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Retreat Dharma Talks

Mindfulness for Everyone: Practicing Across the Spectrum of Awareness

Most people practice mindfulness in a focused way—attending to their breathing, and returning to their breath when their attention has wandered. But there are actually many different ways to practice mindfulness.

In this retreat, we will learn about the Spectrum of Awareness Practices, from focused awareness to investigative and choiceless awareness, to natural awareness. Natural awareness is an effortless, radiant, and spacious state of being that includes awareness of awareness.

Over the retreat, through sitting, walking meditations, lectures, exercises, and meetings with teachers, we will practice each type of awareness and explore how these different approaches relate to one another. We will also make each practice relevant to daily life and will practice with them in our families, homes, and daily activities.

The retreat is based on Diana Winston’s book, The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering your Natural Awareness.

2021-06-14 (6 days) Spirit Rock Meditation Center

  
2021-06-15 The Spectrum of Awareness Practices 51:07
Diana Winston
This talk details the Spectrum of Awareness Practice-- a map for exploring how many types of awareness meditations fit together. We explore how to move from narrow, focused awareness, through an investigative awareness, to open awareness, and to natural awareness-- an open, spacious, awareness of awareness.
2021-06-16 Self-Directed Loving Kindness 45:25
Diana Winston
We practice loving kindness with an emphasis on how to send it to ourselves.
2021-06-16 Fluidity of Mind: Reflections on Awareness 53:53
Alex Haley
This talk details the importance of embodied awareness, especially as known through felt-sense experience, and how this awareness can be temporarily obscured. Investigative awareness is discussed as a practice method for working with these temporary hindrances and how the sense of fluidity that we cultivate through investigative awareness supports a deeper knowing of natural awareness.
2021-06-17 The Lake of Lovingkindness 34:55
Diana Winston
Using guided imagery, we practice loving kindness expansively. We start with ourselves and ultimately include the whole world. The lake is a metaphor, image, and guide.
2021-06-17 Heart Centered Wisdom 47:45
Carol Cano
Mindfulness is not just about training the mind, it is also about training the heart. Cultivating a practice of listening and being with what arises moment to moment opens us to every changing nature of who we are.
2021-06-18 A Guided Session on Opening to Natural Awareness 62:35
Diana Winston
For those interested in natural awareness, this session includes several short meditations called Glimpse Practices to help us access our expansive, luminous nature.
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