Now I think this is very important, to recognize how much technology shapes our lives, but I want to extrapolate this concept even further, because I think it’s also very aligned with Buddhist, meditative, and psychological perspectives.

If we don’t actively program our minds, then they will be programmed for us by our experiences, our culture, our media, our technology, our family and friends…

Meditation is really trying to reprogram our minds to see things more clearly. To not get caught up in unhealthy mindsets. We practice being with things as they are, we practice non-judgement, and we also practice compassion.

If we don’t take control of our programming, we may tie our success or social status to our self worth. We may think that how others treat us is a reflection of our value.

One thing I love about Buddhism, is it recognizes our innate goodness as well as our innate wholeness. We can start to see that on a fundamental level, who and what we are is good, we are compassionate by nature, and we are also already whole, meaning we don’t need to achieve anything to be ok or deserving.

While I can now see these things clear as day, it wasn’t always this way, our clarity gets obscured through all sorts of misperception.

Meditation is about seeing through this ignorance and recognizing our goodness and wholeness. Not in a theoretical way, although studying theory is definitely helpful, but we come to perceive these things in a very direct way. And this isn’t just how we see ourselves, it’s also how we see others.

We see that in spite of people’s flaws, they are fundamentally good, and worthy of compassion.

I know this may seem like a stretch in today’s world, but that is just a reflection of how much pain and ignorance there is. Buddhism teaches that the best thing we can do is to be compassionate and try to overcome our own limited, ignorant views. It’s like Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world.

Or as I’ve heard many other wise people say in various forms, if you want to see change in the outer world, start by creating change in your inner world. After all, they aren’t as separate as they seem.

Basic Goodness

One of my favourite things about Buddhism is the idea of basic goodness. It’s the idea that at our core, we are fundamentally good.

This is very much in contrast to the Chirstian idea of original sin, although you could equate original sin to how ignorance is discussed in Buddhism, but I think the discussion around these things feels very different.

Buddhism sees that we are all inherently good, inherently compassionate, but this good nature often gets obscured by ignorance. Selfishness, greed, anger and hate are all rooted in ignorance, in not seeing the true nature of things.

We can get in touch with our basic goodness just by recognizing that there are people and things we care about. It is just the simple fact that we don’t want others to suffer.

This is one of my favourite ways to meditate, and it’s especially good for anxiety, depression, overwhelm, shame, and restlessness.

Bring to mind someone you care about. It could be an individual, a group of people, or even a pet.

Recognize that you care, that you don’t want them to suffer.

Try to get in touch with this feeling in your body. It may be very subtle, and that’s ok, just try to find where this feeling of basic goodness exists in your body.

I like to also add a smile, to actually smile a bit, but to also imagine the sensation of a smile emanating from my heart, radiating outwards in all directions, sending out a wish for the wellbeing of others, and the wellbeing of the planet too.

And just try to feel that radiating goodness, letting go of everything else and relaxing into this wish for the happiness, safety, and wellbeing of others.

You can also use a visualization, like there is warm golden-white light radiating from your heart space.

And many traditions use phrases to help here. “May all beings be happy. May all beings be free from suffering.”

Try these out, find the technique that lands for you, and do this every day, or throughout your day, and watch it transform your life.

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So what is insight? We could say it’s seeing reality more clearly.

Now Buddhism says that much of our experience is fabricated by the mind, and science has now backed this up. Anil Seth, a neuroscience researcher and professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, uses the term “controlled hallucinations” and explains that our brains are constantly generating predictions about the causes of incoming sensory signals, and this creates a great deal of our moment to moment experience.

This is very evident when you’re listening to a song and your mind makes up different lyrics, or you look at the classic optical illusions. Our mind is always making its best guess as to what we’re experiencing and constructing our experience around that.

So what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Well Buddhism in general and many advanced meditators across traditions claim that there is a fundamental error in how we experience the world, and that it’s way better when we subvert this and experience things more as they are. They say there is an immense sense of relief, and a pervasive feeling of peace, freedom, and a fundamental sense of wellbeing.

One of the great insight teachers of our times, Rob Burbea, wrote an absolutely brilliant guide to practicing insight. Seeing That Frees is a comprehensive practice guide that’s also creative and deeply contemplative and maybe a little theoretically dense at times but very accessibly written. I find I have to stop every page or so to digest what I just read. When I moved to Mexico from Canada it’s one of the few books I brought with me.

Burbea encourages a playful and curious attitude and approaches this topic from many angles. I think it will go down in history as one of the great books on meditation and insight, definitely check it out if you’re looking for a deep dive on this topic.

Burbea talks about insight as “Any realization, understanding, or way of seeing that brings, to any degree, a dissolution of, or decrease in, dukkha.”

Now, dukkha is often translated as suffering, but scholars point out that it may be closer to, or at least include, the idea of dissatisfaction.

Burbea goes on to claim that it’s most helpful to think of mindfulness practice “as a way of looking that merely fabricates a little less than our habitual ways of looking.”

So insight is a way of looking that fabricates less, and so there’s a sense of clarity, and this clarity relieves a great deal of our day to day suffering and dissatisfaction.

So what is our mind fabricating that leads to our suffering?

This is largely addressed in what’s called The Three Characteristics or The Three Marks of Existence. These are three ways in which our mind constructs this false reality that keep us stuck in cyclical suffering. The objective of insight meditation is to see through these illusions.

The Three Characteristics

So what exactly is our mind constructing that makes us suffer?

These are the three delusions that insight meditation is meant to liberate us from.

The first is insight into the nature of dukkha, which means suffering or dissatisfaction. By carefully observing our experience, we see how our cravings and desires don’t lead to any lasting satisfaction, and in fact tend to increase our suffering and dissatisfaction. Typically we can say the more we mentally feed our desires, the less happy we are.

Another dukkha insight points to the fact that much of our suffering and dissatisfaction is unavoidable, and resisting it only makes it worse. So we practice accepting our pains and discomforts instead of resisting or avoiding them, and we come to realize that the more fully we can embrace our pain, the less it actually hurts.

My main teacher Shinzen Young has a formula:

pain x resistance = suffering

pain x equanimity = purification

Equanimity is just accepting our experience, thoughts and feelings, as they are, without trying to resist or change anything at all.

The second characteristic is anicca which means impermanence. We recognize how our mind is always trying to concretize things, it desires permanence as a form of security. There’s an innate fear or insecurity in the impermanent nature of things. We can see impermanence on a larger scale, like the fact that we will all die and lose everything and everyone we love. But we can also see it on a smaller scale, that every feeling is impermanent, and that nothing is as solid or fixed as it seems. When we closely observe our experience, we can actually experience feelings more as vibration, and our body starts to feel more and more like empty space.

The more we can accept the impermanent, always changing nature of things, the less we will suffer.

The third is anatta, which translates to no-self. Our mind creates a sense of self based on habits and self-perception. But that’s just in the mind. Who and what we think we are, are only our limitations. If you remove the limitations, you have no self. Real freedom is being free from the self-imposed limitations of our self-image.

So if we want to practice insight, to see things in a way that reduce our suffering and dissatisfaction, we can pay attention to how our mind is constantly wanting but never satisfied, how it resists and avoids suffering, how we try to make things solid and permanent when in reality things are always changing and different in every moment, and how our mind creates a sense of self that largely just acts to restrict and limit our true nature.

This was a very short intro to a very large topic, but I’ll be exploring these themes and more in future posts so be sure to subscribe.

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Now without moving your eyes, can you open your vision to see all of the letters?

Are the other letters clear or not?

Our awareness tends to have a very narrow focus, and will jump around to take in more information. But instead of moving your attention around, see if you can open it wider.

In shamatha style meditation, we are just focusing on one object and disregarding everything else. It’s like if you focus on the X so intently that all the other letters disappear.

But in basically every meditation tradition, one pointed focus is just to train your concentration, the end goal is to open up your awareness to let more in.

In Tantric traditions they will often meditate on mandalas.

It’s the same idea, how much can you open your vision to see the whole image at once? They typically use these images as reference points, ultimately aiming to visualize this in their mind’s eye in as much detail as possible.

And this isn’t just about vision. You also want to apply this same principle to body sensations.

In both Zen Buddhism and Taoism, you usually keep about 30% of your attention in your lower belly, just a bit below your belly button but in the centre of your body. In Zen they usually call it the Hara, in Taoism it’s the lower dantien.

Keeping your awareness rooted in your lower body helps to keep your attention more grounded in your body sensations as opposed to getting lost in thoughts, as thoughts typically happen up here.

So try putting about 30% of your awareness in your belly, and the rest is just open into the space around you, feeling your whole body, hearing sounds around you, and even noticing thoughts happening up here, without fixating on any of it, just letting it all come and go.

The key to opening our awareness like this isn’t to try to force it open, but instead to try to relax into it naturally.

Being totally relaxed. Staying in an open, embodied awareness.

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Instead of focusing on what we are aware of in the present moment, I think it’s more helpful to focus on how we are aware in each moment.

There is always a perspective from which we are aware, and we can generally call this our attitude. It can often seem subtle, but it is one of the most consequential and impactful aspects of our experience.

What is the attitude with which you meet experience? Our minds have an innate habit of being critical or judgmental, and this creates a resistance, or contractions in our mind-body system, where we get stuck in feelings and thought loops.

If we look at extremes, do you know someone with an overly critical and judgemental attitude? What is their general mood? Do they seem happy to you?

When we get stuck in a judgmental attitude, we are sending a message to our mind-body system that “I don’t want this” or “this is not ok”. Try to notice, in this moment, what that does to your mind and body on a very subtle level. What does it feel like to be telling yourself “I don’t want this” or “this is not ok”? You may notice you feel more closed, rigid, anxious, tight.

With mindfulness, we are training being more open to our experience. We are training the attitude of “I can be with this” or “this is fundamentally ok”. Notice now what it feels like when you practice this attitude. “I can be with this”. “This is OK”.

You may notice you feel a bit more relaxed, a bit more open or free.

Over time, our habitual attitudes ingrain themselves in our posture. Try opening your posture, even if it’s very subtle, to feel like you’re more open to experience. Chronic tension and a collapsed posture signify a dissociation or self protection.

This is the reason posture is emphasized so much in meditation, we are practicing this openness, vulnerability, allowing ourselves to fully inhabit our body and meet each experience fully. We embody a sense of dignity.

Feel your shoulders relax and your chest open, vulnerable, feeling a willingness to meet life fully. Chogyam Trungpa talks about this in his book Shambhala: sacred path of the warrior, that we are practicing being courageous, a willingness to meet life with a tender, open heart.

We want to have this attitude especially towards our own inner experience, meaning our thoughts and feelings. Can we meet our thoughts and feelings with a warm, welcoming, accepting attitude. Not trying to change them, but accepting them wholly as we experience them, in each moment.

We can practice this in all activities, when we’re working, walking, sitting, moving… feel a sense of alignment through your centre. Feel a sense of dignity in your posture. Can you embody a quiet courage, a willingness to meet your experience fully.

We can even practice embodying a subtle smile. Like smile with your face, then imagine smiling through your heart space, and imagine that smile energy permeates your whole being. Even if you’re feeling sad or anxious or numb, smile at those feelings, they are welcome here.

And this is one of the keys to a good life, learning to accept and even love each moment, each thought, and every feeling as fully as we can, especially if they are uncomfortable.

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Now Khadro has lived a remarkable life. She was a Tibetan Refugee who grew up in Calcutta, India, and Mother Teresa was actually one of her teachers as a child.

At some point in her life Khadro was diagnosed with endometritis, and didn’t want to do the prescribed surgery and hormone replacement therapy, so she instead studied both Chinese Taoist healing traditions along with Tibetan Medicine and healed herself naturally.

