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LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn

We are indeed pleased to be able to offer these wonderful excerpts from 100 Lessons in Mindfulness from Jon Kabat-Zinn's new book Letting Everything Become Your Teacher.  The 100 lessons are derived from Kabat-Zinn's international best-seller Full Catastrophe Living. Keep checking our site for new lessons. The first is on "Self-Motivation"

LESSON 1: Self-Motivation  

 

In order for meditation practice to take root in your life and flourish, you will have to know why you are practicing. How else will you be able to sustain non-doing in a world where only doing seems to count? What will get you up early in the morning to sit and follow your breathing when everybody else is snug in bed? What will motivate you to practice when the wheels of the doing world are turning, your obligations and responsibilities are beckoning, and a part of you decides or remembers to take some time for “just being”? What will motivate you to bring moment-to-moment awareness into your daily life? What will prevent your practice from losing energy and becoming stale or from petering out altogether after an initial burst of enthusiasm? 

Reprinted from LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn © 2009 by Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Reprinted by arrangement with the Random House Publishing Group.

Jon Kabat-Zinn on BetterListen!

Excerpt from "Global Mind Change" with Edgar Mitchell

Dr. Edgar Mitchell  -- the sixth person to walk on the moon – talks to us about what what it means to be a human and our place in the universe in his series of lectures, “Global Mind Change.”  Following is an excerpt from that series.

I like to suggest that there is a challenge here. Throughout most of human history we have strongly believed ourselves to be very physical beings -- rooted in our physicality, experiencing what we would like to think would be a wonderful life.  But quite often, experiencing a lot of trauma and pain and all of those things that go with being human, that is the opposite of having ups and ups and ups. And the question is why? We are rooted in our physicality and yearning for a spiritual experience and trying to ask ourselves: Why me? What’s this all about? And we particularly ask that question “Why me?” when things turn sour. 

I suggest to you that the way we need to look at it is that we are not really physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  We are in reality eternal creative beings creating a physical experience, and it takes quite a shift in mindset to get yourself around that one.  But tonight we’re going to give it a try.  For those of you who haven’t heard me before, why is this important?  What is it about now, that I would bring this up?  What is it about the contemporary period that we live in that perhaps makes this a vital alternative viewpoint to think about and to look at? I will tell you that in the last year I have seldom spoken with a person who did not think that something very strange was going on, who did not think that the world was in a rather major crisis and it seemed to be deepening.  I will suggest to you that in the last six months it has become almost overwhelming.  I can’t talk to anyone who doesn’t feel that way.  They seek me out and my telephone is ringing off the hook.  Things are happening in ways they haven’t happened before. 

Next, BetterListen! will offer and excerpt from Edgar Mitchell's recording "Science and the Inner Experience".

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

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The New Epicureans by Thomas Moore available on MP3 and iTunes

Recorded live in Europe, this instructive lecture is a great visit with the best-selling author of "Care of The Soul." His new book "A Life at Work," is published by Broadway Books/Random House. In this inspired talk Thomas first shares with the listener the roots of his work and approach to philosophy and living.

Thomas then goes on to explore how our sexually repressed society contributes to violence and dysfunction in the current age. Click here for Digital Liner Notes from the author. Author Bio and Links

Running Time: 78 minutes New Epicureans Preview	Buy From BetterListen! MP3 download $9.95 MP3 download info
	also available on iTunes

Like This - More Poems of Rumi - Coleman Barks

Through his rendering of Rumi’s poems and stories, Coleman Barks has established himself as perhaps the leading voice for Rumi’s work today. His warm and sensitive reading combines with the world-renowned musicianship of Hamza El Din (oud and tar) and Steve Coughlin (ney an hansuri) to create an enthralling listening experience. 

Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), is now recognized in the West as one of the greatest poets of all time . His works are charged with an unequalled blend of literary genius and spiritual wisdom 

No matter how often we listen to Rumi, each time is always the first time.

This program includes twenty two of Rumi’s most beautiful poems. Coleman Barks bio and links

Running Time: 73 minutes Like This - Preview	Buy From BetterListen!
	also available on iTunes

2009 Nautilus Silver Winner Pure Water - Poetry of Rumi with Coleman Barks and Eugene Friesen

BetterListen is proud to be the recipient of a 2009 Nautilus Silver Award for our recording of Pure Water - Poetry of Rumi with Coleman Barks and Eugene Friesen. 

Following are transcribed selections of Rumi poetry included on our audio program our Pure Water.

Inside water, a water wheel turns.

The star circulates with the moon. 

We live in the night ocean wondering, 

What are these lights?  

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This moment, this love comes to rest in me, 

many beings in one being.

In one wheat grain a thousand sheath stacks. 

Inside the needles eye a turning night of stars.

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I am so small I can barely be seen.  

How can this great love be inside me?  

Look at your eyes, they are small, 

but they see enormous things.

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Keep walking though there is no place to get to.  

Don’t try to see through the distance, that’s not for human beings.  

Move within but don’t move the way fear makes you move.  Move within.  

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Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, 

there is a field. I’ll meet you there. 

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.  

Coleman Barks Bio and Links

The Sacred Self Workshop by Marianne Williamson on mp3 and iTunes

Better Listen! is extremely proud to make available for the first time in digital format this inspirational and down-to-earth audio program.  The Sacred Self Workshop captures the essence of a great weekend recorded live at The Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

In this program, Marianne tells us that the purpose of our lives is to become the sacred, enlightened self, which already exists in each of us.

The ‘Sacred Self’ is the part of us that is serene and indestructible. By committing with heart to a new path we can begin to live our lives as an endless prayer. Marianne’s dynamic style helps us open ourselves to greater love, abundance and joy in our lives. Marianne Bio and Links

Running Time: 2 hours, 27 minutes Click here for Sacred Self Preview	Buy From BetterListen! MP3 download info
	also available on iTunes

The Educated Heart with Robert Bly

During this talk, Robert Bly gives a delicate and lively view of the fantastic flowering of feeling in the 12th century Provence. The feeling thought, developed of Arabic, Gnostic, and Albigensian sources, blossoms as love poetry famous at that time.

Bly distinguishes in this talk between the literal mode, the psychological mode and the mythological mode, and he locates the “Amor” or ecstatic love in the latter. That mythological mode of feeling led to Sufism among the Arabs.

When we hear the Provencal poetry he recites toward the end we recognize the terrible loss we suffered when these traditions were uprooted and destroyed.

Robert Bly Bio and links

Running Time: 58 minutes Click here for Educated Heart Preview	Buy From BetterListen! MP3 download info
	also available on iTunes