Mindfulness Is the Awareness that You Are: An Introduction to the Basics

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast

***

Mindfulness is the buzz of the world right now. Business leaders, educators, scientists — everyone’s talking about mindfulness. People are even saying mindfulness will create revolution in human health.

So, what is all this hype about?

I want to address that question, but first I want to share how I came into the practice.

It started when I was 18 years old. I was an insomniac. I'd just moved out of my parent’s home to start my freshman year of college. I got to my apartment, unpacked my bags, sat on the floor, and realized that my life was a total mess.

I felt emotional turbulence. I wasn't able to sleep through the night. It was a really stressful time for me. I didn't know how to be on my own.

One day I somehow absorbed this word out of the ether: mindfulness.

I started asking people about it. I'd never known a meditator, and I'd never sat with any group formally to practice meditation, but something in me was yearning to learn mindfulness. I just had an intuition that it could help me.

So I learned the basics: how to hold the posture, how to follow my breath, how to observe my thoughts, etc. It was challenging, but I kept doing it because I had a sense that the practice was really going to help.

Then, around the six month mark, I felt my whole life change. It changed in a very subtle but profound way. I had gone from being an anxious, destabilized teenager to feeling like I was really rooted in my self. I had a certain centered awareness that I'd never felt before, that I didn't even know was possible, and I knew that it was the result of practicing mindfulness for a few months. In a very concrete way I could feel that my breathing had changed. It had gone from this kind of nervous, anxious, chest breathing, to dropping down deep in to my belly — every breath calming me more than the last.

Mindfulness changed the course of my life. I've been doing it daily for nearly twenty years, and it’s a joy of mine to share the basics with people so that they can start their own journey with it.

If you stick with the practice, your transformation will look very different from mine, but I can promise you that it will be incredibly rewarding. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it, which brings me to the next point.

When we talk about mindfulness, it can sometimes sound like a really exotic technique that gurus know how to do and you don't. Perhaps you’re already hearing those gurus saying, “We're on the in and you're on the out!”

I want to debunk that notion immediately because what I love about mindfulness is that mindfulness is who you are. What I mean is that when you pay attention, like I invite you to do right now, what you'll notice is that you're aware. You're just simply aware. You're not trying to be aware. In fact, you can't try to be aware. You're just aware. And there’s something really profound that happens when we just notice the fact that we're aware. Everything shifts.

I'll give you an example. If you watch a newborn infant, you realize there’s something wondrous about the simple act of looking around. It's an amazing experience.

That’s the way it is with all our senses. It doesn't matter if you're hearing a dump truck or if you're hearing Niagara Falls. Human hearing is an incredible experience.

Infants know this intuitively. You could say that they're enraptured by the sensorial experience of being a human. Unfortunately, what happens over time is that as we become used to the many sensory experiences available to us, they lose their charm.

You could say that a mindfulness practice is the practice of remembering. It's remembering just how amazing it is to be awake, to be in a human body, to be in this very moment.

That's the essence of it. There are techniques we can learn. We can rev up our mindfulness and raise our baseline of mindful awareness, but at the very heart of the practice, at the very heart of the experience, you're already mindful. You’re already aware. You’re already perfectly present. In this sense, to practice mindfulness is to celebrate what's already here.

Let’s go ahead and try it. As you read the following words, see if you can treat the experience as mindfulness practice.

Start by bringing awareness to the physical body.

Notice that if I prompt you to notice the physical body, your awareness just goes right there. It's not effortful. You're just suddenly aware of the physical body.

And you can just notice the flow of sensation in this moment. If you're sitting down, you can notice what it feels like to be sitting. If you're standing, you can notice the sensation of standing.

What I want you to notice, especially here, is that it doesn't take any special effort or special training to simply notice that you're already aware. In this case, you can just notice that you're aware of body sensation and let that body sensation flow and enjoy.

In this moment, notice hearing. Notice any sound in the environment. If there’s not sound, you can simply attend to the silence, the absence of sound. Again, just notice how effortlessly you're aware of sound, aware of hearing. You don't need any special training to do this. You simply turn your attention one degree, and suddenly you notice all the sound in the world.

At this point, I invite you to notice seeing. Take a moment away from this text and notice your surrounding. Notice the different shapes, the different colors in your visual field, the volume of space, and so on. Maybe you're sitting in a small room. Maybe you're outdoors beneath the wide open sky. Whatever the case, you can just notice the experience of seeing all of this. Notice that it doesn't take any special training. Just bring awareness to seeing and you're aware of seeing. Seeing is happening.

Now give yourself a nice full breath, letting go and softening even more. Notice that all of these different qualities of awareness are happening all at once: feeling, hearing, seeing, all just different experiences within the experience of awareness, of being aware.

At the heart of experience you're always already aware.

***

There are many mindfulness teachers in the world right now — many extremely talented and knowledgeable mindfulness teachers. They have their own definitions on what mindfulness is, but I want to offer you my own very simple definition, which hopefully you just had a chance to experience:

Mindfulness is the awareness that you are.

In this sense mindfulness is the practice of just remembering that we're already aware. It's being aware that we're aware. When we get buried in daily tasks, when we're stressed about where we need to get to next, we forget this joyous and simple feeling of being that comes through our own awareness. By contrast, when we take a moment or pause, when we shift attention one degree, when we pay attention to how we're paying attention, these are all mindful moves.

