Episode #4 Building Focus & Intent
In this episode, we look more closely at HOW to grow into coherence.
There are four obvious types of meditation, mindfulness, contemplation – whatever you want to call it– and we explore how these four types form the foundation of this work. All of them help us to build our focused attention into intention.
As we’ve said already, the key to successful practice – to building enduring habits – is to evoke a background affective texture (that is, a feeling) that is intimately woven with the act of our practice. The feeling of Joyful Curiosity – the child-like wonder of something truly magical happening – is the key to this. If each breath, or each moment of watching a candle flame, or a leaf or whatever we choose, is utterly magical, then it’s far more likely to be engaging and we’re far more likely to want to bring our mind back again to the single point of focus.
And then we move to Open Focus meditation, which is the same kind of life skill, but spread out into everything we experience in the moment: everything we see, hear, smell, taste, feel – all of it, as it happens, in the moment. This is an eyes open meditation and a really good grounding for becoming fully present through the days.
The music that book-ends the podcasts is created by Caro C and is called ‘Sense Ability’ – you can find it here.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE THESE RECENT EPISODES
Jaguar Dreaming – Walking the Bridge of Perception with John Perkins of the Pachamama Alliance
How can the dream of a jaguar – or any dream – help us to overcome our own fears? This week’s guest, John Perkins has written a book about this. ‘Touching the Jaguar’ is a memoir of an extraordinary life, and it’s an invitation to walk across what he calls the Bridge of Perception to see the world differently – in his words to remember that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature.
Crossing the Uncanny Chasm from where we are to where we need to be – Thoughts from the Edge #6 with Manda Scott
I went away for a weekend with the core planning team of our Thrutopian Convergence. We played a Solar Punk Futures game and I learned something important about getting past what I’m calling the Uncanny Chasm…
Climate Popularism – Launch of the new report by Rupert Read and Caroline Lucas, interviewed by Jon Alexander
This week sees the launch of the Climate Popularism Report written for the Climate Majority Project by friend of the podcast Professor Rupert Read, co-director of the Climate Majority Project, and Caroline Lucas, former Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and for a long time, the sole Green party member of the UK’s Parliament.
A New Earth Dawning: Biological Elegance, the health of humanity and OriginEarth with Zach Bush, MD
What happens when someone who has trained for years in the Cartesian model of science, of medicine in particular – who has been trained to look at bodies the way a mechanic looks at a car, to take them apart and fix one thing and put it back together and get it back on the road… what happens when that person begins to question everything?
STAY IN TOUCH
For a regular supply of ideas about humanity's next evolutionary step, insights into the thinking behind some of the podcasts, early updates on the guests we'll be having on the show - AND a free Water visualisation that will guide you through a deep immersion in water connection...sign up here.
(NB: This is a free newsletter - it's not joining up to the Membership! That's a nice, subtle pink button on the 'Join Us' page...)