Deconstructing Yourself Loch Kelly on Awareness, Freedom, and Effortless Mindfulness
Early Awareness Experiences
- Loch Kelly's interest in awareness began at 14 when he heard a sportscaster say a goalie had "eyes in the back of his head".
- This led him to explore Zen, TM, and Zen sitting, but formal practices felt less natural than open awareness.
Fragility of Retreat Calm
- After a 10-day silent retreat, Loch Kelly felt a sense of stability and choiceless awareness.
- This was disrupted when someone kicked him on a bus, highlighting the fragility of retreat-based calm.
Awakening's Accessibility
- Loch Kelly realized that awakening doesn't require years of retreat or monastic life.
- It's inherent within us, obscured by constructed identity and habitual patterning of consciousness.
Host Michael Taft speaks with Loch Kelly on nondual practices, contemporary forms of ancient awareness techniques, dzogchen, mahamudra, advaita, the role of psychotherapy in awakening, the need—or not—for a guru, open-hearted awareness, internal family systems therapy, and more.
Loch Kelly is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch teaches in a non-sectarian lineage based in the earliest non-dual wisdom traditions, modern science, and psychotherapy.
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Show Notes:
00:43 - Intro
03:05 - Loch’s meditation background
06:59 - Shifting from concentration practice to choiceless awareness practice
10:01 - Meeting Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
12:23 - The experience vs explanation of ‘pure awareness’ in different traditions
14:38 - Mahamudra
15:31 - The dualism in stopping halfway at ‘pure/spacious awareness’
17:54 - Recognition vs realization
20:02 - The possibility of ‘awake awareness’ in different traditions
22:53 - Contacting nondual awareness
24:00 - How can awareness be aware of awareness, if you are not aware from awareness?
28:10 - The contemporary teaching of unhooking ‘local awareness’
34:42 - The vipassana model/map vs natural awakenings
37:42 - Upgrading the mahamudra map and instructions (from ‘pure awareness’ to ‘awake awareness’)
43:07 - The four or five levels of the mind in mahamudra (1. everyday mind, 2. subtle mind, 3. pure awareness, 4. simultaneous mind, 5. open-hearted awareness/bodhicitta)
46:13 - Thoughts and emotions in ‘open-hearted awareness’
50:09 - Teaching moving from ‘spacious awareness’ to ‘awake awareness’
56:02 - Wonder, freedom, and joy in wisdom mind
01:02:14 - Postural yoga and pranayama in mahamudra
01:05:18 - Integrating ‘one-pointed awareness’ into the ‘field of awareness’
01:08:37 - Psychotherapy as a “preliminary” practice
01:10:42 - The “crazy yogi”: waking up without growing up
01:13:32 - The healing power of ‘open-hearted awareness’ in IFS (Internal Family Systems)
01:16:40 - The role of the guru in different traditions; “energetic transmission”
01:21:37 - Don’t stop halfway and come on in the water!
01:27:30 - Teaching vipassana in a nondual way
01:32:47 - Loch’s latest teaching- and personal inquiries
01:35:14 - Outro
What does nondual mean?
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