Return to Your True Home: The Realm of Natural Awareness
As a child, did you ever sit under a favorite tree, immersed in the wonder of a single, precious leaf? As our days grow more complex, teaches Pema Chodron, these vibrant and wholehearted moments may begin to elude even seasoned meditators. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
With Natural Awareness, this celebrated teacher guides us through Buddhism’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness to bring us to a surprising destination: the effortless state of presence known as “non-meditation.” It’s a journey back to the unabashed presence and delight of the “Child Mind” that lies within all of us. Along the way, you’ll learn how to:
- Work with the body, emotions, thoughts, and sense perceptions as your objects of focus
- Tune in to your natural cycles of attention and effortless “non-meditation” awareness
- Embrace the inevitable “meditator’s struggle knot” (it means that your practice is working!)
- Open a heartful space with others to listen, speak, and connect more authentically
- Master a wealth of Ani Pema’s favorite practices for riding life’s emotional storms
“We’ve been training our minds for a lifetime to flee—to escape to anywhere but here.” With this encouraging new offering, Pema Chodron shows us how to stop running and come home to the abiding freedom waiting for us right here, right now.
We all have fears, but when we look closely at them, we discover that behind each fear resides a basic fear of ourselves. We’re afraid to look at our habitual styles of thinking and behaving because we might not always like what we see. Ironically it is this fear of honest self-reflection that keeps us trapped in patterns of stress and discontentment. Here is a vision for moving beyond this most basic fear to discover the innate bravery, trust, and joy that reside at the core of our being.
In this recorded retreat, Pema Chodron shares teachings inspired by the book Smile at Fear, which was written by her teacher Chogyam Trungpa. She and her teaching assistant, Carolyn Rose Gimian, also share practices they received from Trungpa Rinpoche for courageously meeting ourselves in the present moment, including:
• The Windhorse Practice: a three-step meditation on awakening confidence
• Spiritual Warrior training for meeting life with courage and compassion
• Meditation instruction for calming the mind and developing concentration