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Join The Practice of Living Awareness

steps of the practice

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​The steps of The Practice of Living Awareness comprise a comprehensive meditation practice designed to bring awareness to the forefront of your day. Consider each one of these steps a tool to be used in any moment, on and off of the meditation cushion, to bring clarity of mind and gentleness of spirit. The Practice of Living Awareness occurs in "rounds",  which occur  three times a year. A "round" of our online meditation lasts 14 weeks... each week we will cover a new step with three, 20-minute guided meditations: Monday's meditation introduces the step, Wednesday's meditation explores the step further, and on Friday we will meditate on ways to apply the step to everyday life. Each step is described in detail below. And be sure to register to begin meditating with us!
In 2018, rounds for The Practice of Living Awareness will begin: 
January 8th, 2018, May 7th, 2018, & ​September 17, 2018

"Smile and take a long, slow, deep breath."

A smile is the first element of the Practice of Living Awareness.  Just as meditation changes everything, a smile does too: emotionally, biologically, and mentally.  As the smile lifts upwards, it invites spiritual transformation.  

Change happens with a smile.  And so we smile and take a long, slow, deep breath as the practice begins.

Common Benefits
  • releases endorphins which make us feel happy and lower stress 
  • increases feelings of ease, relaxation, and acceptance
  • generates acceptance of the things we cannot  change and creativity with the things we can
Spiritual Benefits
  • opens the potential for joy and bliss
  • develops acceptance which leads to understanding
  • transitions ease into “peaceful abiding” 
  • reverberates through the personal energy centers (chakras) as the base, sacral, and solar plexus centers hold the vibration of ease, safety, and self-assurance.

"Notice the usually not noticed."

Maintaining a point of focus is cultivated through this step. And the tip of the nose is a perfect example of this.  It is the meeting point of the inner and the outer. The vastitude of air that is available to you meets the focused entry point of your breath at the tip of the nose. 

We begin to register that there is much more going on at any moment than we usually notice.  As a result, we begin to register the more-ness of the moment, and awareness itself.

Common Benefits
Spiritual Benefits
  • stabilizes the mind and emotions
  • increases appreciation and gratitude
  • leads to the recognition of natural rhythms
  •  brings the subtle systems "online"
  • elicits movement of kundalini energy supporting the infusion of higher vibrations of consciousness
  • fosters penetrating insight (vipasana) through the stabilized mind

"We breath in and we breath out."

Building on steps 1 and 2, this step brings attention to the natural and gentle flow of the breath. We are always breathing and breath's rhythm is constant.This aligns us with the natural rhythms of life: the cycle of seasons, the flow of rivers, the rise and fall of waves, and the migration of animals - each highlighting the Universal principle of impermanence. All things come and go, not unlike the breath. 

Just as focusing on the tip of the nose stabilizes the mind,  joining the gentle rhythm of the breath stabilizes the emotions.Flow begins to permeate our thoughts and our awareness. We sense that rhythm is constant in our existence. We become aware of the bigger picture and discover that everything is relative.

Common Benefits
  • inspires gentleness and ease
  • leads to less reactiveness by letting go of "the small stuff"
  • develops constancy
  • widens one's perspective
Spiritual Benefits
  • flows divine qualities into our meditation as Spirit breathes into us
  • reveals qualities that have always been available to us that we may not have been aware of
  • Universal pairs are experienced, and thus the whole
  • fosters the gradual emptiness of sunyata

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"We soften so as to open, we open so as to receive."

Step four teaches the process of receiving. We receive a new breath every few seconds... there are great teachings within this natural occurrence. Softening makes one receptive and magnetic to meditative experiences. Softening is necessary to experience union.

As this step permeates our living awareness, we  begin to sense whether we are rigid or soft, closed-off or open, defensive or accepting. Examples from nature and common daily experience are offered to illustrate the necessity of this process. Exercises from this step can be practiced throughout your day. Softening, opening, and receiving are choices; and these choices create powerful shifts toward being fully present in the moment. From the present moment, the possibilities are endless.


Common Benefits
  • eases the relationship between give and take
  • refines listening skills
  • welcomes infinite possibilities
  • assists  in cooperation
  • clears the path to creativity
Spiritual Benefits
  •  integrates the subtle bodies facilitating the personality-soul relationship
  • produces the expression of a balanced sacral chakra
  • fosters the transference process of the energies of the lower chakras to the chakras above the diaphragm

"The Autumn leaf rejoices in its release."

