What is this feeling we call restlessness?  It feels like something is off. There’s an agitation or irritation interpreted as something that can’t be felt; something needs to be different. . That’s part of it, and most of us live with that feeling much of the time. But then there is the movement away from that

I’d been wanting to create an episode that I was tentatively calling “They aren’t your thoughts – Revisited”.  Then, a series of questions along the lines of “How do I stop thinking about this?” started popping up, which led me to write something about that, which led to this episode. They aren’t your thoughts. You aren’t

We can all tell our story and it can feel helpful to do so at times. We feel seen and heard, our experience recognized by another person as valid and real-to-us.  But what seems even more helpful is sharing what’s beneath the story. Going to the simplest, most immediate thing. Something more like how it

This week’s episode speaks to a listener’s questions about self-compassion and surrender. Jay says they have a block to self-compassion. They want to know how one can access this self-love without talking yourself into it. There are so many threads in this question that lead to an exploration of feeling, expectations, blocks, what surrender is, the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In my recent week in silence I saw two things more clearly and simply than I ever had. One, there is nothing to work out. The movements of life around the deep, still, silence that is always there are just movements. There is nothing in those movements that requires anything.And two, those movements in consciousness

In this episode, I give an overview of the way I see and work with anxiety. I recorded this episode for people who are brand new to this way of viewing anxiety. I have been deeply impacted by this understanding myself and have seen the way it resonates as truth for so many.At the beginning

You know what hurts? Bracing yourself. Holding yourself apart from what’s here. Not that you can, but believing you can and tightening and resisting life as if it’s going to slam into you.Bracing yourself for impact hurts.You know what doesn’t hurt so much? Being overwhelmed. Letting life overwhelm “you”. Seeing that what is arising is already

Lisa Natoli was our November guest speaker in The Community. This week’s podcast is a portion of our call.  I felt a huge resonance with what Lisa shares because things look exactly the same to me (although we may point in different ways) – she points to being in/as what is, as it is, welcoming

Being in silence is not about suppressing anything.  It’s also not about creating anything, such as an environment of peace or thoughtlessness or anything like that. It’s the exact opposite, actually. It’s about leaving everything alone to simply be exactly what it is.“What it is” is constantly changing. It is totally unknowable. It’s far too fluid

What is meant by “no self”?  We use the personal pronoun “I” all the time. I am typing (or reading) these words, I am feeling anxious, I am ready for winter.   To what does that “I” refer? Can you identify or locate it in direct experience? In this episode, we’ll see the difference between direct experience and