Meditation and Beyond: Doing to Being: Recent Episodes
Elliott S. Dacher, M.D.
In Meditation and Beyond you will discover a uniquely different approach to meditation. There are two traditional aims of meditation. The first is cultivating a healthy human life. The second is transcending our limited day-to-day consciousness to discover our true self and its extraordinary qualities of human flourishing. Our first session begins by focusing on two quick and sure methods of calming the mind. Whenever your mind is out of control, these will be your go-to practices.one that is simple, surprisingly effortless, and goes directly to the essence of meditation. The first aim of meditation is to diminish, stress, calm the mind, decrease reactivity, and improve the quality of our relationships. The second aim of meditation is the heart and true essence of meditation. This approach cuts through the limitations of day-to-day living and reveals the precious gold of human life - a sustained serenity, natural wisdom, unchanging happiness, and boundless freedom. . We learn how to meditate in an entirely new and effortless way. Let’s join together on the journey of a lifetime. If you are ready, you will discover life’s treasures.
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What happens when the familiar sense of “I” grows quiet—even for a moment? What remains is not emptiness, but a spacious, living awareness that has always been here. In this episode, we explore how meditation reveals our essential nature by allowing thoughts to liberate themselves as they arise, and how the habit of reification quietly contracts consciousness into the story we call “our life.” This is an invitation to rest in the present moment and rediscover the clarity, stillness, and freedom beneath thought.
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What if everything you experience – thoughts, emotions, sensations, even the world itself –arises nowhere other than within the mind? This is not a philosophical idea to be believed, but a truth to be directly known. Like a night dream that feels utterly real until the moment of waking, our waking life appears solid and external until awareness turns back upon itself. This reflection explores how we fall into confusion, how wisdom naturally co-emerges, and how meditation gently reawakens us to the full, undivided nature of mind. And that is authentic well-being and human flourishing. Join me in this exploration.
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We weren’t born with a restless mind. We arrived in this world spacious, open, and untouched – like awareness itself. So how did that vast clarity become a chattering “me”? What silent shift pulls us from our natural wholeness into the frantic monkey mind? In this episode we explore the invisible turn of awareness where heaven is forgotten and the monkey mind is born. And more importantly, we explore how meditation can unwind that process from the very start and dissolve the source of suffering at its root.
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Have you ever wondered why your mind refuses to sit still—why thoughts surge, swirl, and rehearse themselves as if on an endless loop? The answer isn’t mysterious or psychological jargon. It comes down to one simple, ancient habit: the mind’s impulse to grab hold of fleeting appearances and turn them into solid realities. In the very moment the mind turns nothing into something, the monkey mind is born. But once we see this mechanism clearly—truly catch it in the act—we hold the key to dissolving restlessness at its source and opening into the spacious, luminous awareness that has always been our true nature.
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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 dissolves. When we cease trying to fix or follow our thoughts and instead rest as awareness itself, the veil of confusion thins, serenity expands, and the essence of our true being reveals itself – clear, boundless, and ever-present.
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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 momentary states into abiding traits, so what was once a passing glimpse becomes a resilient way of being.
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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 by the weight of accepted norms and a subtle system of praise and critique. What once seemed expansive and open is replaced by a seemingly “functional” existence, as the natural vitality of an expansive life fades into the background. Join me in discovering how we find our way to home to a natural freedom from the known.
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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 transient. In time they will pass. Why? Because all phenomena and experience are transitory. When circumstances change so does our mental state – more calm, less calm, no calm, or back to our usual stress. Circumstance-based calmness, while pleasant and helpful, is fragile and fleeting. Join me in this Podcast to explore how circumstantial can be replace by a pervasive and stable serenity.
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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 moment was in actuality a precious glimpse of one’s true nature. Join me in this discussion and practice
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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 “I,” reveals itself from the center of our being. It may be brief, but if we catch it we will know it by heart.