As we make these mindful moves more and more they become habit, and this habit changes our experience. It changes the course of our lives.

Remember this incredible thing that you already are. You might have simply forgotten.

***

Want to deepen your practice? Download the Mindfulness Essentials course.

Subscribe to Mindfulness+.

Guided Meditation: A Tour of Body, Mind, and Spirit

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.

Listen to this episode here.

***

Take a moment to settle in, letting the intelligence of the body organize itself into a posture that allows you to be awake, alert, but also soft and relaxed.

And you can just breathe, letting the breath soften you, especially on the out-breath. You can just notice the way the body tends to relax and let go. The muscles tend to soften.

I'd invite you in this practice to not try and feel a certain way as you practice, not try and get somewhere with this meditation so much as just open up to what’s already here — what's actually so. Just notice the body. Notice the shape, the posture, of the physical body. Notice sensation, the feel of the floor or the pressure of the seat against your bottom or maybe your back. Notice where you make contact with the ground.

Also notice where sensation is the brightest, the most felt — maybe through the organs, the belly, the heart, the throat, or the face. Just notice. And you can notice where sensation is quieter, more dim, or difficult to detect. However the body is feeling in this moment — blissful, relaxed, happy, or maybe tense, challenged, uncomfortable, or all the above and more — notice that the body is just happening. Sensation is just flowing like a mighty river. Or a quiet river, as the case may be. And just as you can never step into the same river twice, the body never repeats the same sensation. It's a continuous flow — always new, always renewing.

Notice thoughts in the mind, thoughts floating through awareness. What does it feel like to have a thought? What images come up? What internal sound and chatter occur? Notice the shape, the contour, and the movement of the thinking mind in this moment. And again you can just allow thought to flow. Just like you wouldn't hold the breath indefinitely, you don't need to try and not think. Rather you can just allow thoughts to flow through awareness as naturally as blood flows through the veins.

If you get pulled into a thought, you can just notice that awareness collapses into a thought and allow awareness to open back up into spaciousness, into the vast field of awareness that is, that you are. And just notice awareness in this moment. Not awareness of something — awareness of the body, awareness of the mind — but awareness that you're aware. You're having an experience and if you weren't aware, there would be no experience at all. Forget what you're experiencing and notice that you're experiencing.

And as you rest as awareness, as you're aware of awareness, it makes no difference what you're experiencing. There's no longer such thing as a good meditation and a bad meditation, even a good day and a bad day, because you are awareness. You are the open and free field through which experience comes and goes, comes and goes. But you — awareness — don't come and go. You, this wakefulness, this intelligence — you have always been and always are. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to understand it. You can be it. Just aware.

And in this moment the body rises in awareness. Thoughts arise in awareness. The entire world arises in awareness, and you are all these things, all at once, simultaneously. Body, mind, spirit, integrated. Breathe in through all of you. Breathe in through all of your bodies, feel the stretch in awareness, feel your own vastness. And know that this is always available.

Freedom in Chains: A Practice of Open Awareness

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.

***

In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl reflects on what enabled him to not just survive, but to thrive during the Holocaust. 

There’s a quote from the book that for me incapsulates something beautiful about what we're working with in a mindfulness practice and in a human life. Frankl writes, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Here's a person writing from the extreme of the extremes — a witness to some of the most atrocious acts ever committed in the history of human civilization. And yet he talks about his ultimate power to not respond to outward situations, which we don't often have ultimate control of, and instead move to a kind of inner freedom where we choose our response. 

If we pay close attention, we notice that our days are full of moments where we feel oppressed or we don't feel free. Or perhaps we feel extremely limited, burdened, and oppressed in really significant ways. From a conventional standpoint, what we tend to do in those situations is get really moody and mad at everything and everyone around us. We want things to change. And sometimes we get our way, and sometimes we don’t. Often we don't. In extreme situations, we might come upon incredible hardships that last for days, weeks, months, years, even decades.

So it's not the conditions of our lives where we find actual freedom. And I think that this is where a mindfulness practice is so relevant to all of us. 

I'm talking about the movement at the deepest level of our being that desires to be free. Can you feel that? Can you feel that stirring in you, that deep desire to be free? And yet the paradox is that we're always born into conditions. Having a human body is a condition that limits us in many ways. Depending on the culture we grew up in — the political, economic, and social environment we grew up in — we were denied certain freedoms and gifted with other freedoms. So certain conditions work in our favor, they're positive, they’re supportive. Other conditions, such as Viktor Frankl’s, are at the extreme opposite end of oppression and limitation. And yet there's something in us, there's an awareness, there's a suchness and a beingness beyond all conditions, that knows freedom right now. 

At the deepest level we're already free.

Of course, I'm absolutely not asking you to take anything I say just based on my words. The invitation is for you to investigate this directly and see if you're able to access this quality of freedom that goes beyond all conditions. 

It's an amazing paradox and a poignant contradiction that Viktor Frankl, chained and tortured during the Holocaust, learned to access his deepest freedom in the very conditions that we would suppose are the antithesis of freedom. 