In the late 90s she read Waking The Tiger by Peter Levine, which was one of the major pioneering works on somatic psychology.

She hand wrote Peter Levine a message, explaining some of her understanding of how trauma is stored in the body based on her studies and experience. Peter Levine was so impressed that he invited her to Esalen Institute in California for a few weeks to work with her and learn from her, and when Peter Levine came out of retirement in 2019 to teach an advanced somatic experiencing class, he brought Khadro to teach with him.

OK so this is what Khadro told me:

“All spiritual practice is to just help the practitioner to feel safe to let go.”

That’s it. There are countless different types of practice, countless forms of meditation, yoga, breathwork, chi-gong… but Khadro claims it’s all just in service of making you feel safe to let go.

This really struck me for how general and simple it is, but since then I’ve come more and more to realize this profound truth. That it really is just about letting go, and yet the world and our lives are so dangerous and uncertain and chaotic that it really is a challenge to feel safe and let go.

So we need to learn strategies and practices that can help us loosen our grip and relax, bit by bit. And that’s what I’m trying to do here, give you some of those practices and strategies.

Here’s a great quote I find myself often referencing by Thai Forest tradition monk and meditation master Ajahn Chah:

“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely, you will have complete peace.”

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What are we letting go of?

We often have no idea how much we are actually holding on until we start to feel what’s on the other side. I used to get a sense of this when I was reading eastern spirituality when I was young, and it really became evident after some psychedelic experiences. Maybe you’ve had moments like these, where you felt more free, relaxed, connected, content, and even happy and fulfilled. Maybe you even felt deeply loved by the cosmos.

If you’ve been lucky enough to have had these experiences, you’ll know they can help us see how our whole mind-body system has been closed off or gripping our entire lives; it can become so normalized that we often don’t even realize there is another, better, freer way of being.

The point of spiritual practices is to help us touch in on this freer, more connected way of being.

Whenever something happens that we don’t want to happen, or we see something we don’t like, or we feel something uncomfortable, we tighten up a little. Sometimes it’s very obvious, but often it’s very subtle.

Throughout our life these contractions build up in our system and become stuck in our physical and energetic bodies. In some cases we are very sensitive to these emotions we’ve been carrying around, often feeling emotionally reactive, irritable, or perpetually overwhelmed. In other cases we repress or dissociate from the feelings, which can lead to feeling more numb, restless, apathetic, disconnected or depressed, which was how I felt for much of my life.

Some meditative traditions discuss these contractions in both our physical and energy bodies as being energetic knots. Much of spiritual practice is aimed at what is often called purification, which means we are trying to cleanse our mind-body system so we can feel more naturally open, radiant, and free.

Practices like yoga and chi-gong use movement combined with awareness to purify our system, while meditation mostly just focuses on the raw power of awareness.

I’m also a practicing therapist and I see much of the therapeutic process, especially somatic and emotion focused therapies, as effective forms of purification. In these cases we are processing the feelings through expressing and feeling them.

In Gestalt therapy, one of the modalities I trained in, they use the metaphor of peeling the onion. You work through your stuff layer by layer, and you feel more relief and peace and freedom with every layer peeled.

I’ve benefited greatly from all of these approaches, both therapeutic and meditative, and as a result my approach is integrative. I’m just always looking for what works, and I’ve found that each person has their own unique journey to learn and grow and work through their emotional and energetic knots to find more freedom and wellbeing.

But my baseline practice is mindfulness, because it compliments all the other practices. Regardless of your unique path, I truly believe everyone can benefit from learning some basic mindfulness skills.

That’s what I’m trying to do here, so please follow along and/or share if that interests you, because my whole goal is to bring you the practices and perspectives that I have found to actually help, both in my own experience and in working with others.

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The idea is to become less identified with what’s happening in a way that events and experiences feel less personal, and as a result, don’t throw us for a loop so easily.

For example, if we are experiencing anxiety we may say “I’m anxious”, as if we are that anxiety. We can begin to de-identify by shifting to “I am feeling anxiety”. You see the “I” and the “anxiety” are now seperate. We can even further dis-identify by shifting to “there is anxiety happening” – in this case there is no “I” at all, just sensations happening in space.

We can do this for any uncomfortable experience. Shift from “I’m angry” to “there is anger” or “I’m scared” to “there is fear”.

Normally our awareness, and sense of self, is embedded in our feelings. When we practice non-identification, we are differentiating between the experience and the experiencer. We come to learn that we are not our experiences, but we are the awareness in which experiences happen.

We realize that what we really are is this fundamental ground of awareness, and all the thoughts and feelings we experience are just passing phenomena. This has an odd effect of making our thoughts and feelings less scary because they feel less personal, less permanent, and less all consuming.

This actually allows us to dissociate less and be more present with our experience, to come more into our senses and feel more fully. Our experience feels less personal, but at the same time, more intimate, because we can be with it more fully.

So try this, notice what you are thinking or feeling in any moment, but make it less about you. There are thoughts. There are feelings. You aren’t any of it, but the observer to it.

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In the wellness scene there’s a lot of emphasis on the power of forgiveness. And for good reason, forgiveness is liberating. We forgive not so much to help the person we are forgiving, but to unburden ourselves from the grudge we carry against them.

But if you try to forgive someone before you process the emotional impact of what happened, then the forgiveness is just performative.

To truly forgive, we need to feel all the anger and sadness they caused us. Often we dissociate from these feelings because they feel like they’re too much, or don’t know how to process them, and then never fully move past what happened.

One of the oldest and most effective ways to process feelings is to tell a safe person what happened. You can tell them that you’re not looking for advice, you just want to share what happened and how it impacted you so you can process your feelings.

Or you can journal, or scream into a pillow, or cry in the shower, or meditate with your feelings, or write a song, or paint a picture, or do an interpretive dance… There is no right way to process feelings, so feel free to explore and find what works for you.

We typically process feelings in waves. Sometimes a big wave comes, sometimes a little wave. Your job is to just to ride each wave as best you can by staying present with the feelings, and if appropriate expressing the feelings and also caring for yourself until the feelings subside.

It’s common to shift between anger and sadness. This is normal, it’s part of the process. Healing is a process reflecting, making sense of what happened, but mostly feeling and grieving.

And then, after you’ve processed the bulk of the feelings, then you may feel ready to forgive.

This isn’t a process to be rushed, and you don’t have to forgive anyone. But, if you really do want to move emotionally, then forgiveness is something to eventually be worked towards. Again, not for them, but for you.

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Stop throwing more wood on the inner fire of fear, anger, shame… this is relevant for all negative emotions, but let’s focus on anger.

First of all, you have a right to be angry. I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel what you feel.

But Buddhism teaches that anger is toxic, and not actually all that productive. Of course, meaningful change can and has happened through collective anger. It can serve a constructive purpose. But you have to ask yourself, how is your anger really impacting you?

The Dalai Lama was once asked if he would kill Hitler, if he had the chance. He consulted with his senior advisors, very wise men, and he eventually answered that yes he would kill Hitler, but he stressed that he wouldn’t be angry.

Acts of resistance, and even violence, can be compassionate acts. When you really understand karma or just cause and effect, you realize that harming others is actually harming yourself as well.

So killing Hitler isn’t just compassionate to the people he is harming, but it’s even compassionate to Hitler, as this stops him from worsening his karma, from harming himself further.

There’s a saying that holding anger is like holding a hot coal, and expecting it to burn the other person.

So what is a skillful response to anger?

Well, we acknowledge it. We feel it. We allow it to course through our veins. But we don’t feed it. We don’t keep ruminating on what happened, or play out scenarios of vengeance.

We want to allow the fire of anger to burn up inside of us, without throwing more wood on the fire.

Instead of playing out the events over and over in our heads, we can just be with the feeling of anger in our bodies. Feeling it as fully as we can, without stoking the flames with our imagination.

And when we feel ready and able, we can shift to compassion. Compassion for ourselves, compassion to the victims, and eventually, if we can, even compassion to those doing harm.

Compassion isn’t compliance. It isn’t complacency. And it isn’t approval for the actions of others. Compassion is just realizing that we are all the victims of imperfect conditions, fear, and ignorance.

We practice compassion not to give others a pass, but to allow ourselves to respond intelligently and effectively — and really to protect our own energy and wellbeing. If we want the world to be a better place, with more compassion and care, we need to start practicing it ourselves.

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What is emotional mastery? Most people think it’s the ability to control our emotions, but that’s not really how it works, because for the most part, we cannot control our emotions… though there is an exception I’ll address shortly.

With most emotions, we can only resist or accept them. We may think that resisting emotions is controlling them, but when we resist a feeling, it only becomes more stuck in us, and ends up lingering around for much longer.

You can think of your emotions like a flowing river, and resisting your emotions is like trying to dam up the river, but the water just keeps flowing and building up.

Instead of damming up the river, we want to dig deep trenches, so the water can flow more easily. Instead of suppressing our feelings, we can guide them to flow through us, and this helps us metabolize them as they arise.

So emotional mastery is actually being able to recognize your feelings as they arise and relaxing around them, allowing them to flow through us, without resisting them, or needing to act on them.

And this is the practice. The more we can fully be with what we are feeling, the better our mind-body system becomes at processing feelings.

I said at the start that there are some ways that we can control our feelings. We can’t stop uncomfortable feelings, but we can cultivate good feelings. We can conjure up a sense of compassion, which is helpful in pretty much every setting. Or maybe we can find a sensation of ease or joy, and focus on that, allowing it to grow.

I will explore more on cultivating good feelings and also working with feelings when they become overwhelming in the future, but for now, the best way to work towards emotional mastery is to simply practice feeling what you’re feeling, in each moment, as clearly and fully as you can.

Working with Overwhelm

Now we generally don’t want to resist or dissociate from our feelings, but if we are feeling emotionally overwhelmed, we actually do. To a degree.

There are two very effective approaches to work with emotional overwhelm. They became popularized by somatic psychology but they have started to catch on in the meditation world with trauma informed teachers.

The strategies are called titration and pendulation.

Titration is really just moving slowly into the feeling. Processing it bit by bit. A great mindfulness technique is to just pay attention to the outer edges of the feeling, instead of diving in the centre of it. There are many titration techniques, but it’s all about going slowly, feeling it bit by bit, so it’s not so overwhelming.

Pendulation is the other approach, which is moving your attention back and forth between the difficult feelings and something more stable. A common practice here is to feel the sensations in our feet, as this generally has a grounding and stabilizing effect, because we usually don’t have a lot of emotions in our feet.

So we move our awareness down, into our feet, feeling the sensations there, and once we feel a little more settled, we can move our awareness back into the centre of our body, and practice being with the feelings here.

The core idea in all of this is that being overwhelmed is scary, and that fear and disorientation just adds to the overwhelm. These techniques help us feel more safe to feel what’s coming up.

This is just a general intro to these approaches, but if this seems like it would be helpful for you to explore further, I’d recommend the book Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven, and also books on Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine… all of his books are great but Healing Trauma is a great starting point as it’s short, to the point, and comes with guided audio practices.

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I’m going to also be posting the same content here. Instead of the longer essays I’ve posted previously, these will be short, actionable posts that get straight to the point.

Thank you to all my supporters and I always appreciate the subscribes, likes, and shares!

Whatever happened to the Mindfulness Revolution?

Some of you may remember a time when you were hearing about meditation and mindfulness everywhere.

My experience, as someone who’s been teaching this stuff for over 12 years now, is that a lot of people gave it a shot, but never really knew how to practice, and didn’t see much in the way of results. Over time, the mindfulness hype fizzled out…

And yet mindfulness has never been so needed!

I truly believe that mindfulness can be taught in a way that sticks, but traditional methods aren’t ideal for today’s world.

