This week we listened to a talk by Tara Brach in which she examines how suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. She explores the ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being, noting:
So we begin to see our strategies to get attention,...
We looked at the practice of metta, often translated as loving-kindness, this week. We read an article by JoAnn Harper from Lion's Roar magazine, in which she writes:
I discovered that while loving-kindness is taught in many ways by different teachers, ultimately it is an equalizer and an an...
We had our chance to extend the meditation period this week, being the closest Tuesday to the full moon. We added 10 minutes to each sitting period, from 15 up to 25, and kept the walking meditation to 5 minutes. Great practice with plenty of mind activity to observe and accept :-)
Using a technique called VOICE (Voice Of Innate Clarity Exercise), we explored the way we pick and choose, accept and reject, all in an attempt to get our our life to be a certain way. We saw how this is a natural part of being human, but left unchecked it can undermine our ability to find contentme...
We read a short article by Dr. Rick Hanson on the meaning of faith and role it can play in our lives, in which he comments, "In your experience of faith, there's probably a sense of trusting in something–which makes sense since the word comes from the Latin root, 'to trust'." We looked at what it fe...
We had a special guest this week, Shastri Debbie McCubbin from the Mississauga Shambhala Centre. We explored the topic, "Five Ways to Work With Difficult Emotions".
This week's topic was from an article by Pema Chodron called "How to Fail". Sound like a good idea? As Pema observes, it actually can be:
This is what we need a lot of help with: this feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with us, that we are the failure because of the relationsh...
After sitting and walking meditation, we read about the Zen Peacemakers organization and how they structure their practice around three basic tenets. The first one is "not knowing", and founder Bernie Glassman observes:
You are not entering a situation with the feeling that you know what to do...
Our topic for last week came from a TED talk by Judson Brewer on how to break a bad habit with mindfulness.
Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you beat your n...
After sitting and walking meditation, we read an interview with Vinny Ferraro about a simple phrase we can use as a powerful reminder both to be more present and to recognize that life is endlessly changing:
I think there is “a turning toward” aspect to practicing with “right now, it’s like...