Let’s take a look at this experience at a personal level

*start practice* 

Take a moment to settle in. Find a comfortable posture. Feel the shape of the body, the posture of the body. Notice the impact that has on your experience in this moment, on your awareness. And just breathe. Let the breath move through you like a wave. Notice all of the rich sensation associated with breathing.

Take another moment to just soften, to let go of whatever you've been carrying with you from the days work, from the night full of dreams, to just empty out. To soften. To unwind. 

Feel the spaciousness of your awareness. Notice that it's no effort to be aware. You're aware of sensations in the body, emotions, thoughts in the mind. You're aware of sounds, activity in the world, and it's no effort to you; you are this awareness, this intelligence. Notice any conditions in this moment that feel limiting, that feel troubling in any way. Perhaps pain in the body, challenging sensations, emotions. Maybe the mind is busy and you'd like it to calm down. Or if in this moment, the body, the mind, are relatively at peace, relatively blissful, you might open up your awareness to relationships that are challenging, work life. Just the demand to earn money to provide for yourself and maybe others. And if everything is amazing on this front and effortless, you can open up your awareness to the challenges of the world.

The huddled masses of immigrants who are driven from war-torn, famine-stricken countries. Climate change disturbing environments, ecosystems, communities. Political strife, division, the threat of war. All of these conditions, they're in the air, and if we look closely we feel it in our bodies. These conditions that challenge us, that would seem to limit our joy, limit our freedom. Whatever conditions are particularly challenging to you in the moment, you can pick the one that, if you could wave a magic wand and make it disappear, you would. But rather than making it disappear you actually open up your awareness even more, become even more present and just feel the presence of this condition in your life. The way it colors you, the way it pushes on you, the way it impinges. And rather than pushing back, rather than resisting, rather than trying to change it, perhaps you can allow awareness to simply more fully receive it. Not that you're giving up action, not that you don't allow conditions to inform you and evoke the appropriate response, but to just fully be present to this condition, this limitation, this challenge. 

And recognize that when you don't tell a story about it, when you don't jump to a meaning about it, when you just dwell in the immediacy of your experience in this moment — the immediate experience of having a body, being in sensation, being aware, being alive, being intelligent — notice what this does. Allow this condition to fully inform you to become completely present, so present that you become one with it. This condition is your life, it is you. It's part of what makes you you. 

And when you let this condition be fully present you're actually free not to react. Not to react in a desperate way that tries to make this go away as quickly as possible, but act in a way that's intelligent, that's responsive, that's appropriate, skillful, whatever that is. Whatever that is to you. But first you can taste the freedom in open awareness.

*bell to conclude*

I'll invite you to stay with this practice. You'll notice when you pay attention, countless times throughout the day where we notice this vague sense of dissatisfaction, of oppression, horns blaring in traffic, a long, slow moving line at the grocery story, a vaguely boring or uncomfortable interaction with a friend, a colleague, a neighbor. In these moments when you're most inclined to react and change circumstances immediately, see if you can first escape into circumstance. Finding your freedom in the chains of conditions. Going beyond conditions all together, into freedom beyond any condition. 

Judge More, Lest Ye Be Judgmental: A Fresh Perspective on Mindfulness

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.

***

My experience is that most definitions of mindfulness include something about not being judgmental. I wholeheartedly agree with this definition — with a caveat.

The truth is that when we really look closely at our experience what we find inevitably is that we're extremely judgmental. We find that the mind is constantly evaluating the environment, analyzing, assessing, and judging. Do I like this, or do I not like it? Is it interesting, or is it not interesting? Is this situation dangerous, or is it safe?  There's no end to the judgments.

What I've found after years of practice is that we can potentially run into a pretty significant mindfulness pitfall that goes something like this: We notice when we sit still and really observe our own minds that we're incredibly judgmental, but we suppose that mindfulness is all about not being judgmental. So we do our best to mask our judgment. We start to speak in really soft tones. We talk about how mindfulness is all about being in the present moment and being really happy. 

But in reality, sometimes we're really pissed off. Sometimes we're really stirred up; sometimes the waters are really muddy. So we practice in life, and we get activated. And because we have this notion that we're not supposed to be judgmental, we have a tendency to try to suppress judgment and at worst, when we really fall into this pitfall, we start to don a spiritual mask and talk about mindfulness as though it's a practice of being soft-spoken and not being angry ever, ever, ever. 

We run into a big problem because we start to suppress the very activity of the body-mind, and the body-mind doesn't like to be suppressed, repressed, depressed, or any kind of pressed. It likes to flow, it likes to really move. 

When our mindfulness practice is vibrant and expansive, we're able to occupy a greater and greater spectrum of human experience, ranging the whole spectrum of human emotion, human expression, and human thinking. But we can't get there if we have this limiting notion that we're not supposed to judge.

The point is that there's a paradox here where if we want to be less judgmental in the mindful sense, we have to actually judge more — which is to say we have to notice how judgmental we are and be really honest about that fact. 

To do this, there's a critical piece of awareness that we need to develop. Namely, we need to start recognizing that our thoughts — our judgements — are not ultimately who we are at the deepest level. When we identify with the thinking mind, we're very much disturbed by the judgments that arise because it makes us feel like a judgmental person. 