The flow of receiving continues in step 5 by going into the experience of release. Release requires softening and opening as well - our lungs prove this every time we breathe. Sharing, adjusting,  allowing, giving, forgiving, recognizing, and accepting all incorporate aspects of steps 4 and 5. 

Release makes flow possible by creating space for a new receiving. We are given many opportunities for release during a meditation sitting - the experience can move from settling to healing to sublime.

Common Benefits
  • creates space
  • lessens anxiety
  • readies one for the new
  • improves relationships of all kinds
  • generates trust
Spiritual Benefits
  • fosters readiness for spiritual energy or insight
  • generates appreciation of emptiness as a blissful state
  • allows for lightness of being and movement to a finer vibrational state

“Our lungs lead us to our heart. Our heart has opened our mind.”

 Up to this point the practice has taught us to breathe consciously with a smile and with flow; to focus on receiving and releasing. Through these steps the interconnectedness of life is vibrantly apparent and directly experienced each time we meditate.

In the Tibetan language there is only one word for both heart and mind, and when a Tibetan speaks of mind, he or she will often point to the heart. As we begin to experience this truth from within, we experience another level of smile, of the coming and going of the breath, and of the ability within ourselves to let go and be more heart-full. This is what is meant by mindfulness.

Common Benefits
  • generates patience and kindness
  • supports compassion
  • appreciation and recognition of deeper values in oneself and others
Spiritual Benefits
  • unifying of heart and mind
  • awakens the heart chakra and its qualities of care and  universal love
  • cultivates the qualities of humility and collaboration which lead to one's life service

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"Meditation is an experience, not a thought process."

We simply pause for step 7 to allow steps 1 through 6 to find their productive connectedness in the whole of our meditation practice. We begin to experience the efficacy of the steps we've learned and we begin to recognize that, in fact, we are learning to meditate. 

Interludes are important, they are integrative. An interlude has no agenda other than itself, it is a space between. We also begin to grow comfortable with the space that is not being filled by words or tasks. We allow ourselves to simply be present and comfortable. 

Common Benefits
  • inspires one to look for places where interludes are possible
  • Eyes, brain, and nervous system settles and resets
  • reveals the power of now
Spiritual Benefits
  • integration of the energy centers
  • reveals the true nature of awareness by settling into simple presence
  • illustrates emptiness

“We support our meditation by fully including the body."

With Step 8, we bring attention to the physical body. It is a common misconception that meditation is a way to escape or "check out" from physical reality. We would say that the contrary is true, that meditation is the full immersion into the now, and that includes the body, the mind, and the spirit.  As we more effectively include our body in meditation sittings, our meditations will immediately improve.

Asana is a sanskrit word that refers to one's sitting position. We would extend that to include one's posture in life. Our physical body is a resource, it will provide us with much information on our state of being. 


Physical Benefits
Spiritual Benefits
  • increases awareness of one's self overall
  • improves balance and poise
  • improves strength
  • reduces stress and fatigue
  • inspires inner posture
  • develops equipoise
  • moves inner stability to inner authenticity
  • aligns the five energy centers along the spine with the spiritual crown center

“We expand the range of mind by experiencing its qualities.”

The first half of the practice has delivered the tools necessary to establish shamatha, or peaceful abiding. The second half leads one to a greater understanding of vipassyana, or penetrating insight. When these two methods or states of being are effectively combined, a Living Awareness unfolds.

Step 9 explores the basic qualities of the mind, many of which our practice has already made us familiar with... the contracting mind, the expanding mind, the emptying mind.

Common Benefits
  • reveals that states of mind are choices
  • illustrates the connection between state of mind and the state of our emotions and physiology
  • facilitates self-regulation
  • increases cognition, peace, and willingness to explore
  • aids in restful sleep
Spiritual Benefits
  • reinforces heart-mind connection
  • expands the range of the mind to the subtle spiritual realms
  • establishes communication between the personality and the soul

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"We turn on the lamp of Awareness.”

Luminous Perception is Step 10.  Luminous perception is both a result and a fact.  In The Practice, it is a result of “noticing the usually not noticed.”  As one notices more of the wonders of life, then the sparkle of energy and the radiance that is everywhere, all of the time, can be brought to one's awareness. The luminous nature of reality becomes self-evident. This is an ongoing awakening to life. 

The lightness and vibrancy that one perceives increases the vibrancy and brightness of mind, demeanor, creative inspiration, and problem solving.
Common Benefits
Spiritual Benefits
  • increases clarity of mind
  • reveals broader considerations 
  • increases empathy and understanding
  • generates gratitude
  • facilitates intuitive processes
  • reinforces the use of abstract mind 
  • leads one to the experience of union

“A great tree is as great as its root system.”

