Mindful Biology is on pause

as I await discernment.

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Anyone wanting a sense of the project can view free video classes or check out the blog archive. 

I also host  free meditation clubs and teach 'Mindfulness for Skillful Aging' classes at College of Marin.

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The framework below  will be part of Mindful Biology's future evolution, if any comes. It is my adaptation of spiritual principles from many traditions and teachers. 

Human Life unfolds within a continuous––but often unnoticed––background of "Creative Aliveness". This is the vibrancy that weaves and witnesses all experience. It is composed of both our sense of bodily energy (also called Qi, prana, orgone, etc) and our sense of awareness, consciousness, and so on. 

As we grow familiar with Creative Aliveness, we feel how it expresses different qualities in different bodily regions. Eventually, we connect with its mature forms:

• Spacious Knowing. We and society benefit from broad-minded, non-dogmatic comprehension, which borders on the non-conceptual. It centers around the head, brain, and major sense organs. In spiritual terms, it is flavored with awe and moves us toward transcendence—rising above the conventional stress of  Life.

• Embodied Caring. All beings are served by the boundless and courageous compassion we feel in the heart, lungs, and chest—our relational core. Spiritually, it draws us into the body and moves us toward immanence, encouraging us to love Life as it actually is, without judgment, resistance or craving. 

• Earthly Being. This is our deep, lived stability. Rooted in the lower belly, hips & pelvis, it connects us to the earth. Tangibly we feel earthbound via functions of the skeletal base, anti-gravity muscles, and the earthy activities of reproduction & elimination. Spiritually, it awakens our true nature as non-dual wholeness with all of Life and reality. 

Creative Aliveness, Spacious Knowing, Embodied Caring, & Earthly Being comprise the human being in mature development, beyond the pain of confusion, aversion, and greed. Together, they sculpt an inward shape and feel––a subtle body––which can be explored with contemplative practices. They also connect us with a foundational, mysterious quality I call Fertile Emptiness, experienced as the silent, pure potential of Life and closely related to what mystics in various traditions have called Ground of Being, Great Spirit, Light of Christ, etc. Beyond the reach of language, it is difficult to talk or even think about. Yet its presence and importance can be deeply felt.

As we grow into these mature realities, we connect with two vital qualities of mature humanity: 1. Intimacy with our values, gifts and soul. 2. Feeling how our individual being is interwoven with all of Life and the cosmos-at-large.

We can aid this growth by exploring the layers, flavors, and components of experience. For instance, a practice of feeling how space, time, matter, and energy are felt in the body helps us detach from the sense of tight, personal importance. We become aware of how we are both embedded in and woven by the larger field of Life and universe that surrounds us.

We can do something similar by going back to Mindful Biology's roots and feeling into the various functions and structures of the living body: breathing, bones, skin, digestion, etc.

None of this is new or unique. It is simply my way of working with contemplative traditions (primarily Quakerism and Buddhism) and contemporary science (mainly biology). I've enjoyed bringing the project to this point and remain open to going further with the public offerings. 

Time will tell...