200: Recurring Themes
Awareness Explorers
In this episode, we respond to ChatGPT’s summary of the top 15 recurring themes throughout the 200 episodes of Awareness Explorers to date, and elaborate on the ways they point to the realization of our true nature as infinite awareness. • Includes a list of Brian’s Key Principles of Awareness, which can serve as a guided meditation. And here is a link to Pamela Wilson’s “Cave of the Heart” meditation that we talked about in this episode: Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature. To learn more about...
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199: Guru Pros and Cons
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we discuss gurus and spiritual teachers and explore the potential benefits as well as the potential risks involved in following a guru. • Includes a guided meditation leading us toward finding our inner guru and asking a deep personal question. Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature. To learn more about Awareness Explorers, and to listen to all of our podcast episodes, please visit: If you want to listen to the meditations alone, you can find all of our meditations excerpted either in this...
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198: Beth Miller, Guest Explorer
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we talk with Beth Miller, author of Awakening is Not for the Faint of Heart: Risk Everything for Love, about her profound shift in consciousness, the integration of therapy and spirituality, and insights from long COVID, which was ultimately a gift, providing deep healing and spiritual growth, and requiring intense presence, surrender, and trust in life. To learn more about Beth Miller, please visit: BethMillerPhD.com Or email her at bmillerphd@gmail.com Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true...
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197: Michael McCord, Guest Explorer
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we talk to Michael McCord, president of San Francisco Zen Center, on bringing Zen practices into daily life and work, and how enlightenment is seen as an ongoing process of increasing awareness, not a fixed end state to achieve. • Includes a guided meditation introducing the Zen practice of breath counting. To learn more about Michael McCord, please visit these San Franciso Zen Center pages: and on YouTube: Or email him at: michael.mccord@sfzc.org The Zen manual discussed in this episode is the Tenzo Kyokun (Instructions for the Cook). This site has...
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196: Stephen Zerfas, Guest Explorer
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we talk to Stephen Zerfas, co-founder of Jhourney, which offers retreats facilitating rapid access to jhana meditation states, described as positive feedback loops between attention and emotion, offering profound states of gratitude, peace and non-duality. • Includes a guided meditation focusing on relaxing the body while turning our attention to positive concepts such as gratitude and wishing for the well-being of all others. To learn more about Stephen Zerfas, please visit: and on X: @jhanatech The Oxford professor Stephen mentions in this episode is Shamil...
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195: How to Be with Bad News
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we discuss strategies for handling bad news as an awakening person, balancing awareness and action.. • Includes a guided meditation addressing the dichotomy between taking action and acceptance, and how to bring these two seeming opposites into a workable equilibrium. Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature. NEWS: Awareness Explorers has made the following top listener charts on Goodpods: # 6 in the Top 100 awakening All time chart # 8 in the Top 100 joy All time chart # 6 in the Top...
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194: Embracing the Middle Way
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we discuss the concept of the Middle Way and explore how to move beyond polarities in spiritual practice and daily life, thus finding a balance between extremes and recognizing the interconnectedness of all things. • Includes a guided meditation in which we bring two opposite energies together to sense how they are intertwined and to feel a balance and a gentle equilibrium as we use breath to weave the two together. Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature. NEWS: Awareness Explorers has made the...
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193: Kat van Oudheusden, Guest Explorer
Awareness Explorers
In this episode, we talk to Kat (Katrijn) van Oudheusden, author of Seeing No-Self, and Beyond Illusion, about discovering the illusion of separation, and her set of essential inquiries that use empirical investigation of direct experience to point to our true nature. To learn more about Kat van Oudheusden, please visit: Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature. NEWS: Awareness Explorers has made the following top listener charts on Goodpods: # 6 in the Top 100 awakening All time chart # 7 in the Top...
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192: Samuel Jacob, Guest Explorer
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we talk to Samuel Jacob, a contemporary spiritual teacher specializing in radical self-inquiry. He emphasizes the immediate availability of awareness, completeness, and happiness in the present moment. • Includes a guided meditation focusing on being aware that all appearances arise “here” without effort, and emphasizing the relaxation of any attempt to arrive here, which is where the I, awareness is. To learn more about Samuel Jacob, please visit: or on YouTube: @being-happiness or on Instagram: @samueljacobness Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap...
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191: Inward and Outward Paths
Awareness Explorers
In this episode we explore the concepts of the inward and outward facing paths. They are presented as different approaches in various traditions that, if pursued to their core, eventually arrive at a direct experience of a unified life. • Includes a guided meditation that extends the ancient neti neti practice of excluding all concepts of what you conceive yourself to be, and then re-including all so-called outer experience, thereby seeing that all is awareness and not separate from your true self. Short phrases to help you get a handle on the inward and outward facing paths: ...
info_outlineIn this episode we talk to Stephen Zerfas, co-founder of Jhourney, which offers retreats facilitating rapid access to jhana meditation states, described as positive feedback loops between attention and emotion, offering profound states of gratitude, peace and non-duality.
• Includes a guided meditation focusing on relaxing the body while turning our attention to positive concepts such as gratitude and wishing for the well-being of all others.
To learn more about Stephen Zerfas, please visit:
https://www.jhourney.io/
and on X:
@jhanatech
https://x.com/jhanatech?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
The Oxford professor Stephen mentions in this episode is Shamil Chandaria. To learn more, please visit his YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com/@ShamilChandaria
And the books recommended in this episode:
Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhānas, by Leigh Brasington
The Path to Nibbāna. How Mindfulness of Loving-Kindness Progresses through the Tranquil Aware Jhānas to Awakening, by David C. Johnson
Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.
NEWS:
Awareness Explorers has made the following top listener charts on Goodpods:
# 6 in the Top 100 awakening All time chart
# 8 in the Top 100 joy All time chart
# 6 in the Top 100 awareness All time chart
# 8 in the Top 100 consciousness All time chart
# 48 in the Top 100 meditation All time chart
To learn more about Awareness Explorers, and to listen to all of our podcast episodes, please visit:
https://www.awarenessexplorers.com/
If you want to listen to the meditations alone, you can find all of our meditations excerpted either in this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLThffcko0gAVvivvVVGNfQgJxbWB6dF6Z
Or on our Awareness Explorers website:
https://www.awarenessexplorers.com/meditations
To Support Awareness Explorers, please consider clicking the "Donate" button on any AwarenessExplorers.com page, or becoming a Patreon supporter:
https://www.patreon.com/awarenessexplorers
NOTE: If you are a Patreon supporter and have not been receiving our bonus material, please check to make sure that the email address you have on Patreon is an active one.
To learn more about Jonathan Robinson and Brian Tom O'Connor, please visit
https://findinghappiness.com/
and
https://www.playawarenessgames.com/
You can listen to all of our episodes on this YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLThffcko0gAXyaArC4OyY0y84CZ8uSb_n
Enjoy,
Jonathan and Brian