Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness

next-level practices—awareness of awareness, effortless mindfulness, and heart mindfulness—offer similar benefits in terms of stress relief and focus, they’re primarily designed to relieve the root of suffering caused by ego-identification and to help us access our natural potential for joy, wellbeing, and living from an embodied flow state.

Why stop there?

most types of meditation currently studied are only the introductory practices from traditions in which awakening is the goal.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? MARY OLIVER, FROM “THE SUMMER DAY”1

A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest

In fact, many of the opportunities for initial awakening come during periods of transition, crisis, loss, and chaos in people’s external and internal lives. This is a time when the ego-identification collapses because it can’t maintain control or handle life’s intensity.

Living an awakened life also requires waking-in, waking-out, and growing up.

culturally unacknowledged.

You can wake up, but still not grow up.