Mindfulness in Daily Life
A 6-Week Meditation Course
When: Wednesdays 7-9pm; November 6 – December 11, 2024
Where: The Flander’s House Community Room — 2926 NE Flanders St, Portland 97232
Registration: Email me at Da***@pa*************.com
Cost: Gift Economy / Donation (see below)
Overview:
This course will teach you how to bring more mindful awareness into your daily life, not just when sitting still on a cushion with your eyes closed, but in every waking moment.
You will learn to use that awareness to get curious about how you show up in different domains of your life — like eating & drinking, beginning & ending the day, relationships, technology, and transit. Building on those observations, you’ll learn precise tools & inquiries to more deeply align your actions with your values in these areas of your life.
More directly, this course will teach mindful awareness as a vehicle for moving into deeper presence, integrity, and wisdom, all across your life.
The course will feature a dynamic blend of guided meditation, short lectures, journaling exercises, community discussion, and between-class homework. Participants will be asked to do a minimum of ten minutes of daily meditation throughout the course. All experience levels are welcome!
Space is limited — email me at Da***@pa*************.com to register!!
Cost & Commitment:
As with nearly everything I do, I’m offering this course on the gift economy; aka on donation, as a practice of mutual giving and receiving!
As donation-based offerings are a bit foreign in our culture, I would love for you to read over this article on how I think about the financial part of donation-based courses. I trust that whatever you donate will be the perfect amount, even if that’s nothing!
Also, just as importantly, offered-on-donation doesn’t mean “come when you feel like it” or “only participate halfway.” While of course life happens and you may have to miss a week, I’d request that you make a genuine commitment to showing up and doing the practices — that’s the only real way to turn these teachings from a good idea into something you truly live and embody.
A Personal Note:
This course is largely inspired by Buddhist teachings, particularly my two years of intensive training with the Burmese, Vipassana Meditation teacher, Sayadaw U Tejaniya. He emphasizes a relaxed, natural awareness that develops wisdom, and this is primarily what I’ve spent the past decade trying to do in my everyday life.
Basically, when we cut through the jargon, what does it actually look like to live intentionally, peacefully, and lovingly, in a world filled with so many distractions, myriad relationships, chores, busyness, the need to make a living, and on and on? And, most saliently for this course, how can mindfulness help with this?
In this spirit, I think of this course as Buddhist-inspired, as opposed to explicitly Buddhist. My aim is to offer what’s blessed me so profoundly in a way that is beneficial to all people, regardless of their spiritual/belief system (or lack thereof).
That being said, the people who will get the most from this course are likely going to be those already interested in mindfulness & meditation, and see this course as a way to deepen & broaden their regular meditation practice.