Meditating With John Vervaeke Course Guide

Transcribed and written by Ian @BorderlessTravels

“You have to trust, that even if you’re not doing it perfectly correctly or perfectly right, in the
end it doesn’t matter as long as you maintain the continuity of practice. If your life transforms
that is your feedback.”

Table of Contents

LESSON 1: FINDING YOUR CENTRE 2

LESSON 2: FINDING YOUR ROOT 2

LESSON 3: FINDING YOUR FLOW 2

LESSON 4: FINDING YOUR FOCUS 3

LESSON 5: METTA CONTEMPLATION 3

LESSON 6: INQUIRING MINDFULNESS 6

LESSON 7: MEDITATIVE QUESTING (QUESTIONING) 6

LESSON 8: DISTRACTIONS & HINDERANCES 7

LESSON 9: DEEPENING VIPASSANA 15

LESSON 10: PRAJNA 17

LESSON 11: LECTIO DIVINA 19

LESSON 12: CHI KUNG 22

LESSON 13: SEATED CHI KUNG 24

LESSON 14: CHANTING 25

LESSON 15: WALKING MEDITATION 26

NOTES & INSIGHTS: 29

Lesson 1: Finding your Centre
Sitting on your zafu or meditation bench you do the following:

1. Shift forward and back from your torso slowly until you come to a centred feeling
2. Repeat the shifting action from left to right from your torso shrinking your movements
until you come to a centred feeling
3. Now from your neck, shift your head forward and back until you come to a centered
feeling
4. Repeat the process from your neck shifting your head right and left until you come to a
centered feeling

Then: Ask yourself:

Sink into your centre What does being centered taste like?
Savour your centre What tone is it?

Once centered: begin meditating or move to the next step

Lesson 2: Finding your root

When finding your flow there are four points of attention:

1. Looking
2. Listening
3. Letting it Flow (Loosening/Relaxing)
4. Letting it go - opening, melting, draining

You find your root with the following steps:

Step 1 - Front of your body:

1. Starting at the top of your scull move your attention forwards towards your eye area and
find the four points of attention while drawing your attention to tension in that area. First
looking, then listening, letting it flow, then letting it go.
2. As your attention melts down to your heart area you repeat the attentive awareness at the
front of your heart area while drawing your attention to tension in that area. First looking,
then listening, letting it flow, then letting it go.
3. Then your melt your attention down to the front of your abdomen (dan tien) while
drawing your attention to tension in that area. First looking, then listening, letting it flow,
then letting it go.
4. Then the area touching the ground beneath you while drawing your attention to tension in
that area. First looking, then listening, letting it flow, then letting it go.
5. Finally, you let your attention melt into the ground then 3ft into the earth
 6. Then slowly bring your attention back up towards the top of your head (don’t jump your
attention there)

Note: Imagine you’re tracing a line down the front of your body.

Step 2 - Back of your body:

1. Starting at the top of your scull move your attention backwards towards the base of your
scull and find the four points of attention while drawing your attention to tension in that
area. First looking, then listening, letting it flow, then letting it go.
2. As your attention melts down to the centre of your scull neck area then you repeat the
four points of attentive awareness while drawing your attention to tension in that area.
First looking, then listening, letting it flow, then letting it go.
3. Then you let your attention melt down the centre of your abdomen (dan tien) while
drawing your attention to tension in that area. First looking, then listening, letting it flow,
then letting it go.
4. Then the area touching the ground beneath you where you’re touching the ground while
drawing your attention to tension in that area. First looking, then listening, letting it flow,
then letting it go.
5. Finally, you let your attention melt into the ground then 3ft into the earth and join with
the front root and back root

Note: Imagine you’re tracing a line down the back of your body.

Step 3 - Centre of your body:

1. Starting at the top of your scull move your attention down towards the centre of your
scull and find the four points of attention while drawing your attention to tension in that
area. First looking, then listening, letting it flow, then letting it go.
2. Then you draw your attention down to the centre of your neck area (where your shoulders
meet) then you repeat the attentive awareness.
3. Then you let your attention melt down your back across from your solar plexus
4. Then the area touching the ground beneath you in synch with the back of your body
5. Finally, you let your attention melt into the ground then 3ft into the earth and join with
the front root
6. Then slowly bring your attention back up towards the top of your head (don’t jump your
attention there)

Once rooted: Savour your centre and root then meditate or move onto the next step.

Lesson 3: Finding your flow

Expand (fill your attention)
Enhance (deepen into the area) (notice movement, temperature, texture, tightness, different
patterns of sensations) - letting your awareness expand out and in
 1. First draw your attention to your abdomen
a. Expand your awareness (fill your attention in the area)
b. Enhance deepen your awareness and enrich your experience

2. Then draw your attention to your chest

a. Expand your awareness (fill your attention in the area)
b. Enhance deepen your awareness and enrich your experience
c. Then join your attention with your abdomen and focus your attention there)

3. Then draw your attention to your shoulders

a. Expand your awareness (fill your attention in the area)
b. Enhance deepen your awareness and enrich your experience
c. Then join your attention with your, chest, then abdomen, then focus your attention
on your abdomen

4. Finally draw your attention to your spine/back

a. Follow the flow of your spine, deepen into the muscles of the back
b. Then join with abdomen, chest, shoulders

**Feel the flow in the whole torso and hole of your breath with whole of your torso. Connecting
the whole of the body with the whole of the mind**

Lesson 4: Finding your focus

To find your focus you bring your attention to your breath and the flow of your torso. On each
breath you can quietly say “In” then “Out” then count in your mind. Ex. In, out, 1 – in out 2

If the majority of your attention is on your breath (things might be happening around but not the
major focus of attention), keep counting.

When the centre of your attention moves elsewhere reduce the count and start at zero.

The point is to fall into flowing attention - continually renew your interest in your breath. What’s
changing? What’s different?

When you get distracted recognize:

1. What did it feel like to be in the stream? Flowing with my breath - moment of
remembering “sati”
2. When you return to your breath - renewing your interest - present through, with, and in it

You count until you remember, oh that’s what it felt like to have continuity of mindfulness

You want the majority of your mind (focus) on your breath. Fleeting thoughts may be in the
distance or background but the majority of focus is on your breath.
Trying to get a sense of momentum with flow - how one moment of mindfulness is leading to the
next.

**You want to get to a count of 4 or 6. Remember when you get distracted you go back to your
breath and start your count over. **

Lesson 5: Metta Contemplation

Always go into Vipassana to start (always, always, always)

1. Centre, root, finding flow, finding focus (then a bit of Vipassana)

2. Metta to yourself
3. Metta to someone close to you
4. Metta to a neutral person
5. Metta to a person you’re in conflict with
6. Metta towards all human beings (all beings)

Bring up the image and name of the person in your mind then you say to yourself

a) May I realize your suchness (what goes beyond - the meaningfulness - beyond your
categorical identities)

Or

b) May I realize what’s more about you

Metta to yourself

a) Try to see are you having yourself or becoming yourself

b) Is yourself a thing within you that you hold onto (your identity), how are you the same?
Or, is yourself an ongoing unfolding process that’s always in relation to the world.

c) Can you shift from having yourself to being yourself? Realizing yourself in a process of
development. That there’s more to you that what you know

d) What have you not seen or realized about yourself?

