Bringing Meditation to Life with Neil McKinlay

Enjoy a conversation between myself and Jules Faye. In this, Jules shares her experience travelling ‘the path of the difficult’ through life. She speaks to a journey featuring many challenges, of course, but one that continues to offer opportunities for connection and appreciation, curiosity and discovery, wonder and grace.

Finding time for meditation is a challenge for many of us. In the midst jam-packed schedules and hurried lives, finding time for practice can be a considerable challenge. Fortunately, a basic understanding and a few available moments are all we need to bring meditation alive for ourselves. These are all we need to engage the practice of pausing.

In this episode, Deborah Eden Tull - author of the newly released, ‘Luminous Darkness’ - speaks of remembering. Coming to this from a variety of angles and directions, she speaks of turning our attention toward and remembering the basic ground of our lives. Remembering, in other words, “who and what we really are.”

A friend’s approaching birthday provokes this episode in which a broad understanding of ‘precious human birth’ is considered. ‘Am I sharing what I’m uniquely able to offer this world?’ This question perhaps lay at the heart of this understanding. It is an inquiry that, in the present instance, gives rise to a sense of gratitude and inspiration.

This conversation allows us to witness some of Julia Simmons’ journey toward presence. From difficult beginnings, Julia shares a little of what’s helped her develop an ability to turn toward life. This involves meditation, of course, but also a range of other modalities and perspectives - including the encouragement to ‘let it be okay’.

Whether in meditation practice or in the hustle of everyday living, ‘just keep it simple’ is a helpful instruction to remember. When the time is right, these four words can aid us in navigating the challenges of too much: too much thinking, too much to take care of. They can help us find our way back to the immediacy of this.

In this conversation, Eric Manning brings a lifelong curiosity to his engagement with meditation. We learn about how the practice came into his life and about what it now offers his everyday experience. Eric concludes by sharing a wonderful ‘mantra’ to help us remain open to and curious about our lives.

It is relatively easy to believe meditation is all about ‘getting it right’. In this episode, a live recording of Jerry Garcia reminds us how important it is to let our approach to this work be porous and adaptive. Through such flexibility, we become familiar with the vibrant humanity of our lives.

Engaging meditation as a process of slowing down and settling in lets Jo Runnells connect the practice with all areas of her life. From accessing awe when immersed in the natural world, to checking out the conceptual models we live within, meditation allows her to approach everyday living with curiosity and fascination.

Turning attention toward embodied experience is not only the stuff of formal meditation. Here Neil McKinlay speaks to how his informal engagement with this act reignited a sense of relatedness in the midst of hurry and overwhelm. Taking time to connect in this way remedied the apparent separateness of the online work environment.