Beyond Mindfulness: With Dustin DiPerna

Despite the ease with which we can access different forms of meditation, it is not so easy to find a sort of map or guidebook, to help the practitioner understand what is what. What are certain meditations useful for? Where do they fall short? Is there a purpose or direction to meditation as a whole? Just as there has always been, an entire universe of possibilites exists, awaiting each and every human to deepen their meditative experience. Use this insightful talk to find the answers to these questions and embark on a journey of Awakening.

Transcript

Beyond mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a hot buzzword at the moment.

A quick survey of popular culture,

And we see mindfulness practice being offered everywhere from Google's campus in Silicon Valley to the hallowed halls of many an elite university.

I am in full support of any practice that helps people come into deeper contact with their own direct experience,

As long as it helps the practitioner bring forth a fuller sense of care and presence in the world.

Basic mindfulness meditation has the capacity to insert a fuller sense of conscious awareness into the lives of those who practice it.

And because of the positive results I've seen it have in those I love and know,

I generally endorse it.

With that said,

However,

It is vital that those who practice mindfulness,

As well as the larger interest of population,

Come to understand that mindfulness is the tip of the iceberg when considering what is possible in meditation.

Throughout history,

The great saints and sages of both East and West have always confessed the path that leads beyond mindfulness to authentic spiritual awakening.

This means that today,

Just as there has always been,

There exists an entire universe of possibility waiting for each and every human being as they begin to deepen their meditative experience.

At the core of that possibility,

There's a fundamental promise and potential to wake up.

Westerners have been dabbling in meditative practices borrowed from Eastern spirituality,

At least as far back as ancient Rome.

Even more recent waves of interest to beat generation and many of the so-called hippies took meditation even further with an active and often public exchange that brought Eastern practitioners to the West and sent truth seekers to the East.

What is remarkable at this point in history is that meditation,

Once reserved for the fringes and most progressive pockets of society,

Has now made its way into the mainstream.

If we define meditation as the conscious and intentional practice of turning attention inward to study the phenomena of one's own experience,

Then without doubt there are hundreds if not thousands of meditative techniques available to any one of us today.

With a simple search on the internet,

One finds scores of recorded and guided practices,

Meditation apps for smartphones,

And other forms of engagement that can introduce one to certain forms of practice.

In this way,

Meditative techniques are more readily available today than ever before.

The fact that it's not uncommon to find meditation in both the classroom and the boardroom is cause for celebration.

And at the same time,

We are faced with an interesting dilemma.

With all of the content available,

How are we to start to make sense of the plethora of practices at our fingertips?

Despite the ease with which we can access different forms of meditation,

What's not as easily available is any sort of map or guidebook to help the practitioner understand what is what.

What are certain meditations useful for?

Where do they fall short?

Is there a purpose or direction to meditation as a whole?

Because mindfulness is sweeping the world by storm,

It seems like a perfectly fitting place to begin sorting through some of this confusion.

What is mindfulness?

What is it useful for?

Where does it fall short?

As I see it,

Mindfulness is a gateway drug to authentic spiritual realization.

For those of you who have not been exposed to the basics,

Mindfulness meditation is a practice of intentionally turning one's attention to the direct experience of the present moment without any judgment.

When the methodology is applied correctly,

Mindfulness meditation does a few things quite well.

First,

It brings the practitioner into direct contact with thoughts,

Emotions,

And sensations as they arise in the immediacy of experience.

Mindfulness meditation also brings the gift of training the practitioner to pay full attention to that which is arising without distraction.

In our modern culture of short attention spans,

Instantaneous distraction and perpetual efforts define satisfaction and meaning in a superficial material world outside of ourselves.

Mindfulness practice provides a healthy antidote to a world desperately in need.

We all could use a bit fuller contact with the depths of our body,

Emotion,

And thoughts.

And to be able to do this in a persistent way from moment to moment without distraction is a skill almost any human being would benefit from acquiring.

When I speak about and teach meditation,

I often explain that there are two types of meditation.

There is meditation with a lowercase m and meditation with an uppercase m.

Meditation with a lowercase m refers to any practice that allows the practitioner to intentionally engage his or her own direct experience.

Self-sacrificed mindfulness practice falls into this category.

Although it is true that there are many kinds of meditation with a lowercase m,

All leading to their own diverse array of states,

Meditation with a capital M is and has always been about waking up.

That means that through the process of capital M meditation,

We not only learn to become more available to the present moment,

But within that present moment,

We expand our field of direct knowing,

Experiencing,

And feeling to come to rest as the heart of reality itself.

Waking up in this way reveals a reality even more profound,

More whole,

And more enchanted than the one we tend to find ourselves in in our usual everyday consciousness.