Now, I have ADHD, and I could never get the traditional systems to work for me. But I was deeply interested in this stuff, so I kept learning and experimenting with different methods, and eventually figured out what practices actually did work for me… and yes, they really did transform my life.

So I decided to take up the challenge of teaching mindfulness in a way intended to get more traction by everyday distractible people, by making it more interesting, clear, and enjoyable.

Here’s how:

First: very low time commitment. Short teachings with clear instructions that I’ll give out here. The beauty of mindfulness practice is that you can add it to anything else you’re doing, without losing time or energy.

Second: I want to give you a rich understanding of what mindfulness is and how you can practice it. Often mindfulness is talked about in very vague terms, and this just leads to confusion and lack of direction.

That’s my mission going forward, so if you want to try this out be sure to follow along.

The Power of Mindfulness and the 2 Step Formula

The main technique I used to transform my life and dramatically lower my ADHD symptoms is a simple two step process.

It both smooths out discomforts like restlessness and anxiety, and also deepens feelings of pleasure and ease. Although it’s a simple technique, the impacts are profound. The key to making it work is to be aware of the positive results, even if they are subtle. Over time, they build and build.

So this is the 2 step process:

First: notice what’s happening in your body. What sensations are present when you feel into your experience in this moment?

First you can check in to see what’s most obvious. Is it a pleasant sensation? Is it unpleasant? Or maybe it’s neutral. Where in your body are you feeling this? What is the shape of it? Notice the space it takes up. Is it moving or vibrating or pulsating? Does it feel stable or solid? Is it heavy or light? Does it have a contractive or expansive quality? Does it have a texture? See if you can be genuinely curious about these sensations as if you’re experiencing them for the first time.

So this is the first step. The technical term is sensory clarity. We are bringing more awareness and clarity to the sensations in our body.

The second step is called equanimity. Can we just let these sensations be there? Can we relax around them instead of trying to resist or control them? Our body naturally tightens around uncomfortable feelings in an attempt to resist them. But this actually makes them more stuck. So instead, can we intentionally relax around these feelings, even if they are uncomfortable. We can even actively welcome them, allowing these feelings to dance and move through our body unobstructed.

So this is the magic formula, first noticing what we’re feeling, and bringing more clarity to our feelings. And then welcoming these sensations as fully as we can, even if they are uncomfortable.

This is the starting point, but as you might imagine, there’s a lot more to it. So stay tuned and follow for more bite size mindfulness tips that will help you build out a rich understanding and practice as to how mindfulness can transform your life.

Stay tuned for more, and follow along on instagram if you aren’t already.

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This is not a rhetorical question. Really, how do you suffer?

Usually when I ask this to clients, they respond to a different yet related question: why do you suffer?

That is also a worthy inquiry, but you’ve likely thought some deal about that already. Instead I am asking a very different question. How do you suffer?

Why we suffer has to do the the conditions that we attribute our suffering to. Sometimes we can do something to better these conditions, sometimes we can’t. Either way, much of our suffering can be transformed through the direct investigation into the experience of suffering.

Insight Transforms Suffering

Buddhism is very much oriented towards working with, and alleviating suffering, and there are many lessons and strategies we can draw from it.

One of the core aspects of Buddhism is called Vipassana, often translated to Insight and conflated with the term Mindfulness. While there are specific traditions that emphasize this style of practice and therefore use the label, Vipassana was a central teaching of the Buddha, and therefore exists in all Buddhist traditions, even if it’s less emphasized (you will hear this term less in Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, though it’s still a prominent principle in those traditions).

The goal of Vipassana or Insight Meditation is to get insight into the true nature of reality. There are a few types of insight we are looking for, and a big one is insight into the nature of suffering.

One of my favourite Insight Meditation teachers, Rob Burbea, clarified what he considers to be an insight:

“Any realization, understanding, or way of seeing that brings, to any degree, a dissolution of, or decrease in, dukkha.” (Dukkha is commonly translated as suffering but also has a quality of dissatisfaction.)

Insight Meditation practice is all about observing our experience in a way that dissolves or reduces our suffering.

This is an incredible claim, that we can reduce our suffering through observation or insight. It’s in stark contrast to our usual way of trying to resolve our suffering; by addressing the conditions or perceived causes.

Exploring the causes of suffering is also important, because sometimes we can address these issues directly.

For example, if I’m working with a client who feels they are being bullied or mistreated, I’d first coach them to learn how to stand up for themselves, to communicate and enforce boundaries better.

Or if a client came to me depressed and anxious because their life felt meaningless, I would start by exploring what they care about, their sense of agency, and what they can actually do to feel they are living more aligned with their values.

The mindfulness approach is not so much about addressing the conditional causes of our individual suffering as much as it is about freeing ourselves from suffering regardless of the conditions.

In this sense the methods are universally applicable. Regardless of your individual conditions, these strategies can help you.

There is, however, a bit of a trap here. If we take this approach to its extreme, we may end up accepting or minimizing conditions that we can and should take action to try to change.

Conditional Wellbeing and Spiritual Bypassing

Some idealistic types can be too focused on the inner work of liberating themselves from suffering and not enough on taking appropriate action. This is what is often meant by the term spiritual bypassing.

But that isn’t to say these techniques don’t have their place. In fact I find them deeply complimentary and sometimes even essential to enacting meaningful change. Often the barriers to taking meaningful action are internal.

Alternatively, sometimes we are genuinely stuck. We are working a stressful job that isn’t aligned with our values, but we don’t have any other options. Or maybe we have chronic pain or illness. Some degree of suffering is always inevitable.

Ultimately this is eloquently addressed in the Serenity Prayer (“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference”).

How We Suffer

Coming back to the question about how you suffer, the goal is to get beyond the story and look at the actual felt sense of suffering.

A natural progression of can go something like this.

Story: I suffer because my life is a mess and nothing feels meaningful.

Then we try to get into the actual feelings. Boiling down the story until we arrive at the unique cocktail of emotions or felt senses. Something like this:

I feel disoriented, lost, impotent, and sad.

This is very important as naming the feelings helps to process or liberate them. It brings them more into conscious awareness, where they can be felt and move more freely.

This movement of feelings is important. The more we can put words to them, the more alive they become within us. Repressing feelings only makes them more stuck. Instead we want to do our best allow them to move through us unobstructed.

We often have a lot of resistance or defences against feeling things fully. These are based in fear. So helping us to understand what are our fears around feeling these things will help us feel safe to feel them.

Non-Identification

One common fear has to do with the way we tend to identify with feelings. For example, if we commonly feel worthless, we may associate the feeling of worthlessness with the belief that we are worthless.

This is a very common mistake we make. So we must practice non-identification; practicing “I feel” statements to replace “I am” statements.

All of this can help us to better feel what’s going on, and practically we are doing this by learning to relax around difficult feelings, as opposed to contracting around them.

Our body instinctively responds to discomfort by tensing up in an attempt to suppress the feelings. Here we are retraining our body to relax around our uncomfortable sensations by reassuring ourselves that we can feel these feelings.

We can further help ourselves to feel safe to feel our feelings by further dropping the stories, context, and labels — and feeling them only as physical sensation.

We may have all sorts of associations with these feelings that make them feel very scary, and so we practice dropping all of this and just be with felt sense only.

This means feeling things like vibration, weight, pressure, texture, and space.

There are many techniques we can use to help this process, but we can emphasize two important principles here.

Sensory Clarity: How clearly can you feel the physical sensations?

And also equanimity.

How much can you welcome the sensations?

Instead of resisting them by tightening up around them, can you relax and just be with the sensations as fully as possible?

It is this simple formula, applied over and over, that begins to transform our moment to moment relationship with suffering, in turn liberating us from our pain and reactivity.

How clearly can you feel your suffering? How fully can you relax, let it happen, and whole heartedly welcome it? Let your pain move through your being unobstructed.

This is in many ways against our nature and counterintuitive, but deeply transformative if we commit to the practice.

(You can check out my Equanimity Playlist for guided meditations and more talk on the power and practice of equanimity.)

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From some time now I’ve felt like my life has been guided by two great wisdom traditions. As both a therapist and meditation teacher, I’m always trying to help the people I’m working with, and whether I’m teaching meditation or working therapeutically, I always end up relying on both of these perspectives. We could roughly call them Buddhism and Psychology, and if we take them at face value, there seem to be massive contradictions in their goals.

Take for example the idea of the Self. Psychology is aimed at developing a healthy, functional sense of self. But Buddhism, on the other hand, claims that the sense of a Self is a delusion and is responsible for most of our suffering.

Another seeming contradiction lies in the idea of attachment.

Buddhism claims that our suffering comes from attachment (it could be said that our sense of self is made up from our attachments), and that we should work to be less attached to things.

And yet, likely THE most widely accepted and tested and utilized idea in all of modern psychology is in fact called Attachment Theory. While many ideas in psychology are difficult to prove, Attachment Theory has been so well studied, so universally applicable, that its truth and relevance is more or less irrefutable.

The basic idea of attachment theory, without getting into all the anxious and avoidant details, is that for healthy human development it is ideal for a child to maintain a healthy sense of attachment with their primary caregiver.

What Buddhism misses is that we are biological beings that have these things called nervous systems, and nervous systems are very sensitive things.

When you feel safe, your nervous system relaxes and you can feel a natural ease. When you don’t feel safe, your nervous system activates, going into fight, flight, freeze or fawn (or fear, anger, dissociation, shame) — and very often a cocktail of them all.

It is more and more common to hear the theory that all mental health challenges or pathologies are the result of not feeling safe. Both the body and mind work in overdrive to try to solve the problem of not feeling safe.

So the therapeutic approach is to help the person find a sense of safety. In Attachment Theory, the original sense of safety is provided by our primary caregiver. They either meet our needs consistently in a way that helps us trust that our needs will be met, or they don’t, which leads to a fundamental mistrust that others, and the world in general, will be able to meet our needs.

When we take this perspective, that a sense of safety helps us relax and trust, then we can begin to see that these principles aren’t actually in contrast to much of what’s taught in Buddhism.

Buddhism has these principles embedded all through it. If you were to become a traditional Buddhist, you’d do something that’s called Taking Refuge. You take refuge in The Three Jewels, which are The Buddha (the teacher or enlightened ideal), The Dharma (the teachings or truth of the path), and the Sangha (the community).

While the Buddha preached non-attachment, The Three Jewels definitely look like forms of attachment to me. My theory is that while The Buddha taught an ideal, it was also realized that there’s a very real process to ultimately achieving that ideal.

The Buddhist path, simplified into one idea, could be just this: Let go.

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go absolutely, you will have absolute peace.”
-Ajahn Chah, Thai Monk and Buddhist Teacher

The thing is though, it’s not easy to let go. In a world that is chaotic, unpredictable, and full of potential threats, letting go doesn’t feel like a winning strategy. Instead we are constantly trying to assess the threats, to reflect on what we should do or shouldn’t have done, to try to make something of ourselves, to try to figure life out, and the world too, because it seems like that’s the only way to make the best decisions for ourselves.

One of my mentors, a Tibetan woman in her 70s who goes by Khadro, once told me something very interesting. Khadro is not just a Tibetan Buddhist, but also practices Taoism, teaches Chi-gong and actually helped Peter Levine develop Somatic Experiencing, a pioneering movement in somatic psychology that revolutionized how we work with trauma.

Khadro said to me that “all spiritual practices are only to help the practitioner feel safe to let go.”

I had never heard it put so simply before. And while I mentally tried to find exceptions to this statement, I haven’t found a solid one yet. All practices are just tools in the ultimate service of helping us to let go.