But with time and with trust, what we recognize is that as these judgmental thoughts come up there's a part of us that's deeper than the thinking mind itself. We might call this the witness. We might call it awareness itself, or spirit, or intelligence — there are lots of words for it. But when we recognize that we're not just the judgmental thoughts but we're actually this awareness that is aware of all the experience coming up in the space moment to moment, we can actually just allow the activity of our body, mind, personality, to happen. To flow.

What's more, when we get into this flow-state — when we're not judging the judgement or berating ourselves for not being more mindful — but instead just letting the activity and the experience of life come up and inform us fully without denying it, without suppressing it, without sugarcoating it, then experience can fully inform us and allow us to show up in a more appropriate, fluid, compassionate way. 

We want to be less judgmental. And with the best of intentions we notice how judgmental we are when we actually sit still and start practicing mindfulness. And at worst we start pretending like we're not judgmental, and wearing a spiritual mask and convincing people how mindful and spiritual we actually are. And that practice creates a lot of tension and wreaks a lot of havoc on us over time. 

What we're going to work with here is just being more judgmental. Or better said: we’re going to practice being as judgmental as we actually are. And rather than suppressing, rather than fighting, rather than pretending and telling a story about how things are, we're just going to attempt to appreciate things as they are, make a little more space for the judgements. Not struggle with the struggle so much and see where that leaves us.  

*Begin Practice*

Take a moment to settle in, trusting your body to organize in a way that allows you to deeply relax, but also be alert and present. Allow the face to relax, unwrinkling the forehead, softening around the eyes, behind the eyes. Letting the jaw drop slightly. Relaxing the back of the neck. Letting the breath drop deeply into the belly. Letting the breath flow through you like a wave. Good. Keep breathing. Just trusting the rhythm of your body to soften, to settle. Not trying to settle, just letting nature settle you. Letting life meditate you.

And notice in this very moment how you're feeling. Notice how you feel in the body, how you feel in the mind. Notice any judgement you have around it. Positive, negative, neutral. Maybe you sense that this practice is going amazingly well, in which case you can notice that judgement. Maybe you're frustrated with yourself because you're not settling in quickly enough, deeply enough. Why isn't todays meditation as good as yesterdays? Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a meditator. Notice if you have any judgements like that. And whatever the case may be, I want to invite you to radically include the judgement in this experience in this moment. Include the judgements without buying in to them. Without believing them, absolutely. Without identifying with them.

Open up your awareness to your entire life and notice what judgements you have around your life. Maybe the judgement that you're very successful. That you're a good person, that you're doing well - I can't believe I've accomplished this much at this young age - or whatever it is. Or on the other end of the spectrum: I thought I would be much more successful at this late age in life. I thought I would know better who I am, what life actually means, what it's all about. Just notice what judgements come up. And you can let these judgements come up in awareness as naturally as the rains fall. As the winds blow. See if you can allow these judgements to just ebb and flow like the tide. Not reifying them, not buying into their meaning absolutely, but just letting them come and go as something deeper. Deeper than the physical body, deeper than the thinking mind, deeper than the personality remains present. Aware. Awake.

Notice judgements you have towards another person in your life. Positive judgements: this person is absolutely amazing. I admire them, I hope to become more like them in time. Or negative judgements: how does that person live with herself? How does she get away with the things she does? How does he lie, cheat, and steal? Whatever it is, notice. Notice judgements coming up and, again, just be open to these judgements coming up not as a final truth on the matter on who this other person is, but judgements as a product of your own mind. These judgements are you. They're yourself.  They're coming up in your experience. They're nobody else's. See if you can just let them come up, let them inform you, and let them go. Staying open to just this moment. Open mind, open heart, open will to be led. As surely as the heart beats, the lungs breath, muscles expand and contract, the mind secretes thoughts; the mind churns out judgement. And you don't have to stop judging any more than your heart needs to stop beating. But you don't have to invest in the judgement, you don't have to identify with it, you don't have to believe it. it can rise and pass like the coming and going of the breath. And as you allow thoughts to come and go, judgements to come and go, you judge maybe more than you're used to, and become infinitely less judgmental in the process.

***

Want to deepen your practice? Download the Mindfulness Essentials course.

Living an Inspired Life Through Integral Polarity Practice: An Interview With John Kesler

The following is a transcript for Episode 31 of Season 1 of Mindfulness+, an interview with Thomas McConkie and John Kesler, founder of Integral Polarity Practice. Listen along, or read the transcript below.

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Thomas: I am especially excited to introduce this guest today. After almost twenty years of practice across the different meditative traditions, I'm sitting here with the man who has probably had a deeper impact on me than just about anybody, and I feel a lot of gratitude for his teaching and just for the person he is. I'm excited to get to share him with you today. His name is John Kesler. He's in the studio with us. Welcome, John.

Kesler: Thank you, Tom. So pleased to be here.

Thomas: Thank you. It's hard to know where to start, there's so much, John. I hope this is just the beginning of many conversations we have with you on Mindfulness Plus, but I wanted to get the ball rolling today and introduce you to the listeners at Mindfulness Plus. So there's a lot to say about John. It's telling that I've known John for ten years and have been studying with him for about that long, and it seems that every time I meet somebody that knows John, or I go to some conference where John's keynoting, or some meeting that he's presiding over, I hear about a new organization that he's a part of or on the board of, or was the driving force and inspiration behind starting it. He's just involved in so many things and it's a beautiful example of the fruits of a mindfulness practice. I think, John, the way you show up in the world and how deeply engaged you are is a real inspiration.

