Practice Session 1— Noticing our patterns on-the-cushion

1. Welcome; What is “Embodiment” and “Off-the-Cushion” Practice?

Tina describes what she means by the terms “embodiment” and “off-the-cushion” and gives a context for doing this type of practice as an extension of our sitting meditation practice.

2. My own journey with embodiment

Tina describes her journey with embodiment, including her birth trauma, working with leaders in humanistic organizations, and learning to live her realization in daily life.

3. How this fits in the 4 Categories of Practice; Relationship to Sila

Tina describes how embodiment work fits with the categories of sitting practice, including: heart-based, focused attention, open monitoring, and self-transcending practices. She also talks about sila, the practice of cultivating a worldly life that is in integrity with our realizations on-the-cushion.

4. Transformation and Transcendence; The “Thinning of the ‘Me’”

Tina describes how one of two things is always happening in our practice on-the-cushion—either transformation of personality material, or contact with the transcendent when our meditation is going smoothly. This also applies to our daily life, and working with both aspects leads to a “thinning of the ‘me’” which is a thinning of our identification with the ego-self.

5. Using the other 15 hours a day; relationship to psychological work; “Spiritual Bypassing”

Tina describes how we can put our daily life to good use, by working with our patterns off-the-cushion in our ongoing life circumstances. She discusses how this relates to therapy, as well as the phenomenon of “spiritual bypassing,” in which a person pushes their patterns down to the unconscious or ignores them, instead of working to digest them permanently. Spiritual bypassing is seen in spiritual teachers and practitioners who may have genuine realization, but act in ways that are clearly ego-driven to the point that they do harm to others.

6. Our “Top 10 Hits”; Noticing our patterns on-the-cushion

Tina describes her method of encouraging people to notice their “Top 10 Hits,” which are the most frequent patterns that take a person off their meditation object over and over. These are the building blocks of the ego-self, which are so compulsive that when we try to meditation we can’t stay with our object. Rather than judging ourselves for this, or just pushing them down into the unconscious, by working with them skillfully they can thin our permanently and even dissolve completely.

7. Practice Session 1— Noticing our patterns on-the-cushion

Tina provides a guided meditation helping us to notice our patterns while meditating, so that we can begin to identify and understand them, as well as work with them off-the-cushion.

8. The Software Upgrade; Working with psychological material 

Tina describes how working with our patterns is like giving ourselves a “software upgrade” through our on and off-the-cushion work. Our patterns were our original “software program” that was instilled in us in childhood as the ego formed. Fortunately, we can work with this “program” to update so that we suffer less and are more free to know our deeper nature that is obscured by the patterns.

9. Working our patterns off-the-cushion; “Working a Thread”

Tina discussed how to “work a thread” of our patterns off-the-cushion in everyday life, making the most of those 15 hours a day that we are not on the cushion.

10. The 4 Spiritual Centers and 4 Instinctual Drives

Tina gives an overview of the instinctual drives (that all mammals have, including humans) that are part of what make the patterns so compelling and hard to let go of. She also describes how these patterns can ultimately support the “Enlightenment Drive” that compels us to practice and ultimately leads us back to our True Nature and the Ground of Being, that we are at our most fundamental.

11. The Enlightenment Drive; Relationship to Bodhicitta

Tina describes the Enlightenment Drive in more detail, and discusses how to cultivate and work with it. She also details how this relates to the practice of Bodhicitta, and how to use the Bodhicitta practice to fan the flame of our Enlightenment Drive.

12. Practice Session 2—Working with the centers on-the-cushion

Tina provides a guided meditation helping us work with the Instinctual Drives and Centers on-the-cushion, which can provide insights into our patterning and how it linked to these powerful drives.