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Meditation and Beyond
Elliott S. Dacher, M.D.
55 episodes
2 days ago
Behind the restless flow of thoughts lies a vast, silent field of awareness – the natural mind that precedes and sustains all experience. We live mostly within a fragment of this wholeness, mistaking our conditioned patterns, stories, and identities for the entirety of who we are. Meditation, when understood in its deeper sense, is not simply a technique to calm or improve the mind but a doorway to directly recognize the luminous consciousness from which all mental activity arises and dissolv...
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Behind the restless flow of thoughts lies a vast, silent field of awareness – the natural mind that precedes and sustains all experience. We live mostly within a fragment of this wholeness, mistaking our conditioned patterns, stories, and identities for the entirety of who we are. Meditation, when understood in its deeper sense, is not simply a technique to calm or improve the mind but a doorway to directly recognize the luminous consciousness from which all mental activity arises and dissolv...
Show more...
Mental Health
Education,
Courses,
Health & Fitness
Episodes (20/55)
Meditation and Beyond
Discovering the Nature of Mind
Behind the restless flow of thoughts lies a vast, silent field of awareness – the natural mind that precedes and sustains all experience. We live mostly within a fragment of this wholeness, mistaking our conditioned patterns, stories, and identities for the entirety of who we are. Meditation, when understood in its deeper sense, is not simply a technique to calm or improve the mind but a doorway to directly recognize the luminous consciousness from which all mental activity arises and dissolv...
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6 days ago
19 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Bottom-Up – Top-Down
A question that all meditators confront is how to stabilize the qualities we experience in our natural state – serenity, spontaneous realizations, freedom from conditioning, and a natural simplicity and ease. These qualities often appear only as fleeting experiences, easily disrupted by the pressures of daily life. In other words, we tend to know them as temporary states, not enduring traits. A state is transient, a trait is stable. The work of meditation is the transformation of moment...
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1 month ago
18 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Freedom from the Known
We are born with a simple, clear, and open awareness. Yet, this pristine consciousness is short lived. As we navigate life, our experiences – linked to external approval or criticism – progressively reduce our scope of consciousness to limited ways of perceiving reality, ingrained habits, and automated reaction patterns. Unbounded curiosity, exuberance and awe, novelty, and spontaneous creativity give way to the ordinary, known, and mundane. Our lives become conditioned, molded and contracted...
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4 months ago
20 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Where Stillness Waits: Beyond Circumstantial Calm
We have all experienced moments of circumstantial calmness – whether through a relaxing walk in nature, immersion in art and beauty, or through music, yoga, intimacy, meditation, and other such events that can calm mind and body. These moments offer a respite from the overactive mind, afflictive emotions, and daily challenges. We seek out these desirable circumstances, valuing them greatly. However, all circumstances are impermanent. They may last moments or longer, but their nature is ...
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6 months ago
19 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
The Peak Experience
A peak experience is a fleeting moment of profound inner peace, harmony, flow, and oneness. It’s T.S. Eliot’s image of children playing innocently in the apple tree, Wordsworth’s moment of splendor in the grass, or you and I “lost” in nature, wonderment, exuberance, beauty, art, intimacy, dance, or, music. It’s when the music, the playing, and the musician become one. Most individuals have had a peak experience, but missed its meaning. What on the surface appeared to be a pleasant momen...
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6 months ago
21 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
The Vanishing ‘I’: Finding Freedom in "Otherness"
Shantideva, a famous 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk, shared with us a very wise realization: "All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others." When we desire that others be free of suffering and attain happiness, we swiftly lose our ego-based-self-cherishing and self-centeredness. In that precise moment a spontaneous feeling of peace, connection, and contentness, no longer obscured by our personal...
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8 months ago
23 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Liberation on Arising: The Secret of Mental Stillness
"Self-liberation on arising" describes the natural dissolution of thoughts, feelings, and sensations when the mind refrains from grasping, elaborating, or fixating on them. Mental appearances arise and pass naturally, but fixation extends their lifespan, leading to suffering and distraction. This cycle detaches us from present experience and immerses us in past stories. By observing mental activity without entanglement, we allow these fleeting appearances to dissolve like writing on water—mom...
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9 months ago
18 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
This Precious Life
"This Precious Life" explores the human journey from the expansive, limitless consciousness of childhood, to the constricted identity shaped by societal demands and ego, and in fortunate ones the return to the precious essence of an expanded conscousness. Eastern traditions highlight this second phase of life where one turns inward, rediscovering the vast possibilities and serenity beyond the ego. This awakening, often triggered by pivotal life moments, aligns with the Hero’s Journey—a path t...
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10 months ago
20 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
The Gap: Glimpses of Essence
This podcast explores the distinction between two aspects of self: the essential self, characterized by unconditioned awareness present from birth, and the personal (ego) self, a constructed identity shaped by experiences and societal conditioning. The ego self narrows our expansive consciousness into patterns and beliefs, obscuring our natural state of openness and wonder. Despite this conditioning, moments of connection to the essential self can arise, such as during experiences of flow, pr...
