Meditation

Meditation is commonly described as a training of mental attention that awakens us beyond the conditioned mind and habitual thinking, and reveals the nature of reality. While the origins of meditation practices go back to the Buddhist tradition, it is a secular practice.

The practice of meditation has multiple scientifically-proven emotional and physician health benefits including stress reduction, better memory, greater ability to focus, pain reduction, decreased anxiety and greater self-awareness.

Meditation is a state of awareness. It is not an act of doing, it is a state of being. We practice meditation by receiving all the domains of experience with a mindful, open attention including sensations, feelings, thoughts and emotions.

By engaging with different meditation practices, we lean to notice conditioned patterns and habits of our minds, discern when our minds are running on autopilot and discover a space where we can purposely shift away from old unhelpful habits and cultivate new, more positive ways of being.

In the essential practice of meditation there is no attempt to manipulate or control experience. Natural Presence simply recognizes what is arising and allows life to unfold, just as it is. The open receptivity of Natural Presence dissolves this sense of a self “doing” the meditation allowing clarity of the present moment.