Ask yourself:

- What identity am I assuming, what identity am I assigning. Am I having this person or

am I being with them.
 - Wake up and see the identification and become aware of, and see through, any modal
confusion
Metta towards others

a) What identity do you assume towards that person, what identity do you assign

b) Are they just a unit, do you just have them, can you remember the being mode with
respect to them?

c) What identity are you assigning, what identity are you assuming

d) Are you having yourself and having them? Can you remember the being mode…not
getting locked into the having mode?

Metta towards all beings

a) What identity to assume and what identity do you assign as a human person

b) Is this something you have or can you remember the being mode.

c) What identities are coming to mind, what identities are you assuming/assigning.
Remember the being mode

3/4 times for each one…

If you get distracted, label the distraction then go back to your breathing and befriend yourself (a
way of being) then return to where you were in Metta - start from the beginning of the person
you were focusing with.

You can set a timer for Metta but you don’t need to, rather: choose a number to focus on and do
them mindfully 5/6 mantras.

Really zero in, magnify, and amplify

- what does this feel like in the tempo and texture, the tenure, the temperature of my mind
- same thing with my body; how am I inhabiting this identity
- With others: what world is being structured around that person when I’m projecting an
identity onto them

What is the tenure, temperature, texture, tempo?

How are you inhabiting your mind and body?

What world are you structuring around that person and yourself as you assign and identity to
them?
- How is it locked?
 - How is it automatic?
- How is it reactive?
Get into the flow state to explore the process of co-identification

Why am I not practicing?

What’s the anxiety I’m not facing?
What am I afraid of?
What is it I don’t actually want to have changed in me?

Goal: genuinely recognizing other people’s humanity and being in right relationship to their
humanity; to their personhood (it is not perfect or wonderful but it is important).

1. Try to bring attention to people throughout your day (reciprocal opening, the being mode,
empathy). Once it becomes second nature then you can begin the next step.

2. Once you are capable of achieving the above outcomes you can then focus on situations,
or people, that are really pushing your buttons within Metta.

Remembering the situation you can turn back to it in Metta and try to get a sense of how
you might be projecting onto that person.

Try to get a sense of that about you, which you’re not seeing precisely because you’re
projecting.

Lesson 6: Inquiring Mindfulness

5 Factors of inquiring mindfulness

1. Vigilance
2. Sensitivity
3. Acuity
4. Noticing
5. Reminding

Inquiry: questing - to expose yourself to exploration - to open up - to call into question by going
beyond the familiar (everything that you’ve regarded as familiar) - to learn in a deep fashion - to
give up the pretense of expertise in our self-knowledge

A kind of humility, learn to give up the pretended expertise that we have in our self-knowledge.

Vigilance

Core of the 5 practices

1. Exploratory observation.
2. Looking for what you haven’t yet seen, notice what is new and what is different.
3. Explore and get below the familiar face of our experience (attention/awareness)
4. Give up the pretense of expertise in our self-knowledge (attitude)
5. Movement, exploration, penetrating observation (energy)

Lesson 7: Meditative Questing (questioning)

Once per week

Accentuates the factors of vigilance (vigilance practice)

1. Find core four (centre, root, flow, focus)

2. Do some Vipassana
3. Go into meditative questing

Pick a question that has a normal familiar automatic answer but can be re-understood to have a
deep and profound meeting that is personally relevant to you

Who am I?

Ask the question deeply to yourself

Answers are portals and doorways - a lens that you see through that affords you going further

When an answer comes you say thank you then ask…

- Where did that answer come from?
- What is the something that is behind that?
- then you quest deeper and try to see and I ask the question again
- What answer comes up when I try to get behind and through that first answer?

For example: Yes, thank you but who am I really?

Pass through the doorway, go on the quest. The point is to get to a place that seems unfamiliar - a
kind of emptiness, an expectation, a waiting.

De-familiarizing/de-automatize the machinery of your self-identity

What is really going on now in my experience?

Label the distraction - return to Vipassana - then pick up the questioning again

Get the taste, the felt sense of this questing into the depths, looking into the pond,

Every answer is a portal that portends what is happening, deep insight into the depths of the pond

Broaden your scope to include thoughts, feelings, and sensations as responses to questions.
Other Questions:

What is really happening right now?

Who am I in relation to…?

Lesson 8: Distractions & Hinderances

When a distraction appears, you apply the 5 factors of inquiring mindfulness

Vigilance - exploratory observation in humility

Sensitivity - as in rooting, letting other flow
Acuity - as in flow - noticing all the differences, pulling it apart
Noticing - how the lived body is reacting, emotional reaction, mental reaction
Reminding - stay in the practice

If you go away, return to the breath.

If it goes away, return to the breath, notice what an empty mind is like and pay very careful
attention to attitude.
If it becomes merely enduring then mindfully come out of the practice. Deal with distraction and
return to the practice.

NOTE: Over time try to minimize inner coaching (in noticing) - maybe say body, heart, mind
and try to sense and answer observationally what is revealed by you intentionally directing your
attention towards that (eventually without having to speak to yourself)

Generate observational attention rather than verbal responses

Physical Distraction

Label with an -ing word (always) ex. paining, checking, thinking, remembering, imagining,
planning

Vigilance - take an attitude towards it that you don’t really know what this is completely.
a. Do not accept the familiarity as being a complete revelation of the phenomena.
b. Do not interpret that familiarity.
c. You do not have a complete understanding or awareness of it.
d. You do not have any expertise about it because nothing has been disclosed to me
because it’s familiar.
e. Use exploratory observation into the physical distraction (ex. pain)
f. You might feel like, “I’m not going to like that”. This does not mean it’s as bad as
what’s been habituated in you.
g. You want to see more and to learn more.
​
​Sensitivity - Turn all the nouns in your mind into verbs -ing labels (flowing)
​
a) This isn’t pain it’s paining
b) Draw your attention like in an exploratory movie where the distraction is unfolding and
you’re seeing how it’s going to progress
​
​Acuity - pull the experience apart
​
​Ex. Break the con-fusion - fused together frame - break it down into what it really is and notice
all the different kinds of sensations - tension, tightness, tingling, felt nastiness but I don’t know
what it is, there’s a lot happening there.
​
​Look at all the layers and what’s shifting around
​
​Noticing - try to pay attention to the three kinds of reactions you’re having

a. What’s your physical reaction - How is your energetic felt body reacting to this
- ex. is it tightening, do you feel it try to pull away, do you feel a part of it that’s
like oooohhhh. What is your lived body doing?

b. What’s your emotional reaction to this? - ex. I hate it, I’m angry at it, it’s
unjust, I like it a bit too because it gives me a sense of urgency - you might be
surprised by the complex set of sensations and reactions

c. What’s your mind doing? - how is it reacting to the sensation? Moving away,
moving towards it, grasping it, trying to shred it, trying to make it go away, trying
to attach to it - ex. I want to get away from this, no I want to make this go away
with the raw power of my will, I’m going to set this as the villain

Reminding - stay in mindfulness - staying in the practice - keep going back to vigilance,
sensitivity, acuity, noticing

1st Principle

If when you’re meditating on your distraction you’re distracted from it, you go back to your
breath (basic Vipassana)

2nd Principle

If the discomfort or distraction goes away - leave it, let go of what’s happening and return to
your breath

- befriending and being centred again - let go of that temptation to inflation - re-centre your
attitude

Turn away from the temptation or realizing that you can make discomfort and pain go way
To pursue magic must be abandoned because it is the greatest fraudulent surrogate for the
cultivation of wisdom

3rd Principle

It doesn’t go away and you don’t go away

Or

It doesn’t go away and you keep coming back to it

Stop and alleviate the distraction by making adjustments then start over again going through
centering etc. but faster because you’re already close

Summary…

This is education not endurance

1st - You go away (distraction from meditating on discomfort) go back to the breath

2nd - it goes away, go back to the breath paying very close attention to re-centre your attitude

3rd - it doesn’t go away, you don’t go away or your keep coming back to it repeatedly

Note: If you have an experience such as an itch and it’s so overwhelming you’re not learning
anything while applying the 5 factors of mindfulness, break your practice and scratch the itch
with mindful attention. Note if the itch is reduced even before you scratch it and pay attention to
the experience of scratching the itch. Pay attention to how your impish monkey mind has figured
out how to distract you.

