The Meditation Course Podcast

References:

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Swami Satchidananda

Bhagavad Gita - Stephen Mitchell

Inner Engineering - Sadhguru

Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated

with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.

https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course

Podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

I recorded this episode at a global corporation in the City of London that I have been teaching at since 2014.For them, and for most people working in the square mile, this is the busiest time of the year. Many projects and deadlines finish at Christmas as does accounting periods so the stress is on.My students here also have extremely busy lives and so fitting in a meditation practice can feel like a bridge too far.Because of this, I taught a class that is partly stress-management and also meditation for beginners.Stress is one of the things that gets in the way of us building a regular meditation practice. This is one of the Catch-22s of meditation. Because of this I teach stress-management early in my courses and regularly in my classes.Practices are:The Bell MeditationThe 4-6 Breaths ExerciseThe Four Tens MeditationMeditation of no Meditation

This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course -Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updatedwith new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation CoursePodcast here:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

For them, and for most people working in the square mile, this is the busiest time of the year. Many projects and deadlines finish at Christmas as does accounting periods so the stress is on.

My students here also have extremely busy lives and so fitting in a meditation practice can feel like a bridge too far.

Because of this, I taught a class that is partly stress-management and also meditation for beginners.

Stress is one of the things that gets in the way of us building a regular meditation practice. This is one of the Catch-22s of meditation. Because of this I teach stress-management early in my courses and regularly in my classes.

Practices are:

The Bell Meditation

The 4-6 Breaths Exercise

The Four Tens Meditation

Meditation of no Meditation

Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated

with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.

https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course

Podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

In the Modern World, our minds have been captured by a narrative that also runs in the minds of many others around us. With variations, this is true for almost all of humanity.This incessant train of repetitive thought rationalises and justifies and rehearses and reconstructs our pasts, our futures and our life situations. All in an attempt to make sense of it. To try to explain this complexity, we all construct a narrative. This personal explanatory narrative is not helpful for our happiness. It is a reflection of our society, our culture and our economy. It is not unique to us as we discover when we share it.The sense that something is broken or something is wrong with us and/or with the world is almost universal. In addition to our shaky internal world, the external world, for many of us, is completely artificial. We work in boxes, travel in boxes, meet in boxes and live in boxes. Nature becomes something we use as an antidote to the inevitable consequences of living in our crazy artificial world.In this episode, Robert teaches some practices that are designed to bring our awareness to our bodies with the breath and relaxation and help us to learn how to focus our minds.This is the essential first step in releasing the unhelpful narrative that has captures so many of us in its grip. These are the foundations of the practices build help us to rebuild our connection to the world, to each other and to our selves.Practices:4-6 breathsFour tens meditationThe bell meditationFollowing the breath

This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course -Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updatedwith new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation CoursePodcast here:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

This incessant train of repetitive thought rationalises and justifies and rehearses and reconstructs our pasts, our futures and our life situations. All in an attempt to make sense of it. To try to explain this complexity, we all construct a narrative. This personal explanatory narrative is not helpful for our happiness. It is a reflection of our society, our culture and our economy. It is not unique to us as we discover when we share it.

The sense that something is broken or something is wrong with us and/or with the world is almost universal. In addition to our shaky internal world, the external world, for many of us, is completely artificial. We work in boxes, travel in boxes, meet in boxes and live in boxes. Nature becomes something we use as an antidote to the inevitable consequences of living in our crazy artificial world.

In this episode, Robert teaches some practices that are designed to bring our awareness to our bodies with the breath and relaxation and help us to learn how to focus our minds.

This is the essential first step in releasing the unhelpful narrative that has captures so many of us in its grip. These are the foundations of the practices build help us to rebuild our connection to the world, to each other and to our selves.

