Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Liberation Now: From the Progressive Path to Direct Experience

With Caverly Morgan recorded on December 1, 2019.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

In a progressive path approach to practice, we sometimes fall for the idea that liberation is in the future. We are conditioned to believe that we must end thinking, master practices, meditate for years, and purify our minds. Without realizing it, our beliefs can maintain the conditioning that stands in the way of our direct realization.

Turning our attention outward to various objects in practice can be deeply helpful. And, what changes when we cultivate our effortless capacity to rest the attention in Awareness itself? What changes as we practice inquiry into the nature of consciousness? And what tends to get in the way?

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The Jewel of Sangha: We all need Community, Support and Love

    Martin writes: “Sangha is about community, support and love; it is one of the 3 jewels (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha) of our practice. But in the individualistic cultures and atomised structures in which many of us live, sangha too often gets inadequate attention. This is especially true in the Vipassana / Insight meditation tradition, because while silent meditation…

    Read More

  • Practice as a Way of Remembrance

    Many are referring to this time as apocalyptic. Fair enough. It can seem as though everywhere we turn a dismantling of some sort is in the works. While we might intellectually feel able to embrace the change upon us, for many it can be easy to fall into overwhelm, hopelessness, even despair. What do the…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of 02 December, 2024

    We are grateful to have Ulla Koenig leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Soothing the Grieving Heart

    As human beings we have the privilege to consciously experience many beautiful and joyful things. And we are constantly in touch with the changeability of nature, relationships, our body, hearts, self and much more. Without knowing how to accommodate the naturally arising sadness, change and loss can be easily overwhelming. We will dedicate this week in the darkest time of the year, to open up a compassionate space to explore skillful grieving.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Refuge, resilience and response in uncertain times

    By now, we can consciously acknowledge that our planetary state of emergency and ineffectual political response is impacting and fast changing our Dharma curriculum. We are being mercilessly shaken awake while at the same time facing overwhelming uncertainties. In this session, Thanissara explores how the Dharma, its practices and guidelines, can come to our aid…

    Read More

  • Dave Smith

    Citta and Right Speech: Cultivating the Voice of Kindness and Wisdom

    Dharma practice encourages us to transform our thoughts, words and actions. The primary mechanism for how this is accomplished is vague. What often goes unnoticed is that the use of the term mind has undergone a radical psychologization from the time of the Buddha into present day. During this session we will explore the many nuances of…

    Read More

  • Joy is Always Available

    On autopilot, our mind often resists opening to joy with: “But right now in my life, there is …” So we explore what stands in our way of the unexpected ordinariness of joy. We’ll discover how the awakening factor of meditative joy (piti) illuminates our capacity to open to delight and rapture, allowing our hearts…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 17 March, 2025

    We are delighted to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. This week’s theme is: Sacred Body, Sacred Path: Feminine Principles on the Spiritual Journey. This week, we explore the profound role of the feminine principle on the spiritual journey in Buddhism. We will engage in embodied practices, examining the qualities of the elements and nature, while opening ourselves to what truly serves us on our path to awakening. Where does our practice lead us when we open to an embrace of life, seeing all experience as sacred?

    Read More