While the goal of Buddhism is ultimate freedom, the traditional practice asks for a very serious degree of commitment. The paradox here, and something I’ve learned over and over again through real world trials and tribulations, is that it is through commitment that I’ve become more free.

The juvenile idea of freedom, that responsibilities and commitments restrict our freedom, usually leads to feeling disconnected and disoriented. We end up at the mercy of our every whim and desire, and are profoundly disappointed when we realize that these egoic comforts and desires don’t bring us any lasting satisfaction.

A more mature sense of freedom is not the result of being able to do whatever we want at any moment, but instead seeing the nature of our mind, how it’s always wanting things, and never satisfied. And instead of doing what we feel like doing, we can instead do what we know is right, recognizing that helping others is also helping ourselves.

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In my own life this couldn’t be more clear. I suffered from depression for many years, even when I had the money and freedom to more or less do whatever I wanted. When I enquired into my experience, I got the distinct feeling that something was wrong. That feeling of something being wrong marked every aspect of my life.

But over the last decade I’ve become more and more oriented towards doing things for others. I’ve realized that the more I care for others, the better I feel. That created a positive feedback loop, where I stopped being so concerned about my more selfish ambitions, and instead I’ve naturally become more oriented towards helping others.

By figuring out what I actually, truly cared about, and organizing my life more and more around those values, I’ve found a sense of fundamental okayness. There’s a sense of contentment, that things are somehow ok, even when they aren’t all that ok, that has brought me to more peace than I’d ever felt.

And this is how I see the complement between these two perspectives. Psychology has taught me how to care for myself, how to find a sense of safety not just through my relationships, but also through living in alignment with my values as best I can.

Through the psychological perspective I’ve better understood how I wasn’t really listening to my feelings. One of my favourite psychologists, James Hollis once said when speaking of depression, “The Self is always speaking to you, but when you don’t listen to it, the Self ends up leaving you, and takes all your energy with it” (this is paraphrased from his audiobook Through The Dark Wood).

Psychology in general, and depth psychologists like James Hollis specifically, helped me understand that a good life isn’t necessarily a comfortable or glamorous life, but a life that is aligned with our deepest values, and therefore personally meaningful. For me that meant stepping into the role of a therapist and meditation teacher, which carry great responsibilities —responsibilities that for some time I feared to take on because I was afraid they may infringe on my more juvenile ideas of freedom.

Psychology taught me how to be true to myself, and Buddhism has taught me not to get too wrapped up in any of this. Not to judge my value, or the value of others, based on successes or failures. And not to make a solid identity out of any of this, not even the achievements I’m proud of.

Buddhism helps me see the illusion of it all, that even though I’m very much a therapist and meditation teacher, who and what I really am is not these things at all. These are roles I am playing and although I take them seriously, they don’t define me outside of the work itself.

Who and what I am is not limited by any role at all. I can make every decision, and respond to each moment, not from a role or sense of identity, but from the unconditioned intelligence and spontaneity that we learn to access when we put all of this aside, and just be present.

The feeling of alignment with my values gave me a sense of comfort and peace that made me feel safe to let go further than I ever had. I’ve been able to let go of the idea that I need to do or be anything at all, instead seeing the raw beauty of humanity itself and appreciating the inherent value of all living beings.

It is the recognition of this innate wholeness, that we don’t have to achieve anything to be worthy, that we already are everything. This was the freedom the Buddha was speaking about, and the freedom that I was always looking for. And the more I do what I feel is good and aligned with who I am, the more I can let go of any agenda and appreciate the fullness of each moment.

Second is A Jungian & Archetypal Seminar Series by my good friend Pat Davis. Pat loves depth psychology the same way I love meditation and mindfulness (I also really love depth psychology, but admittedly not as much as Pat does). We studied together at school, and after graduating Pat was so hungry to immerse himself deeper into Jungian and Archetypal study that he joined an MA/PhD program at Pacifica Graduate Institute (the leading educational institution for depth psychology).

We have both made these offerings relatively affordable as well as offering sliding scale. We also happen to be starting these around the same time (but on different dates/times). Take them both! Or if that’s too much—just take mine. No really I won’t be offended if you choose Pat’s course over mine, I am also considering taking his course if I can make the time for it (and he will likely join mine).

A Shift In Perspective Can Bring Immediate Improvements To Your Concentration

Everyone has been complaining about their attention spans these days! I hear this from friends and clients all the time, that they can’t seem to focus at all, and often fall behind on work, compounding their stress, which actually makes it even harder to focus.

On one hand, there’s some practical things we can do to help. Things we absolutely should do if we want to regain our focus. We need to minimize our distractions, setting up barriers to our dopamine stimulating addictions, whether this is social media, news sites, games, etc.

Distancing ourselves from these things is an important first step. Taking the time to block apps when you should be working, or putting your phone out of reach and sight, are small but powerful actions you can take. You need to protect your peace!

But you will likely still struggle to concentrate on your task, and that’s where these tips that I learned from meditative traditions and also my own challenges with ADHD, will really help.

Note: if this is something you are serious about transforming, I made a whole course on this years ago. It’s the result of deep study and a lot of trial and error. I distilled the core techniques I used to transform my own distractible nature, and I’ve received a lot of feedback from people who have done the course with similar results. It’s just $33, buy once for lifetime access (no subscriptions or anything like that). Check it out!

The mindset shift around concentration

I have to admit, that even just the word “concentration” still brings up a subtle discomfort in my body. I think that, growing up ADHD, I have Concentration Deficit Trauma (a term I just made up right now, but I’m sure many of you will relate to).

You see, when I really needed to get something done, I would wait until the last possible minute, and then that sense of urgency would give me enough energy to force myself to focus enough to get it done.

But as I got older, and learned mindfulness skills, and studied ADHD and explored my own experience of it, I learned something really important.

There are different ways to concentrate, and I had an unconscious belief that concentration was the result of effort, and when I used this approach I would use up all my mental energy trying to focus, and get mentally exhausted, which made it even harder to focus, resulting in stress and frustration.

The best way to concentrate, and the only truly sustainable way to stay concentrated, is to develop concentration as a direct result of relaxation.

Any truly experienced meditator can tell you this, that the times they feel most focused and concentrated in their meditation practice are also the times when they are most relaxed.

And so the irony of concentration is that the more we try to focus, the more effort we put into being concentrated, the harder it actually becomes.

Instead, we actually have to learn how to relax, which is a whole other approach.

So when you have some important work to get done, when it comes time that you need to be focused on a task, you need to, first and foremost, prioritize your relaxation.

When you take this approach, you start to see all they ways in which you aren’t relaxed. The tension in your shoulders and jaw, the restlessness in your abdomen, the thoughts racing through your head...

My practice of meditation and mindfulness has been very fruitful largely because I have learned strategies to relax my body and mind. This is what it’s all about. Or at least, this is the foundation of meditation and mindfulness practice.

Relaxation is a skill that can be learned. You can even learn to relax in the midst of stress and chaos. This is a true game changer. You might even call it a life hack, but it’s not really a hack, because you actually have to work for it, you actually have to practice the skills.

This is one of the things I’m focusing on in my upcoming Pragmatic Mindfulness Skills for Therapists and Guides Course. But it’s also the focus of my Meditation for ADHD Course.

This essay wasn’t originally intended to be a sales pitch for my Meditation for ADHD Course, but it’s sort of turned into one. I really did put so much time and thought into that course, and the ideas and techniques in it are the things I still use to this day—every day.

Thanks for reading!

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I had carried over a lot of my mindfulness skills into my therapeutic practice to great success. They were a perfect complement — both in theory and in practice — to all of the other therapeutic techniques I had learned.

I wanted to share this effective complement with other therapists and healthcare workers, and the workshop was very well received (some testimonials at the bottom).

Now, 7 years later, I am offering a course with the same intention. This time, however, I have refined my practice and approach a great deal. I have far more experience to draw from, more data points to integrate into a comprehensive approach on how to work with various types of challenges.

So again I am offering this new and improved mindfulness skills course!

Note: This course is designed for therapists, coaches, guides, facilitators, etc. It’s meant for people guiding others in some sense. But it’s not limited to that. Anyone interested in learning these things is welcome to join!

Course Description

This course is intended to give participants a comprehensive framework and structured techniques that work as a stand alone approach as well as complement other therapeutic modalities (parts work, somatic, psychodynamic, etc).

I use the basic Unified Mindfulness framework, as taught by Shinzen Young, but add a lot of complementary practices and perspectives.

One way of explaining mindfulness practice is that it is a systematic way of transforming suffering through awareness. We are developing attentional skills that can complement any and all aspects of life and practice.

This course will be 5 online sessions, each 2 hours long. The group will be limited to 10 participants. Every session will include:

-a theory section

-guided group practices (demonstrating universally applicable practices)

-a 1:1 guided practice demo (where I guide an individual through a practice, to demonstrate how to be flexible and tailor a practice to a clients individual needs)

-a group discussion / Q&A

My goal is to give participants the tools and understanding to confidently guide others in a tailored and flexible way, that attunes to the individual needs of each client.

Course Outline

Session 1: Building a Framework - Understanding the attentional skills of Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity — and the concept of Purification.

Session 2: Filling In the Details - Strategies for exploring and applying Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity through practice. Emphasis and on the mind-body relationship.

Session 3: Core Practices 1 - Guided practices for Inner Child Healing, Reparenting, and Self-Actualization.

Session 4: Core Practices 2 - Guided meditations for Pain, ADHD, Restlessness, and cultivating Compassion, Gratitude, Peace, and Tranquility.

Session 5: Integration - A final session to explore any lingering questions (how to work with x?) and dive deeper into topics that interest the participants.

If you are interested in this course, reach out by replying to this email or emailing me at jude.integrated@gmail.com and let me know what dates and times do and don’t work for you. I will take all of this into consideration when making the times, and if I get enough interest I may run 2 courses concurrently (on different days, at different times).

All sessions will be recorded and available to the participants.

Cost: I will be charging $250 USD for Americans, and $300 CAD for Canadians. Being a Canadian, I am sympathetic to the currency difference, so Canadians get a small discount. If you are from another country or cost is a barrier, please reach out and we can negotiate a rate given you financial situation.

About Me

I have been studying Buddhism and meditation for over 20 years and teaching for the last 12 years. I’ve written guided meditations for many apps including Calm, Open, Mindbloom, FieldTrip, and Hatch for Sleep. You can find more about me on my Website and also an outline of much of my work in this Substack post.

Testimonials from my previous workshops (7 years ago):

“I’m a psychologist and DBT therapist, and had been looking for ways to strengthen my ability to incorporate mindfulness strategies into my work with clients, particularly those in later stages of treatment. I’ve been doing my own mindfulness practice for a few years, and it is part of the DBT framework, however, I was finding that my ability to use mindfulness in-session with clients was limited. The workshop I attended with Jude was incredibly helpful, from both a personal and professional standpoint. He provided some very specific and clear ideas about ways to apply mindfulness strategies with my clients, particularly for clients who experience a lot of shame, or who are highly avoidant of certain emotions. I often find that I leave workshops feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information, and uncertain about how to translate it into practice. This was definitely not the case with this workshop – I left with knowledge and ideas that I was able to start incorporating into my work with clients right away, as well as some ideas about where to go next with my own practice. Jude’s passion about mindfulness, meditation, and their value in therapy was clear, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from him.”

-Dr. Stacey Schell, Clinical Psychologist

“Jude has a way of making the information both approachable and interactive. I appreciate his ability to go off the cuff and roll with the flow of questions from the group. I felt like I took home some manageable skills, and lots of references for future learning. I was able to integrate methods into my own meditation practice and to relate it to the practice of therapy. Given the opportunity I would attend a workshop run by Jude again, as I am sure it would be informative and interesting.”