Emotional Distraction

First step back and label the emotion -ing

Vigilance - go from passively undergoing your emotions to actively exploring them

Sensitivity - moving and unfolding - follow it, let it flow by labelling the process

Acuity - notice expanding & enriching your awareness, unfolding it, diffusing it., pulling it apart
- you may notice that you’re not having a single emotion (emotion focused therapy)
- very often you’ll find there’s a tremendous layering
- try to distinguish between the raw feeling of the emotion and what it seems to be wanting
to impel you to do
o Where is it in your chest? Really feel it
o What is it trying to say to you? What is it trying to impel you to do?
Noticing
a) Where is it in your body? What is your body reaction?
b) What's the mind doing to the emotion? (ex. I love this emotion) -
a. you’ll have this mental reflective judgement/evaluation of your emotion; try to
just notice that, notice it
b. Try to take a meta stance towards your emotion, try to befriend it, try to take that
attitude that you’re going to unlock towards it and it’s going to unlock towards
you

Reminding - stay in the practice - 3 principles

Mental Distraction

The first time a mental distraction comes up step back:

Inner Speech

Don’t pay attention to what is being said, pay attention to qualities of the voice saying it;

a) Whose voice is it?

b) If It’s your voice when?
​- You as an adult, as a teenager, as a child?
​- Your voice when you’re older?
​- Is it a wise sounding voice/a foolish sounding voice?
​- Does it try to pretend that it has authority or does it seem to just naturally have authority over
you?
​- Is it talking quickly?
​- Is there an emotional tone to it?

Imagine you were sitting on a bus listening to a person speaking a language you don’t
understand. So, you don’t know what they’re talking about but you can pick up all of this kind of
information. Do that with the voice.

When you do this, very soon, the thinking will disappear, and note that…

1. What’s it like when my mind is empty of thought

2. Then return to the breath

Scenes/Pictures

Behave as if you were an art critique at a museum

Look at this painting

Look at these colours
Look at the colour, look at where they are
Look at the texture
Look at how rapidly or slowly things are changing
Notice if it’s a whole or a part (a whole tiger or just part of a tiger’s face)

Step back and look at the medium rather than the meaning of it

3 principles

When it goes away (notice what it’s like)

You go away (get distracted from the distraction), return to the breath

Probably won’t go through 3rd principal if you do go back to the breath

Hindrances

Things preventing you from doing the practice

- Active hinderance

You want to sit and you’re getting a “no”

1. Apply 5 factors of acquiring mindfulness to it and eventually the 3 principles will appear
2. It will go away, you go to the breath
3. You go away and you go to the breath
4. It endures and you stay with it, turn it into a learning experience

- Passive resistance

Yeah, I would meditate - but your motivation dissipates away

A) Taking refuge in the Buddha (your sage)

- Throughout your day keep a journal of moments when you were mindful
- Remembering the being mode
- Note moments when you have seen through illusion
- Note moments when you have let go of a habitual pattern

This is called watering your Buddha

Noting these moments builds up your inner sage, your inner teacher. As your inner sage starts to
grow in you it will start to motivate you and encourage you. It’s you.
future self that you’re giving birth to

B) The Dharma
Learning - reading books about meditation and mindfulness from different perspectives that
interest you. Studying and growing with your practice,

C) The Sanga

Meeting with other people

Note: Use the aspects of inquiring mindfulness even when there are no thoughts to notice the
temperature, texture, and tempo of the processing of the mind (even though there may be no
thoughts). Notice them the way you notice your room and explore them as if you were looking
for a lost object.

Principles of Practice

Integrity

🡪 Being true to the principles that you hold to be most true

🡪 Principles of practice - training principles - training precepts - precepts to help us to properly
train

Integration

🡪 We want the patterns in our life and the patterns in our practice to befriend each other

Part 1 - extend the notion of befriending oneself

- What we’re cultivating in our practice and what we’re practicing in our life are in a
reciprocal opening, a reciprocal reinforcing, a reciprocal affording relationship; they’re
befriending each other

Part 2 - building a bridge

- Trying to afford moments of application and transfer. To call out moments where we
notice where we can apply our practice to our lives. We are befriending ourselves and the
world around us.

1. Here’s where I could step back and look at

2. Here’s where I could come into centeredness and rootedness
3. Here’s where I could try to get into a more flowing relationship with all the dynamics
happening in this situation

Ex. Here’s where I can be centred and rooted, here’s where I can look at something, here’s where
I can try to open up and flow
Try to increase the opportunities for where we can apply what we trained in our practice to our
life. We will also do the reverse by more and more flagging moments in our life as things that get
taken into our practice, that remind us of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha

Try to afford harmony and opportunity.

5 Training Precepts

No need to add all of them - get an optimal grip - don’t overburden the precepts flowingly add
commitments after mindfully - focus is on deepening your commitment

Saying them out loud is very conducive to getting the intent more deeply permeating through
your consciousness and cognition. When you speak out loud you’re not just representing your
intent you’re instantiating it; reaching beyond that you’re trying to invoke aspirationally the very
phenomena that you are speaking. Aspiring and committing yourself to it in the future.

IMPORTANT: use (craft) the words that resonates the most with you to participate in the
intention and transformation.

5 Promises

I promise not to harm but to mindfully enhance and enrich life.

I promise not to relate to material things mindlessly but mindfully (remember the being mode)
I promise not to speak mindlessly but mindfully and wisely
I promise not to practice sexuality mindlessly but mindfully.
I promise not to cultivate altered states of consciousness mindlessly but mindfully. (for the sake
of wisdom not for escape).

Note: Once you get used to the above phrases they will evolve and might include the following
phrases. The extension can be used later once you’re even more comfortable. As you continue
these will adapt and change. The bracketed text can be added later as well.