Kesler: Thanks, Tom. I'm a real believer in what goes on inside of you as a reflection of what you're doing in the world, so you need to have a practice on both sides of that, I think.

Thomas: And I haven't seen that demonstrated more powerfully with anyone, than with you, John. Not to flatter you, that's how it is [Kesler laughs]. So John has developed a practice called "Integral Polarity Practice”. That's the inner practice you could say, that we'll speak about a little bit today and explore. John also spends a lot of time heading up an organization called "The Salt Lake Civil Network", which has to do with supporting the flourishing of wholistic communities on a global level. And John is also a practicing lawyer, and a deeply engaged father and husband, and overall good citizen [laughs]. What else can we say, John?

Kesler: [laughs] They could call me a recovering lawyer.

Thomas: A recovering lawyer! Right [laughs]. Hard to come to terms with that one. So this is interesting. There are a lot of things we could say about your background and your mediation practice, but an interesting place to start it occurs to me is your background as a swimmer. I mean you were a national champion backstroker when you were young. 

Kesler: Well I swam for a lot of years — went through age group swimming, and swimming in high school, and into college, and I was as involved as a person could be.

Thomas: Junior Nationals in high school, I think it was. Undefeated your freshman year at Stanford which was probably the best swim team in the country at that time, and then you kind of laid it up. You stopped swimming pretty spontaneously, is that right?

Kesler: Not quite. I transferred schools and took a year off, but really because of the financial support that was there, I finished university swimming. 

Thomas: The financial support, that was where? 

Kesler: At the University of Utah.

Thomas: Okay. So you came back for some scholarship money, here, after you'd beaten up all the best swimmers in the NCAA, you decided to come back to your roots in Utah.

Kesler: Yeah, there were other reasons that I returned related to family. In those days, you had to take a year off if you were going to transfer schools. And in those days you could only swim on a freshman level if you were a freshman. So, different world then but I did, after that year off, swam for the last two years of undergraduate.

Thomas: And it's interesting, I met Genpo Roshi when I was 18 years old — Roshi is a well known Zen master who had a big influence on me. He was also a water polo player on the national team, so really adept swimmer. I just thought that was such an interesting coincidence. You studied quite deeply with Genpo Roshi which we'll talk about momentarily, here. The swimming thing is interesting to me: swimming is such a repetitive sport and activity for those who've done it. I wonder if that was some kind of precursor to your career in meditation later on.

Kesler: I have to think that it was because swimming isn't one of those sports that you're stimulated by all the exciting, challenging situations that you respond to going on around you. You literally practice for hours everyday and for years, repeating the same physical routine and movements. I think unless you find a meditated place to be in, there, you have a problem.

Thomas: So interesting. You know, it reminds me that all of us in some way probably have activities in our lives that are monotonous and routine, and that we have the opportunity to bring our full awareness to; to kind of pull ourselves out of the monotony and into a sense of a kind of wonder. With something we've done 10 million times, when we're really present with it, feels like it's the first time we've engaged it. 

Kesler: Nice summary. I think that's right.

Thomas: Okay, well we can save another podcast episode dedicated to Johns merits as an athlete [laughs] but I want to get to a story, John. I mean I flipped when we first talked about this. I thought "who is this guy”? [laughs] when I heard this story. It belongs in the cannon of American Zen stories. You're a lawyer, you're going for continuing legal education credits, and you show up at a mediation workshop, is that correct? Or was it built as a meditation workshop and you thought it was mediation? What's the detail there?

Kesler: No, it was a mediation workshop, not meditation. But this gem haroshi[4]  had just come up with a dramatic new approach called the “Big Mind Process" that he had not really tried on people outside of his own community, and he just wondered what would happen if he offered this to people off the street. And the person who was running the conference was a student of his and so this was a breakout session for an hour and a half in a day-long workshop.

Thomas: And that student by the way, was that Diane Hamilton who was helping him set up this workshop?

Kesler: It was.

Thomas: So Diane was a former guest on our show. She did our last video podcast with us — check that out if you haven't yet — it was a gorgeous conversation with Diane. So here you are, you wander into this mediation workshop and the Zen master decides "I'm going to see what this industrial strength technique of Zen does for the next person who walks through the door. Somewhat. 

Kesler: Yeah. So there were probably 35 or 40 of us attorneys who just kind of wandered in clueless of what was going on. So he facilitated us through this unique process and the effect was so profound on me that I just was… it wasn't something I thought about, it was just being in a state of… I was stunned and almost in shock because I was in a state I'd never been in before and it was profound.

Thomas: Could you say a little bit more about that state you were in? How would you describe it as you look back on it? What happened in that workshop?

Kesler: Well you're always aware that you're sitting here in a body and you have a sense of self and other, but he was able to facilitate us all in a way that we identified more with everything around us — the entire universe, the cosmos. And so it was a sense of being one with or no different than the universe. And it was an experience I had never had. I had meditated a lot for about 5 years in my early 20's but I had never really had this experience and it was just so profound that I knew I needed to follow up on it.