Please join me in this discussion and the special practice of Tonglen, Sending and Receiving.
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"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—momentary and transient. True mental stillness arises not from suppressing thoughts but through understanding their ephemeral nature, fostering lasting peace, clarity, and freedom.
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"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 toward reconnecting with our inner self, a natural compassion, awareness, and deeper sense of purpose, ultimately shaping a precious and meaningful life.
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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, presence, or deep connection with nature, art, or others. These moments reveal our innate wholeness but are often fleeting and overlooked, as the ego quickly reasserts itself. Understanding and stabilizing these glimpses into the true self can lead to a more fulfilling and centered life. Join me in discussing and practing the "gap."
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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 can it be just another example of virtual reality? Let’s look at this startling possibility.
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"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 create a temporary “mere I” that is needed to navigate our daily life and we let it drop back into consciousness when no longer needed. By "zooming in" to this core awareness and "zooming out" to navigate daily life, we can, in time, harmonize our deeper essence with practical, worldly existence.
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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 identity, outside of conventional consciousness. it cannot be known through our usual sensory or mental capacities. It can only be known through direct experience, by being one with it. It then knows itself.
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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.
In both instances things don't exist in the manner in which they appear.
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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 – will determine the character of our relationships, reactions, and life. It is quite different when we place our natural true self at the center of our life. Wh1at is your center - small or large self.
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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. They have a clear and decisive impact on our lives.
These spontaneous insights may be about concerns we’ve been struggling to understand or they may offer a glimpse into the great questions of life. Suddenly there is clarity. But what would it be like if we were able to have a decisive experience that fully and permanently resolved the essential questions of every human life
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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 awareness of childhood and the re-discovered beingness touched later in life, if fortunate, by the spiritual seeker.
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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.
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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 of fixed content, and clarity.
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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” as needed to respond to a more demanding adult experience, we manufacture a multi-level, complex, seemingly solid and self-sustaining ego structure. Join me in this discussion and practice to better understand the complexities of our personal "I" and the relevance and simplicity of the "mere "I."
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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 loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly.” We are instructed to take our worldly experience and personal identity lightly, neither attaching to nor identifying with it.
Join me in this discussion and practice.
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The transcendent state of consciousness is a non-sensory experience. It is a non-ordinary experience. It can neither be experienced or known through our senses, nor through our usual intellectual capacities. It is an inner, personal, “invisible” experience. Words that point towards it include: transpersonal, timeless, infinite, wholeness, natural, all-embracing, essential being, pure perception, final truth, sacred, and divine. Although these words point towards a transcendent consciousness, they are not themselves the experience. So how do we move towards this pinnacle of human consciousness? Join in me in this discussion, and practice.
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Born with a mind and body, we are destined to develop a personal identity as a vehicle for living human life. It can be no other way. It’s an acquired mental structure that assists us in navigating daily life. As we gain greater consciousness, we recognize the limitations and pitfalls of identifying exclusively with our acquired self.
We are not born with a personal self. We are born into presence, a simple awareness and presence. We never forget this essence of our being and we increasingly desire its great treasures of life – inner serenity, delight, wisdom, selfless love and compassion, and freedom from the known. Please join me in this discussion and practice of shifting from Person to Presence.
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I first heard Francis Thompson poem, Hound of Heaven, years ago. His words touched me deeply and have since taken residence in my mind. I sense it’s because they touch a very basic human. That call to truth is likely familiar to you as well
I now realize that Thompson’s hound is a poetic metaphor for the irrepressible urge that quickens soul and spirit toward a recognition and reunion with our true self, our divine essence. It has taken time, detours, misplaced pursuits, personal dramas, and subtle resistance for the ripening to occur, a ripening that allowed that inner heaven to subtly reveal itself only in brief glimpses, at first. Please join me in this discussion and practice.
