Mindfulness+ with Thomas McConkie

Andrew Holecek is an author, speaker, and humanitarian who offers seminars internationally on meditation, lucid dreaming, and the art of dying. Andrew’s books include Dreams of Light, Dream Yoga, and Reverse Meditation. He hosts the popular Edge of Mind podcast and is the founder of the Night Club community, a support platform for nocturnal meditations

In this episode, Thomas and Andrew discuss lucid dreaming, dream yoga, pain, neuroscience, all in the context of what Andrew calls “reverse meditation.” What is reverse meditation? In a word, it is bringing unwanted experience directly to the path of meditation. Listen in for new insights and some guided practice.

Also, you can find Andrew’s new book from Sounds True here.

Please support Mindfulness+ by sharing with a friend, leaving a review or making a tax-deductible donation to Lower Lights School of Wisdom. We’re grateful for your support!

Thomas reprises the ever-present theme of vulnerability in this episode. As we mature in life, our capacity to tolerate more disturbing experience tends to mature as well. We start to realize how much energy we’ve spent avoiding certain experiences that have been with us all along. Mindfulness practice reveals to us a deeper capacity we have to stay present and awake to whatever is arising. In this way, we begin to let go of the struggle to not feel.

If you feel fed by the show, please support Mindfulness+ by sharing with a friend, leaving a review or making a tax-deductible donation to Lower Lights School of Wisdom. We’re grateful for your support!

Want more guidance from Thomas? Come to our monthly online practitioners retreat. 

Have a practice question for Thomas? Leave a voicemail Voicemail. We would love to hear from you.

We all come with a particular disposition—a way we like to be and move in the world. Contemplative practice helps us attune to these subtle, soulful rhythms and move with greater kindness in our journey. Give yourself some space for this episode. Find a place where you can relax and just be. Savor the experience of coming home.

If you feel fed by the show, please support Mindfulness+ by sharing with a friend, leaving a review or making a tax-deductible donation to Lower Lights School of Wisdom. We’re grateful for your support!

Want more guidance from Thomas? Come to our monthly online practitioners retreat. 

Have a practice question for Thomas? Leave a voicemail Voicemail. We would love to hear from you.

Sometimes in life it can feel like what we need, what we’re searching and striving for is so hard to come by. Mindfulness practice reveals to us exactly the opposite truth: it does not take much at all to relax into a mindset of “more than enough.” Fully embodied, open-hearted and open to life, the contentment and fulfillment we believed was somewhere in the far-off future reveals itself to be always here and now.

Want to practice with Thomas? Join on Zoom from anywhere in the world for a monthly mini-retreat. Feeling called to a really deep dive? Join his 7-day intensive training in Scholls, Oregon from August 10th-17th.

In this and every moment, life invites us into a brand new experience at the edge of our knowing and our capacity. Too often we pretend like we know who we are and where we’re going. We then miss out on the precious experience of tenderness, where life reminds us that we have never, in fact, been here before. In this raw, exposed state, the possibilities are infinite.

Want to practice with Thomas? Join on Zoom from anywhere in the world for a monthly mini-retreat. Feeling called to a really deep dive? Join his 7-day intensive training in Scholls, Oregon from August 10th-17th.

Hello, Mindfulness+ fans! We're excited to let you know that Season 6 is coming next week!

In the meantime, if you're looking for other supports to practice, Thomas offers a monthly mini-retreat on Zoom. And if you really want to go deep, join Thomas and Lower Lights for a 7-day retreat in Scholls, Oregon, August 10th-17th. Learn more here. 

Drawing from ancient understandings from the Wisdom traditions to modern insights in developmental psychology and neuroscience, Thomas will continue to offer intimate, guided tours of cosmos, soul and psyche from his new headquarters in Boston! 

Want to practice with Thomas? Join on Zoom from anywhere in the world for a monthly mini-retreat. Feeling called to a really deep dive? Join his 7-day intensive training in Scholls, Oregon this August.

Kelly is a mindfulness trainer and author of The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You. She has developed mindfulness trainings in diverse places from the United Nations to San Quentin Prison. In this conversation, Kelly exudes dharma from every pore and offers a direct taste of the ancient practice of Yoga Nidra. This one is a special treat.  

