I had just returned home to New York City on September 7th, 2001 from a week long meditation retreat with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche in Colorado. During the retreat we received training to help us recognize our true nature as already awake and unconditionally loving, and then see this in ordinary everyday life. There was no question that the support of that retreat helped me to face the events that followed. What happened next was September 11th 2001.  I was working in... Read more

  In this video, I am explaining that we can discover freedom from the constant inner-criticism of the chattering mind when we directly recognize our naturally wakeful and liberated essence. One of my methods for helping others realize this is by asking the question: “What is here now, when there is no problem to solve?” In my book and audio of meditations, Shift Into Freedom, I describe this process of relaxing into our naturally spacious and awake ground of being in greater detail. Below is an... Read more

This video is about the primary obstacle to awakening, the “mini-me.” Both ancient wisdom traditions and modern neuroscience agree that there is no location of a separate self to be found within our brains. It is hard to find the mini-me because, most likely, it is the one looking at the video! This video explains the importance of breaking free of the mini-me as the first step towards awakening, and then discovering the new operating system of open-hearted awareness. For in-depth discussion... Read more

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle... Read more

One simple way to talk about awakening is as a shift from our current sense of self and way of knowing based in conceptual thinking to awake awareness as the new way of knowing and being. Here is a definition of awake awareness and a practice to experience directly for yourself from my book, Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness.  “When our basic awareness is revealed to be the foundation of both how we know and who we... Read more

Did you ever feel like you were wandering around in a dream, like walking on a treadmill, or sleepwalking through life? There is a type of perpetual dissatisfaction that awakening addresses. By waking up, you actually become less detached, less spacey, less fearful and less alienated. Here is how I talk about this process of awakening in the beginning of my book, Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness.  “In many wisdom traditions, the term awakening is... Read more

Forty years ago many people thought of yoga as a fringe activity for hippies. Today there is a yoga studio on nearly every corner, and millions of people are practicing and enjoying the benefits of yoga in many forms. Twenty years ago, many people considered meditation to be a way of escaping the world, even weirder than yoga. Today it is one of the most scientifically studied and beneficial practices that we can do for ourselves. In this blog, I... Read more