Thomas: Yeah. You walked out the door of the workshop that day and it just kept going, did it not? [laughs] 

Kesler: It did! And I was kind of angry about it [laughs]. I didn't want to have my life changed. You know, what is going on here? And it really kind of… I kind of kept that sense of Identity for well over a week — almost 2 weeks.

Thomas: Okay. So you go in for some continuing legal education credit, you walk out totally merged in one with all of manifestation, and you contemplated a career change at that point [laughs].

Kesler: Well I sort of knew that I wanted to follow up on it, and I contacted Roshi and said "look, I have my own religious tradition, I'm not particularly interested in becoming a Buddhist; but I'm just so taken by this experience that I had.” And he said, "Well, my hope has been that this would be an experience for all of mankind; not just tied to Buddhism. And I would be so excited for you to become a student understanding that you can maintain your own Mormon tradition”. 

Thomas: And you did just that. That's the next thing I want to talk about. So here you are: from your mid twenties to your mid fifties you were a householder and a lawyer — not living in a monastery — and then boom: it's of all places a mediation workshop where you have what many would call a classical experience of awakening.

Kesler: Yeah. Well you know there are different qualities of spiritual experience — of having faith, and trust, and communing — but the sense of oneness was a distinct quality of being awake, you could say, that was unique. 

Thomas: yeah, it was new to you. So you went on and you worked with it. You studied with Genpo Roshi, you learned his practice, his techniques and you developed something quite novel. You took even that in a new direction. Could you say a little bit about the relationship of your polarity practice to adult development? That's a topic we talk about continually on this show. It's the "Plus" in Mindfulness Plus.

Kesler: Well it took about three to four years to really absorb this teaching of this new "Big Mind" process and it involves using voice dialogues, speaking to aspects of the self — that's one of the unique aspects that he added to this practice.

Thomas: Let me ask about that. I don't want to gloss over that because listeners maybe haven't heard of Big Self, and when they hear "talking voice dialogue" to a particular voice — could you say a little bit about what is Big Mind, and what does it mean to talk from that voice?

Kesler: Yeah. Well Big Mind is just a word or you know, a framing of that experience. 

Thomas: The one that you had at the mediation workshop.

Kesler: The one that I had. And in the eastern traditions that experience tends to be an experience you want to have. It's sort of a quality of waking up in that particular way. So I became trained and certified — I wasn't taking bows or anything in the tradition — but I became certified to be able to share it. But one of the things that I noticed was that it was very intuitive, and very flowing, and very much tied to traditional Buddhist concepts and voices, and experiences the way they were framed. And I had spent already many years very interested in human development and stages of development, and it didn't have that quality to it. So I decided to see if I could speak in this voice dialogue to voices that were related to stages of human development. And voice dialogue is Jungian therapeutic technique that was developed, and it established that you could speak to aspects of the self, like the vulnerable child is a classic voice that you can speak to. Genpo Roshi had identified that you could speak to transcendent voices — that was his big breakthrough — and for whatever reason, as I was exploring that with a group of people I just noticed that when a voice spoke up very strongly, it's polar opposite also always wanted to speak up, and so I just started playing with those polarities. Like the in-breath and the out-breath (we don't speak to the in-breath and out-breath so much) but about every other polarity developmentally above that, like desire and aversion. If desire has a real strong voice, aversion is saying, "Well, I'm kind of part of this whole deal, so I want you to hear what I'm doing in the life of this person as well." 

Thomas: Yeah let me chime in, there. I meditated with Genpo Roshi for many years, and he did speak to the wounded child and he did speak to desire. And when I started practicing with you I was struck. I felt like I was getting into territory that I had somehow intuited somewhere but we'd never quite brought to the surface and it's really genius in polarity practice to notice that if there's desire on one side, then the flip-side of the coin is aversion, and those qualities are both right there together.

Kesler: Yeah. And then it took another couple of years of working with people and working with groups to say "wait a minute, this is actually also kind of a spiritual meditative practice. Where does this go?” I just discovered that if you quieted those polarities down there was a still point where there was a stillness, like desire and aversion — this place of deep satisfaction or contentment, or abundance, and it would slow that down and then you would be in a different place. You'd be in a deep unity type of place somewhat outside of space and time. A sense of wholeness, a sense of fullness. 

Thomas: Right. I want to come back to still points. We've actually been exploring still points on Mindfulness Plus the last three weeks, and you are the crown jewel of our four week series, John Kesler [laughs]. The master of still points. I want to come back to that in a moment. One thing I'll say what I've learned studying with you, if we're going to talk about — I mean the polarities if you look at Johns chart, if you go to the theIPPinstitute.com you can kind of see the framework of the practice he's laid out. It's really beautifully elegant. There are 15 key polarities that you primarily work with. There are countless polarities, but 15 polarities you've identified as being thematic and paramount in human development.

Kesler: Yes. It was clear that there are very central qualities that come online with each new stage of human development. So my thought was that even though there are endless polarities, if you could work with those universal qualities within yourself that everybody else shares, and they could become more transparent, you could work with them, you could hold the fulness of it; it would create a foundation for integration and growth. And it turned out that it worked really well and attracted several developmental psychologists and researchers because they found that it happened to match a very strong theme in developmental psychology that had been coming online in the previous decade. 