1. I promise not to harm but to mindfully enhance and enrich life mindfully, (wisely,
caringly, and lovingly)
​
​Extension - With reverence and respect I promise not to misuse or abuse (or enhancing
and enriching life) life but to treat life wisely, (mindfully, caringly, lovingly) remembering
the being mode in the aspiration towards wisdom and enlightenment
​- In reverence and respect for the power and promise of life, I promise not to
harm but to care for living things wisely in the aspiration to enlightenment
​
2. I promise not to relate to material things mindlessly but mindfully, (wisely, caringly
and lovingly) (remember the being mode).
​- Notice the ways in which objects are projections of your identity
-​ Notice ways in which material things are giving you a sense of stability or solidity (reflect on
this)
​- Why do I want this object near me all the time; why do I want to control that?
​- Shift from a having mode towards material things (ideas) to a being mode
​- How you participate in being in life because of the connection between yourself and the
world
​
​Extension - With reverence and respect I promise not to misuse or abuse material objects but
to treat them wisely remembering the being mode in the aspiration towards wisdom and
enlightenment
​- In reverence and respect for the power and promise of material things, I
promise not to abuse them or misuse them, treat them wisely, in the aspiration
to enlightenment.
​
3. I promise not use speech mindlessly but mindfully, (wisely, caringly and lovingly.)
​- One of the most fundamental ways in which we can care for ourselves, care for each other, and
care for our humanity is being careful in our speech; taking care of it, caring about it.
​- It means paying attention to what’s at work in our speech i.e. sloppy and careless speech
becomes sloppy and careless thought, which becomes sloppy and careless action, which then
becomes a sloppy and careless life (distinct possibility of progression).
​
​Extension - With reverence and respect I promise not to misuse or abuse speech but to speak
wisely remembering the being mode in the aspiration towards wisdom and enlightenment
​- In reverence and respect for the power and promise of speech, I promise not
to speak foolishly but to speak wisely in the aspiration to enlightenment.

4. I promise not to practice my sexuality mindlessly but mindfully, (wisely, caringly

and lovingly.)
- Are you practicing sexuality in a way that fosters integration?
- Are you bringing in mindfulness?
- Are you bringing in how this deeply taps into areas of your brain that you otherwise
don’t have access to or are you practicing sexuality in a way that disintegrates you,
disintegrates your connections to others, disintegrates your connection to the world?
- Are you focused on the meaning of the relation?
- Befriend our sexuality with mindfulness

Extension - With reverence and respect I promise not to misuse or abuse my sexuality
but to practice it wisely remembering the being mode in the aspiration towards wisdom
and enlightenment.
- In reverence and respect for the power and promise of sexuality, I
promise not to have sex mindlessly but to love wisely in the
aspiration to enlightenment
 5. I promise not to abuse altered states of consciousness but to seek out and cultivate
those that educate and transform me mindfully, (wisely, caringly, and lovingly) (for
the sake of wisdom not for escape) or I promise to abuse altered states of
consciousness but cultivate them mindfully and wisely (for the sake of wisdom not
for escape).
- How are you pursuing altered states of consciousness?
- I’m seeking an altered state of consciousness because I’m not seeking to escape but to
educate, I’m seeking to transform myself so that I can be more present, more insightful,
and act more wisely, more centred, more rooted.
-Are you pursuing escape or education and transformation

Extension - With reverence and respect I promise not to misuse or abuse altered states
of consciousness but to use them wisely remembering the being mode in the aspiration
towards wisdom and enlightenment
- In reverence and respect for the power and promise of
consciousness, I promise not to alter my consciousness indulgently
but to transform it wisely, in the aspiration to enlightenment

NOTE: when you do each one you try to centre your attention on the sense of life in you for the
first one, the sense of the material objects around you, your speech centre, your sexual centre,
and your consciousness as you’re making the promises

Incorporate into all of your sits

After you come out of your sit, slowly coming out of your practice trying to, as best you can,
integrate what you’ve cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness and
cognition, you will be in a state of deep mindfulness, a deep state of presence and receptivity.
This is when you recite the precepts mindfully (can be one or more).

Throughout the day you take it up to try and practice the precepts as a way of harmonizing and
bridging between your practice and your life to create and afford opportunities where you can
grow by applying the principles to your life.

When you violate a promise

Use intelligent regret - befriend yourself - try to explain and understand and see and realize what
was going on as if you were treating a good friend. Help so that the person regrets it and realizes
a missed opportunity. Encourage yourself to take the practice up again - centre and root yourself
to come back into the practice.

Lesson 9: Deepening Vipassana

** Have most of your meditation be basic Vipassana but towards the end, especially when it’s
most challenging - when most of the distractions are coming up - try doing the deepening
Vipassana exercise.

** Eventually, following the breath will be preparation and following the mind will be the focus
of your practice most of the time

Take the insight that Vipassana affords into the level of Metta in a deep and profound way. We
want the insight to become an existential insight into the depths of the process of identification,
the way we’re assuming and assigning identities.

We also want to bring a space into that and open it up. Where we’re free from automatic reactive
ways of process and identity formation and operation, we want to be free to grow, develop,
change and transform.

To the degree in which you are over-identified with your speaking mind, is the degree to which
your identity, and the way in which the world can disclose itself to you, are locked down. It is
this process which we’re trying to open up in Metta.

o when you’re meditating on a distraction and it falls away (there’s no speech or scene) try
to create a felt memory (what does that feel like).

o Try to regularly do this when you’re meditating on your distractions

The process of deepening Vipassana

1. Find the core four

2. Do basic Vipassana (follow your breath, if there’s a distraction you note it an apply the 5
factors, if you get the silence try to notice that especially and then return to the breath)

3. Let distractions, the thoughts, come up (don’t label them)

a. Like a train of thought (one thing is pulling on the other, they’re all linked in a
causal effect.
b. Imagine a train close to you (when it’s moving fast in front of you) it looks like
one object but if you can take a step back and look at it, you can notice the space
between the cars. Instead of noticing the cars you notice the space between the
cars and you start to see beyond the empty space through to the other side of it

4. Then you’re going to count your thoughts

a. The point is to step back and look for the spaces between your thoughts
b. Try more and more to notice the spaces.
c. Eventually the spaces tend to get bigger and the train of thoughts slows down
d. Do Vipassana where the focus is on the empty space between your thoughts
e. Apply the 5 factors of inquiring mindfulness onto that empty space
 f. Meditatively quest into it. Meditate into that space to try to get an inkling, a sense,
a movement, a bubbling, an energy as if a thought is going to form and see if you
can pull back and disidentify from that bubbling (it’s over there) so that it doesn’t
actually germinate into a thought.

While you’re meditating into that space, you’re always sort of sensing these proto-thoughts (first
seeds of thinking). You try to disidentify from them and you try to look at them just as shifting
patterns (of energy); like a cat waiting out front of a mouse hole waiting for a mouse. Note
what the silence tastes like; what does it feel like?

What to do if you become distracted…

o If the thoughts are not the primary focus you continue Vipassana on the space.

o If you get fully distracted from the space you step back, notice the thought, label it with
an -ing word, apply the 5 factors, see if the distraction falls silent (try to note that).

o Then what you do is you come back to basic Vipassana

o After some time let your mind be open, thoughts come up, count your thoughts until you
realize the space between your thoughts

o Then you meditate into that space so that you come to a place where you feel an
expansiveness of mind that is not identified with speaking or making scenes

Lesson 10: Prajna

Prajna rows slowly, be patient, it takes a lot of time. It is a non-duality practice. Prajna is a
self-liberated insightful intelligence; the ability to see through illusion and see what is real.

It is enacted dynamic wisdom that is realized in an enhanced capacity to see through

self-deceptive behaviour and connect to the world in a deep and adaptive manner.

Learn to step back and look at the framing (the patterns and processes of our mind) to try and
notice if there’s any distortion, get more clarity, bring acuity to it, look deeply into the world and
see it anew.

Insight: there is a movement that breaks an inappropriate frame, followed by a movement that is
more encompassing which helps create more optimally gripping frame and allows you to move
between the two.
- Breaking frame
- Making frame
- Flexibility to move between them
Remember: ultimately, you’re getting into an inexhaustible field that affords a continual
movement of inquiring mindfulness.

