TEACHER: Jeff Warren
THEME: Breakthrough
MEDITATION: Moving Ever-closer to The Now
GROUP PRACTICE: Time bandits
So as I said, breakthrough is gonna look different depending on the person. For some, it might be a glimpse into the constructed nature of sensory reality, for others an energizing kundalini shock, for others still a sudden insight into who and how they are. All of these are “ah-ha” moments, although they may happen in different domains. For this meditation we’ll work with developing clarity with our immediate experience, see if we can edge closer to the real present. Neuroscience tells us there’s a delay in consciousness. We live a half-second or so in the past. What most neuroscientists don’t realize is human beings can actually learn to move their awareness forward in time, closer to actual Now. This is a classic meditative feat: as the meditator trains up their clarity, they seems to be able to boost the temporal resolution of attention and move into the initial 10 or 20 or 100 milliseconds of every moment. In this strange place, all sensory experience is unfixated, just the free flow of space expanding and contracting, to use a Shinzen-ism. The world has not yet hardened and congealed. From here come the mind-jarring insights into impermanence and so on. Imagine living from this place! That’s what we’ll explore in the group practice. I have no idea what this will look like.