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The Art of Meditation

Original Course ~ 2016
Self-Guided Course

Program Fee
$90.00

Quietness isn’t just the absence of thought. Quietness is already happening before you try to be quiet. Meditation is the practice of acknowledging that there is quiet here already. ~ Adyashanti

Embark on a transformational journey in Adyashanti’s teachings on meditation. Based on his original live online course The Art of Meditation (2016), this self-guided course offers Adyashanti’s unique perspective and insightful guidance based on 15 years of practice followed by 20 years of teaching the art of meditation to thousands of people at all levels of experience. Whether you are called to explore meditation for the first time, or are a seasoned practitioner, this course will offer you guidance in:

      • Taking your existing meditation practice to an unprecedented level of depth and transformation.
      • Getting an essential orientation to meditation to avoid years of pitfalls.
      • Breaking the cycle of compulsive thought that leads to suffering.
      • Exploring the deeper intricacies and potentials of meditation.
      • Freeing yourself from conditioned emotional responses.
      • Becoming conscious of subtle realms of consciousness.
      • Accessing the peace and quiet always and already present.
      • Discovering the infinite ground of being.

This Course Includes:

  • Course Introduction that provides guidelines for maximizing your experience.
  • Four 2-hour recorded sessions of broadcasts from the live online course “The Art of Meditation” (2016). Sessions include talks followed by dialogues with original course participants. (Video stream and audio download.)
  • Session notes to help you remember and integrate the teachings from each session.
  • Three weekly exercises to help you apply the teachings during the weeks between sessions. (Video stream and audio download.)
  • Three guided meditations to help hone your meditation practice. (Audio download.)
  • A PDF of all Q&A (over 50 question and answers). A 47-page printable PDF that includes all the Session Notes as well as written Q&A between Adyashanti and the original course participants.
  • Audio MP3s of all the content that you can download to your computer or device* so you can revisit the teachings indefinitely.
  • True Meditation PDF - Adyashanti’s highly-regarded one-page teaching on “True Meditation.”

Course materials are accessible for six months from date of purchase. All audio and written materials are downloadable during this period.

*Downloading instructions for Apple mobile devices.

Recorded February 2016 in San Jose, California.
© 2016-2019 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.

You are welcome to gather with others to watch sessions, but the course materials are for registered participants only. We request that participants do not share any of this material on social media or other internet channels.

The Art of Meditation is a 4-week course exploring the deeper intricacies of meditation in a way that is rarely done. Meditation is not a science; it is an art that brings about the harmonization of body, mind, and spirit. And as an art form it must arise from the deepest wellspring of wisdom within each individual in a way that reveals the hidden symmetries of the ground of one’s being. While meditation is the most common of all spiritual practices, it is also the most widely misunderstood.

Meditation is not simply a form of spiritual practice, nor is it a form of endlessly seeking after the continuation of some desired experience. It is a means of directly encountering the immensity of being, that measureless reality which alone brings an end to the relentless search for greater and greater satisfaction.

Meditation is the art of freeing oneself from the tyranny of compulsive thought, along with the reactive and conditioned emotional responses that it habitually creates. Practical and creative thought is obviously a useful tool in everyday life; however, the vast majority of thought is simply the compulsive and conditioned act of the past imposing itself onto the present. Thought is in a constant and habitual relationship with itself, and this relationship creates the endless varieties of human suffering.

Try as it might, thought cannot escape from itself, and no matter how intelligent thought is, it is caught within a narrative web of its own making. This is true not only on an individual level but on a collective level as well. And it is for this reason that to find a way beyond the compulsive and destructive addiction to thought is of the utmost importance to us all.

In this course I explore meditation as more of an art form than a technique, where we allow meditation to arise all on its own (as only authentic meditation can) rather than trying to make it happen through self-centered effort and struggle. Each week of this course I give both accessible meditation guidance as well as explore the deeper esoteric aspects of meditation that relate to the seasoned meditator. I also provide guided meditation instruction as well as brief exercises that you can do to directly access the mind of meditation in daily life. This course also explores the deeper liberating potential of meditation as well as how to avoid its potential pitfalls.

I invite you to join me in this experiential exploration of The Art of Meditation.

~ Adyashanti

Topics Include:

  • Why Meditate?
  • The Importance of Posture & a Stable Foundation
  • Meditation as an Act of Exploration
  • Surrendering the Narrative
  • Shifting Attention from Content to Context
  • The Paradox of Meditation
  • The Use of Inquiry in Meditation
  • Subtle Realms of Consciousness
  • Not Battling the Mind
  • Opening to Quietness
  • Meditating While in Pain
  • Working with Unconscious Content
  • The Attitude of Curiosity
  • Letting Go of the Meditator
  • Abiding in Non-abiding
  • From Ego to the Infinite
  • Body Centers of Awakening
  • Speaking and Acting from Being

“True meditation is not knowing what it is or how to do it. The meditator isn’t there. You’ve gone beyond knowing what it is.”

“Meditation is going from attention on content to attention on context. We habitually obsess about the content of mind.”

“Meditation is the way to recognize the ultimate ground of your being and to carry it forth into daily living.”

“When the mind is stabilized, it can penetrate into the depths of consciousness and being. Both the conscious and unconscious mind start to unload.”

“The whole art of meditation is a paradox. From the absolute point of view, meditation is unnecessary; there is no need to arrive at what we already are.”

“You can’t disidentify from thought as long as you are struggling with thought.”

“Quietness isn’t just the absence of thought. Quietness is already happening before you try to be quiet. Meditation is the practice of acknowledging that there is quiet here already.”

“Your attitude means everything when it comes to meditation. I can teach you the nuts and bolts of meditation in 15 minutes, but of greatest importance is the attitude of curiosity you bring to your practice.”

“Meditation is the process of letting go. When you relax trying to be the witness or maintain the stance, the witness collapses. Then you fall into everything.”

“To realize yourself as awareness is to awaken from the mind.”

“Awareness through the heart is experienced as unity or oneness. There is an intuitive capacity to sense and know non-separation. You experience intimacy, love, and compassion.”

“As awakening deepens, the stillness and quiet sinks into the gut. Then we’re actually going even prior to unity. That’s what I call the infinite.”

“As you come into awareness, you realize that the witness isn’t there; there is only the witnessing.”

“What’s looking through your eyes is the infinite. It has no qualities, but it’s the mother of all qualities.”

“There is no end to the capacity for deeper wisdom, open-heartedness, intimate openness, and receptivity.”

“Eventually there is nowhere to abide.”