Through the cultures within family, education and work, we are constantly orientated towards ‘realistic’ expectations and visions for our lives. Dharma practice asks us to abandon the realistic in favour of the real; listening deeply to life and to how things actually are, so as to respond wisely and lovingly, fully and freely. In this class Worldwide Insight founding teacher Martin Aylward contrasts the realistic and the real, inviting reflection and discussion to point us towards freedom, awakening and wise engagement with the world.
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How Family and Work Shape Our Character and so Influence Our Path
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May 24, 2020 Gregory writes: “Obviously our Dhamma practices infuse our lives (if not, something is amiss). We don’t usually talk about how this flows the other direction: the qualities we develop in our personal and professional lives strongly impact our Buddhist path. That’s what I’ll be speaking about, drawing examples from my own life in music, inventing,…
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How do we stay connected to the essence of practice through life’s changing forms?
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September 17, 2017 How do we keep meditation practice alive, both firm enough and flexible enough to respond to our changing needs, health issues and practical considerations? How do we stay connected to the essence of practice day-to-day, and make peace inside with reality as it actually is? In this session we explore a few different forms of…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of September 4, 2023
This week’s theme is “Which comes first, your practice or your life?” Does your life support your practice, or your practice your life? For me, things have been shifting recently, leaving me with lots to contemplate, particularly around the overlap between practice and systemic change. I’ll share some ideas and embodied relational techniques for working at these interesting edges, whilst giving you lots of open quiet meditation time, over our five mornings together.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Yahel Avigur – Week of 14 July, 2025
We’re delighted to have Yahel Avigur guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions enrich and support your practice.
This week’s theme is: Metta — Healing All Aspects
This week, we’ll open to the healing power of metta – loving-kindness, or goodwill – as a transformative force in our lives. We’ll practice offering this gentle warmth first to those we naturally care about, and to ourselves. Gradually, we’ll widen the circle, allowing metta to infuse our relationships with neutral people, those we find difficult, and ultimately all beings. As kindness suffuses more corners of our hearts and lives, we may begin to discover a growing sense of spaciousness and connection – and with it, insight, balance, and inner freedom.
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The Power of a New Year’s Resolution
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January 5, 2020 We start a new year. It is 2020. Perhaps the intensity of environmental dramas in 2019 finally made clear to many people the vulnerabilities to life on Earth. It might be useful to make a New Year’s resolution that lasts longer than a week. Here are four considerations. 1. Dedicate an hour a day or…
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How awareness frees: Vitaka Vicara Viveka
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January 21, 2018 Worldwide Insight Founding teacher Martin Aylward returns to lead his first class of the year. Martin looks at how different elements of attention can meet, explore and hold experience, allowing for insight, spaciousness and increasing freeness in the midst of experience.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of February 19, 2024
What is your relationship to fear? When fear arises, is your tendency to collapse into it, or to resist and struggle with it? Or do you deny it? How do you know if you need to face fear with courage, or simply surrender to its inevitability? What does it mean to practice with fear? In this week of Daily Meditations, you are invited to join Miles in an exploration into the human experience of fear, and how it arises in your life, relationships, and practice. You will learn how to work with fear by cultivating courage and surrender, the core qualities of the Spiritual Warrior.
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Working with difficult emotions.
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December 4, 2016 Feelings have the power to motivate one toward wise action when facing a challenge. They can also cause intense suffering, drive and distort behavior, and lead to regret. Being able to work with emotions, both intense and subtle, is a skill that can be developed through mindfulness meditation. We explore the Unified Mindfulness technique of…
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