The Practice

Getting Started:

1. Do some basic Vipassana first to remind yourself what Vipassana feels like.
2. Then a bit of Metta (perhaps your most extensive Metta that you’re practicing, not just
people but all sentient beings) as wide and deep as possible.
3. Then come back to Vipassana and do some deep Vipassana (the space between your
thoughts)
Once you’ve done these for a little while you begin Prajna with in-breath Metta, out-breath
Vipassana. Accepting that each will be shallow for a long time.

1. As you inhale and you feel your abdomen expanding, you extend your awareness
outward in Metta (towards all beings) in a deep flow like way (opening up to the
mysterious ground of the world).

2. As you exhale you do Vipassana where you try and go to the very centre, that space
between your thoughts; the silent mind (the mysterious ground of the psyche)

You flow between them

1. Inhale Metta out

2. Exhale Vipassana in (space between your thoughts)

Move towards it as you practice. It takes a lot of time each breath you’ll be able to do this but at
first it may only be half a breath because you’re not flexible. You’ll get a shallow sense of the
two to begin.

On the inhale you’ll be able to realize deep Metta and, on the exhale, you’ll be able to realize
deep Vipassana.

At first you will experience shallow Metta and Vipassana. Focus on whatever taste you can get
by letting your breath move naturally and unforced as you develop your flexibility.

Once you start to flow, after a lot of practice, you’ll start to notice a foreground background
thing. While you’re sensing Metta, you’ll have a background awareness of the depth of
Vipassana that you were touching. Then you’ll be able to feel them both active in your breath.
Then it will be both. The deepest resonance, reciprocal opening, the deepest optimization.

Then you’re in a state of non-duality, you are not subjectively or objectively oriented, you are
trans-oriented. The place that is optimal for optimizing your optimal grip; deep insight at the
level of yourself and the world.
Deepening Metta - All people 🡪 all sentient beings 🡪 all beings 🡪 the groundedness from which
being emanates.

Metta - opening towards the deepest mystery of participation

Vipassana - opening towards the deepest mystery of individuation

Connecting reciprocally to the moreness of participation and the suchness of individuation.

Avoid - do not extend breath and hyperventilate - be vigilant, leave your breathing alone and let
it flow naturally.

Ideal Meditation Schedule

** Remember that continuity of practice is better than quantity so use your time in a way that
helps you stay consistent, even if it’s only 5 minutes per day. There is no perfect only a process
of learning and transformation. **

Day 1: Basic Vipassana that leads into deep Vipassana

Day 2: Metta - trying always and gradually to be extending and deepening it Metta

Day 3: Prajna

Day 4: Basic Vipassana that leads into deep Vipassana

Day 5: Metta - trying always and gradually to be extending and deepening it Metta

Day 6: Prajna

Day 7: Meditative questing (or once per month)

Each sit you should do the movement practices, find your core four, chant, meditate, then do
lector Divina.

You might want to explore walking meditation two or three times a day

Lesson 11: Lectio Divina

Ideally, it should be done every day. You should already be familiar with the texts (informatively
before you read it transformatively). This means that you should have already read both poetry
and prose it before Lectio Divina.

The process should be done out loud until internalized.

**Always do a sit first**

Then set an intention “May I resonate with this text with reverence and for transformation”

1. Start with poetry first (Four Stages)

2. Follow this by reading prose (Four Stages)

Finally, try to commit yourself to remember this throughout the day, set the intention

“May I remember and realize this again and again throughout this day”

Your mind will naturally and spontaneously make connections and insights between the poetry
and the prose. Let them talk to each other as a way of talking to you.

Get into the state for reverence and transformation

**Don’t need to read too much (a few sentences) **

Read sequentially for most of the sits (a couple days you can bring in new text and read
randomly) - start sequentially

Four stages (The Four Es):

Enactive engagement: set the intention for reverence and transformation. Recite the text and
note what jumps out, grabs your attention and resonances with you.

Intention: out loud may I approach today’s readings with “reverence for the revelation trusting
in the transformation”

**Set the intention to resonate with the text to be transformed by the reading, read aloud, let
something catch you (let something grab you) **

1. Pick out the phrase that caught you, that’s salient

- Read the text with an attitude of reverence

- Read the text with the intention of resonating with the text
- May say to yourself “may I resonate with this text”
- Reading for transformation
- Read aloud
- Read as if someone else is reading it to you
- Trying to open up from it, that there’s something in here to be disclosed to you that you
haven’t seen before
- When you read look for what’s salient to you
- Don’t look for the why, don’t theorize, something will jump out to you (be catchy for
you)
 - Could be strong or moderate
- What catches you * what’s salient to you

Embodied emotion: allow emotional associations to come up as you imaginally enact the
imagery.

2. Start repeating it to yourself (like a mantra) and let emotional associations come up

Emotionally resonate with that, let emotions and associations come up with that. Also, whatever
metaphors are in them literalize them, actually as if you were to enact them. Really enacting and
embodying emotion.

- As you’re doing this try to find the imagery in what you read (practice it imaginably -
imagining it as if you were literally acting out the metaphor, let your emotions associate
- Really reaching into, how much, your ability to make sense of things come up and out of
your body and how you’re interacting with the world

Existential-ethics: What would it be like to see and be this way as a way of life?

When you get a sense of what it’s like consider;

1. What is your perspective like?

2. How is your world being shaped?
3. What would it be like to live in this perspective that you’ve engendered in the first
few stages, as if it became your default mode of consciousness
4. What would it be like to live this way?
5. How would you move around the world?

What would it be like if this way of seeing would be a comprehensive way of being for you? If
this was your comprehensive perspectival knowing; your default mode of consciousness. What
would that be like? How to imagine that, get some sense of it?

- Really try to get a sense of what this would be like if it became a second nature
perspective for you
- Really let it sink in
- What would this feel like as a way of life, a way of being, a way of seeing the world?

Ekstatic-eternal: what is being disclosed about Being or the world and what correspondingly is
being demanded from you called from you in order to come into conformity with this realization.
This is the call and path of transformation. Ekstatic means to stand beyond yourself.

Try to get an inkling, maybe an insight;

1. What is being disclosed to you about Being?

2. What is being disclosed to you about the world?
 3. What is being demanded from you?
4. How would you need to be transformed to conform to that deeper reality that is
being disclosed to you?

What’s being disclosed to you? Might be a vague feeling (an inkling), might be a full-blown
insight, anywhere on the continuum is good. What’s being disclosed to you about the world,
about being? And correspondingly, what’s being demanded from you? What’s calling to you?
what transformation, in order to come into greater conformity with that deeper reality, are you
seeing, is coming to you, is calling you?

**Discover how you can conform to the realization**

Note: If using the bible, you can use the Psalms as your poetry and proverbs and Ecclesiastes as
your prose

Symptomata is how the texts talk to each other so they can talk to you. As you practice you will
get the symptomata between the poetry and the prose. This will build from yesterday’s reading
and the present reading going into the next day’s reading where you’re getting the three tenses
(past, present, future).

For some, having objects as reminders of your aspirations and commitment can be helpful for
remembering the being mode. Vervaeke has two objects that are carried around as reminders
throughout the day. He has a rock representing Zen Buddhism Dao tradition and frog
representing the Neo-platonic tradition.

These objects are used to enact resonance by putting them in front of the books before setting
your intentions.