Practices:

4-6 breaths

Four tens meditation

The bell meditation

Following the breath

Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated

with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.

https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course

Podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

This episode is a recorded training session that I ran at a global law firm recently as part of training that I have been giving there since 2014.Exactly what is the Present Moment?What is the continuum of the Life Situation?How can I find my way out of the mashup of the past, the present and the future and into The Present Moment mindfully.Why would we want to extract ourselves from the grip or the Life Situation?Some quotes from the talk on the topic (the first 13 minutes)."Modern life is like a mashup of the past, the present, the future and your life situation.""If I am buried deeply in a problem, very rarely do I get insights into how to solve it.""How do we step out of the treadmill of our lives, to get a different perspective? The way we do that is with mindfulness."Robert uses the free iBreathe app to help students to regulate their breath. The app is free and there are equivalent apps for Android.The Bell meditation - 13 minutesSummary - 24 minutes4-6 Breaths - 30 minutes

This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course -Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updatedwith new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation CoursePodcast here:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

Exactly what is the Present Moment?

What is the continuum of the Life Situation?

How can I find my way out of the mashup of the past, the present and the future and into The Present Moment mindfully.

Why would we want to extract ourselves from the grip or the Life Situation?

Some quotes from the talk on the topic (the first 13 minutes).

"Modern life is like a mashup of the past, the present, the future and your life situation."

"If I am buried deeply in a problem, very rarely do I get insights into how to solve it."

"How do we step out of the treadmill of our lives, to get a different perspective? The way we do that is with mindfulness."

Robert uses the free iBreathe app to help students to regulate their breath. The app is free and there are equivalent apps for Android.

The Bell meditation - 13 minutes

Summary - 24 minutes

4-6 Breaths - 30 minutes

Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated

with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.

https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course

Podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

Visit https://therestfulmind.com/blog for a more readable version.The common narrative is the cultural story which we all share, rooted in folklore, that we use to explain our reality. The common narrative is a fluid construct of our collective consciousness. We also all have a version of this common narrative which is our personal narrative. This is the tape that runs in many of our heads. The purpose of the narrative is to explain our reality and update the set of beliefs we already hold known as a mental model 📖(Daniel Kahneman 'Nobel Prize Holder' - Thinking Fast and Slow, Farrar Strauss and Giroux Press 2011) . An example is atomic theory which was constructed by Democritus who was a quite possibly legendary pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He formulated the theory that reality is made of ever decreasing sized particles, like grains of sand on a beach, from which everything else is made. This became the prevailing theory of the fundamental nature of the universe which science has pursued and applied: 📖https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DemocritusCurrently, the prevailing theory used to measure and calculate events at the fundamental level is Quantum Field Theory. Quantum Field Theory calcuates fundamental events as 'disturbances in a field'. Not as collisions of particles. This shift in scientific knowledge has yet to be translated into the public consciousness and so the deeply embedded folkloric paradigm of matter being atoms of stuff (particles) is maintained in public education, even up to a high level. ▶️https://youtu.be/FBeALt3rxEAScience, and subsequently society, applies paradigms (frameworks of knowledge and belief) to constuct a narrative that expains our reality. Anything that science cannot explain, such as the mind and thought, is either ignored (no lessons on the mind and thought at school are there?) or obfuscated in a mystique of scientific legitimacy. (you need to be a psychologist to understand the mind, despite the fact it is your mind!) Subsequently, there are no lessons in school about the mind. It is largely a taboo subject. It has become the province of academia. Previously of course, the mind was the province of religion and explained away with concepts such as sin and purity of mind. Along with other fundamental elements of human existence such as bereavement, the mind is ignored by the modern cultural narrative. Paradigms change once the weight of evidence becomes so overwhelming that it overturns the previous paradigm. This is known as a 'paradigm shift' and is the subject of one of the best known and most respected books on the history of science, ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ by Thomas Kuhn: 📖https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_RevolutionsAn example of a paradigm shift is the Copernican Revolution. 📖https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_RevolutionA paradigm shift occurred in the common narrative after the Apollo 11 mission and the photographs they returned with. Since then it has been possible to concieve of oneself a a citizen of the world. These images are largely credited with changing public awareness to enable a global perspective: 📖https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/187/apollo-11-mission-image-view-of-moon-limb-with-earth-on-the-horizon/'Executive Agency' is the concept that the human brain and mind operate like a top-down control structure where a ‘conscious mind’ makes choices which the rest of the system then carry out. It certainly feels like that to be human. As though we have free agency and that we exercise it. 📖http://dai.fmph.uniba.sk/courses/CCN/references/david.agency.consccog08.pdfThis concept of Executive Agency has become a philosophical football unfortunately at the mercy of determinists and people of faith, so it is difficult to pin down, but the sense that w