-Reva, Psychotherapy Student

“Jude is a compassionate guide that takes you on a journey through his wisdom and experience of meditation and mindfulness. His real and down to earth demeanour make this information very accessible and engaging. It is evident that he has passion and knowledge about working with meditation as a personal and professional practice. Whether you are interested in meditation and mindfulness for yourself or in your practice, you are sure to learn something new from Jude.”

-Jenna Street, Intern Psychotherapist

“Incredibly helpful workshop. I’m new to meditation and I want to learn how to teach my patients how to become more resilient. I’ll be applying these valuable lessons into my practice.”

-Matthew Ta, Psychiatry Resident Physician

“Jude is incredibly knowledgeable about mindfulness and meditation. As a therapist who grew up entrenched in Buddhism, he brings a unique perspective for how to use mindfulness to strengthen your therapeutic practice.”

-Michelle, Psychologist

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This event happened nearly two decades ago, and the lessons I’ve drawn from it have been truly profound for me.

I got into Buddhism and spirituality at a fairly young age. My parents were students of Tibetan Buddhism, so I grew up learning about that worldview and also in close proximity to Tibetan Lamas.

At 18 I found the work of Krishnamurti. I felt a profound truth when reading his words; I could feel what he was pointing to, even though it felt distant for me personally.

This ignited a deep curiosity towards the spiritual traditions. I wanted to understand the mystery at the heart of our existence. I explored all the avenues available to me in Toronto at the time. I perused every used bookstore; straight to the Buddhism, Religion, and Spirituality sections, looking for the books that I imagined could hold the knowledge and wisdom I was seeking.

When I happened across a book by Ken Wilber, called A Theory of Everything, I felt that in some ways I had found what I was looking for. Wilber’s work was an attempt at integrating all the world’s wisdom into a single theory, or more precisely it was creating a number of theories and maps to make sense of seemingly contradictory philosophies and ideologies.

Wilber had co-founded a magazine along with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen. At the time it was called What Is Enlightenment? but a few years later it changed its name to EnlightenNext.

I bought and read every issue, and this one particular 2007 issue led to a trip to Italy with Alex and Allyson Grey.

The article The Story of Damanhur profiled a cult-like community in Italy (here I use the term “cult” lovingly) that secretly built a network of remarkable underground temples. These temples were truly mind-boggling, and the story of how they came to be, and their purpose, was just as profound.

A young boy in Italy was spiritually gifted and some may say even had prophetic qualities. He had a vision, since a young age, of building these temples, and his character and gifts attracted followers who eventually travelled the world, mapping energetic lines, looking for the perfect place to build.

Upon their return back to Italy, having not found the appropriate site, they began to explore the local area and found the space where some of these major energetic lines intersected.

When they arrived, just a few hours drive from where the boy had grown up, an old man greeted them with “what took you so long?!”. Apparently over 20 years before he had had a dream telling him to buy up all the land in that area and when they arrive he gifted it to them.

Now these people created a community, with the vision of it being self-sustainable, and secretly began to make these underground temples where they would perform ceremonies with the goal of world peace.

They named the community Damanhur, drawing on Egyptian spirituality, of which their leader, now called Falco, felt intimately connected to. Central to the values of Damanhur was the practice of sacred art, and this is what piqued the interest of artist Alex Grey.

Alex and his wife Allyson visited the community, and were so impressed they decided to organize a 7 day tour. This tour was advertised in the very same issue of What Is Enlightenment? Magazine.

My first reaction was “wow that would be so cool!”, and when I told my girlfriend about it, she reminded me that I could actually go, and urged me to.

So I contacted the tour company and booked it. I actually got my first passport specifically for this trip.

Now as cool as the community and temples and the whole tour ended up being, this isn’t really what impacted me so profoundly.

It was actually the first morning after arriving that I met Alex Grey for the first time that something happened.

***

If you don’t already know who Alex Grey is, he’s become one of the modern pioneers of psychedelic or visionary art. He began his art career doing more conceptual and abstract art, but a fateful psychedelic trip inspired him to dedicate his practice to exploring spiritual and transcendent realms. (more on Alex Grey here)

Although I thought his work was cool at the time, it wasn’t really my thing. I didn’t go in idolizing him or caring about his work all that much. I was mostly interested in exploring this weird community in Italy. But what I thought was really cool was that Alex was friends with Ken Wilber, and Wilber had written the foreword to his book The Mission of Art.

So the first morning after arriving, our tour group met and there was Alex. He came to introduce himself to me, and I can’t remember much of what I said, but remember mentioning that I really admired Ken Wilber. And this is where it first happened.

What I remember so distinctly about this moment of meeting Alex was how intently he was listening to me. His eyes were locked on me, his face was relaxed, and he was giving me his full undivided attention.

His attention was so full, so unwavering, that it struck me emotionally.

I’m not sure exactly why. I think it was partly that most adults, especially adults that had some accomplishment or distinction, didn’t really pay attention to a kid like me. Not like this anyhow.

His eyes were large and empathetic, I could feel his full presence in a way that I don’t think I’d ever felt before from anyone, except for maybe my mom.

His gaze made me feel so seen, so cared for, that I began to get emotional. My eyes got watery. It was totally unexpected.

Throughout the seven day tour, Alex and Allyson spent nearly the entire day with the tour group. They were both incredibly gracious with every single person there.

There were times when, at events, Alex would get swarmed by kids from the community, wanting autographs and to tell him how much they loved his work.

Every single time, Alex would give them his full attention, and listen to each one, never rushing them, never looking around to see if the rest of the group was waiting on him (we were).

There was something about both Alex and Allyson that was so completely and utterly normal. They never felt like important figures, they didn’t carry themselves as the leader of this group, or as iconic artists, but they were just so completely and utterly themselves; humble, gracious, genuine and always sincere.

It was a few months later, after returning back to Toronto, that I made a trip to NYC and during that time I also visited The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, which was Alex’s master work (at the time it was in Manhattan, but has now been moved to upstate New York).

Alex would give a weekly tour, and afterwards he would be swarmed with people, wanting to tell him about how his work impacted them. He would listen to each one intently, patiently and unwavering, signing their books, until they were finished and left the circle of people huddled around him.

On another trip to NY I invited a musician friend to join me on the tour. My friend wanted to gift him a CD, so after the tour we sat down on some couches, waiting for the circle of people to die down so we could hand him the album without interrupting.

We waited for over 2 hours, while Alex still listened to each person, we got impatient and decided instead to just leave the CD with Allyson.

Over the years I’d encounter the Greys at numerous other events — an exhibition they did in Toronto, a festival they attended in Oregon — and every time Alex would be swarmed with people, so instead I’d just chat with Allyson, who was always welcoming and lovely.

They Say Not To Meet Your Heroes

I’ve become quite cautious at idolizing people, realizing they rarely live up to expectation. For example, I’ve come to learn that Ken Wilber can be quite self-centred and terrible at taking feedback (for a deeper dive on Wilber criticisms see Jamie Wheal’s The Legacy of Integral and Mark Manson’s The Rise And Fall Of Ken Wilber).

And sometimes it gets really bad. As another example, the spiritual teacher and co-founder of What Is Enlightenment? Magazine, Andrew Cohen, turned out to be an abusive narcissist. You only need to check out the “Controversies” section of his Wikipedia page to get a sense of what a terrible person he is.

Despite what I wrote here, I don’t idolize the Greys. I don’t project any form of perfection onto them. In fact one might conclude that Alex actually has poor boundaries, and this could be true.

The thing is, the Greys just feel so refreshingly normal. What I got from my encounter with them is the realization that people of status and influence can, sometimes, remain sincere and compassionate. They treat every person they encounter with dignity and respect.

Over the years, I would often remember their presence and sincerity, and the way they listened and spoke to a kid in his 20s as though he was an equal. Through my own journey I’ve come to realize more and more that this is really the most important part of the spiritual path; to regard every being with dignity and respect, to recognize that we are all the same in some way, and all deserving of compassion and care on the most fundamental level.

I’ve encountered so many “spiritual teachers” who hold themselves above others. Sometimes this is subtle, but it’s often quite obvious too. To me, this is the most fundamentally important thing about any spiritual teacher or mentor; that they don’t hold themselves above others in any way. To me, it’s the mark of true spiritual achievement, and the quality I admire most in anyone.

The Greys gave me a very clear early experience of this, a reference point for the person I aspire to be. And I can think of no greater ambition than to embody this myself and inspire the people I encounter throughout my life to do the same.

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Yes there had been some times in the past where my life was coloured by anxiety, but this time it was different.

In the past my anxiety was the result of stressors in my life, but in the last few years I’ve created a balanced lifestyle that works for me and also worked through a lot of the pressures I used to put on myself.

I found a great sense of peace with who I was and where I was in life and felt capable handling my day to day. I was quite content with my lifestyle and my life trajectory. For years I experienced almost no anxiety at all.

But last year this anxiety kicked in, and as you may have guessed by now, it was because of all the horrible things happening in the world.

I wrestled with how much attention I’d pay to all the injustice in the world. In the past, I wouldn’t give these things too much attention, as I realized it only stressed me in a way that detracted from the impact I do have.

My philosophy was to get clear on where I can help others, and focus on that.

You see, I really do care about the wellbeing of others, but if I paid too much attention to things outside my control it would just distract me from where I do have some potential to help and support others.

But this time it was different. This time the tragedy and injustice felt closer to home. This time I got triggered at just how many people were supporting and defending these horrible acts.

Central to the teachings of Buddhism is how we relate to suffering. The Buddha taught a path to the ending of suffering. And then the second turning of the Dharma Wheel, the next movement in Buddhism — called The Mahayana — was aimed to end suffering for all beings.

It is often taught when approaching the Buddhist path that the first thing you should do, at minimum, is try not to do harm. When we harm others, we are also harming ourselves.

This is the teaching of Karma. Most people think of Karma as some cosmic point keeping system, and well that’s often how it’s taught, but I’ve come to understand it in a much more intimate way.

I don’t hold Karma as a belief so much as I’ve seen the truth of it in my being. I’ve noticed the impact of acting careless towards others, and also the impact when I’m compassionate towards others.

The way I was able to arrive at a place of peace and contentment in my personal life was a direct result of cultivating and practicing compassion. Thinking and acting selfishly just makes us more isolated and unhappy; it creates a disharmony in our being and colours our experience with dissatisfaction.

As I practiced putting aside my own ego-driven desires and shifted to being more thoughtful and caring towards others, I started to feel so much better. This created a positive feedback loop, bringing more of a sense of natural harmony through my being, and making it so utterly clear that the best thing I can do in my life — not just for others but also for myself — is to practice compassion.

Practicing compassion is really a win-win. Others benefit from our kindness and generosity, while we also clearly benefit. As this became more and more clear to me, it also became so incredibly heartbreaking to see the opposite; to see hate and violence perpetuated.

As a therapist, I’m all too familiar with the nature of trauma, and how it perpetuates through individuals and entire generations.

When I see these violent acts in the world, I can feel how they will ripple out, not just through the families and relations of the victims, but the perpetrators as well.

All the hate, violence, and indifference in the world is a lot to process. And it’s everywhere.

I realized that while I wanted to pay attention to what was happening in the world, it was A LOT to process. And I was consuming more than I could actually process, leading to this sense of pervasive anxiety.

Let me first say that if you’ve tuned out the problems of the world because you’ve found them overwhelming or disheartening, that’s ok. You do need to take care of yourself and prioritize your own wellbeing first.

But for me, I want to stay informed. The challenge though has been not overdoing it; to not be consuming more than I have the capacity to process.