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What more noble experience can there be than walking each other home to the center of our being – to peace, happiness, and freedom. The journey home has never been solely an individual journey. Even the most solitary monk, nun, or seminarian takes their journey in the context of a community, teacher, and spiritual friends. It's only the ego that perceives this journey as a solitary hero’s quest. That’s the dilemma of modern times. Join me in this discussion and practice.
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“Humankind can not bear very much reality.” These words, words of the poet T.S. Eliot, have echoed in my mind for many years like a persistent Zen Koan. What is this fundamental reality he speaks of? Why can’t humans bear it? If we cannot base our life on a realistic understanding, how can we live an authentic and meaningful life.
It is not easy, convenient, or socially rewarding to pursue a realistic understanding of life. At any moment I can feel my mind turning away from it as quickly as possible, towards other more palatable experiences. In order to avoid a realistic view, we spend our days immersed in distractions, amusements, and transient pleasures. By anesthetizing our self to the essential truths of life, we gain a certain transient illusory comfort, putting off the inevitable confrontation with truth.
Join me in discussion and meditation as we seek to touch the true realities of life.
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The primary aim of meditation is to go beyond the narrow confines of our ordinary self and experience the immensity of life’s possibilities. We aim to free ourself from the tenacious grip of individualism and to awaken to our full humanity.
Individualism, with its accompanying habitual and limiting patterns of perception, and perpetual mind traffice imprisons us in a narrow and contracted life. Our personal psychology, chained to the past traps us in tenacious conditioning, denying us access to our essential humanity and its full possibilities.
We are born as humans, not as individuals. We are born without distinctive names, personalities, patterns of thought and action. That is all acquired, learned. It is who we become, not who we truly are. And try as we do, utilizing an endless array of self-development strategies the personal self - including the improved version - cannot bring us to an authentic and natural serenity, freedom, wholeness, and compassion that paradoxically is already and always available as our fundamental humanity. We know there is more to life than what appears on the surface. We know this by heart.
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In the East they speak of the early stages of meditation as a raging waterfall. We have finally stopped long enough to actually hear the cacophony we live with every day. With practice we experience our innerness as a rushing stream, quieter but still active. Then we come to the heart of meditation which is experienced as a gentle and still river flowing through the flat plains. Finally, at the conclusion the river drops into the sea and is one with the source, the vast ocean of being. The formula is letting go, letting go, letting be. And then, an indescribable oneness naturally and spontaneously arises, revealing to us the great mystery and truth of life. Join me in this discussion and practice.
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What is a knowable? It’s any experience, outer or inner, that can be observed and known through our sensory organs or mental capacity. Our sensory system is oriented to “physical” experiences that appear as outer events. Our inner capacity for observation is oriented towards thoughts, feelings, and images that appear as mental events. In contrast, there are also unknowables. What is an unknowable? These are experiences that cannot be observed or comprehended through our sensory system or mental awareness. They can only be known to the individual through direct experience. Examples of unknowables include soul, spirit, pure awareness, love, God, and reality itself.
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There are two ways that we gain knowledge of our self and world. As adults, our default approach is “memory knowledge.” From childhood on we accumulate experiences, learning from parents, schooling, and culture. We store all this knowledge in our mental file called memory. We draw upon this acquired memory-based knowledge, bounded by the reach and character of our life experience, to understand and navigate the inner and outer day-to-day world.
The second path to knowledge is “being knowledge.” Being knowledge refers to the insights and understandings that naturally arise from a still state of being and presence. The knower is a natural and unconditioned awareness absent any previously stored information. It is a unique and precious state-of-being that allows us access to full and clear knowledge and actions that lie beyond the grasp of our acquired memory-based knowledge.
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The phrase “effortless meditation” may sound to you like an oxymoron or perhaps a clever marketing tease, but it’s neither. This immediate reaction arises from the experience many beginners have when they approach meditation as a process of subduing the mind. That certainly feels like effort, and it is.
