Click here to join our daily meditations to support establishing a regular sitting practice.

Search Sangha Live

Seeing Beyond Mara: Understanding and Transforming Self-Judgement

Live Online Course

With Martin Aylward

October 22nd, 2023 - November 12th, 2023

To allow who and how you are...

What is the most central, and most crucial aspect of any transformational practice?

To understand and transform the way you judge, evaluate and doubt yourself.

To unhook from that familiar stream of self-views, and discover a true freedom from self-measurement.

To taste the simplicity and ease and openness of an unmeasured, and immeasurable, life.

Thousands of people have taken, and benefitted from, Martin’s first course on the inner critic, I See You Mara! In this follow up, he builds on those liberating insights and practices to look at further ways of seeing through Mara, and of knowing and exploring a consciousness unbound from judgement.

Martin has been exploring and guiding people in this specific work for over 20 years, using a variety of practices and approaches drawn from both spiritual and psychological traditions. In this 4-week immersive course, Martin explores the material in depth and detail, while maintaining a lightness of touch and a loose, loving attitude.

He invites you to explore your experience deeply and sincerely, while not taking yourself too seriously.

Special early bird price $170 until October 8th.

Please note: Martin recommends students take the 1st level course (I See You Mara! From Inner Critic to Inner Freedom) as a pre-requisite to this course, as the 2nd level will build off of the material from the 1st level. Click here to find out more and register.

 

Seeing Beyond Mara: Understanding and Transforming Self-Judgement

During the course, you will:

  • Explore teachings and practices of radical forgiveness, and the various layers and emotions that lie in the way
  • Learn meditations, visualisations, dialog practices and ritual exercises to support the process
  • Uncover and unwind the attitudes and views that keep you bound to limiting self-views
  • Taste the openness and joy of being unashamed of who and how you are
  • Benefit from the contact with and insights from a learning community with Martin and the other students you are practicing with

Module 1: Standing your (groundless) ground

Module 1: Standing your (groundless) ground

This module is all about discovering true confidence.

A confidence which by its nature is simple, quiet, relaxed and effortless. A confidence which has nothing to prove nor assert, which has no need to defend or protect or justify itself.

A confidence which is deeply trustworthy, and which becomes naturally felt and known as we uncover and move beyond the unhelpful and unnecessary anxieties and defences which otherwise prevent it, which we’ll be exploring and exposing during this module together.

Module 2: Forgiving everyone everything

Total forgiveness is a radical idea.

How would it be to genuinely forgive yourself everything, all the time? And to forgive others everything?

This module will explore the common objections to this possibility, exposing the ways we hold on to blame and resentments, “like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” This module will open up the relief, the compassion and ease that we come to know as forgiveness becomes more natural, fluid, and instant.

Module 3: Making your life an offering / Giving it all up

Module 3: Making your life an offering / Giving it all up

How easily we focus on what I’m getting, what I need, what I want.

Yet the more we focus on getting, the more we reinforce a sense of lack or neediness, or not having enough.

This module will focus on our lives and practices as offerings, orientating to ‘what I can give’ instead of ‘what I can get’ as a powerful way to dissolve and transform the feelings and self-views of inadequacy and deficiency.

Module 4: Meeting Mara (and all of life) with a bow

Module 4: Meeting Mara (and all of life) with a bow

Our final module will focus on simplicity, love and humility.

The capacity to bow to Mara, and to life, regardless of circumstance. The ability to hold our experience lightly, to take ourselves less personally, to move more fluidly and freely through the lives we live.

We will draw the different elements of the course together during this module, pointing forwards to ongoing ways to maintain a playful, untroubled relationship with the evaluative structure we call the super-ego, or Inner Critic, or Mara.

Praise for Martin's Teachings

Martin Aylward Dharma Teacher

“Martin is an awesome teacher! Very authentic and accessible. Greatly enjoyed the opportunity to learn from and deepen my practice with him.”

“Martin is an excellent teacher. His guidance is to the point. His answers to the questions not only clarify doubts but broaden our understanding of the meditative process. I feel fortunate to have had an opportunity to attend this course.”

“Martin’s inspiration gave me fresh hope and strategies, illustrated the benefits of meditation beautifully.”

Live Online Course Details

Live Interactive Sessions

Martin will lead our weekly Sunday sessions to include insightful dharma teachings, guided group practice and an open discussion forum for students to ask questions about the teachings. Video recordings will be permanently available for you to come back to as many times as you like in the future.

Community Connections

Your journey will be in community with other practitioners around the world via our interactive course platform. As you move through each module, course guides will facilitate discussions, answer questions, and provide resources and support. Every Sunday, you will come together with your coursemates in real time to practice together and share your experiences.

Woman Watching Martin Aylward

Live Interactive Q&As

During our live sessions, we'll also have the opportunity to ask Martin questions about the week's teachings and exercises, and receive his direct and insightful feedback.

Course Buddies

(OPTIONAL) Students are encouraged to pair up for the duration of the 4 weeks to experience the journey together. Course buddies will be invited to share their joys, challenges, and insights with each other as they progress through the course.

Schedule

Photo - Alarm Clock - Schedule

Dates & Times

LIVE Interactive #1: Sunday, Oct 22 @ 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm BST / 6pm CEST (90 minutes)

LIVE Interactive #2: Sunday, Oct 29 @ 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 4pm GMT / 5pm CET (90 minutes)

LIVE Interactive #3: Sunday, Nov 5 @ 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET (90 minutes)

LIVE Interactive #4: Sunday, Nov 12 @ 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET (90 minutes)

Replays will be posted in the days afterwards for those who cannot attend live.

About Martin Aylward

photo of Martin Aylward smiling

Martin Aylward is the founding teacher of Sangha Live. After spending his early adult years in Asian monasteries and with Himalayan hermits, Martin settled in Southern France with his wife Gail and their 2 children, co-founding the Moulin de Chaves retreat centre where he lives and teaches.

Martin teaches meditation, guides students and leads retreats internationally, emphasising the integration of the deepest wisdom teachings into the midst of the lives we live. He is also a director of the Mindfulness Training Institute. Martin’s book Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness (2021) is now available via Wisdom Publications