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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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Great new lectures from Marianne Williamson available on mp3

Better Listen! is proud and excited to offer these insightful and brand new titles from Marianne Williamson. Recorded live at her current lecture series In Los Angeles and other recent events, Marianne is a pleasure to listen to.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to our newsletter to stay in touch with the latest offerings from Marianne.

The new releases include, The Spirit of A New World, Work and Career and From Out of The Blue are now available for sale via digital download in the BetterListen! store,

NOTE: The first 3 titles in the new Marianne Williamson Lecture Series are now live on iTunes!

Of course, we also have our 3 classic Marianne Williamson / BetterListen! titles available for instant access MP3 download as well. Enjoy! 

Click here for our complete list of  BetterListen!, instant access, mp3 titles from Marianne.

Excerpt from "Don't Bite the Hook" with Pema Chodron

Once again, we are pleased to offer you a transcribed excerpt from Pema Chodron's recording "Don't Bite the Hook".

So -- what is the significance of the teaching on how to work with anger? Well, it has tremendous significance because again and again, whenever we’re challenged, there is opportunity to open to the difficulty and let the difficulty make us more compassionate, more wise. Or the opposite, which is that when things are difficult, the chances instead of it making us more afraid and therefore more vulnerable or more subject to being able to catch the anxiety in the atmosphere and spin off into wanting to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and the tendency for aggression to escalate and violence to escalate under challenge is much greater. I wanted to begin by giving the Dharma talks on the sixth chapter of Shanti Deva -- chapter on working with anger. So, for Shanti Deva teaching as he did in the eighth century in India a long, long time ago, to Yolanda University in India to a entire packed audience of celibate monks, you might wonder what the relevance of such a teaching would be today, and all I can say is at the level of human neurosis, nothing has changed much. And so what he has to say and the way he… you’ll see, it actually has humor in it where he keeps pointing out example after example of our foibles of how we justify our anger and all the many, many situations that make us angry. But it’s more than just like losing our temper or something. We’re talking now about finding ourselves in a situation where many, many people are feeling more vulnerable and the situation is more volatile.

And so, it might be that in the years to come, you might look back and think of it as something like, that was teaching. That was really -- because I have started to use it every day of my life in difficult situations -- has made it possible for me to be become more compassionate, to become more tenderhearted and loving rather than more afraid and full of aggression and wanting to strike out and protect me and mine. You might just look back and say, “This was really important” because right now the key thing is whether it was a difficult situation in the world or not; it’s to use the difficult situations of everyday life to wake us up, to awaken our compassion. To make us feel our kinship with each other rather than to buy into polarization. So Shanti Deva says a lot about our mindset. The mindset of friend and foe. Like and dislike. For me and against me. And how that very mechanism of buying so tightly into this notion of the good people and the bad people -- the ones that I like and the ones I don’t like and how we get so invested in this and how this is  “the kindling” or “the fuel” for anger and aggression to escalate. So from this point of view, the teachings are on non-violence and on non-aggression. And you could think of that as a synonym for the word patience. 

Click here to check out the Shambhala Audio Complete Collection.

Click here to listen to a preview of this recording.

Have A Happy (and Mindful) Holiday

We are indeed proud to release "The World of Relaxation: A Guided Mindfulness Practice for Healing" with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. Click here for more info and to hear a sample. 

The audio only version is available now on our website and is currently being featured on iTunes. Look for the DVD version in early 2010. 

Also, please take advantage of our "mindful" free title of the month with the esteemed yoga instructor Beryl Bender Birch.

Excerpt from "Perfect Just as You Are" with Pema Chodron

Pema Chodron once again brings us her teachings with an excerpt from her recording "Perfect Just as You Are".

So often the question is asked: why are they called limitless? Have you asked that question? Because these four remarkable qualities are, generally speaking, traditionally called the four limitless qualities or the four limitless ones or the four boundless qualities. But boundless or limitless, it’s because we start with what we have, and it’s in a limited form, and that isn’t meant to be a criticism. It’s so valuable to touch in on these qualities as you already experienced them. But it’s limited in the sense that it’s love for one or two people, or four or five people, compassion for one person or three or four, a whole category of people and ability to rejoice in the same way or stay open. Have a sense of equanimity in the same way. It starts limited. I would be surprised if we weren’t all in the limited category. I know I am.

