The Meditation Course Podcast

This episode is a recorded training session that I ran at a global law firm recently as part of training that I have been giving there since 2014.Exactly what is the Present Moment? What is the continuum of the Life Situation? How can I find my way out of the mashup of the past, the present and the future and into The Present Moment mindfully. Why would we want to extract ourselves from the grip o...

Visit https://therestfulmind.com/blog for a more readable version. The common narrative is the cultural story which we all share, rooted in folklore, that we use to explain our reality. The common narrative is a fluid construct of our collective consciousness. We also all have a version of this common narrative which is our personal narrative. This is the tape that runs in many of our heads. The p...

This week is an exercise in Focus and Attention. Trataka is a focused attention meditation practice designed to help us build our personal mindfulness while developing our awareness and training ourselves to focus. It helps us to become aware of our focus and our awareness, internal and external. Trataka helps us to become aware of our internal focus and our external focus and the difference betwe...

Much is written about how suffering is anchored by the illusion of permence and a craving for, and attachment to, those things that bring us comfort and pleasure. The response of many ancient cultures to this realisation was to renonouce all material possessions which led to the aceticism of hermits and monks. Other philophical perspectives try to find a middle way (buddhism). What does it actuall...

#Mindfulness and #Meditation is all about the #Mind. To work with the mind, it helps to have some models of our inner processes. These models need to model the mind in a way that helps our practices. There is too much dogma associated with the mind. Most of it has historical roots and is part of the tangle of our broken cultural narrative that tries to explain our experience while remaining mainly...

In which Robert explains when and why he began to learn how to meditate, the distractions and diversions on his meditation and mindfulness journey. Robert describes his early meditation practices and the changes of focus that he has taken over the last thirty years of meditation practice. Robert also explains, and guides, his current meditation practice. Meditations are: The Meditation of no Medit...

The self-help genre is flooded with a deluge of advice relating to Acceptance. Usually the advisory sentence begins with the words ‘just’ or ‘simply’. These diminish what is the most difficult thing that anyone can do which is to confront their internal reality when it is what is causing them to suffer. In this context, there is no such thing as ‘Just!’. In this episode, Robert teaches, in a 30 mi...

Most of the content that fills our minds is a reflection of our common cultural narrative. The goods and bads, rights and wrongs, fairs and unfairs that we adopt from what we learn and from trying to interpret the beliefs of our peers. The modern mind then judges, compares, complains, and weaves a compelling narrative (which we often accept unquestioningly) that much of what we experience, often i...

The modern life has become an infinite merry-go-round of tasks, work and activities where the goal or destination stays permanently out of reach. Our culture creates an illusion that the only way to stop this is to somehow physically remove yourself from it. This isn’t the case.in this session, recorded at The Mansion, Robert outlines an alternative with an example and appropriate meditations whic...

In this podcast, Robert explains why he teaches the meditations he does teach and why he teaches how he teaches. There are three key elements of teaching meditation: the teaching methodology, the meditations and the way that new meditators are encouraged to meditate. In this Podcast, Robert provides some insight into his training methodology, how he uses Kaizen, a process of continuous improvement...

In this episode, Robert deconstructs the modern mind meditation and uses it to explain the nature of the mind. The modern mind is ‘the content’ and unfortunately out society confuses this content with the mind itself. Because of this confusion, the focus of science and philosophy remains on trying to work with the thoughts themselves and fails to spend time understanding the nature of the mind its...

Subtitle, the Design, History and Original Purpose of Meditation. The content of our modern minds becomes overwhelming for us. There is so much messaging from so many sources, television, work, the media, advertising, the news, the internet, our devices, our family, our friends, partners and peers. In the modern world, we make a critical, yet understandable error. We confuse the contents of the mi...

The Modern Mind is a collection of lists. A list of lists. Each list consists of tasks, priorities, values, desires, jobs, people, memories and so-on. The lists continually revolve in our minds leading to the overload that is all part of the modern life. Imagine what life would be like without this constantly overflowing stream of wants, needs, fears, worries, doubts and other emotionally charged...

For many in the Modern World, there is an abiding sense that something is wrong with the world. It is difficult to put it into words but it is always there. Any one problem is only ever replaced by the next in the seemingly endless succession of problems to solve, difficulties that may lie ahead, uncertainties, worries, doubts and fears. This intervention of the modern world into what would otherw...

Gratitude in the context of meditation is the word that is used to describe a collection of practices that use positive emotions to help us understand our relationship to the world, and to ourselves and which help us balance our lives in a way that is more helpful for our happiness. In this episode, Robert describes how these practices work and introduces them fully explained as a set of practices...

In this episode Robert condenses the key elements of the Mastering Meditation series into a one hour session. Robert explains why we meditate, what meditation is, what mindfulness is and guides you into a meditation that gives you a frictionless introduction to meditation, the present moment, your mind, thoughts and how our inner and outer experience can pass calmly through our awareness. This exp...

Listen to this podcast to learn how you can effortlessly begin a simple and sustainable meditation practice without struggling against your busy mind, and without needing to find the time in your busy life. Meditation teachers have historically given new meditators the opposite of what they want. You want a calm mind but you soon become keenly aware of the frantic nature of your mind as you try to...

Focused Attention meditation is at the heart of every useful mediation practice. Before we can positively affect our lives, we need to be present to do so. While our minds wander, they leave us incapable of addressing our real lives which are a collection of present moments. To train this we need to practice noticing that our minds have wandered and train ourselves to be present. MeditationsRobert...

What is Mindfulness? What is the relationship between meditation and mindfulness? How does mindfulness meditation work? How can we do mindfulness meditation with a busy mind? How can learn mindfulness with a busy life and a busy mind? In this session, taught at The Mansion in Beckenham Place Park on the 9th of February 2019, Robert answers these questions and guides the key meditations that will h...

For session 3 of the mastering #meditation series, the topic is meditation and stress. Learn what stress is, why we experience it and how we can manage it. The guided meditations are: the 4-6 breaths, the four tens meditation and the compassion meditation. This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course -Three live-streamed classes each week. You can subscr...

There is a Catch-22 of Meditation. The same thing that causes students to want to learn to meditate - the busy mind - is what makes it difficult to meditate. Our busy minds can work against us to make mediation unsatisfactory and even stressful as sitting quietly allows us to discover exactly how busy our minds are.in this episode, Robert explains the nature of the busy mind and teaches some of th...

Meditation, what is it, why would I want it and how do I get it? In this important first session of the Mastering Meditation series, Robert explains some of the history of meditation, what the purpose of meditation is, why most people wish to learn to meditate and how we can learn to meditate. Robert explains how there is a frictionless way to learn to meditate and to build a minimal meditation pr...

Acceptance is much misunderstood. It is often defined as accepting our circumstances. That is just plain wrong. We can’t just allow ourselves to suffer circumstances that are intolerable or unacceptable if we can change them. Acceptance is actually allowing ourselves to feel how experiences *make us feel*. Robert explains how meditation helps to allow uncomfortable experiences into our lives and h...

On the 19th of December I ran a webinar for an international organisation. The goal was, in the course of 45 minutes, to introduce and explain some meditation, mindfulness, stress management and emotional regulation techniques that the delegates could learn from and use in their stressful day-to-day professional work. I briefly explained mindfulness and taught the following practices: The meditati...

This week at The Mansion, a student asked: "What to do when nothing else works?"At some point in our modern lives, we will either feel overwhelmed or close to it. We feel our emotions and mood driving us in a way that is clearly unhelpful for our happiness or the happiness of those we care about. this can be anything from uncontrolled angry responses to depressed mood, anxiety, unhelpful or inappr...