Hey!
Just a quick email to share two stories I published this week (apologies if you’ve already been notified by Medium).
One is about bringing mindfulness to conflicts and difficult conversations. The other is about avoiding being sucked into a meditation group that’s really a hidden cult (which nearly happened to me last week!)
There seems to be a common theme between the two: bringing the discernment and honesty that is cultivated in mindfulness meditation into more challenging moments of daily life.
Here’s a few snippets and the links to each, enjoy!
Argue Like a Buddha: The 4 Skillful Responses to Conflict - 10min read
Just like in meditation, we find that when in communication with other beings, suffering is optional, but pain is 100% inevitable.
As Buddhist teacher Ethan Nichtern says in The Road Home, “the pain of disagreement within human relationships will last until the end of the human race.”
We often believe it’s possible to avoid this pain.
This leads to three dilemmas:
1) We forget how to engage in conflict and, therefore, when they inevitably happen, react in over-the-top and harmful ways.
2) As conflict is always a possibility when two subjective humans meet, we distance ourselves from others and live in fear.
3) Our limited subjective realities are challenged less and less, leading us to cling to the familiar, live in echo chambers, and fail to learn and grow.
Continuing reading
The Hidden Cult Agenda of Meditation Retreats - 14min read
“A silent meditation retreat in the mountains, what could go wrong?”
Famous last words.
You have to be a devil to question the motives of such as seemingly harmless group of people whose purpose is to teach meditation, open hearts, and transcend suffering.
But meditation teachers hold immense power and responsibility. If they aren’t aware of the subtleties of the practice and aren’t willing to constantly check their own BS, then it’s a one long slippery slope into a (most likely sex) cult.
At least with a devil, you know what you’re dealing with.
Five days in silence on a meditation retreat, what could go wrong. As if trying to show me that plenty could go wrong, over our time there, my mind kept returning to the proverb:
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
After a few days of following their ways and playing it dumb, I decided to avoid the road to hell and instead, become the devil.
Continue reading
Visit my new site for mindfulness coaching and meditation for modern life.