In meditation there is this ideology of not engaging with thoughts. There are different approaches, depending on the practice. Sometimes we gently let the thought go and return to the breath or some other object, but sometimes the goal is actually to just let the mind do its thing, while simply trying to remain aware.

This latter practice, of letting the mind wander, is really important given the context I’ve laid out above. It can seem like a mess at first, like we’re not meditating at all, but I assure you there is value here if you take the right attitude.

And this really doesn’t need to be a formal meditation practice. For me it’s usually not. I go on walks every day, without music, without a podcast, and I just let my mind do its thing, trying to keep somewhat aware of what thoughts are coming up.

I let myself think about whatever my mind wants to think about, but I do my best to be aware about getting stuck in unhelpful loops. I don’t force my thoughts in any direction, but just approach with curiosity, noticing if I’m catastrophizing, or getting too fixated on any one topic.

Now just the noticing of these patterns, of where my thoughts naturally go, tells me a lot, and also begins to shift things. I recognize how the media I’m consuming is impacting me, and I have space to reflect on what I care about, and what I may want to direct my energy towards.

I recognize how easy it is to become addicted to consumption, how consuming is actually stimulating, and how I need time to process and also express what’s going on with me.

I start to get a sense of what I actually need; time to talk with friends, exercise and yoga or at least some light stretching, connecting to the natural world by simply appreciating the trees and flowers all around me.

It’s so easy, especially for ADHD folks like me, to get stuck in this cycle of consumption. So if you feel you may also be over-consuming, find the ways where you can give yourself time and space to simply think, reflect, and even free-associate. It’s important, and a lot of clarity can come from it.

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I put a lot of work in my last piece, The Myths That Rule Us, which was really years in the making. It details how I went from optimistic about the world, to feeling pessimistic, disenchanted, and disempowered — and then recently started to feel inspired and empowered again. If you’re feeling the weight of the world and need some inspiration, I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

I said so much in that essay that after publishing, I didn’t really know what to write about. But last weekend I did a mushroom ceremony that brought a lot of clarity to my own life and journey, and I feel the lessons are relevant to just about everyone. So stay tuned for that…

My Offering

Hey there! I am looking to take on a few clients and I’m really looking for the right fit. I figured I’d share some about my experience and how I work in hopes of connecting the with right people.

I have been steeped in the study and practice of both psychotherapy and also meditation and Buddhism for 20 years now. I call myself an Integrative Therapist because my approach is flexible and draws on a wide range of experience. My work with each client looks totally different — though there are a lot of common themes.

If you’re curious, you can reply to this email or reach out to me via email at jude.integrated@gmail.com

Here’s a link to my Website and also a brief overview of my work.

A Good Fit

There are a number of different types of clients I tend to work very well with. Here are some common themes:

• People who work in the healing arts: many of my clients are therapists themselves or support others in some way. I love working with people who feel a calling to support others in on their path.

• High pressure performers and people in leadership positions: I’ve worked with number of founders and people who others look to for guidance, and also people who work in high stress performance positions. I’ve actually helped several public figures overcome anxiety and panic attacks, and also deal with the stress of public criticism.

• People exploring existential issues: many of my clients have been smart, curious people who are asking the big questions in life. I love to help people navigate these big questions and get clear on what they really want and their place in the world.

• Anyone who wants to “do the work”: I love working with people who are inspired to transform into the best versions of themselves (or transcend the self completely). Some of my clients are serious meditators who feel a calling towards awakening, some are wanting to heal their childhood wounds so they can live more fully, and some are looking to self-actualize; becoming the truest and fullest version of themselves.

Really I’m open to working with all sorts people, especially if you’re feeling the calling.

Ideally I’m looking for clients that have some financial stability, but I’ve always offered at least one session to anyone asking on a pay-what-you-can basis (no minimum).

Reply to this email or reach out at jude.integrated@gmail.com if you’re interested.

My Experience and Background with Psychotherapy

As far as formal schooling goes, I first enrolled in a small psychotherapy training program when I was just 22 years old (20 years ago now!). The school was called The Transpersonal Therapy Centre and was headed by a longtime Zen practitioner who had graduated from the Gestalt Institute of Toronto (Brent Mitton), and one of the senior faculty of the Gestalt Institute who left, wanting to bring complimentary modalities into her teaching (Moira Canes).

This experience was extremely formative for me, introducing me to a wide range of perspectives and practice. Brent was not just an extremely seasoned Zen practitioner (a longtime student of the legendary Roshi Philip Kapleau), but was also deeply passionate about the work of Carl Jung. Moira also introduced many interesting modalities, including Enneagram and Family Constellations. Although this school eventually closed its doors, Brent eventually opened a new training institute in the same spirit, called The Heart School. (I talk a bit about my growth and experience at this school in this video)

Some years later, at the age of 27, I enrolled in The Gestalt Institute of Toronto. I completed 2 years of their psychotherapy training program, where we learned through direct experience. Gestalt training is very much about doing the work yourself and pushing your edges, and becoming aware of your own stuff so you don’t project it onto your client. Gestalt training is very intense and challenging, in the best way. I love Gestalt and it informs a lot of my approach. It’s very much about observing what’s happening in the here and now, being creative and intuitive, while not trying to “end game” (control the outcome), but instead being present with what’s unfolding in each moment. Although I really love Gestalt, I left after second year to pursue other things in life.

One of these things was working with ayahuasca. This was the main theme in my life from ages 30-32, and during that time I spent a combined 6 months on ayahuasca retreats (in a 2.5 year period I did roughly 90 ayahuasca ceremonies). I learned and grew so much from this experience, but ultimately got the calling to go back to school for a third time and become a therapist.

So at 32 years old I enrolled in The Living Institute, and completed a 3 year program in Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, including my internship as a supervised psychotherapist and all the required supervision hours. This was an integrative school with a strong grounding in depth psychology.

However, upon completing this program, I decided not to become a registered/licensed therapist. This was for two main reasons. First is that covid hit at this time, and I felt a calling to leave Canada. I moved to Costa Rica, and eventually ended up in Mexico City, where I am now based. The second reason is that registered therapists are only allowed to work with local populations, but at the time I was getting a lot of American clients both through my YouTube channel and referrals.

I made sure it was legal for me to take this route (I did a lot of research and consulted with many mentors who were themselves psychologists or registered therapists), and now I work as an unregistered professional.

Meditation Experience

A number of people have come to me looking for support with their meditation practice. I love to offer this, but inevitably the work almost always turns therapeutic to some degree.

This is because I’ve discovered that to progress in meditation, it’s really helpful to look at what’s getting in the way. I use a mix of meditation techniques and also therapeutic approaches to work through the barriers of becoming more relaxed and aware.

My experience studying meditation is just as extensive as my experience with psychotherapy, but I’ll keep this much more succinct. I studied Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, and Vipassana or Mindfulness meditation.

I’ve had a number of great teachers, but I mostly draw from the work of Shinzen Young, who I consider my main teacher. I’ve been teaching in his framework for 12 years now.

I love to mix and match practices to meet particular needs of the person I’m working with. I’ve come to learn that there’s no one size fits all approach; what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. This is why I love to explore different practices and traditions. My own practice is constantly shifting and evolving, and I’m often mixing and matching different techniques, though the common theme is that most of my practice has been somatically focused, as that’s what I tend to find most helpful.

So if you’re curious about working together, please do reach out. I’m happy to answer questions and I do have some flexibility when it comes to the fee.

I hope to hear from you soon!

Jude

"Myth is the way we make sense in a senseless world." -Rollo May

My last piece explored how our mind makes a mental model of our world based on experience and expectations, and how that model dulls our awareness and keeps us from being more immersed in our experience, limiting our perception and creativity.

In this piece I’m going to explore how many of the perspectives we adopt are unhelpful or even disempowering, and that we can critically examine our views and intentionally adopt myths that better serve us.

I spend some time exploring the bleak realities we face today, which I feel is important, even though these perspectives sent me into a spiral of despair. But if you keep reading I share how I regained my inspiration and optimism, in spite of the seemingly insurmountable challenges we face (feel free to skip down to the Re-Discovering Optimism part if you’ve had enough to despair about lately).

The Myths That Rule Us

Myths are often thought of as fictions, but here I’m using the term as it was originally intended; a myth is a story that helps us make sense of the world and our place in it.

I use the term myth here with no regard for the objective truth of it. Instead I am staying these are the stories I encountered in my life that helped me (and others) make sense of the world we are living in.

The Myth of Progress

I remember in grade school I was taught what I like to call The Myth of Progress; that we are constantly advancing in many ways and our quality of life is increasingly improving; that we are learning from history and the world is becoming more just. In some ways this is true, in other ways not — but this was very much my belief in early life and it also represented the beliefs of my culture.

Now I do believe that we are still progressing in many important ways. There is no doubt that science, technology, medicine, and other important disciplines are continuing to progress and have positive impacts on the quality of life for many.

I also believe that we are generally progressing in a psycho-spiritual sense. That there is some sort of psychological or spiritual evolution happening, although not nearly as quickly as many hope (but still quite quickly in the grand scheme of things).

In this sense I am a big picture optimist, yet I believe we must make dramatic change to avert large scale disasters and realize a better world.

My goal here is not to convince people of the problems we face, and I assume most readers are somewhat aware, so I will only briefly explore them and offer further resources that helped shape my view of these problems and their potential solutions.

My real goal in writing this piece is to offer hope and inspiration for all of us to stay mindful of what’s important and keep working towards a better world despite the scale of the problems we face.

Realities of the Climate & Energy Crisis

The Myth of Progress first started to break down for me when I began to learn more about the climate crisis. At first I was skeptical because there was debate and mixed opinions and the consequences of climate change felt somewhat vague or abstract.

But many of the hard facts made it very real for me. It is estimated that about 150 species go extinct every day. Even if it was only a fraction of this, it would still be an alarming amount.

Deforestation destroys entire ecosystems, and is happening worldwide. I find this loss alone to be truly heartbreaking. Forest fires are also getting worse year after year, further destroying forests and biodiversity.

It was actually Daniel Pinchbeck — an author best known for his writings on psychedelics, spirituality, culture, and prophecy — who helped me realize the scope of the climate crisis. A rare voice of grounded pragmatism in the new age spiritual scene, he relentlessly researched the climate crisis and explored innovative ideas on how we can restructure our systems to avoid the coming catastrophes.

This was the basis of his 2017 book How Soon Is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation. I bought this book the day it was released and loved it, hoping it would inspire meaningful change. Unfortunately the masses weren’t so receptive, as many mainstream outlets refused to review it because it didn’t fit neatly into traditional book categories (and also likely because it is sounding the alarm on an issue most people would rather not think about).

I theorize that one of Pinchbeck’s issues is that he is often too far ahead of his time. He published Breaking Open The Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism in 2002, well before psychedelics reemerged as a hot topic in popular culture.

In the case of How Soon Is Now?, I also imagine people being far more receptive when climate and energy issues start to impact us in ways we can no longer deny and we begin to collectively feel the urgency of our predicament.

I won’t get into the full scope of the climate catastrophe here, but if you want to explore the depth of the predicament we’re in you can check out Jem Bendell’s fantastic book Breaking Together: A Freedom Loving Response to Collapse. Jem is a climate scientist who presented at The United Nations and Davos conferences but was critical of the climate science today (he claims only scientists claiming optimistic outcomes are being funded and platformed) so he put together a multidisciplinary team to look at the hard facts and the results are not very optimistic (reader be warned).

Nate Hagens also has a compelling thesis about our growth being tied to energy surplus, and that we are heading toward a major reorganization due to the unsustainable and temporary nature of our current growth-based system, which has been propped up by cheap fossil fuel energy. He has a fantastic podcast called The Great Simplification that explores environmental, social, and global issues in depth. Hagens makes a compelling argument for the our predicament in this 45 min talk (also here’s a 4 min summary of his thesis, and here’s a 32 min video giving a more thorough overview of his argument, but I find that the 45 min talk linked presents more compelling data to back up his thesis).

