The One You Feed

Practical Wisdom for a Better Life

Meditation & Mindfulness

A collection of The One You Feed Episodes that deal with meditation and mindfulness

222: Jeff Warren on Meditating with a Busy Mind

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Jeff Warren is a former journalist and more recently is a researcher, writer, and teacher of meditation and personal growth practices. His most recent book, written with Dan Harris, is called, Meditation for Fidgitty Skeptics: A 10% Happier How to Book. Jeff is a likable, relatable guy who carries a lot of practical wisdom in his conversational style of communicating. If you’ve ever felt like you’re not good at meditating or that meditation just isn’t for you because your brain never turns off, this interview is for you because that’s how Jeff would describe himself, particularly at the beginning of his practice years ago. We all know that meditation is good for us but for many, it just feels inaccessible and out of reach. If that is how you feel, what Jeff has to share in this interview will make that gap shrink in size so much so that you can hop right over it and try again.
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In This Interview, Jeff Warren and I Discuss…

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book with Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgitty Skeptics: A 10% Happier How to Book
  • The role of meditation in living with depression
  • The voice in our heads
  • Not identifying with the voices in our heads
  • Coming out of the conversation in our heads
  • The idea of “I can’t meditate”
  • Thinking we’re supposed to stop thinking when we meditate
  • Changing the relationship with your thoughts
  • Focusing on an anchor, getting lost in thought, realizing you’re lost in thought and coming back to your anchor = mediation
  • How quick we are to conclude that meditation isn’t for us
  • That meditation is a practice
  • Celebrating the coming back from thought in meditation
  • Training affability during meditation
  • Finding enjoyment and curiosity during meditation
  •  Asking “What’s the attitude in my mind right now?” during meditation
  • That attitude is what you’re training during meditation
  • Looking at the world with interest
  • Equanimity = a lack of pushing and pulling on experience
  • Opening to experience so that there’s no friction
  • When everything has permission to express its self fully

Jeff Warren Links

166: Adyashanti

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This week we talk to Adyashanti about waking up

Adyashanti, author of The Way of Liberation, Resurrecting Jesus, Falling into Grace, and The End of Your World, is an American-born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence.

Asked to teach in 1996 by his Zen teacher of 14 years, Adyashanti offers teachings that are free of any tradition or ideology. “The Truth I point to is not confined within any religious point of view, belief system, or doctrine, but is open to all and found within all.” Based in California, Adyashanti teaches throughout the U.S. and in Canada, Europe, and Australia.

In This Interview, Adyashanti and I Discuss…

  • That our work as humans is on the journey from a walking contradiction to a walking paradox
  • That if we see something out of alignment with our value system we feel it in our body as tension
  • That our bodies are our best aid when it comes to navigating our inner consciousness
  • That there are different types of awakening
  • That awakening is a fundamental shift of identity
  • The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions but to question your answers
  • What to do when you WANT to change but then you can’t seem to change
  • The 5 foundations of spirituality
  • What is my aspiration?
  • That wanting to feel pleasure can only take us so far
  • When we start feeling better we’ll stop looking deeper
  • Never abdicate your authority
  • That “true” meditation is the art of allowing everything to be exactly as it is
  • That meditation is there for us to get experiential insight into the nature of our being, our consciousness
  • The importance of bringing your intelligence along for the ride in meditation
  • To let go of what the outcome should be in meditation
  • Our whole body is a sensory instrument through which we experience life
  • That self-inquiry is joining the intellectual mind with the contemplative spirit
  • An unresolved deep question is often what sparks an awakening
  • How contemplation is different from meditation and inquiry
  • The three means of evoking insight: contemplation, meditation, and inquiry
  • The Jesus story is a map for awakening
  • How the Jesus story is so compelling
  • What life is like for awakened people
  • That awakening can be sudden and/or it can be a gradual unfolding
  • How enlightenment is the end of one game and the beginning of another
  • The difference between exploration and seeking
  • Whether or not psychedelic drugs play a role in awakening

Adyashanti Links

143: Tara Brach

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This week we talk to Tara Brach

Tara Brach is an American psychologist and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C  Brach also teaches Buddhist meditation at centers for meditation and yoga in the United States and Europe including Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, the Kripalu Center,and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.

Brach is an engaged Buddhist specializing in the application of Buddhist teachings to emotional healing. Her 2003 book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha, focuses on the use of practices such as mindfulness for healing trauma. Her 2013 book, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart, offers practices for tapping into inner peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty.

