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Location: online via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/799184864
Date: Monday, June 1st, 7:30pm EST
Location: online via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/799184864
Date: Monday, June 8th, 7:30pm EST
Location: online via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/799184864
Date: Monday, June 15th, 7:30pm EST
“A wise teacher, and a wise centre, needs to offer a whole range of skillful practices, because people come along at different stages of their inner development, with different temperaments, and with different sets of problems.” -Jack Kornfield
There is something in us that wants us to be well, and pulls us towards ever greater notions of what wholeness means. Why would we want to be whole in the first place? Easy. So we can throw a party that includes every single person, no matter who they are, no matter what they look like. We heal because it leads to the most fun.
In this challenging month I realized that the nature outdoors is a part of our own true nature. Even though I felt at times as though I was separated from it, each time I returned to my cushion I was connecting to that true nature, and tuning into the flow of the universe. The more I sat, the more I took joy in our little walks around the block, or jumping in the smallest puddle on our driveway.
Coming back into our bodies is the medicine. That of course is the real direction of meditation, when it’s working the way it’s supposed to. We notice what’s really going on, notice the habit pattern that wants to take over, notice our urgency or our anxiety, our frozen-ness or our outrage. We notice and we float – for just a moment – above this behavior that wants so badly to repeat itself, to stay unconscious, to stay automatic. And then, as time resumes, we exercise our dignity and our freedom by deliberately choosing whether we want to keep that particular response going. Not a glamorous practice, but a necessary one. Where’s the rest? Real rest – deep rest – is there in every moment.
We just finished version 2.0 of our CEC Community Practice Activation Kit available for free here. The idea of this kit is to inspire people around the world to start up their own community practice groups, in a way that’s unique to them and uniquely responsive to their local needs and context.
Suddenly, we exist. Existing is complicated. We turn to practice. As we love to say at the CEC, being human takes practice. But what is a practice? The simplest definition of practice is some action – mental, emotional, physical, social – that you choose and repeat, so that it can become a habit. It is the deliberate cultivation of habits. Contemplative practices are practices that rehearse how you want to exist and relate to yourself and others.
This primer is about the broadest possible classes of meditation and spiritual experience. It’s a work-in-progress. Every time I come back, I find myself cutting more details, for they seem like technique-specific effects, and not the human universals I once imagined. So it goes. In a couple years there may be nothing here at all.
Almost any domain or activity in life can be approached as an intentional practice, and the people who specialize in these domains have learned important things about being human. How can we draw this wisdom out? Introducing the Consciousness Explorers Club's new pluralistic practice paradigm :)
