“We are all connected; to each other biologically; to the earth chemically; and to the universe atomically.” That’s from Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author and Director of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. His explanation is simple and to the point. It might be easy to miss how profound the idea is. For much of human … Read more
Creating a Strategy Having a strategy for mindfulness practice is as important as a technique. Many of the participants in the Mindfulness 101 class that I teach at the Colorado Mental Wellness Network already know about meditation and mindfulness. Many have practiced sporadically. Their challenge is not that they don’t know some basic meditation techniques, … Read more