 In This Interview, Tara Brach and I Discuss…

  • The One You Feed parable
  • Being kind to the parts of ourselves that are more primitive
  • The difference between feelings and thoughts
  • Dropping the storyline
  • The question of “What am I unwilling to feel?”
  • How we have to go through the difficult emotions to get to peace
  • The importance of remembering the good
  • Not being addicted to suffering
  • The habit of looking for what’s wrong
  • What’s the moment like if there is no problem
  • How we tend to always anticipating a problem 
  • How we are almost always lost in thought
  • Practicing coming into our senses
  • Self-compassion as the most important quality on the spiritual path
  • Only being taught one type of meditation
  • Trying different types of meditation until we find the one that works best for us
  • The quality that helps people progress on the path of meditation: intention
  • How to deal with numbness
  • Tara’s tips on dealing with depression
  • How depression hates a moving target
  • That depression is not our fault
  • Finding refuge in difficult times
  • Instead of asking “What’s the Meaning” asking “What matters to me here”

Tara Brach Links

136: Brad Warner

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Brad Warner- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Brad Warner about not being a jerk

Brad Warner is an ordained Zen teacher and author of the books There Is No God And He Is Always With You , Sit Down and Shut Up and Hardcore Zen. He’s also a writer for the Suicide Girls website, bass player for the hardcore punk rock group 0DFx (aka Zero Defex), star of the movies “Shoplifting From American Apparel” and “Zombie Bounty Hunter M.D.,” director of the film “Cleveland’s Screaming!” and former vice president of the US branch of the company founded by the man who created Godzilla.

His latest book is called: Don’t Be a Jerk: Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master – A Radical but Reverent Paraphrasing of Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye

In This Interview, Brad Warner and I Discuss…

  • The One You Feed parable
  • His book, Don’t Be a Jerk and Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master
  • That we become the people we need to become
  • How a person can be a buddha one minute and a jackass the next
  • That once you realize what your “negative” urges are, they become less attractive for you to respond to
  • The answer to the question, “How do you strive to be a better person AND accept life exactly as it is?”
  • That the most intelligent course of action is the one that benefits everyone involved
  • How one of his teachers said that you need to hold an equal amount of faith and doubt
  • The idea that thoughts are just the secretions of your brain the same way your stomach acid are the secretion of your stomach
  • According to the Zen practice, there is nothing other than what exists right now
  • The powerful truth that Brad Warner states: “you can always improve your situation but you do so by facing it, not by running away”
  • The mistake that’s made when designating certain things as “self”
  • The role of nature as it relates to the dharma according to Dogen

Brad Warner Links

134: James R Doty

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This week we talk to James R Doty about the power of compassion

James R Doty, MD, is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University and the Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of CA, Irvine and medical school at Tulane University. He trained in neurosurgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and completed fellowships in pediatric neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.

As Director of CCARE, Dr. Doty has collaborated on a number of research projects focused on compassion and altruism including the use of neuro-economic models to assess altruism, use of the CCARE developed compassion cultivation training in individuals and its effect, assessment of compassionate and altruistic judgment utilizing implanted brain electrodes and the use of optogenetic techniques to assess nurturing pathways in rodents.

Dr. Doty is also an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist having given support to a number of charitable organizations including Children as the Peacemakers, Global Healing, the Pachamama Alliance and Family & Children Services of Silicon Valley. Additionally, he has endowed chairs at major universities including Stanford University and his alma mater, Tulane University. He is on the Board of Directors of a number of non-profit foundations including the Dalai Lama Foundation, of which he is chairman and the Charter for Compassion International of which he is vice-chair. He is also on the International Advisory Board of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

He is the author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart 

In This Interview, James R Doty and I Discuss…

  • The One You Feed parable
  • His book,  Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart 
  • The impact of compassionate acts on our brain, health and well-being
  • How early in his childhood he felt like a leaf being blown around by an ill wind
  • The four key lessons that, when learned, changed the trajectory of his life
  • The difference between you and your inner voice
  • That when you create the internal circumstances for reaching your goal, that allows for the possibility of the outward circumstances to align themselves for your own success
  • A scientific perspective on the connection between the brain and the heart and the rest of the body
  • The types of practices that can improve your vegal tone and why that matters 
  • The important role that attachment early in life plays in the quality of health later in your life
  • The important role that connection with others plays in your health throughout your life
  • That being of service to others is what gives life meaning

James R Doty Links

129: John Prendergast

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John Prendergast The One You Feed

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This week we talk to John Prendergast about tuning into our body

John J. Prendergast, PhD, is a psychotherapist, retired professor of psychology, spiritual teacher, and founder and editor-in-chief of Undivided: The Online Journal of Nonduality and Psychology.

He received his undergraduate degree from UC Santa Cruz and my M.A. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Integral Studies.  He is licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist.

In This Interview, John Prendergast and I Discuss:

  • The One You Feed parable
  • How important our body is
  • What “knowing” is
  • Learning to trust our deeper knowledge
  • The difference between inner knowing and hunches based on fear
  • Finding true knowing from ego desires
  • The static in our system
  • Observing thoughts as just thoughts
  • Learning to be more aware to the sensations and feelings in the body
  • Our brain- The Thought Factory
  • Scanning the body
  • Identifying with the world from our thinking, not our body

John Prendergast Links

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