Being with Being

Typically, there are those things on one list of what is nice and pleasant and spiritual or “good meditation.” And then there’s the other list. And there’s a feeling that what we need is to take what’s over here and change it to what’s over there on the better list. When it doesn’t work, we can get caught in a layer deeper of distress. That hurts. We’re taking some aspect of ourselves, some aspect...

Patrul Rinpoche nails us with his list of the many flavors of doing in meditation — drawing the mind outward, inward, spacing out, chasing thoughts, blocking their arising, anticipating them like a cat anticipating a mouse, squeezing and staring intensely with concentration. So what direction is simply settling? It’s not a settling outward. Not a settling inward. Not a settling toward something ov...

What’s so truly amazing as a sentient being, a human being, is that the flows that make up us, the flows that help give rise to our own unique experiences and feelings and perceptions, and even mental activity and mind — are flows that carry content. And yet are also at the same time are pure flow of nature, unfolding altogether in nature in this fine-free-yet-together way. So the bit of a leap th...

What’s it like to simply settle into that there is space? To simply settle into that there is the flow of change? The space and the flow of change don’t need our tweaking. They don’t need our adjusting. It’s just the way of nature. And we can simply settle into it. Gradually we let our perception of this sense of the flow of nature, our own inner feel of it, begin to become finer and finer. And th...

Once we get the feel of laying down to the ground, “the ground” can become many things. It doesn’t have to just stay as the most obvious thing, the ground. Our torso acts like the ground upon which our shoulders rest. Whatever layer of our spine we pick, one vertebra lays down upon the one beneath. We could put that sense of ground throughout our body. And as we begin to feel the sense of ground a...

In this opening session we explore what these two words, “simply settle,” can mean at the most tangible level — hands simply settling into the support of a lap, body simply settling into the support of the earth. And what it’s like when we notice the absurdity of our own language around it. How do you allow your hands to be heavy? They have the weight that they have. Nothing to do. Nothing even to...

I'm feeling kind of feisty today. Take it all with a grain of salt. But one thing I do feel feisty about is this idea that mystery -- and a realm of unknowing -- is in danger. That it's fragile. That if we know too much, or science says something too definitively, this deeper mystery of existence and being is somehow under threat. Yeah, I think that it's not. And I also can relate t...

Today we will be getting into another level of juicy. This is where some people really, really go to town -- with quantum mechanics, interpretations around consciousness. There's even someone who tends to make claims that if there wasn't consciousness, there wouldn't be a moon. Because of quantum. Interesting, interesting. We return to the double slit experiment -- and this time to...

So that was kind of the sexy science, the fancy physics experiments. And today, with a glorious thud, we're going to go into some of the most well-established -- you could have a yawn already -- the most well-established, long-standing, across all the domains of physics, including good old Newtonian physics. Not just all this, no, no, no, spooky quantum. It's really mundane, established,...

Quantum physics had its 100th anniversary -- and do we know what it actually means any more than 100 years ago? Open question for sure. But part of this exploration is actually inquiring into the effects that a scientific story, scientific knowledge, scientific models have on us. Master Park, who is a physicist as well as a Tai Chi master, always says physics is a story. And so this is not to be d...

Our perception is a map -- it's always a map -- and it can be informed by our understanding, it can be tinted by our expectations. Some of what this exploration is about is to see what it's like to actually feel what we feel, rather than what we think we feel. And thrown into this whole mix is the way that physics -- especially sometimes quantum physics, quantum mechanics -- is used in s...

This series of adventures really comes out of a curiosity of mine that goes back to when I was in grade school. I would love to read these science books -- there was even at this mall a store called the Learning Smith, and that's where I discovered all these books about Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking and hyperspace. And sometimes you just kind of set them down and look around and be like...

For me to be speaking right now, for me to make a gesture with my hand, for me to click the mouse button and fix my tech at the beginning of this session — all of that is coming from this integrity of this loop that includes both feeling and doing. From the fullness of our being. We might see this whole series as kind of unpacking the richness of all of this being, and then relaxing into the integ...

It can kind of feel experientially like we're free-falling. Free-falling into the unknown. Because there's no limit to how finely we can feel this fine free flow of our body, even just our physical body. On this next in-breath, in this next nostril — there's a finer flow yet to be felt, ever, by you. And you can open to it. That thing we call a thumb, that we think we know what it f...

It's probably helpful just to introduce some terms here — not as another thing to learn, but as holding places. These words can become holding places that we then associate with a certain level of fine feeling, nuanced feeling within ourselves. Jing is the physicality of our body — centered at the lower dantian, our center of mass. Qi is something finer, a finer inner flow — sometimes Master...

I was not personally struck by lightning — glad I gave the forewarning. I did lose internet, I did lose power, and now I'm back and we can practice together. This is truly one of the favorite parts of my day, so I didn't want to miss it. Some of the Taoist meditation circulation practices can feel more natural and intuitive — less of a trying and more of an effortless revealing — when we...

When we're more activated, even just thinking really hard, there can be this sense of being more in our head — more kind of bunched up. There's usually plenty, plenty up there already, and instead we lack feeling that presence includes all of our body, all the way to our feet, all the way to our fingertips. This is what Qigong calls coarse qi — and what's interesting is that even po...

Full disclosure: I have some emotional release happening in my diaphragm as I come on today. So this is just what I need. And it's not necessary that you have any strong emotion in your system at the moment — but this will give us a way of seeing how we could practice if we did. When I'm working with an emotion that feels kind of stuck — when I just want it to flow, I want it to change,...

In this exploration, we'll be feeling these three qualities of nature's flow in a way that helps us feel them more all together. We'll be feeling a sense of long—long in space, so that there is a sense of the whole flow quality. And we'll be discovering how any length in our body is comprised of all these very fine flows, another quality of nature, and that they all are arising...

In this exploration, we'll be playing with our perception—the *how* of how we are sensing and feeling our body. This is called “ting” in tai chi or listening, and we'll actually be using the sounds around us. If you would like to kind of create a bit of a soundscape in your space—you'd like to play a little music, open a window and even hear some sounds from nature or your neighbors...

In this exploration, we'll be using what's called the external harmonies in Tai Chi—the way that there's this natural correspondence between shoulders and hips, elbows and knees, wrists and ankles, hands and feet, and even all the way to our fingers and our toes. We'll especially allow ourselves more to feel our lower body and the presence of our lower bodies, first of all, bec...

In this exploration, we'll be using the whole flow quality—the third quality of Nature’s flow—to experientially stumble upon an experience of the now that may feel a little more allowing, just the way it is. We can get a lot of messages about how it's better for us to live in the moment, be here now. And even quite subtly, we can tend to associate now as something more kind of like the p...

In this exploration, we'll be using what's called the external harmonies in Tai Chi—the way that there's this natural correspondence between shoulders and hips, elbows and knees, wrists and ankles, hands and feet, and even all the way to our fingers and our toes. We'll especially allow ourselves more to feel our lower body and the presence of our lower bodies, first of all, bec...

In this hour-long exploration, we'll discover how to deeply relax physically by feeling into the first quality of nature's flow: contactful, mutual connection. I'll guide you through accessing these qualities of presence really tangibly and evidently in your experience, then we'll go on the adventure of how we can especially use this contactful, mutual connection as a way to de...

In this exploration, we'll discover how to work with subtle emotional pains that may feel tied to past events and "smeared out" in time. Getting trauma-informed support for these emotions is incredibly important. Ultimately, though, each one of us is “the one” who interfaces with our own inner experiences. I personally find it helpful to do this with as much spaciousness as possible...