A version of Joseph Goldstein's Big Mind meditation using bells and reminders to allow your mind to be like a clear empty sky and allow the different experiences to arise and pass without interference.
We have the opportunity to make something of this precious life, that has such fortunate conditions that can also quickly change. The seeds we plant have results. Orienting ourselves toward the Dharma can free us from the samsaric loop.
Looking at the similarities between creativity and dharma practice with a focus on being comfortable with the unknown and the willingness to surprise yourself.
How this truth-telling practice is a process which reveals ever deeper levels of what really is so. In this way, what we mistook for real is seen through and released, over and over again, leaving - what?
The culmination of the Brahma Viharas, the ten paramis, and the factors of awakening. Equanimity allows us, like the Buddha, to 'sit in the middle'. Moment to moment mindfulness brings balance and openness to meet our joys and sorrows.
The distortion of delusion operates in many ways, including when we are disconnected from our direct experience, or only allow in information that doesn't challenge our deluded state of mind. Learning how to recognize when delusion is distorting our experience allows us to wake up out of its spell and discover clarity and peacefulness.
By welcoming joy we become content, so we relax, thus letting go of the need to do something - anything about it - thus calming down. Inner and/or outer joy facilitates the shift from doing to being - from trying to letting go - crucial steps on the path to awakening.
Metta practice makes the heart more sensitive. This tenderness becomes the avenue for us to discover our deep connectedness to all of life and end a sense of isolation.