Thomas: Right, and this is one of those hidden gems about John Kesler, that the real estate attorney in Salt Lake — I've asked world class developmental psychologists questions about their research and I've had one say "you know, you should really talk to John Kesler about that one. He really knows more about this than I do” [laughs]. To your credit, John, It's a robust framework, and If I can share a personal experience: I came from quite a traditional meditative background in Buddhism. I was doing my daily sitting for years, and it was a practice that did amazing things for me. Nothing was broken by any stretch. And yet, when I started to practice with you and become more sensitive to polarity, the transformation I saw in my life was profound. And to give just one concrete example: one of your polarities that comes up very early in human development in the first few years of life. You talk about agency and communion. You talk about the individual and the collective. And I didn't notice until I started practicing with you how heavily oriented I was towards the individual side. And the whole collective, relationship, communion side, was there, but when I was with people, I was waiting to be alone again and go to my meditation cushion. And really just in a few years of working with Integral Polarity Practice (or IPP) my entire mindfulness practice transformed from I sit on my cushion daily to meditation is relationship and every encounter I have with another being - not just a human but with an animal, a plant — every relationship I have is an opportunity to bring my highest awareness to that moment and encounter. And suddenly this practice I'd been really giving myself to for 15 years, it was enormously freed up from the cushion — from the formal practice — and I felt like I was walking around and every encounter I had was this invitation to meditate. That's just one example of how polarity practice opened up my awareness to a whole new dimension of mindfulness.

Kesler: Thank you for that example. And that's a good example, for instance, that you learned with any true polarity it's not healthy and pathological, or they're not opposites in good and bad ways, they're just necessary qualities that need one another. And as you become mature in any polarity, they come closer together and begin to inner penetrate, and at some point you can't experience agency without communion. You can't experience a sense of purpose without being concerned with something larger than yourself, for instance. 

Thomas: Yeah exactly. And I found that so much in my own experience. That far from compromising my agency, to more deeply enter into relationship and communion, I was energized in my solitary times. I felt happier when I was alone. And after a certain point of being alone, being in my meditation and individual life, I would come back into relationship and replenish myself that way. So like you pointed to, this dance of the polarity, these two qualities could express even more fully when I held them both. It's a profound gift, I can't even express. We'll have to have you on to another show to do a bit of voice dialogue and really help the audience understand what that feels like to start the wholeness of a given polarity. It's really something.

Kesler: Thank you. and I realize working with polarities is only one approach — there are many approaches to meditation and integration, and growth — but it's one that's powerful. I love it, am committed to it, I love to share it.

Thomas: Yeah well it's a real legacy to humanity as far as I've experience IPP, it's done amazing things for me and you really walk the talk, John. It's just amazing who you are and the life you live, and the generosity you share this practice with. It's stunning.

Kesler: Thanks, Tom.

Thomas: I want to come back and talk about still points for a minute. Again, you pointed to this a moment ago, that the still point is a different dimension of our humanity. It's a place of profound stillness and peace beyond space and time, where we start to experience a fullness of freedom and compassion, and joy. You shared a story with me years ago that I really just wanted our audience to hear. I think it's a perfect example of the potential of really living from a still point throughout the day. You know what story I'm talking about, you were, I think reading the newspaper one evening. You were just home, relaxing.

Kesler: I was. And I mean this is an example, I think, of being trained in a still point opens you up to something that everybody has available to them. But it's just in my experience it’s maybe more sensitive. I was just being really quiet, I was reading the paper, but I was sort of settling into some deep stillness, and all of a sudden realized that there was something really important. It had to do with a young woman who was living in the university village. I was a Mormon bishop for a married student housing area at that time, and I just went running out the door. My wife said, “Where are you going?” and I said, “I'm running over to so and so's place.” She said, “Who's going with you?” I said, “I'm just going.”

Thomas: Let me pause you there because, just a little cultural context for you listeners around the globe. In Salt Lake City, in a Mormon culture, where a man John's age — a bishop — just has this impulse to run over to a young woman's house. His wife's going to raise an eyebrow, we could say [laughs].

Kesler: Yeah [laughs]. So I just sped over there and knocked on the door, and there was no answer. So I did what anybody would do and I kicked the door open.

Thomas: [laughs]. Any reasonable person would do that.

Kesler: And I saw this woman laying on her living room floor, her head on a pillow, and she'd been smoking, and there was a cigarette smoldering in her pillow. The moment I burst through the door, the pillow burst into fire. I was able to dash over and pull it away and her hair was on fire and I was able to help her. Even a minute later would have been too late.

Thomas: Ten seconds later.

Kesler: And isn't that, a person in that position or any, where you're seeking to be a steward for other people in an ecclesiastical or other position, I think there's a tendency to get inspiration for those kind of folks. But I just know that that practice, along with leading the life I felt I was supposed to lead, helped me be more sensitive in those kinds of ways.