Let me share with you a natural and effortless way to experience your true inner self – a meditative state that self-reveals itself, when the mind has been stilled through a natural presence. It is then that we will find what we seek - what already and always has been within - revealed without methods, techniques, or struggle, a simple serenity, awareness, and freedom at the center of our being. Join me in discussion and practice.
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The pediatrician and psychotherapist D.W. Winnicott coined the expression a “good enough mother” or perhaps one might say “good enough parenting.” It refers to the manner in which a mother responds to her infant child with age-related sensitivity and care, allowing the infant to successfully transition to an autonomous and well-functioning adult. But is this accomplishment all we can hope to achieve? Is there more?
It can be said that healthy development is an important preparation for the experience of a larger spiritual life. A “good enough” childhood increases the probability that we will experience life’s larger possibilities. So, we can say that good enough parenting supports healthy development, but it may not be good enough to go beyond to the depths of our being and the fullness of our humanity, the second and fundamental aim of meditation. Join me in exploring the upgraded "good enough" parenting for human flourishing.
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Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
Looking back, the first "self" that I lost was in medical training. It was the loss of a healthy personal self. Entangled in the mechanics and pressures of my medical education, I forgot my most basic human needs. I forgot to take time for the simple joys of life and the basics of self-care. I was to discover years later that, unknown to me at the time, my deeper true self was lost even earlier in life. That self, I was to discover, was my essential self. Over time, I slowly realized that I could not live a full life without living from that foundational center of my being That’s what propelled me toward the study and practice of meditation – a yearning to reclaim , with stability, the unchanging essence of my life, this more primary and vital lost self. Join me in this sharing and practice.
Welcome to my Podcasts
On my website below you will find many resources and a sign-up link to our Sunday morning Zoom teaching and meditation. Everyone is invited.
www.elliottdacher.org
Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
The clarity we will speak of here is not the clarity that results from mentally studying a particular issue until there is a conclusive sense of understanding. That is intellectual clarity. And it is important in its place.
However, here we are speaking about a very different type of clarity – the clarity which spontaneously arises from a spacious, pure, and unconditioned awareness. It doesn’t aim at resolving or understanding anything. It merely allows you to see the truth of what is as is – the true nature of self, life, and reality free from the influence and judgment of past experience. And that we will call “knowing” rather than “understanding.”
Join me in this discussion and practice.
Welcome to my Podcasts
On my website below you will find many resources and a sign-up link to our Sunday morning Zoom teaching and meditation. Everyone is invited.
www.elliottdacher.org
Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
There is an underlying and troublesome hollowness in the Western psyche. That’s the result of an inability to access our fundamental, natural, and unchanging well-being, an ever-present wholeness in each of us. In response to this loss of our essential self and its well-being, we are mistakenly taught by an ill-informed culture to seek from the outer world that which is missing in our inner world. We seek possessions, fame, fortune, relationships, drugs and even healthy pursuits such as fitness, self-improvement, yoga, and meditation as remedies to this underlying emptiness. For periods of time, we may seem to succeed in these efforts, but because our efforts fail to address the underlying wound these efforts will each, in their turn fail. And even if they seem to succeed, they fail. A spiritual wound requires, as Jung so eloquently stated, a spiritual remedy, not a surface one. It requires Spiritus.
Welcome to my Podcasts
On my website below you will find many resources and a sign-up link to our Sunday morning Zoom teaching and meditation. Everyone is invited.
www.elliottdacher.org
Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
It is certain that each of us will experience loss. It may come in one of many forms - loss of a loved one, loss of mental or physical capacities, loss of material possessions, or future possibilities. Significant loss often heralds a time of sadness, emotional pain, or perhaps a sense of hopelessness or despair. It can be an inconsolable time.
Loss is real. Fear, despair, anxiety, and depression are mental experiences superimposed onto loss. Therefore they vary person-to-person. They are reactions to loss. If we can learn to separate our mental add-ons from the experience of loss itself, relax and ease into loss, experience it in our heart, let go of our efforts to control life, and stop resisting what is unalterable, we may discover the possibility of fully experiencing loss without suffering.
