Rabbit Hole

Back in my twenties, I had this idea of living life like an adventure story. So I did. Until I realized the ratio of fun to struggle was moving in the wrong direction. The fun was getting briefer and more desperate; the challenges were getting longer and more all-encompassing.

From the Business Unusual with Barbara Corcoran Podcast: “Meditation changed my life, and today I’m talking to the guy who coached me through it. Jeff Warren joins me to break down the benefits of meditation, why many of the most successful people practice it, and why it’s okay if you ‘can’t get the hang of it.'”

From the Dropping In – An Omega Podcast: “In his conversation with Omega digital media director Cali Alpert, Jeff reveals why he thinks meditation is one of the most radical acts, how we can tailor a practice to fit our individual needs, and how we learn best in community.”

I knew parenting would be rewarding and challenging. I didn’t know it would be everything – like the life I had before, except now in 3-D, with the vanishing point always in sight.

From CNN: “The stress of this the pandemic is getting to us, and today’s election is only heightening the anxiety for some. Today CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta shares tips for coping with all this extra anxiety. Jeff Warren tells us about his experience with meditation and explains some of the benefits.”

What a thrill it was for Jeff to be joined live by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. They had an open and honest conversation about meditation and maintaining mental health in these wild times. Then Jeff led a short guided practice- with over 40k joining in from around the world. Amazing.  

Imagine a post-Apocalyptic landscape filled with careening hot rods, all kitted out with various high performance stylings, and all of them moving in the same direction. In this metaphor, our armada of vehicles represent the world’s contemplative and personal growth practices. They are beautiful in their freakish diversity.

Suddenly: you exist. You didn’t plan it or ask for it, but existence happened, and now, after a bunch of years bumping into coffee tables and staring at trees, full self-consciousness has flickered on, and you’re like: ‘wait a second … where am I? Who am I? And what am I supposed to DO here?’

Many of us are at war with ourselves. We’re divided, we have mixed feelings. We’re of two minds, of four minds, of eight minds. How many minds do we have in there?

Book blurb: “In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Dan Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating.” Click to read book’s marketing description, plus my commentary.

Almost any domain or activity in life can be approached as an intentional practice, and the people who specialize in these domains have learned important things about being human. How can we draw this wisdom out? Introducing the Consciousness Explorers Club’s new pluralistic practice paradigm :)

We are – Buddhist thinking goes – locked into unhelpfully narrow views of reality, meta-trances imposed by the preoccupations and formulations of our conditioning and language and culture.

We can start pretending, in a vaguely schizoid way, that existence / nature / whatever responds to our overtures, indeed, that the whole container is a 360-degree dance partner keeping time with your every move.

The benefits of mindfulness meditation have very quickly become one of the good-news mental health stories of our time. But meditation also has a shadowy seam. Is there a link between some forms of mental illness and the freedom promised at the heart of meditation? My column on the infamous “Dark Night of the Soul”

Fourteen years ago Gary Weber’s thoughts disappeared, and all his suffering vanished with them. Was it the disappearance of his thoughts that saved him, or is something else going on?

“Stream entry,” is a Buddhist term for initial enlightenment — a shift in perspective where the practitioners’ mind flips inside-out, and for a split-second recognizes its own inseparability from the rest of the natural world.

Western psychology is still outgrowing a reactive skepticism towards the subjective anecdote that it inherited from behaviorism. Fortunately, this is changing. These days, there is a growing appreciation among investigators that if you want to understand consciousness – as opposed to just brain activity – you have to start taking first-person reports seriously. This will soon include reports of human “enlightenment.”

A collection of academic essays edited by Alex Kohav that explores personal, theoretical, and historical dimensions of mystical experience. Alex contacted me about including my New York Times piece “The Anxiety of the Long-Distance Meditator” – all about striving to get to “initial enlightenment” via advanced meditation. It didn’t really work.