Weekly Guiding Teacher Reflection

Dear Common Ground Friends,

I have appreciated over the years the value of dropping in simple questions from time to time. What is it like to be aware right now? What is this felt experience like? What is awareness revealing right now? Can it be ok just to feel this right now? It is both simple and quite radical to soften, expand, and include right here and now. Whether we are sitting with our eyes closed or right in the middle of life’s activities, questions like these can support us in standing right within the currents of our minds and our lives so that we might know the currents themselves. Awareness steadies the attention so that we might understand what the currents are made of. Again and again the mind gets swept away by the currents of thought or feeling. That is the way it is for human beings. Again and again we ask: What is this felt experience like? Can it be ok just to feel this? Or perhaps: What is needed to let this move? Mindfulness practice is not so much about achieving a particular state but about learning how to meet experience, how to meet the moments of our lives with skill and care.

Common Ground offers an Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation class three or four times each year. This June I will be teaching the next six-week class. The class will be held on six Tuesday evenings, June 16–July 21, from 7–8:30pm. You can register here. This class is intended for anyone curious about beginning a meditation practice, as well as those who already practice and wish to reconnect with the core practices and teachings. Together we will ask simple and profound questions in order to deepen our connection with the way things are, both in structured practice and in daily life. There will be guided meditation, discussion, time for questions, and optional home practice suggestions each week. This class is one of my favorite things to teach. I continue to feel inspired by the exceedingly simple instructions the Buddha offers us. It is a real privilege to do my best to distill those instructions for others and to feel our collective confidence in the path grow. I hope to see some of you there.

Shelly Graf
Co-Guiding Teacher