Join me in this discussion and meditation.
Welcome to my Podcasts
On my website below you will find many resources and a sign-up link to our Sunday morning Zoom teaching and meditation. Everyone is invited.
www.elliottdacher.org
Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
There are some experiences that naturally evolve over time. The meeting with our true self and the awakening to a larger life is not one of those experiences. It is here, right now, already, and always. It requires no preparation, no preliminaries, no putting off until another day. What we are seeking is there at the beginning – complete, finished, whole.
Welcome to my Podcasts
On my website below you will find many resources and a sign-up link to our Sunday morning Zoom teaching and meditation. Everyone is invited.
www.elliottdacher.org
Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
Thank you for joining me again. Today we will discuss the two aspects of creativity: ordinary creativity and ultimate creativity. We will then share a practice that expands our discussion.
Most creativity has its origins in our day-to-day ego structure. We draw upon our past experience, capacities, and skills to formulate a "creative" project. This project may have previously untouched aspects and qualities. But, it is by its nature a re-organizing and re-shaping of our existing knowledge and experiences. It is creative in an ordinary sense, but it does not touch the full possibility.
Ultimate creativity has its origins in the still mind that is free, for the moment, from the usual self and its conditioning past experiences. The mental stillness and corresponding full awareness opens us to the full possibilities of the human experience. Out of this vast field of being there can appear spontaneously and in complete form the pure unconditioned creative idea. This creative genius is available to each of us.
Join us for this exploration.
Welcome to my Podcasts
On my website below you will find many resources and a sign-up link to our Sunday morning Zoom teaching and meditation. Everyone is invited.
www.elliottdacher.org
Aware, Awake, Alive on Amazon
To create a world of inner and outer sanity, a world free of the limitations and consequences of the mentally fabricated personal self, we must return home to our true self. In the words of the poet Derek Walcott:
“The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror. And each will smile at the other's welcome, and say sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself.”
Although obscured by the ramblings and diversions of our ordinary mind, our natural essence is ever present. When the clouds of mental activity cease there it is, revealed as it has always been. We return home to who and what we have always been, a homecoming – our full human possibilities. You will know, I AM That.
www.elliottdacher.org
Meditating smarter rather than harder requires that we take a closer look at the personal self, which obscures our true Self. We are so closely identified with our day-to-day sense of self that we rarely give consideration to its origins, limitations, or the possibility that it’s only a fraction of our possibilities, a fragment of who we are.
Understanding how our personal identity develops, its content, and false promises can help us reach beyond it to the totality of our being. This Podcast, in dialogue and practice, will demonstrate how to move beyond the personal self to discover the full possibilities of meditation and human flourishing. We will discover the totality of consciousness that lies beyond the limitations and restrictions of a personal self.
Welcome to Beyond Meditation and this episode Accessing Your Natural Stillness. It is in our larger self that we experience natural stillness – a stillness and clarity which progressively bring distress and suffering to an end, revealing our expansive human possibilities. This stillness is not on a continuum with restlessness. It is not a calm mind. It is not a Relaxed mind. It is a pervasive a serenity that surpasses understanding. It is innate to our larger self and inherently stable as long as we live in this natural self.
Natural stillness and presence are always available – right here, right now. They are our foundational state-of-being. However, they are obscured by our mental chatter. As we quiet mental chatter, we transcend our personal drama and enter the space of our natural and deeper self. This state of inner stillness remains as long as we dwell in our natural self. It is undisturbed by the movements of mind or the challenges of daily life. It is the source of a sustained wellness and wholeness. It will amaze you how simple this is. Join us in this teaching and meditation.
As a perfume naturally and spontaneously arises from its flower, our natural empty/aware self has a perfume as well - the qualities of human flourishing. These qualities are seamlessly interwoven into our true self. They have no cause or reason. They just are. They arise spontaneously. They are permanent and unchanging.