Lesson 12: Chi Kung

Cultivating the chi

Yin - contracting, getting cooler, getting darker

o Emphasizes roundedness
o Movement towards the centre that ultimately grounds me
o Axis Mundi (the axis of the world the centre that grounds me)

Yang - expanding, brightening up, opening up

o Emphasizes growth
o opening
Constant movement between them. They interpenetrate and inter-reform. When that
interpenetration and affordance develops you get that realization through you (like in Prajna).

Contrasts between motion which is yang, and stillness which is yin; and also opening which is
yang and closing which is yin.

Eyes open looking at your movements also known as Tiger Eyes (the tiger represents optimal
relationship between flexibility and force/awareness and the opportunity to be still and silent).
You are using flowing flexible soft vigilance (moving in and out). You’re training perceptual
vision in order to train the virtue of vision

Moving Chi Kung is “Jan Jong” - Coordinating movement and breath with moving of the mind

Standing Chi Kung is “I Chuan”- Standing / embracing the tree

Standing Sequence (layering mental and physical practices)

1. Wuji
- Knees slightly bent, shoulder width apart, feet straight, arms dropped to the side with
space between arm pits.
- To get your arms prepared, hold them in front of you shoulder width apart with your
elbows lower than your hands. This is a way of deeply activating and integrating mind
and body into a stable, rooted, dynamic sensitivity.

2. Jan Jong (Embracing the tree)

- Bring your hands up like you’re embracing a big tree.
- Hands are shoulder width apart slightly below shoulder height and elbows are lower
than your hands with hands about a hand apart
- You should feel like you’re squeezing a big ball between your hands and between your
knees
- You should be centred

4 baby breaths (as in meditation)

I Chuan

3. Opening (Yin/Yang)
- Arms around the middle of your body shoulder width apart
- Inhale you spread your arms out
- Exhale you bring your arms in
- Still sitting/squeezing the spongy ball between your knees

4 breaths
4. Fire in the belly
- Tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth
- Sphincter clenched
- Hands over your belly (dan then) feeling the heat as your breath in and out

4 breaths

5. Old man stroking his beard (microcosmic orbit)

- Keep sphincter clenched and tongue behind teeth
- Inhale, raise your hands above your head. Exhale, tracing a line down along the centre
of your face back to where you started

4 breaths

6. Reciprocal Opening
- Of the world and you in each case
- Rotating your hands in an orbiting fashion
- First in front of your dan tien for opening of your body (in front of dan tien)
- Then in front of your chest for opening heart (in front of chest)
- In front of your head for opening of the mind (in front of head)
- Above your head for opening of the spirit (above your head sense of self
transcendence)

4 rotations at each stage

7. Awe and Ah
- Starting with your hands above your head inhale and lift your head to face the sky (with
your mouth open) in awe while bringing your hands down to your side
- Exhale in Ah bringing your hands back above your head while bowing your head back
down (chin parallel) in front of you (mouth open)

1. Above your head to your sides (spirit)

2. In front of your face and out (mind)
3. In front or your heart and out (heart)
4. In front of your Dan Tien and out (body)

4 breath cycles each

8. Weaving the Silk

- Move from the hips (which moves your head and your heart) upward from the earth
- Inhale left, exhale right
- Weaving silk
 - Up from the earth not down from your head

Mental Component
- Each one for both in and out breath
- Notice how each one is affording the next
- Your body is an instrument and you’re making music

- Softening
- Suppleness (like a young sapling)

- Smoothing (smoothing the transitions of mind and body)

- Subtleness (subtleness of motions of mind and body, allows you to pick up on very
subtle movements of awareness and energy in your body, fine detail)

- Suffuse (suffuse the whole of your body with your mind, try to feel aliveness and
communication and awareness throughout the whole of your body and your mind (filling
your mind with your body))
- Shining (how everything is present all of your body and everything around you starts
singing its name)

- Synching (feel everything synching your mind and your energy like a root in your body
and everything is getting in synch; every molecule in synch with every other molecule in
your body)
- Self-Organizing (you’re not doing it everything is running on its own like listening to
music and how it inhabits your body and you start to move with the rhythm

- Slow it down

Summary – in pairs you focus on the following

Softening/Suppleness
Smoothing/Subtleness
Suffusing/Shining
Synching/Self Organizing
Slow Down

9. Bringing down the heavens - raise your hands from your sides to above your head then
trace a line with your hands in front of you bowing your head as you trace (imaginally as
in rooting) 1. Down the front 2. Down the back 3. Down your core 4. All three at once

10. Back to Wuji

Lesson 13: Seated Chi Kung
Sitting and moving (for linking and layering) practice designed to bridge between the standing
and the sitting practice.

Part 1

1. Hands in front of your face lift your head and do awe and inhale, raising arms to the
heavens

2. Close eyes and come into the prayer position ah and exhale

3. Inhale and press hands and try to move into the centre of your mind (bringing the mind to
its fore); the depths of Vipassana the most imminent aspect of your experience

4. Exhale put your hands out

5. Open your eyes and inhale Ha

Repeat 1 - 5 four times (x4)

6. With your hand above your shoulders next to your head shoulder width apart. Take four
inhales and expand your hands outward each time then hold your breath for a count of
four.
- hands are carrying the meaning of opening up but your mind is also moving towards the
centre

7. As you exhale bring your hands to your throat then take four inhales followed by holding
your breath rotate the area one way four times followed by four times the other direction

8. As you exhale bring your hands to your heart followed by inhales, breath holding and
rotations

9. As you exhale bring your hands to your solar plexus followed by inhales, breath holding
and rotations

10. As you exhale bring your hands to your dan tien (above your belly button followed by
inhales, breath holding and rotations

11. As you exhale bring your hands to the area just above your pelvis followed by inhales,
breath holding and rotations, tighten the sphincter muscle then release

12. Then opening, melting, draining, sinking into the earth

Part 2
 1. Centre your mind above your head (as if your hands are there for awe and ah)
- as you inhale you expand to the horizon (with your mind expanding as if your arms are
expanding for awe and ah expanding like a sphere all around you forward and back/ side
to side)
- as you exhale you contract to the core
- in the space between breaths you move your focus to the centre of your head) Centre of
your head (repeat inhale/exhale actions)
- in the space between your breaths drop your focus to your throat

2. Centre of your throat (repeat inhale/exhale actions)

- in the space between your breaths drop your focus to your heart

3. Centre of your heart (repeat inhale/exhale actions)

- in the space between your breaths drop your focus to your solar plexus

4. Repeat at dan tien

5. Finally, at your pelvic area then contracting the sphincter muscle before opening,
draining, sinking (rooting) into the earth

Get you into proto-flow and proto-rooting

By orienting your vision and your affective state upwards you move between first person and
third person processing you’re activating fundamentally different stratum of the brain

Lesson 14: Chanting

Trying to do something more musical. Music is one of the most fundamental ways that we play
with things that are salient to us, and how we play with the machinery of how we make sense of
things; how things are intelligible to us.

Connects left hemisphere (linguistic) and right hemisphere (music). Also activates your entire
brain from your prefrontal cortex to you brain stem.

Remember everything you’re trying to activate while you’re chanting makes it more
transformative.

