This week we talk to Rick Heller about secular meditation

Rick Heller is the author of the new book, Secular Meditation: 32 Practices for Cultivating Inner Peace, Compassion, and Joy — A Guide from the Humanist Community at Harvard.

Rick leads weekly meditations at the Humanist Community at Harvard.

Rick received a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University. He also holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT

In This Interview, Rick Heller and I Discuss:

The One You Feed parable

His new book, Secular Meditation: 32 practices for cultivating inner peace, compassion & Joy (A guide from the Humanist Community at Harvard)

How in the brain, two negatives do not equal a positive

What a "Humanist" is

A secular view of meditation & mindfulness

Other types of meditation other than breath focused meditation

How there's no such thing as an inherently negative stimulus

What face meditation is

How the muscles in your face can affect your inner speech

How to relate to emotions with mindfulness

That recognizing an emotion actually brings it's feeling back toward neutral

What "positive equanimity" is

The difference between cognitive reappraisal and positive thinking

Different approaches to help us achieve "mindfulness of life"

When you're more "in your head" about something than you are collecting sensory information about something, you're really just dealing with abstractions

Skepticism surrounding the concept of "no self" as a goal to pursue

His working definition of enlightenment

A secular version of the serenity prayer

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