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COURSE

Beyond The Suffering Self

With Jared Featherstone

One can practice meditation or yoga daily, take the right supplements, and exercise regularly, yet still suffer deeply. Even with relatively stable life circumstances, one might return again and again to a core-level dissatisfaction. Despite sincere efforts, patterns of unease repeat. The problem is that most suffering inevitably comes down to one, often-overlooked factor: how one defines the self. Join teacher Jared Featherstone for a 6-day course that will investigate the suffering caused by a narrow, limited view of the self and the liberation possible when one is able to experience an expanded, interconnected self. The course is designed to facilitate both a conceptual understanding and the direct experience of a spacious self through the following means: Vipassana (open awareness meditation), metta (loving-kindness meditation), dharma talks/discussion, and meditative self-inquiry. Day One: Sources of the Separate Self • Why do we have such a strong feeling of being separate? Where does this come from? • Darwinism, capitalism, consumerism, dualism, and other stories • Effects of internal rhetoric/inner speech Day Two: Implications of the Separate Self • What results from this assumption of separation? • Competition, fear, and the lack of compassion • Invisible ecologies at work • Emphasis on winning Day Three: Sources of the Unified Self • What is the basis of a unified, interdependent self? • Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, mystical traditions • ecology and quantum mechanics Day Four: Implications of the Unified Self • What happens if we accept interconnection, relationship, and wholeness as our baseline instead of disconnection, competition, and fragmentation? • Work, family, personal goals, purpose • Transformations of suffering Day Five: Decentralizing of Awareness and Care • Where are the lines drawn? How can we remove the boundaries to compassion? • Practices of expansion, inclusion, and nonjudgment • Opening and reopening of the heart • Mudita: the art of sympathetic joy Day Six: The Oceanic Self in daily life • How can we live from this unified place if our outer lives are based in separation? • The two truths: relative and absolute • Transforming work, family, goals • Shifting out of resistance and non-acceptance • Accepting the changing states of consciousness

This course uses meditation and contemplative inquiry to help participants understand and experience a unified, interconnected self.

12 Days

20 students

5.0 stars

20 min / day

English

About this course

Meet your Teacher

Jared Featherstone

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Harrisonburg, Virginia

Jared Featherstone, PhD, has been practicing meditation for over 28 years and teaching mindfulness for 15 years. His teaching is informed by Buddhist, Taoist, and Vedanta traditions, along with his published research on mindfulness and learning. He is certified through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach's Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, and he is a member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. He is a university professor of interdisciplinary studies, specializing in mindfulness-based pedagogies, integration of self knowledge, metacognition, internal rhetoric, attention literacy, and reflective writing.

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12 Days

20 students

5.0 stars

20 min / day

English

Lesson 1

Talk: Sources Of The Separate Self

This talk explores some of the sources that contribute to a sense of a separate, suffering self. The following topics will be covered: -Why do we have such a strong feeling of being separate? Where does this come from? -Darwinism, Capitalism, Consumerism, Dualism, and other stories -Effects of internal rhetoric/inner speech

Lesson 2

Guided Meditation

This is a guided insight meditation practice with an emphasis on expanding the felt experience of self. This practice is meant to complement the Day One talk and uses breath, body, and sound to quiet the ego and experience spaciousness.

Lesson 3

Guided Meditation

The guided meditation for week two involves resting in wide open attention, non-differentiation between mental and physical phenomena, resting in awareness, letting go of binary evaluations of pleasant or unpleasant, sensing space around you, and tuning into the silences between sounds or thought forms. The practice is intended to help participants experience an interconnected sense of self.

Lesson 4

Dharma Talk

The talk examines how cultural ideologies and personal experiences create a pervasive sense of separation, reinforced by screen-mediated communication and fear of real-time interaction. This assumption of separateness fosters competition, defensiveness, and diminished compassion, obscuring our interdependence and the ecological reality of our interconnected selves. Recognizing this interconnectedness—what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing”—dissolves barriers and opens the way to peace, love, and understanding.

Lesson 5

Guided Meditation

This guided meditation is a metta practice designed to expand kindness and compassion beyond the individual self to widening circles of life, putting us in touch with a boundless feeling of self. Phrases and images are used to help participants feel a sense of boundless compassion and ease.

Lesson 6

Dharma Talk

This talk explores the ways in which various contemplative traditions and teachers teach the idea of non-duality or ultimate interconnection. We consider Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, along with connections from the sciences such as ecology and quantum mechanics.

Lesson 7

Guided Meditation

This guided meditation features a body scan to release tension in the body, imagery to gladden the mind, and widening circles of loving kindness practice. The practice is designed to enable the meditator to feel the interconnectedness with others, quieting the sense of a separate, isolated self.

Lesson 8

Dharma Talk

This dharma talk elaborates on the two truths, relative and absolute, as a way to understand and embody a more expansive sense of self. The talk is also framed by common student questions about the difference between interdependence and codependence and how personality types (introvert, extrovert) influence the self.

Lesson 9

Guided Meditation

This meditation is a fusion of Vipassana, or open awareness practice, and metta (lovingkindness practice). In combining these practices, the meditator can experience two related methods of experiencing a more expansive sense of self.

Lesson 10

Dharma Talk

This talk continues to discuss practical applications of insights about the nondual, interconnected nature of the self. We consider ways in which we might move beyond the limitations of the suffering self as we navigate daily struggles. We unpacked some life situations from both the viewpoint of the small self (wave) and from the viewpoint of the large self (ocean).

Lesson 11

Guided Meditation (Metta And insight Practice)

This is a guided meditation that integrates metta and insight practices into one meditation. By bringing these together and emphasizing the interconnectedness of inner and outer experiences, the meditation is designed to enable listeners to feel a sense of nondual awareness.

Lesson 12

Dharma Talk

In this talk, I review the major course themes, insights, and applications to daily life. As the course title suggests, the goal of the practices and talks of this course is to enable listeners to experience a more expansive, interconnected feeling of the self.