These include a peace and serenity that surpasses understanding, a happiness and contentment that has no reason, a penetrating intuitive wisdom, selfless love and compassion, an easeful natural flow, and boundless freedom. The more we live in our true self the more we transform our lives, increasingly experiencing these unique human possibilities - what the wise ones called Human Flourishing.
In the previous session we experienced the Practice of Direct Awakening. Utilizing this practice we directly drop into and experience our true self. In this episode we will explore how to integrate this experience of our inner self into daily life, so that our life becomes our practice and our practice becomes our life.
To accomplish this we explore what to cultivate and what to abandon in our daily life - what supports a deeper and more fulfilling life. Join me.
Welcome to the next podcast of The Practice of Direct Awakening. Previously, we explored the essence of our true self. We learned that our natural self is both empty of the usual mental content and aware of moment-to-moment experience. In this podcast we will learn to awaken quickly, directly, and again and again to our true self, until it progressively stabilizes and becomes the ground of your life. This dropping in approach is so simple you will be amazed, as am I. Join me.
Your authentic self is both empty of the usual mental content and aware of moment-to-moment experience. We can say, our true self is empty awareness. It is empty of personal history, fully aware of the present, and uninfluenced by our past. As a result, the awareness of our natural self is vibrant, fresh, and free of interpretation. Isn’t it amazing that we retain a pure awareness that is not influenced by the past? In this episode you can explore the essence of your true self.
Welcome to our fourth session of The Practice of Direct Awakening. The practices we’ve already explored bring us towards the first aim of meditation – cultivating a healthy human life. In this session we begin our exploration of the second aim of meditation – the direct experience of our true self. We begin by focusing on the differences between our usual day-to-day “ego-I,” our personal self, and our “unchanging true self.”
Using the foundation of a calm mind, we will practice cultivating a pure, clear, and unconditioned awareness, which is essential ground of meditation. Pure unconditioned awareness - awareness that is free of past content or history - is the natural flow of the living experience, uninterrupted by comment, judgment, or mental elaboration. It is a presence and “beingness” with life, as it naturally unfolds moment-to-moment. It requires just a small tweak to shift from our absorption in unceasing mental conversation to merely “watching” or being aware of the “mind traffic” come and go. We choose to rest in the awareness rather than the random mental activity.
A still mind is a prerequisite for accessing our full human possibilities. Rather than relying exclusively on the usual methods to still the mind, we will now learn to overcome the overactive mind through a wise and subtle understanding of how the mind actually works.
Left untouched by our interest, attention, or reaction, random mental activity comes and goes by itself like a wave rising and falling on the sea. Let me repeat this important point.. In this Podcast we will learn how to overcome the overactive mind by working smarter rather than harder
You may have tried meditation before but not succeeded. You may have difficulty overcoming the overactive mind. You may have worked with meditation for awhile, but it is becoming routine or stale and you are desire to go further, deeper. Or, you may be coming to meditation for the first time. If this is you, read further and listen to this podcast. It will jump-start and deepen your experience.
Meditation is an age-old contemplative practice that has two aims. The first is to improve the quality of day-to-day life – less stress, reactivity, distress, suffering, and enhancing well being. The second, and most profound aim, is to enable us to go beyond our ordinary mind and life to a natural and true Self that allows for the full actualization of the human possibility, that proverbial “more to life,” the great treasures of human life. This requires an approach that is direct, simple, and cuts through the overactive mind
In this episode we will learn about the two aims of meditation . This session and the following nine sessions will teach the practice of directly cutting through to the heart of meditation. This is the next evolution of meditation in the West. There are some experiences that naturally evolve over time. The meeting with our natural self and the awakening to a larger life is here, right now, already, and always. It requires no preparation, no preliminaries, no putting off until another day.
I suggest you practice each episode for one week and then progress to the next.