Important: use belly breathing (do not hyperventilate)

Where Chanting Fits in:

1. Moving practices Chi-Kung, Jan Jong, I Chuan

2. Sitting Chi Kung
3. Find your core four (Centering, Rooting, Flow and Focus)
4. Go into Chanting
5. A few breaths of basic Vipassana
6. Begin meditation

Chanting Sequence
o Breathe into your diaphragm
o OM (Eastern tradition)
o Grounding
o Emergence
o Flowing into existence
o Chanted lower aoum (rounding to closure) ao part out um chart in
o Like Vipassana the centering and the grounding down into the depths the Tao
where everything emerges from
o ONE (Western tradition)
o Oneness of things - the epitome of the neoplatonic wisdom tradition
o Higher in pitch
o Like the ascent - anagogic
o Feel how all at once the oneness of everything, how everything is one”N”. The
“n” is pronouncing of everything’s determination

Prajna (but up and down and in and out) emergence from “Om” and emanation from “One”
creating a creative tension (in Greek = tonas)

You’re trying to enact the fundamental grammar of being. You’re trying to enact it symbolically,
but it’s not just a symbol that refers to you enacting it; it’s a symbol that participates.

Not losing your flow or your root

Important: What’s the tenor of your mind?

o Is it getting thin and wispy and starting to race?
o Or is it feeling rich and rooted? (Chanting well)

Chanting is the way we’re trying to invoke the deep continuity between the mind and the body.
The mind befriends and trains the body, and the body befriends and trains the mind; and in
chanting we are invoking that, we are accentuating it, and we are celebrating.

Lesson 15: Walking Meditation

This goes at the very beginning of the sequence of meditative walking, standing chi kung,
sifted chi kung, chanting, silent sit practice, Lectio Divina

Bringing mindfulness into movement, engaging the cerebellum cortex loop, training physical
balance as a way of training cognitive balance as a way to bring in complex interactions between
simultaneously changing variables.
Ritualized way of walking (moving) taken from Tai Chi. Designed to put you into the flow state
by initiating that demand on your attention and awareness, give you right concentration and soft
vigilance throughout your body, create an awareness between the whole of your body and the
whole of your body and the world.

Basic

Will energize your centering, rooting, and sit

o Always step heel to toe (tiger paw)

o Step hip width apart

o Step far enough so that your back foot is still solid on the ground and your head and
shoulders are solid above your pelvis (centred and rooted throughout)
o Feel it interoceptively by not looking at your feet
o Stay centred and rooted throughout
o When you move forward you’re exhaling and when you’re moving backwards (drawing
yourself in) you’re inhaling on each movement You want your breath to be natural (baby
breathing) and act as the metronome that moves you through the walking

1. Standing in wu-ji right foot at 45 degrees

2. Step first foot out (left), straight forward, knee aligned directly over your foot just before
your toe

3. Shift weight forward about 80%

4. Shift weight back then back 80% and lift your left toes with your leg straight

5. Turn left foot 45 degrees by turning your hips and align your knee; lift your right foot
with your hips so there’s no weight on it

6. Put your foot down and bring your weight onto your left foot (knee in centre of foot)
7. Put all of your weight on your left foot then bring your right foot forward

8. Shift your bodyweight back to centre as you shift your hips back to centre slowly and do
the tiger paw with your right foot

Do three steps (or multiples of 3)

9. Turning

10. Bring your weight back with your right foot up heel down and leg straight and pivot
inward to the left as much as you can (120 degrees)
 11. Shift your hips right and lift your left foot up and set it down heel toe (tiger paw) adjust
your right foot by letting it slide back a bit so you’re back in position

Repeat the sequence for 3 turns

Breathing

Inhale as you’re drawing in exhale as you express

force

Mind

Trying to make the sensations in your dan tien (abdominal area) as if you’re doing Vipassana
following your breath because the movements are timed with your breath. You’re also aware of
and meditating on, not only your breath, but your centeredness and rootedness; really making
this focal so that while you’re moving you’re trying to keep that sense of being centred and
rooted.

So you’re focusing on the walking itself, you’re focusing on your breath which is timed with the
steps, and your meditative focus is also on your centre and on your root.

Meditating on being centred and rooted and flowing throughout the exercise, if you don’t want to
add in the hands you don’t need to.

Adding the arms makes it more comprehensive and embodied developing an even greater sense
of being at one with yourself.

Brush Knee

1. Starting in a Wu-ji position hand in front of groin palms down

2. Left foot comes up on the ball of the foot

3. Shift to the right simultaneously bringing your right hand up in front of your face
(fingertip of your middle finger aligned in front of your nose).
- Your left hand does a full body block turning slightly bent palm facing left to protect
your groin, liver, & heart

4. Then you take your first step (as if doing the normal walking) with the left foot.
- As you shift your right palm, rotating it in the shape of a J palm forward in front of your
face. - your left-hand brushes past the knee of your left leg. Then as your leg settles your
arm and hand move to the side of your leg (as if there is a plank coming right out of your
leg and you’re slapping the plank); relaxed joints
 5. As your weight shifts back your hands shift in front of you right hand fingers pointing
forward left in front of your face, left hand in front of your sternum fingers pointing
down at a 45-degree angle followed by a shift of the wrists to point your fingers to the
sky.

6. As you pivot your hands, knee, and foot are all aligned. Then, as you bring your right
foot forward you switch your hands so that your left hand is protecting your face (carry
tiger to mountain) and your right hand is now protecting your body.

To Rotate

7. As you rotate your forward hand comes down (spiraling) palm up above the groin. Your
lower hand raises up towards your face the knife edge of your hand aligns with the
middle of your face (carry tiger to mountain). Then as you rotate you drill your lower
hand down further while rotating it into the brush knee position (thumb towards body).

Notes & Insights:

Incorporate form of movement traditions for mindfulness using Beijing or Yang form of Tai Chi.

In order to progress your practice, you should slowly (very incrementally) shrink the time it takes
to do the core four because you want to be able to integrate these within everyday life.

Ecology of Practices

Complementary practices: relationships are created between practices between meditation and
contemplation; they compensate for each other and the self-correct for each other.

Look for relationships between them.

Still practices and moving practices creating complementary relationships.

Combined these enhance the ecology of practices to be self-correcting.

Layering practices: here we take one layer of practices then exapt them into a higher order of
practices. Ex. Prajna - integrating Metta and Vipassana to be exapted up into prajna.

Linking practices: designed to bridge and help you transition between practices more smoothly.
Ex. Lectio Divina which help to transition and get dia logos and the mindfulness practices to talk
to each other

Design principles
o Looking for relationships of complementarity so you get dynamical self-correction
o Looking for relationships of layering so you can get dynamical development and
exaptation
 o Looking for relations of transition so that you get dynamical progression between the
practices

Journaling

At the end of every day

1. Write down your thoughts

2. Leave them for a while
3. Come back and re-read them
4. Correct them as if they were written by someone else
5. Interact with them
6. Write some more
7. Go away then come back

1st person while you’re writing then 3rd person when you’re correcting (Solomon effect)

Get the anxiety up and disclosed

Self-examination practice includes reflecting and writing

1. Moments of mindfulness / wisdom

2. Moments when you missed mindfulness and wisdom opportunities
3. Moments when you fell prey to self-deception
4. Moments you were self-referential/ self centred rather than reality centred
5. When you’re reminded of your practice throughout the day, what comes up for you?
a) Are you remembering it in ways that are self-aggrandizing that is fueling
narcissism that is making you want, or feel special or unique or does it reflect the
way you dislike yourself or are you noting you’re getting moments when you’re
zeroing in on what’s relevant and real and that other people are noticing you’re
picking up on what’s relevant and real.