This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course -Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness

The common narrative is the cultural story which we all share, rooted in folklore, that we use to explain our reality. The common narrative is a fluid construct of our collective consciousness. We also all have a version of this common narrative which is our personal narrative. This is the tape that runs in many of our heads. The purpose of the narrative is to explain our reality and update the set of beliefs we already hold known as a mental model 📖(Daniel Kahneman 'Nobel Prize Holder' - Thinking Fast and Slow, Farrar Strauss and Giroux Press 2011) .

An example is atomic theory which was constructed by Democritus who was a quite possibly legendary pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He formulated the theory that reality is made of ever decreasing sized particles, like grains of sand on a beach, from which everything else is made. This became the prevailing theory of the fundamental nature of the universe which science has pursued and applied: 📖https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus

Currently, the prevailing theory used to measure and calculate events at the fundamental level is Quantum Field Theory. Quantum Field Theory calcuates fundamental events as 'disturbances in a field'. Not as collisions of particles. This shift in scientific knowledge has yet to be translated into the public consciousness and so the deeply embedded folkloric paradigm of matter being atoms of stuff (particles) is maintained in public education, even up to a high level.

▶️https://youtu.be/FBeALt3rxEA

Science, and subsequently society, applies paradigms (frameworks of knowledge and belief) to constuct a narrative that expains our reality. Anything that science cannot explain, such as the mind and thought, is either ignored (no lessons on the mind and thought at school are there?) or obfuscated in a mystique of scientific legitimacy. (you need to be a psychologist to understand the mind, despite the fact it is your mind!) Subsequently, there are no lessons in school about the mind. It is largely a taboo subject. It has become the province of academia. Previously of course, the mind was the province of religion and explained away with concepts such as sin and purity of mind.

Along with other fundamental elements of human existence such as bereavement, the mind is ignored by the modern cultural narrative. Paradigms change once the weight of evidence becomes so overwhelming that it overturns the previous paradigm. This is known as a 'paradigm shift' and is the subject of one of the best known and most respected books on the history of science, ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ by Thomas Kuhn: 📖https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

An example of a paradigm shift is the Copernican Revolution. 📖https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution

A paradigm shift occurred in the common narrative after the Apollo 11 mission and the photographs they returned with. Since then it has been possible to concieve of oneself a a citizen of the world. These images are largely credited with changing public awareness to enable a global perspective: 📖https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/187/apollo-11-mission-image-view-of-moon-limb-with-earth-on-the-horizon/

'Executive Agency' is the concept that the human brain and mind operate like a top-down control structure where a ‘conscious mind’ makes choices which the rest of the system then carry out. It certainly feels like that to be human. As though we have free agency and that we exercise it. 📖http://dai.fmph.uniba.sk/courses/CCN/references/david.agency.consccog08.pdf

This concept of Executive Agency has become a philosophical football unfortunately at the mercy of determinists and people of faith, so it is difficult to pin down, but the sense that w

Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated

with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.

https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course

Podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245

This week is an exercise in Focus and Attention.Trataka is a focused attention meditation practice designed to help us build our personal mindfulness while developing our awareness and training ourselves to focus.It helps us to become aware of our focus and our awareness, internal and external.Trataka helps us to become aware of our internal focus and our external focus and the difference between them.Trataka also enables us to become aware that we can move our focus from our internal experience to our external experience and also that we can gain a balanced awareness of our internal and external experience.Meditations are:Trataka meditationSound meditation and experiencing the present moment.

This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course -Three live-streamed classes each week.

You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updatedwith new podcast episodes, offers and information on training.https://lovingawareness.fm/

If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation CoursePodcast here:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245