The Rise in Inequality

Aside from the climate crisis, inequality is increasing globally. In the 80s a public school teacher or bus driver earned enough to support a family and eventually own their home. Now that would be impossible. Gary Stevenson of Garys Economics explains what is happening economically here; essentially the ultra wealthy are able to buy up all the assets and avoid taxes, leaving the tax burden primarily on the middle class, even though the vast majority of wealth is being hoarded by the ultra rich.

Despite the worst wage to cost of living ratio in modern history, the stock market has still been trending upwards and many experts are predicting a coming recession and even a likely depression, in which case things would be much worse for working class people.

The trends here are clear; our quality of life is declining quickly and Gary is a clear voice addressing this issue thoroughly and pragmatically. His understanding of economics and ability to explain what’s happening and what needs to be done about it are very compelling and worthy of consideration.

Seeing Our Predicament Clearly

As I learned more about the realities of the world, I became less optimistic about the future. This shift from optimism to pessimism impacted me dramatically. I lost a great deal of my drive and ambition. Everything felt gloomy.

I’ve noticed that older generations still largely cling to The Myth of Progress, and I think many use it to justify inaction. They think the setbacks we’ve seen are only minor or temporary. They believe we will overcome these hiccups, that technology will eventually solve all the problems it created, and we will be back to progress shortly.

In this way The Myth of Progress is actually detrimental to our progress. It’s a delusion that keeps us from seeing the gravity of the situation we are now in. The younger generations seem more attuned to reality, for the most part. It’s hard to convince them that things will be OK when things are clearly not OK.

As uncomfortable as this is, we need it. For us to create a better world for everyone we need to change many systems and give up many comforts and conveniences (at least in the short term). This is the hard truth of change — that it’s not easy and requires compromise. People rarely change when they are comfortable; it is discomfort that motivates us to take action, and much action needs to be taken.

The trap here is to end up in feelings of powerlessness and despair. I’ve spent my time stuck there, and only found myself coming out of this space recently.

In retrospect I think I needed time to process this grief. To accept the degree to which mass injustice and suffering will continue and even increase. It’s hard to fully fathom.

I’ve come to realize that if I expect things to be better around the next corner, if I put too much hope in a long-shot politician or social movement, I will inevitably be disappointed.

At one point I really believed a mass “awakening” would happen. This reflected my own “awakening” — a shift in values resulting largely from psychedelic experiences — where I decided our collective wellbeing was more important than my own individualistic comforts.

I was ready and willing to work towards a better world. I was game to give up my comforts and personal ambitions, exchanging them for goals of collective wellbeing. I believed that together we could advert disaster and realize a sort of utopian vision. I held this vision and it carried me for some time.

But inevitably reality hits. Eventually I couldn’t ignore the depth of our predicament.

When people feel a deep sense of lack — lacking financial security, lacking security in resources, lacking meaningful connection, lacking meaningful work or employment, lacking self-determination, lacking community, lacking cultural engagement, lacking a sense of belonging, lacking love — we end up in a scarcity mindset and we fixate on meeting our own individualistic needs.

Like a squirrel knowing that winter is coming, we collect and hoard nuts. I see this everywhere; an uncertain future leads people to focus on accumulating resources to ensure their survival.

This has resulted in a culture of hyper-individualism. We can’t trust anyone else to take care of us, so we need to take care of ourselves. There’s no safety net. If I get sick and can’t work, I can’t trust my community to take care of me. And that’s no slight at my community, I’m sure they’d love to if they could, but they’re so busy trying to keep their own heads above water, they don’t have the time, energy, and resources to care for those in need.

But what about the ultra wealthy? Those who do have the resources to care for others?

Well it seems like they suffer from the same lack. Not a lack of resources, but just a feeling of not having or being enough, or some general fear of the future that drives them to keep accumulating more power and resources.

I’ve come to see that success, power, and validation give a high similar to drugs. You get a hit, it feels good, but the high quickly fades, leaving a desire for more.

The high of power is so intoxicating that nearly everyone gets hooked. When you’re hooked on power, your biggest fear is losing your power, because it’s the only thing that makes you feel good.

People ask why these billionaires need to keep accumulating wealth when they have more than they could ever spend? It’s not about having what they need, they are hooked on the high of power, and life becomes one big power game.

Carl Jung had a hot take on this:

Jung is implying that if there was more love there would be more sharing and less hoarding of resources, less desire to fill an emotional void with the high of power accumulation (or at least that’s how I read it). But this fear of lack, fear of not having enough, fear that things can go wrong at any minute so we must hoard what we can… this fear keeps us from opening up to the possibility of love.

It’s a valid fear. I know people who have opened their hearts and wallets to communities or meaningful projects, only to be swarmed by vultures, taking them for everything they can.

This individualistic survivalist mindset is so deeply rooted, so evident everywhere we look, one can’t really be blamed for believing that that’s just the nature of the world; a kill or be killed type mindset inevitably prevails and individuals feel justified in their ruthless and selfish hoarding of resources.

Re-Discovering Optimism

All this paints a bleak picture. The thing is though, it’s all fiction.

It’s not fiction in the sense that these things aren’t true. But these are all narratives we’ve constructed based on selective information.

Reality is in fact far too complex to sum up into narratives. Any stories we tell ourselves are made up. It’s a choice in the sense that we select what facts to piece together to create a narrative.

This accounts for how people or groups can have such dramatically opposing perspectives on issues. It isn’t that one view is more or less moral (although there often are objective moral discrepancies), it’s that each side has a narrative that justifies their stance.

While I see all these narratives I’ve presented above as important and more or less true, all stories are partial truths. The problem is, when a compelling narrative really takes hold of us, it feels anything but partial.

The stories we tell ourselves rule us. Whether it’s stories of sin and salvation, stories of competition and success, stories of love and connection, stories of awakening and self-realization, or stories of doom and gloom; these are all narratives we make up to make sense of our lives and the world.

It’s become increasingly obvious to me that we cannot cohesively grasp the full complexity of the world (try as I might), and so we do our best by creating myths; stories that guide us in understanding our world and creating a sense of personal and collective meaning.

These myths come to rule our lives. They operate as the framework from which we evaluate every experience and inevitably make value judgements, on ourselves as well as others.

Now I think the narratives I’ve laid out in this piece carry immense value because they present important issues that pose real threat to our collective wellbeing. But if I only hold these myths, if I only live by these stories, I find myself feeling disempowered and apathetic.

If our myths are meant to serve us in creating meaning, these stories only do half the job. Sure, they present the problems I feel need our collective attention, but they are all lacking something that is fundamentally important; that our myths should not disempower us and rob our lives of meaning, that they should empower and inspire and support us in feeling meaningfully connected to the world.

It’s for this reason that I’ve started to intentionally weave my own myths to elevate my spirit and inspire me to act in meaningful ways. Instead of focusing on the scale of the problem we face, I focus on where I have impact and also pull inspiration from other people and movements enacting meaningful change.

A pragmatic, well-balanced view of the world only does me so much good. I also need to see things in a way that imbues my life with meaning; I need myths that uplift my spirit and inspire me to action.

I choose to see myself as part of an informal network of change makers. I look at those caring for the vulnerable, building community around meaningful values, practicing compassion and kindness, and standing up for what’s right — and I choose to feel a sense of camaraderie with them.

I don’t worry too much about the big problems that I can’t impact; instead I focus on where I do have impact, and trust in my fellow compassionate humans to do the same. For every challenge we face, there are people somewhere doing something about it.

Instead of feeding into the myths of the problems, I’m feeding the myths that are part of the solutions.

Now of course the scale of the challenges we face and the mass complicity in destructive and oppressive systems does not naturally imbue optimism. I know that we aren’t going to turn things around overnight. But however long it takes — even if it takes generations — I want to be part of that movement.

When I truly align with the good, when I resist excessive selfishness and act with kindness and compassion, I feel aligned with my values and this gives way to a sense of integrity. I’ve come to learn that there is in fact no better feeling than that — to simply know that one is doing the right thing for the collective good. To know that one’s actions are aligned with compassion for all beings.

Being in integrity is a subtle feeling, and yet it is very significant. It is perhaps less exciting, but far more fulfilling, than the pursuit of power. Those intoxicated by the pursuit of status and power are unlikely to discover this truth.

Living in a way that’s aligned with my values, genuinely caring about others, and having my actions reflect that, brings a sense of peace to my being. This isn’t some grandiose thing, I’m not making huge personal sacrifices, but I do my best to act compassionately, to care for and support those I cross paths with, to not do harm, and to act thoughtfully and responsibly.

I’m not perfect but I don’t beat myself up for my faults. I just simply try to do the right thing, empathize with others, and own up to and learn from my mistakes and shortcomings.

You see, compassion is a win-win. When we practice compassion, we have a positive impact on others while also feeling better ourselves. The Dalai Lama said:

While on some level this is simple, on anther level it’s quite difficult. It is the nature of our mind to judge and blame others; to point fingers at those we believe are responsible for our pain or even the pain in the world, stoking our righteous anger.

We see this pendulum swinging back and forth, between liberal and conservative rulers and governments, each blaming the other for the worlds problems.

In Buddhism this is call Samsara. It’s the cycle of suffering. We all have reasons to be angry, and when we vilify and wish harm on others we feel justified. But that only creates further separation and polarization, leading to never-ending conflicts we are too entrenched in to ever resolve.

Krishnamurti had a radical take on this. That peace is only possible in the world when we find peace within ourselves. He claimed that all violence is the result of inner conflict, and if we want a better world, we must work first to create more harmony in ourselves.

In Buddhism this is practiced by wishing compassion for our “enemies”. Jesus too taught to love thy enemies and suggested we pray for those who persecute us.

When you recognize the cause and effect nature of violence and persecution, it becomes obvious that the only way to end these things is to resist stoking the righteous anger within and instead move towards empathy, forgiveness, understanding, and compassion (this was the basis of my previous piece Political Anxiety and Creating A Better Future).

Making a better world for everyone begins with overcoming our own judgments and working towards being more empathetic, understanding, and compassionate.

As we practice non-judgment and compassion we become more self-less. Our thoughts and actions shift away from worrying about our own wellbeing and towards the wellbeing of others.

There is in fact a great relief as we learn to be more self-less. Buddhism teaches that much of our suffering and feelings of isolation or disconnection are the result of our identification with a sense of self. The less we feed into this identity, the more free we become.

One of the greatest things we can do to challenge the primacy of the self is to act compassionately. To do something for another without the expectation of anything in return. The more selflessly we act, the more selfless we become.

Ultimately the most meaningful change we can make, both in ourselves and the world at large, is to move away from individualistic or tribal thinking/values and to care for the wellbeing of the world as an undivided whole.

I know we are far from this goal, but I truly believe this is the trajectory we are on; that one day the feeling of collective care will be strong enough that there will be no more feelings of lack.

The conflict and violence we are seeing today is disheartening but try not to get overwhelmed by the scale of the issues we face, as that doesn't do anyone any good, and instead focus on the areas you have impact. Look for ways to practice kindness and compassion, as even the smallest acts of genuine care ripple outward and inward in ways we may never fully comprehend.

I've learned that the myths we choose to live by determine not just how we see the world, but how we show up in it. When I shifted from dwelling on narratives of collapse and despair to embracing stories of connection and collective care, I didn't become naive or ignore reality — I became more effective. I could see the problems clearly while also maintaining the energy and hope needed to be part of the solutions.