Want to leave a voicemail for the team? Ask Thomas a practice question? Request a special topic for a future episode? Click here.

In our season finale, Thomas pays tribute to the recently deceased dharma master, Dr. Daniel Brown. Brown’s work is a superb example of Eastern practice meeting the psychological sophistication of the West. In this episode, taste what it means to re-parent the self, what it means to become the Mother of all beings.

It’s common in the modern world to speak of the need to “return to nature.” But from a contemplative perspective, we are Nature. We cannot leave nature, but we can forget who we are. When we remember our nature, we naturally take better care of ourselves, and better care of the planet that sustains us all.

So often in life, we tell ourselves that fear is a problem—that fear stops us from doing the things we most want to do. What about the wisdom of fear, though? Thomas shares a story of his friend who has made a living of encountering his fear everyday for over 40 years now. The result? Not a lack of fear, but the courage to act with fear fully present. Fearlessness.

What did the early Buddhists of China mean when they said, “Be the host of every situation?” In this episode, Thomas explores a sutra that likens mindful awareness to a “host” allowing innumerable “guests” to come and go through the inn. The trick: to let the guests who want to stay, stay, and to let the guests who want to go, go.

The mind prefers to have answers. When we don’t have answers, we feel anything from low-grade anxiety to full-blown panic. If we pay close attention to life, we find that no sooner do we know one thing than we realize there are even more things we don’t know. In short, the experience of “unknowing” is inescapable. What if, instead of spending all our energy avoiding the discomfort of unknowing, we opened up to it? What if unknowing is a gateway leading us to a new way of being human?

From an ordinary point of view, giving and receiving are opposites. In the “real world,” you give a little in order to get a little. Not so on the path of transformation. From a deeper perspective, giving and receiving are one reality, one movement. Listen to a moving account of citizens of the world giving to Ukraine with no hope of receiving something in return. In the words of Jesus, “if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit?”

“Overwhelm” is a technical term in mindfulness. It refers to the experience of not being able to mindfully process sensory experience moment to moment. When life gets too intense, our suffering multiplies. In this episode you can deepen your learning on the classic practice of “divide and conquer”: notice where the most overwhelm is occurring, make skillful adjustments, and you’re back in the game. For anyone serious about not suffering, this episode is a boon.

When we open up to the suffering on the planet, we soon realize that we, the “small self”, are not nearly big enough to contain it all. To really hold suffering in our heart and help to relieve it, we must get bigger—a move from the relative to the Absolute. In Buddhism, there is a Bodhisattva, or awakened being, who models just this: Kuan Yin (Chinese translation). Her name means “she who hears the cries of the world.” As a new war wages in Ukraine, it is an especially important moment to learn to get Big, to hold it together; to hear the cries of the world.

At a time in the not-so-distant past, you might have been involved in the building of a cathedral that took so long to complete, you would have never seen the finished product of your labors. Nevertheless, your participation was absolutely vital. This is a fascinating metaphor for the new reality humanity is giving rise to moment by moment. Thomas calls it “building heaven.”

When life throws challenges at us, it tests our capacity to be open, clear and present. Thomas recounts his glory days as a high school swimmer in this episode to point out a helpful technique for practicing when the going gets tough. If we’re clear where our mindful awareness tends to break down, we can “train to remain” in a more intelligent way.

If you think about virtually everything you do in a given day, you may come to a realization: “I do what I do because I want to get something out it.” We work to earn money, we exercise to stay fit, we meditate to feel good…it seems harmless enough. But there is a more subtle path available to us as human beings. In Suzuki Roshi’s words, we can live our lives with “no gaining idea.” When we have no gaining idea, we taste what it means to express our true nature—to be truly alive.

It’s not often you call someone “selfish” and mean it as a compliment. But prepare to be liberated from your misconceptions about what healthy selfishness actually is! In this episode, Thomas offers insights from the field of developmental psychology and coaches you on how to be the best kind of selfish in your life. You’ll be glad you listened. Interested in learning more about development? For information about an opportunity to join Thomas’s cohort program, go to www.lowerlightswisdom.org/spectra.