But the good news is you find what’s limited and you connect with it, and you contact it, and its potential is limitless. Which is to say, what starts as a feeling of free-flowing love for Fido, if you give your compassionate attention to this feeling of free-flowing love, and you give your compassionate attention to when it gets blocked, then basically by working with these two aspects of what we already have and where it’s blocked, the capacity to love is limitless. Which is to say a description of enlightenment would be someone who actually loved everyone and had compassion or could feel the pain of everyone, and rejoice in the good fortune of everyone, and didn’t shut their heart or mind to anyone. That makes you realize how far we are away from that. So we say, we mouth the words “all sentient beings”, but we’re not at all yet. All is a little far away from where most of us find ourselves, all sentient beings. And if you doubt that, all you have to do is, you know, just start going through these categories and see if you actually have love for all sentient beings. How about your boss, or your child, or your parent, or your partner, or the difficult people? As long as it isn’t all, then it’s in some way limited. So I would say that you could be a pretty wide-awake realized person and still be in the limited category because limitless means all, everyone. And those of you who choose to take the bodhisattva vow at the end of this course, you actually make an aspiration that you could stay that open to all sentient beings. Recognizing that you’re in the limited category right now, you nevertheless make the strong aspiration to be able to move in the direction of a completely open attitude -- being able to love and feel the pain and rejoice in all.

So I want to say one last thing and then open it up for some questions. This again comes from Ken McCloud’s book. If you ask the question: where does this love come from? Where does this compassion come from? Where does the ability to rejoice or feel joy come from? Where does equinimity come from? You think I have the answer, don’t you? Well, I actually am going to give an answer, but I’m not sure that I have the answer. I haven’t mentioned the “B” word. The bodhichitta word yet. But these four qualities are, if we cultivate these four remarkable, healing qualities, we are cultivating what’s called bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is a -- traditionally -- it’s said it’s the spontaneous wish that there not be suffering in the world and that people not suffer, and the wish to be able to help alleviate that suffering. And it starts limited. That you wish for certain beings not to suffer and you wish to be able to alleviate the suffering of certain beings but it has this limitless capacity so that the bodhisattva is one which is a synonym for the word warrior. Courageous, compassionate warrior. The bodhisattva is one, who in their full-blown mode, has that wish that all beings not suffer. All. 

Click here to check out the Shambhala Audio Complete Collection.

Click here to listen to a preview of this recording.

Excerpt from "Only the Light of the Moon..." with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

We are delighted to be able to offer an excerpt from this rare recording with the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach from a talk titled "Only the Light of the Moon Can Create a New World."

When God created the world, the sun and the moon had the same light, according to our tradition.  Then the moon came before God and says to God, “It just isn’t fair -- two kings have the same power.”  So God says to the moon, “OK. Make yourself smaller.”  So in the way of the world, the Sun people, they say God is punishing the moon for the chutzpah, for the audacity; God created you this way so stick to it, forget it.  But the real people know the moon is right, you know there cannot be two cooks in the kitchen. No matter how much there is always the same light is the world?  I want you to open your hearts.  You know what the moon was saying to God: “Is this all you can give the world, the light of the sun, where you see only the outside? Isn’t there a deeper light available -- something so much deeper?” All God says is, “You are the one who will do it.”  

What is the first sign of the real inside person?  You know outside people -- they are always the same. Either they love you or they hate you. When they love you they are always like, “Hi. Are you God?”  So stupid, so meaningless.  The moon people change all the time.   One day I love you, one day I can’t stand you.  One day I am full, one day I am not shining at all.  You see, the more real it is, the more I have to say it every second.  I want you to know I had a great Rabbi, my teacher, he says to me, “If you ever want to be anything in the world, then it has to be clear to you. Whatever you knew yesterday is meaningless today.”  You know friends, I am sure it’s clear to you, God is not a yenta --  you know what a yenta is, someone who says the same thing a hundred times and the way the yenta is saying it could be a he or a she, the way they say it like it’s the first time they are saying it. God cannot stand the same thing twice. 

The sun is always the same, the moon.  You know every day, every day a different light is coming down from heaven. Every day God needs different things from us.  You know one of the great Rabbis passed away.  And his children came to the holy visionary (I am just throwing names at you), and he says to them, “What was the most important thing for your father?” so they said, “For our father, the most important thing is what you do right now.”  You know most people have those general ideas -- they know what to do forever -- but when it comes to the moment they have no idea what to do with it.  

I know every week is Shabbos; I know every year is Rosh Hashanah; I know every year is Yom Kippur, good; but what are you doing right now? And usually they always do the wrong thing because they are not in tune with the moment, special privilege.  You know something? You can be the greatest scholar in the world and not know. You know sometimes a person asks you a question and what they need right now you will never know.  You know it’s so deep to know.  What are you supposed to do right this minute?

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Bio and Links

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