The future remains uncertain. The challenges we face are real and significant. But I believe that within each of us lies an innate capacity for compassion that, when awakened and practiced, can transform not only our own experience but contribute to the healing of our world.

This isn't wishful thinking — it's a conscious choice of which myth to live by. And in choosing myths that serve our highest potential rather than our deepest fears, we create space for the very transformation we most need.

The world doesn't need us to be perfect. It needs us to be present, compassionate, and willing to act from our deepest values despite uncertainty. In doing so, we become part of the story of healing rather than the story of harm.

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“Sooner or later we come to realize that perhaps the most fundamental, and most fundamentally important, fact about any experience is that it depends on the way of looking.”

-Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees

Vipassana or mindfulness practice isn’t just about paying attention to our experience, it’s about seeing how we are constantly projecting concepts and expectations onto our experience, and seeing how much of our experience is in fact fabricated by our mind.

Our constant conceptual projections keep us stuck in limited mental patterns. The more that we can see these as projections the better we can let them go and come more into our real sense perceptions, allowing us to experience the world in a more dynamic way and feel more intimately connected to literally everything.

(That’s quite a bit simplified, as Buddhism makes far more assertions about how our conceptual mind keeps us stuck in a cycle or reactivity and suffering, and that the more fully we can come into our experience, the more we can recognize that there is something fundamentally perfect and indestructible about our truest nature, something I explore in my recent essays What Is Awakening? parts one and two).

Try This:

Feel into the sensations in your feet.

Really notice what sensations are actually present in your feet at this moment.

Now notice: were you picturing your feet in your mind?

If so, try now to feel the sensations in your feet without picturing your feet in your mind (or looking at them at all).

You can try this for any part of your body. It’s almost like your mind pictures the body part(s) in an effort to give shape and form to the sensations. But what shape and form to the sensations have when you aren’t picturing any body part?

Our mind has essentially made a conceptual map of the world based on what it expects to see, and this exercise is meant to illustrate just how omnipresent these projections are.

You can especially notice how the mind projects when you are somewhere familiar vs somewhere new.

In familiar places your mind doesn’t really pay attention to your surroundings because it believes it already knows what’s there. You don’t notice the detail, you’re not actually observing your environment.

But when you’re somewhere new, your mind doesn’t have a preconceived map it can boot up, so it actually has to pay attention.

This is why people often feel much more free when they travel to new places. So much of our identity is tied up in the people and places that are familiar to us. We internalize the expectations of our familiar places, and those act as limitations.

For example, I grew up in Toronto and was very involved in local art and music scenes. When I started traveling to places that had a very different cultural energy and expectation (British Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica), I found that I started to feel less pressure to conform to certain cultural expectations and therefore felt a lot more free.

It wasn’t until I explored new places with different cultural values that I realized how much of my identity and self-expression was limited by the cultural expectations I grew up with.

I encountered people that were far more playful and vulnerable than I was used to. My immediate reaction was to judge them for being too playful and vulnerable, but then I realized that there wasn’t a problem with how they were acting, that they seemed to actually enjoy life more than the people I was used to, and that my judgments were simply cultural norms that I had internalized.

Every culture has its values and we can’t help but internalize these to some degree, for better or worse. It took me getting out of my culture to realize how cynical and suffocating many of my values were.

These were hurdles I had to overcome to really find my way in life. I needed to withhold judgment and give myself permission to explore interests and experiment with expressing myself in new ways (something I discuss in this old essay).

The Mid-Life Transit

There’s this natural transition that often happens in mid life. As Carl Jung once said:

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

Through our interests and social circles we find a sense of belonging in the first half of life. But in mid life this stops working. The things that brought us comfort and a sense of belonging start to feel inadequate. We are no longer content with the life we are living, and we feel a calling to discover something more genuine and sincere.

When this discontent hits, people are often confused. Some look back to times they were happier and attempt to recapture that feeling — the classic midlife crisis. But we can never go back in life. The only way out of this crisis is forward; instead of trying to recapture past experiences we must explore what new values are emerging in us.

Jung called this process individuation. We are individuating from our social identity, finding a sense of self not based on what we have in common with others, but instead exploring what is most personally significant to us, discovering our own unique essence.

This is a very disorienting process as our whole value system shifts along with how we see and make sense of the world.

My own journey of individuation has been a shift from focus on the social and cultural world I connected with in the art and music scene and towards offering my gifts in the realm of meditation and psychology.

But as I went deeper into my work and mindfulness practice, I started to question even this way of making sense of my life and place in the world.

Buddhism is very clear about this. That any way that we may interpret the world or our experience is a construct or fabrication.

The goal of Buddhism is to deconstruct or see through these illusory concepts and projections and come more and more into direct experience of the world where we can see things as they are, without expectation or conceptualization.

In Buddhism they discuss this as “emptiness”. But this term is often misleading, as saying we feel “empty” has a negative connotation in our culture. In Buddhist cultures emptiness is seen more along the lines of being free from limiting perceptions and therefore tapping into limitless potential. It is experiencing everything as fundamentally interconnected and lacking any distinct or fixed nature.

Let’s revisit the quote I used to open this piece by Buddhist teacher Rob Burbea, but this time with more context:

Burbea is actually making a pretty radical statement here in the context of Buddhism. Buddhism is saying that the ultimate nature of things is empty, and while Burbea acknowledges this, he diverges from Buddhist ideology by claiming that even the perspective that things are empty is a subjective way of looking.

In Buddhism we are trying to free ourselves from the limitations of our mind and see things without conceptual projection or association. But to see things in this direct and unfiltered way is a choice, and if we are choosing that perspective then is it really objective?

Emptiness is about not being fixated to any perspective at all. It’s dropping our biases and seeing things more as they are. But Burbea is claiming that seeing things as empty — without meaning or special significance — is its own bias.

This wasn’t just a passing critique of Buddhist ideology; Burbea took this idea much further. A fateful encounter with the work of James Hillman introduced him to a radical new perspective; that life can be enriched through the creative exploration of myth and meaning.

We don’t have to see the world as empty. Instead, we can choose to see the world as ensouled and multidimensional. While Burbea is aware that this perspective is a fabrication, he still sees the value in this approach, and chooses to explore his experience with creativity and heart.

Burbea called this new venture Soulmaking Dharma. While Buddhism denies that there is a permanent, unchanging self, and is devoted to unfixating from this construct, Burbea plays with it. He sees the beauty and value in exploring the richness and depth of the soul and energies of life.

Soulmaking Dharma holds the imagination as sacred and encourages creativity and intimacy in all areas of life. It treats existence as a magical mystery; something we can engage in with our whole being. Life should not be reduced to one perspective but explored as richly multilayered, beautiful, and meaningful in a multiplicity of ways.

This very much reflects the work of Hillman, who reappropriated the term Polytheism to signify that life has many dimensions of meaning. He spoke to our psychological multiplicity, that instead of striving for a single or unified sense of self, we can instead honour various and even contradicting aspects of ourselves. That we should not limit ourselves to one view of ourselves or the world; that there are many dimensions of life that have value.

All this is to say that we need not be narrowly fixated on one aspect of life, on one way of seeing the world. We can be attuned to the pain and injustice in the world while also enjoying the rich beauty surrounding us at every turn.

We can have a clear mission in our lives while also wandering and exploring with creativity and spontaneity.

We can be very logical and pragmatic while also engaging with the mysterious and the sacred.

We don’t have to make sense. We don’t have to be logically consistent. We don’t have to have any fixed views whatsoever.

The richness of life cannot be reduced to concepts or even values. It’s so much more than that, and when you learn to see beyond your limited ideas about yourself and the world, you open up limitless depth and possibility.

***Note that this does not mean there isn’t an objective reality, it’s just that there isn’t only one way to interpret or experience objective reality. More on this in the next post…

Good for newcomers and experienced meditators

Review by Al Brown

This has introduced me to a deeper, more diverse ocean of meditation practices. I feel like I am swimming with greater confidence and freedom! I am challenging and changing my meditation practice each day. I feel free to experiment with new techniques and approaches.

The idea that stuck with me the most is that I am the leading authority on how to practice my meditation. That I am the person best equipped to determine the best path to my goals.

Fun and enlightening

Review by Andrea R

You will learn a ton about meditation and how it can be fun, personal, and creative. You will not be disappointed! I left grounded, happier, and more confident, with a sense of well-being and connectedness. I'm allowing myself to move through life more slowly and be present in everything I do.

We’re kicking off this course this week (Tuesday)! I’ll give a rundown of some frequently asked questions below.

Quickly: this is a 5 week course that includes 1 live session every week as well as online resources. There’s a suggested price tag but also a “forget about the price tag” option where you pay what you can (if cost is a barrier but you’d like to join, please take advantage of this as I’d love to have you in the group!).

The live session is a guided exploration through a variety of meditation practices. Each week exploring practices from the theme, which are Shamatha (calm-abiding), Vipassana (Insight/Mindfulness Meditation), Tantra (themes of ritual, invocation, inclusivity), Non-Dual (Direct Path), and Integration.

The online resources include a theory and history lecture (1-2 hours) for each week as well as the guided meditations from the previous cohort. You also get a resource document where I link to free resources and also include suggested reading lists. You get lifetime access to this content when you sign up.

REGISTER AND SEE MORE COURSE DETAILS HERE

Is This Appropriate for Beginners?

Yes! The whole point of this course is to give you a general understanding of the meditative landscape. I’ve designed the content for absolute beginners, but even experienced meditators will likely encounter a lot of new perspectives and techniques they are not familiar with.

This is a comprehensive crash course, giving you the tools and understanding to better guide and customize your own practice.

What Makes This Course Unique?

From working with people 1:1 over the past decade, I’ve learned that often people get stuck in meditation because they keep trying to do the same technique that just isn’t working for them.

There’s so much out there in the meditative world! Instead of frustrating yourself with a practice that just isn’t landing, it can be really helpful to explore and find a practice that works for you.

My intention here is to introduce you to a wide spectrum of techniques, along with a framework to make sense of it all, so you can find the practices that really land with you.

This course is exploratory, experimental, and fun :)

Who Am I?

I’ve been exploring meditation and consciousness for over 2 decades now. I’ve studied Tibetan Buddhism formally (a Tantric and Non-dual tradition) under a traditional Tibetan teacher, I spent years studying Zen under a longtime student of Roshi Philip Kapleau (author of The Three Pillars of Zen), and I’ve spent over a decade studying Vipassana under Shinzen Young, a brilliant synthesizer and teacher and also founder of Unified Mindfulness. (I wrote a little piece going over my work here)

I’ve also had a close friendship and been a professional collaborator with Jeff Warren (substack and website), and have been teaching at Consciousness Explorers Club (a pluralistic meditation group founded by Jeff) for the past decade.

I talk about my meditation journey here, and go into more detail in this 40 min video. I am also a practicing integrative therapist (more details on my website).

I also recently posted a little clip from the last run of this course that details my values and biases regarding meditation.

What If I Can’t Make All The Sessions?

No problem! Sessions are recorded so you can so them whenever is convenient for you. When you signup up you get lifetime access to all the content.

There’s also a self-paced course option where you have access to all the content but not the live sessions.

What is the Grokkist Platform?

The Grokkist platform is a home for all those who insist on relating to the world with curiosity and care.

Nathan Dufour aka Nathanology, who runs the Ecosophy Course (Intro To Philosophy For Ecological Action) made a fantastic video explaining exactly what a Grokkist is:

The Grokkist Platform is a place for us to learn, connect, and explore together. There will be discussion and sharing there between sessions to keep us all connected and engaged.

REGISTER AND SEE COURSE DETAILS HERE!

Any more questions? Feel free to ask in the comments or reach out to me personally.

I hope to see you there!