Step 11 explores the ground on which our being sits, or the various bodies (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual) in which our consciousness expresses. Luminous perception must have a place to preside; and it does, this place is you, or your being. 

We have an energetic root system which allows for us to move about the world in a physical body while being an expression of an ever-expanding consciousness. As we reinforce our ground of being, we offer the stability necessary for that expression to constantly grow, engage, and evolve.

Common Benefits
Spiritual Benefits
  • brings oneself to the present, and provides the opportunity to be present within one's self
  • establishes inner-stability
  • improves one's relationship with the material world
  • provides integrity to the lower energy centers which allows for the integration of spiritual energies
  • builds resonance between the crown center and the base center
  • manifests spiritual beingness

“The river makes the riverbanks.”

Step 12 brings awareness to the stream of energy that moves along the spine connecting the energy centers to higher levels of consciousness. Body and ground are now a part of our meditation training, providing the stability necessary to focus on some of the inner energy sciences of The Practice of Living Awareness. The mind, the body, and the subtle energy systems have been incrementally prepared for the last few steps of the practice. 

The central channel is core within.  It energetically connects the above to the below, and vice versa.It is the subtle energetic reason why a backbone and central nerve exist; they are the dense forms of the subtle central channel. Five of the seven primary chakra centers are aligned along the central channel, and the central channel is the primary avenue of alignment with the higher Self (Soul or beyond), and of the infusion of the higher vibrations of Soul and beyond to calibrate and integrate into a person.

Common Benefits
  • increases the ability to respond to circumstances
  • aids in discerning deeper meanings
  • increases vibrancy and flow
  • increases sense inner-strength
Spiritual Benefits
  • inspires the personality to be a vehicle of the soul
  • moves one in the direction of their true purpose 

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"Life is one. All beings are One."

Toroidal flow is experienced in step 13. This is related to the spiral flow of everything from the water going down a drain, to the exchange of blood to and from our heart, to  to the spiral arms of a galaxy. The truth is that we are a mini-galaxy with similar internal properties. Our energy centers are toruses, ensuring the constant, dynamic exchange of awareness and experience that is a human being. 

Meditation allows for finer vibrations of spiritual energy to enter and move through the body. The toroidal flow nature of our subtle energy system moves those energies into the world in the form of our actions, creations, and expressions. We attract new experiences as a result of those expressions which in turn inform our consciousness.  Higher consciousness raises our vibration to allow even finer vibrations to enter our system and, in turn, these express outward. This is evolution in action.

Pulsing and rhythmic, we experience life, and even time, as the flow energies through fields, constantly creating experience which forms the very fiber of our being. Meditation reinforces this flow and elicits it's expansion.

Common Benefits
  • increases multi-layered awareness
  • inspires a higher form of prioritization
  • generates positive responses to change
  • exposes and utilizes inherent resources
Spiritual Benefits
  • widens the definition of one's self
  • fosters inspired co-creation
  • integrates the spiritual with the "every day"
  • illumines the interconnected nature of life

"I am a source of clear light."

Ultimately, the result of all meditation practices is an increase of awareness. This is called by many names: mindfulness, peace, detachment, wonder, compassion, wisdom, well-being. The Practice of Living Awareness is designed to bring forward the awareness that is innate in all of us. At this step, step 14, meditation has done its work. Life is now our Practice of Living Awareness.

Learning to meditate requires time, effort, and dedication. More importantly, it requires the choice to give yourself something which only you can give – the gift of awareness. As that choice becomes forefront in your life, you become part of the energy that can change the world.

Common Benefits
Spiritual Benefits
  • reduces stress
  • improves health
  • balances emotions
  • inspires creative solutions
  • generates happiness and contentment
  • raises cellular vibration
  • increases lightness of being
  • supports kindness, gentleness, compassion, and empathy
  • transforms the ordinary into the wonder-full

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Learn more about all of our meditation programs.  

Together, these steps comprise a comprehensive meditation practice designed to bring awareness to the forefront of your day.  Consider each one of these steps a tool to be used in any moment to bring clarity of mind and gentleness of spirit.  

The Practice of Living Awareness for every level of practitioner including the beginner or person looking to refresh an existing practice.  In addition, we offer a monthly Full Moon Meditation open to everyone.

We look forward to your participation! 

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