Changeable Podcast

This week’s episode is a portion of a Community call with guest speaker Shenan Charania. This was one of my all-time favorite guest speaker calls and several in our community said the same.Shenan and I talk about silence, presence, regret, thought, and much more. Shenan shares his past as a gang member and his experiences

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In my recent silent retreat we explored the fact that nothing was happening.  All retreatants had to do was show up when the gong chimed and be quiet. Literally nothing else. Their entire day from 10am to 10pm was scheduled for them. Meals were prepared and served. Life for 6 days was unbelievably simple. And so

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In this episode, I talk about how I work with common phobias.  First we look at what you’re really afraid of – It’s what you think (literally), not the thing you think you’re afraid of (flying, spiders, vomit, germs, etc.) Then, we look at the feeling aspect of the fear. The combination of imagination + feeling is

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Following has been an important pointer for me over the years.  Following, or yielding to what’s already here, looking toward what wants to happen, absorbing, immersing, disintegrating, or melting into what is, being overwhelmed…these all have the flavor of following.And sometimes there’s a flavor of leading. Not following what the world says in terms of

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In this episode, I address a series of questions sent in by a listener. Hannah says she has performed horribly in past work environments and that’s not a thought, it’s a reality. Isn’t it that reality that’s causing her depression?She also gets that the past is over, but it still happened and it was still

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Those thoughts that aren’t yours…yes, that’s all of them…you don’t have to pick them up.  If you don’t want them and you didn’t order them, you don’t have to take delivery of them. Let it be this simple. The thoughts that want to make it more complicated than this also don’t need to be taken delivery of. ***Beginning

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Peace is not in something else. It’s not in adding more or changing what’s here.It’s actually here, in this, now. How can that be when what’s here now is difficult and unwanted? I’ll talk about the difference between an abstraction (e.g., I’m going through a divorce, my country is at war, I have cancer) – there’s

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In this episode, we explore the desire for more of a specific feeling, particularly joy. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Of course you want more joy. Of course more joy is available. Perhaps joy is even our “default state”. We obviously want to experience more of it!As innocent and obvious as this may seem, perhaps

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In this episode I walk through a practice in unbound consciousness I learned from Angelo Dilullo’s book, Awake: It’s your turn. This is something I’ve been practicing for a few years, and it’s my primary practice on silent retreat.This practice allows you to “get underneath” experience – to see from beyond the confines of content

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In my recent week in silence I saw two things more clearly and simply than I ever had. One, there is nothing to work out. The movements of life around the deep, still, silence that is always there are just movements. There is nothing in those movements that requires anything.And two, those movements in consciousness

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