TEACHER: Jeff Warren
THEME: Effort
MEDITATION: Dog on a Bone Concentration
GROUP PRACTICE:  Lucid Dreaming mini-workshop

Everything starts with concentration. The ability to focus, to stay on task. In meditation you learn the things you once thought were boring – like breathing – are actually fas-ci-na-ting when you concentrate on them. That’s because when the discursive mind settles, there’s no real problem with anything. The “problem” is in the judgment about the experience, not the experience itself. This simple truth is one of the deepest lessons we can learn in practice and in life. What’s more, concentration is inherently pleasurable. That’s why we like to be in the zone at work and play and love. It’s blissful and rewarding and takes us outside of time, into the land of slushy happy drizzle breath, our faces collapsed inward like black holes. Then for the group practice we’ll go off-road and hit that mini lucid dreaming workshop I promised last week. Effort and concentration play a role here too, and the reward in this context is a fine double-stitching of nighttime reality.