Self-Deception

Need to create a practice of trying to note self-deception in your life

o Stoic practice of journaling at the end of every day

o Learn about cognitive biases, all the ways in which we fall prey to self-deception,
machinery that makes us self-centered, self-important, self-righteous
o then try to note it throughout the day
o Then journal about both the positive and the negative
▪ When you catch it or when you don’t catch it but there’s evidence of it
affecting things in your life
o It’s a skill, sensitivity and sense of self that you have to practice. It’s a virtue that has to
be actively cultivated independently of whichever specific instance you want to apply it
 because it’s when you’re in the midst of self -deception that it’s difficult to cultivate the
virtue of seeing through illusion (the core of wisdom)

To apply this skill;

Take note: as you’re taking on practices of inquiring mindfulness and Lectio Divina, are they
taking in your life?

The patterns you’re noticing in your life, are they starting to affect your ability to solve
problems, to step back from self-centeredness, to notice more instances of self-deception, to be
more honest with yourself and others, to be more honourable to yourself and others?

Are you noticing all of this? Does it take for you in other ways, do you now start to see those
patterns emerging in your practice?

Is this loop of reciprocal opening in which the independently trained skill/virtue of seeing
through illusion is reliable and systematically and systemically presencing itself?

You start to make sense of things when you’re reading about this topic and it make more sense,
or if other people notice these virtues in you and in your life.

Are you reliably challenging self-deception because you can never do it perfectly?

Aristotle says: “every virtue is between a deficit and an excess, you cannot doubt enough or you
can doubt too much, but doubting for the right reason, to the right degree, at the right time, for
the right purpose, that’s the virtue you’re trying to cultivate”

Religio - the sense of a pre-egoic to post-egoic binding that simultaneously binds the self and its
world

Rationality - overcoming self-deception in a reliable (high probability of functioning

successfully) manner; systematically affording flourishing afforded by optimization of
processing to achieve our goals and as we optimize our goals change because we come to
appreciate the value of the process as opposed to just the end result of the process

“Wisdom begins in wonder” - Socrates

Having mode is about solving problems

Being mode is about confronting a mystery

We like everything else is impermanent and inextricably connected

Chanting goes from propositional into mindfulness / Lectio Divina is a helpful way of moving
out from mindfulness back into more propositional conceptual thought
“There is no enemy worse than your own mind and body; there is no friend or ally, no true
companion, on the path better than your own mind and body. Be lamps unto yourself and each
other “

Inner Sage - reminds you that you are not to be finally identified with your narratives; that
beyond the autobiographical-self there is the ontological-self. The inner sage directs you off of
the autobiography and on the “owner’s manual”; not as an act of intellectual reflection but of
identification where you start to find the “home” for yourself in the ontology of your being rather
than in the narrative.

The meditative practices are developed to help you become aware of all the layers and levels of
who and what you are; how you emerge out of the environment and your body, mind, and spirit
(your capacity for self-transcendence) bringing them into aligned awareness - aligning the four
kinds of knowing - so that they are actively and mutually affording each other - creates a
different sense of identification that gives us a space of freedom from the narratives, not to
despise or dispense with them, but to no longer be confused with them so that they lose some of
the way they can “cut us” and catch us.

When the inner sage comes into your awareness, the inner sage is offering you a new way of
being beyond the autobiographical self; the ontological self which is the self, the stoics will
argue, that is ultimately how we respond to the sufferings of life.

The stoics argue that we have to do our best morally, as much as we can in unfolding this but
ultimately our ability to alter the world is very small compared to our ability to transform who
and what we are ontologically. We have very little control over the length of our narrative - we
can improve our health, longevity, and other things but we are ultimately not gods, we are finally
deeply finite beings. There is a sense that this will not come to a completion so if we identify
with it we will always become frustrated with it but we can find a depth of being that is
completely satisfying such that we can live with the finitude and fate of our mortal existence.

Approaching Regretful or Painful Memories

You keep remembering them because they have not been fully processed.

Needs to go from being always relieved to being remembered when needed.

Encoding specificity - we remember the event or the facts but also deeply the state of being we
are in, when we’re remembering this fact or that event.

Often, the way we try to learn from a situation that’s painful is through primitive forms of
processing that are automatic, reactive, and emotional. Then we try to learn our lesson with pain
and with guilt (which is a kind of psychological pain we inflict on ourselves - we are basically
punishing ourselves to try and right a behaviour).

There’s a sense that learning has to start at this level because initially we are not linguistic beings
or rationally reflective beings etc.
This tradition proposes that you can bring up a painful situation, perhaps by being in a stance of
Metta towards it, and then - instead of trying to avoid the guilt…can you transmute it?

Can you let the guilt come up, and then instead of trying to get away from it or trying to instantly
resolve it, open up the processing and try to transmute guilt into intelligent regret?

If you were trying to correct the behaviour of a good friend, you wouldn’t hurt them to correct
their behaviour, or you try to minimize the hurt, you wouldn’t inflict pain or even guilt on them
other than the minimal force desired to bring about recognition and response.

The guilt is there to get you recognizing and responding but it isn’t enough. To finish the process,
you bring in intelligent regret.

What do you do with your friend? You try to open up their thinking, you try to explicate; how
does this sit in a larger context?

What you try to do is replace a very primitive and childish state of being, that is your recognition
and response to the event that is painful, with an adult recognition and response to the event that
is painful.

Therefore, you need to process these and the kind of processing isn’t just processing the facts,
it’s processing you. You have to grow up and mature how you are recognizing and responding.

The pain and the guilt get you into the initial recognition and response but then move into
intelligent regret. Talk to yourself as you would to a beloved friend.

Like internal family systems therapy - what you’re doing is growing up the person that is
recognizing and responding to things. You’re acknowledging you’re not trying to ignore it and
get away from it, but you’re not just staying locked into who you are.

This is why this is an extension of Metta. You unlock who you are, by growing up/maturing how
you are recognizing and responding to the event.

Right in terms of meditation practice means

Right effort, right concentration, right meditation. Which are so strongly emphasized by the
Buddha.

Not in the sense of meeting some standard of perfection

Right in terms of a dexterous grip, a flowing grip that is adjusting and adapting and
continually self-correcting because it is not achieving some state of final perfection.

Knowing yourself
Knowing yourself is not grasping your autobiographical story, it’s not something that’s
introspective. Knowing yourself is aspirational. Your true self is the self that you’re aspiring to,
in so far as you are undergoing a reciprocal opening and transformation of how the world is
disclosed to you, and how you are defining yourself to the world.

Think of yourself as the deepest pattern of resonance rather than some inner secluded space that
is absolutely self-enclosed and self-existent, like some sort of god.

The degree to which you are knowing yourself, in the Socratic sense, the degree to which the
sage is guiding you and affording you on the way, is the degree to which you can trust other
people.

Existential Insight

Your brain is an anticipation machine. It's always trying to predict the environment and prepare
itself in a complex and interpenetrating manner. So, your brain loves familiarity, and regarding
encoding specificity, it loves familiarity in your processing as well as outside yourself.

**Your brain prefers familiar unhappiness to surprising happiness ex. Even a surprise party has
people who love you, a safe situation, cake and presents etc.**

Generally, when we get an existential insight that is going to take us into an unfamiliar world and
an unfamiliar sense of self, there’s a part of the brain that says I don’t like that; there’s anxiety
around that lack of familiarity and therefore there’s an attempt to pull you back.

This is part of the way that your brain is adaptive because it’s trying to always calibrate between
accommodating to what’s anew but also assimilating into what is familiar; your brain is always
trying to toggle between them.