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10 months ago
18 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Virtual Reality to True Being
Simply stated, virtual reality is an experience that on first glance appears real but on further examination is found not to be real. The experience seems real, looks real, and sounds real, but it is isn’t. It doesn't appear in the manner in which it appears. In addition to dreams and mirages onsider our ordinary day-to-day life and activities – the usual experience of people, places, things, and mental activity. From the perspective of ordinary consciousness, it’s all very real to us, but ca...
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11 months ago
20 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Zooming In – Zooming Out
"Zooming In – Zooming Out" explores the practice of reconnecting with our fundamental, unconditioned awareness, which we are born with but often lose touch with as our ego and personal identity develop. This is called "Zooming-In." When we need to navigate day-to-day life, we simply "Zoom-Out" by reaching into our vast unconditioned consciousness and manifesting those aspects of memory, cognition, intellect, creativity, imagination, and relational skills that are required in the moment. We cr...
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1 year ago
19 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Personal Love – Essence Love
We can begin by agreeing that there are two fundamental kinds of love – personal love and essence love. Although the first, personal love, may take many forms, it is characterized by the love of one person for another within the scope of our usual mind/body life. That love will vary in character and quality following the psychological development of the individuals involved. The second kind of love is what I have called essence love. It exists outside of the realm of personal iden...
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1 year ago
17 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Seen But Not Real – Not Seen But Real
A desert mirage, an echo, train tracks appearing to meet in the distance, and magic tricks are among those experiences that we can see or hear, but they are not actually real. These are sensory-based illusions that we initially think are real, but later learn that they are not real. Love, kindness, patience, and spirit cannot be directly seen. They have no form, shape, texture, color, weight, or location. We cannot touch, feel, see or smell them. However, we would all agree that they are real...
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1 year ago
17 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Reclaiming Your Center: Small Self to True Self
Our lives are influenced and guided by our sense of “self.” When we refer to our self – I believe, I think, I feel – it is important to ask what self, what “I,” are we referring to. Is it our customary, personal day-to-day self, or our natural, inner self? Which “self” have we placed at the center of our life? What we place at the center will define how we experience the world. When our small personal self is at the center – past history, ideas, perceptual patterns, and learned identities – w...
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1 year ago
20 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
The Decisive Experience
We have all had moments when the tumult of life stops and clear and truthful insights arise from the depth of our being. We call them “aha” experiences. These moments of understanding are neither planned nor organized. They come unexpectedly and spontaneously. They are brief and carry with them a sense of truth, authenticity, and authority. We don’t know how or where they come from. We might not be able to explain these insights to others, but without question we know them to be our truth. Th...
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1 year ago
18 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Come to Me as a Child
A child is born with a clear, pure awareness. Not an awareness of this or that or an awareness accompanied by interpretations, commentary, judgments, or preferences. A simple clear awareness is experienced without labels and filled with a natural wonder, awe and curiosity. And that miracle of beingness is experienced, but at the time unknown to the infant. We use the same terms – empty awareness, pure awareness, choiceless awareness, and timeless awareness – for both this natural foundational...
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1 year ago
18 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Glimpses of Beyond
We have all experienced glimpses of a larger consciousness that lies beyond our personal identity and day-to-day life. These glimpses are characterized by a sense of flow, ease, wholeness, peace, delight, and freedom. They are a welcome release from the day-to-day struggles of our usual self and life. We would, of course like, to know what causes these glimpses so that we can re-experience them at will. Join me in exploring how our glimpses of the great mystery can become our life. Support th...
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1 year ago
20 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Consciousness: The Ground of All Being
Consciousness is not a “thing.” It has no form, shape, color, texture, weight, mass, contour, or location. These qualities refer to tangible objects with tangible characteristics that can be described and communicated through language. That is not so with consciousness. Although it is the central aspect of human life, in its full scope it defies the limited capacities of the spoken word. Join me as we explore in discussion and practice the three aspects of consciousness: awareness, absence o...
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1 year ago
19 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
The "Mere I"
There are five increasingly complex and dysfunctional levels of ego development, the development of our personal "I." These are: the Mere "I," the Reified "I," the Self-cherishing "I," the Protective and Defensive "I," and the Social "I." As adults we attempt to function with this complex and afflictive sense of self. Long forgotten is the simple, easeful, and innocent “mere I,” which was once sufficient to navigate worldly life and enjoy it. Instead of upgrading the “mere “I” a...
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1 year ago
18 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Wear the World Like a Loose Garment
While meditating we’ve all had the experience of a blissful moment of serenity, clarity, or realization, only to be pulled back into the stresses and strains of daily life. That can feel quite frustrating and even disempowering. We touch the glory of the sacred and are thrown back into the mundane. We think that our experience and insights will change our life, but too often they don’t. Know that you are not alone. Consider the words of St. Francis of Assisi: Wear the world like a...
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1 year ago
19 minutes

Meditation and Beyond
Behind the restless flow of thoughts lies a vast, silent field of awareness – the natural mind that precedes and sustains all experience. We live mostly within a fragment of this wholeness, mistaking our conditioned patterns, stories, and identities for the entirety of who we are. Meditation, when understood in its deeper sense, is not simply a technique to calm or improve the mind but a doorway to directly recognize the luminous consciousness from which all mental activity arises and dissolv...