“A person can make himself happy or miserable regardless of what is actually happening outside just by changing the contents of consciousness” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

How you feel about life and living, and your happiness in general - ultimately depends on interpreting everyday experience. Your mind shapes every experience you have and there is a minimal return on happiness effort, trying to exert more control over external forces.

Time should be spent on ordering your inner world. This podcast is about doing just that.

My guest is Loch Kelly.

Loch is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn, and NYU to study how awareness training can enhance compassion and well-being. As a licensed psychotherapist, Loch has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians and practicing awareness psychotherapy in NYC for 30 years.

He has authored two books on meditation, Shift into Freedom The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness and The Way of Effortless Mindfulness A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life, which is the touchstone for our discussion

Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, and ancient wisdom traditions, the book is a practical guide to what he calls the next stage in the ongoing mindfulness movement: effortless mindfulness.

On the show we discuss these topics and more

Defining meditation
Defining awareness
Suffering and managing emotions
Why meditation can be hard
Who meditation is for
Terminology
Explaining Flow states and how it can be elicited in meditation
Differences between mindfulness meditation and effortless mindfulness
On effort and effortlessness
Types / Methods
Multiple "selves" and the mini-me
Glimpse practices
How to start - "here now" meditation

There is a lot more here, so give it a listen.

For show notes, resources, and more, visit www.larryweeks.com

Larry

Chapter 1. Doses Matter