Thomas: Yeah. It's a remarkable story, John. I remember the first time you shared that story with the small group of us. And something you said after that story really struck me. I'll remind you what you said and offer it to the listeners. It was something to the effect of: "in that moment, I was still and I was open, and I was receptive; and I received inspiration to dash out my door, and I didn't even know why. And I went and this woman ended up needing somebody to save her life". And the question you put to us has stuck with me for years ever since. You said "how many messages of inspiration are we missing when we're not present, when we're not open”?

Kesler: And there are just so many references in so many of the traditions in the Christen-Judaeo tradition. “Be still and know that I am God.” Be still, and it's like a portal. You're open to your deepest sense of source and inspiration, and spirit — whatever language you use. I just know that that's why I do this practice. It's the heart of the practice. 

Thomas: And that story is dramatic. This woman was passed out on the floor, she would have been incinerated had you not been there. But I see you showing up day to day just in the community, just being a good citizen, and you've really been a good example to me of what the still point looks like and feels like, and walks like, and talks like. And I'm just grateful for who you are, John, and your presence in the world.

Kesler: Thank you. And what I would have to say is I don't think this is the practice or somebody should do this vs. something else, but it's a nice compliment to whatever belief system you have, I think, and helps you access that kind of openness. 

Thomas: We'll close on this note. You noticed what John just did. He said, "You know, IPP is just one of many practices.” The reason you don't know about IPP is because John doesn't have a self-promoting bone in his whole body [laughs] so I'm here to tell you guys that this is really a profound source of wisdom, and you'd do well to look into it a little bit. I know I've been deeply changed by John. Thank you.

Kesler: Thanks. 

Thomas: So I'd like to turn the time over to you to just do a little bit of a guided meditation. When I have guests on, I invite them to just give us a little flavor of what they're up to in their own practices. I wonder if you'd mind just leading a meditation with us.

Kesler: Sure, I'd be happy to do that for a few minutes. So what I thought I might do is a meditation with a polarity that we tend not to think of really, because it's sort of like a fish being in water. You're just so immersed in it that you don't realize it has those qualities, and that's a meditation relating to the qualities of mind or consciousness itself. And one thing I noticed as I spent time in the mindfulness-type practices, I realized that this quality was there. Consciousness always has a quality of focusing and opening. Open and focus. And We've all had the experience I think where we've been overstimulated by our environment. We've gone to a concert or we're just tired and the kids have been screaming all day long, or whatever it is. And if you get stuck in any pole, like openness to stimulation in your environment, you become raw. Things become pathological. Or if you're focused on something and you just can't get out of it — you're obsessed for instance by someone who has embarrassed you, or harmed you, or maybe physical pain, and you can't get your mind away from that — that in and of itself is pathological. And with every polarity, that's the message. You need to learn how to hold them both and hold them well, and come from a deeper place. And so what I'd like to do is just facilitate a little bit of a meditation relating to that quality and then some of the fruits that arise out of that.

Thomas: Excellent. Thanks, John. 

*begin practice

Kesler: So I'm just going to close my eyes a little bit, and settle into where I'm sitting, and into this body, and into this breath, and relax. I'd invite you all to do the same and just follow along.

Just as you know that the pattern of breathing - the in-breath and the out-breath has its own polarity - be aware of the openness of your own mind and awareness in this moment. Just open to whatever's going on right now, that you might notice physically or emotionally, mentally; just be open to whatever is arising in this moment.

And now I would just invite you to bring a scope of focus to this openness. To focus on what you are hearing in this moment, in addition to my voice. What do you hear in your environment, inside of you, outside of you?

Now shift your scope of focus to your emotions. The emotions that you brought into this moment in the last few hours and that you've had during this day. See if those emotional feelings are still present. What do you sense from what’s arising from you emotionally in this moment? Don't try to judge it, control it. Just be aware.

And now be open and aware as to what's arising in your thoughts at this moment. What are you thinking? Whatever those thoughts are, just allow them to happen. Don't judge them, don't control them.

And as we find with any polarity — as we bring the focus and the openness together — there's just a field of awareness. You're aware of what's arising, you move your scope of focus as it's appropriate. But in this moment allow yourself to just be still and tranquil, and relaxed in this moment. And allow your awareness just to rest. Feel that deep tranquility in this moment.

And if this quality is here, you'll also notice that you have a sense of being very present to whatever’s arising. And if you have difficulty getting into this tranquility or this stillness, just practice being present and this quality will settle in for you. And another quality that tends to arise if you're still at your center, connected to your source, relaxed and aware, it brings on a quality as your present in the moment to what in the Buddhist traditions they call the "Beginner Mind". It means rather than framing everything you experience, or what’s before you as you have normally done - just be open to what's arising. Allow yourself to be surprised, allow to see what's really there. And you can live in a moment by moment and state of astonishment as you are totally present to what's happening; not prejudging.

And as you're open and present, and tranquil, and present, and aware, this still point is also a bit of a portal. It opens us to our deepest source of wisdom and compassion. Peace beyond understanding.

And in many traditions — as we say in many traditions — we're open to the gift of divine light, or sacred light'. One can feel it, one can see it. It's always there. Thank you.

*close practice

Thomas: Thanks so much, John. 

Kesler: Thank you, Thomas. 

Thomas: If you want to learn more about John Kesler and Integral Polarity Practice, you can go to theIPPinstitute.com, learn more there.