Whereas a basic mindfulness practice allows us to be more present within the container of our everyday experience,

Waking up takes us beyond the mere present moment of thought,

Sensation,

And emotion to come into the direct experience of a non-separate awareness,

Totally open,

Spacious,

And free.

This fresh and lucid awareness is a perfect oneness blended with all of life.

So how does the meditative path beyond mindfulness actually unfold?

At its core,

Waking up is a process of removing all the things that obscure our ability to perceive an ultimate reality which is already here.

That means that in addition to the fundamental gross and subtle layers of reality that tend to create separation in our experience,

Thought,

Emotion,

And the physical body,

The process of waking up progressively reveals deeper and deeper layers of reality.

After becoming aware of the body,

Thoughts,

And emotions,

Awareness deepens to notice the moment to moment arising of a personal identity,

Bundled with all of its personality traits,

Likes,

And dislikes.

As the path continues,

We become aware of the experience of the entire space-time matrix,

No longer confining our awareness to the conventions of causality and spatialization.

As waking up progresses even further,

We become aware of the subtlest layers of information processing that create a basic split of subject and object.

As these layers of one's own experience become familiar,

We begin to notice the fundamental self-contraction into individual consciousness,

Releasing us from the fundamental and erroneous assumption that there is a meditator doing the meditation in the first place.

At each progressive layer of realization,

We learn to disentangle awareness from the previous layer of identity,

Even as we affirm a deeper layer of awareness that stays.

Ultimately,

What results is a direct knowing,

A gnosis or jhana,

Of naked reality in its purity.

This naked reality exists without a shred of artificial activity overlaid on top of it.

This isn't just being aware of the present moment in the conventional sense.

This is far beyond a mere conceptual labeling of thought as thought,

Or emotion as emotion.

At this level of practice,

Awareness is recognized as the indivisible ground of being,

Simply and effortlessly arising in,

Through,

And as every form and every layer of seemingly separate identity.

This layer of recognition reveals a fullness of life.

One comes to know reality as an ocean of awareness love that saturates absolutely everything.

To be sure,

Waking up in this way is a journey well worth embarking on.

And so let me now return to the opening point of this short essay.

I am in total support of more and more people coming into fuller and more regular practice of mindfulness meditation.

There is no doubt that mindfulness is a healthy and welcomed antidote to many of the personal and social ills that we face as a modern and postmodern culture.

But if nothing else is gleaned from this article,

Please remember one thing.

There is a pathway beyond mindfulness that leads to a direct realization of an ultimate,

Non-separate,

Unbounded identity.

This awareness is sourced in love,

Made of love,

And it leads to action that leaves a trail of love wherever it manifests.

There are many great lineages and teachers who can lead you down the path beyond mindfulness.

If you want to go even deeper in your practice,

Reach out to me.

Either I'll be able to help you directly,

Or I will be able to point you to the teachers and teachings that might be a good fit for you.

If you are one of those lucky souls who have already seen benefits in your life from a basic mindfulness practice,

Know that there is more to come.

The path beyond mindfulness is more full,

More complete,

And more deeply satisfying than you could ever imagine.

Dustin DiPierna,

Occidental California.

Www.

Dustindipierna.

Com.

Reviews

Good call , thank you 🙏

Excellent. Excellent work here. Great descriptions. Wonderful flow. So powerful and informative. ❤️ Thank you.

As I do not believe in coincidences; rather that everything in my experience unfolds as it should, I was brought to this meditation for a reason, and I will accept the invitation to learn more. Thank You 🙏

Thank you. I read Streams of Wisdom and appreciate your view of the territory of Wilber’s maps. The distinction of having a vantage point perspective and a state/realm awareness is blowing my mind. Have you found an inner connection or knowing with others like yourself? There must be a causal or non-dual network that simply needs to be recognized. Blessings.

Excellent talk. Thanks so much

I find so much love and joy in my Meditation... it touches my heart and my soul.

Excellent, he organises with simplicity and grace...

Excellent. I’ll look for more.
Thank you.

Concise, vibrant. I lov it

Thank you, Dustin. It is encouraging to know there is a path on from mindfulness. I am drawn again and again to loving kindness meditations, searching for that love which is the ground all being. Your talk is pointing that way, as I hope will be the course with Ken Wilbur and yourself, which I have joined today. Thank you again.

Very insightful, thank you 🙏

If you have been doing mindfulness for a while, this 12 minute lecture is worth hearing.

Very interesting and well presented. Thank you

Thank you. I agree mindful is the beggining of a wonderful journey into the present.

We need more walking oceans. More Love. More Turquoise

Very interesting thank You Namaste 🙏🏻

Informative for all levels of meditation practioners.

Seek and you shall find..

As close as my Thai Buddhist practice as I ever been here in the US life can be chaotic and if you not my fault I’ll be aware of every day life it can get into you pretty easy I bow to you Dustin.