Meditation and Beyond
In Meditation and Beyond you will discover a uniquely different approach to meditation. There are two traditional aims of meditation. The first is cultivating a healthy human life. The second is transcending our limited day-to-day consciousness to discover our true self and its extraordinary qualities of human flourishing. Our first session begins by focusing on two quick and sure methods of calming the mind. Whenever your mind is out of control, these will be your go-to practices.one that is simple, surprisingly effortless, and goes directly to the essence of meditation. The first aim of meditation is to diminish, stress, calm the mind, decrease reactivity, and improve the quality of our relationships. The second aim of meditation is the heart and true essence of meditation. This approach cuts through the limitations of day-to-day living and reveals the precious gold of human life - a sustained serenity, natural wisdom, unchanging happiness, and boundless freedom. . We learn how to meditate in an entirely new and effortless way. Let’s join together on the journey of a lifetime. If you are ready, you will discover life’s treasures.
May I suggest you refer to my latest book, Meditation and Beyond, available through Amazon as support and more for these podcasts. you may also find further resources on my website: www.elliottdacher.org
Episodes
57 episodes
Unraveling the Monkey Mind
We weren’t born with a restless mind. We arrived in this world spacious, open, and untouched – like awareness itself. So how did that vast clarity become a chattering “me”? What silent shift pulls us from our natural wholeness into the frantic ...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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18:39
The Habit That Made the Monkey Mind
Have you ever wondered why your mind refuses to sit still—why thoughts surge, swirl, and rehearse themselves as if on an endless loop? The answer isn’t mysterious or psychological jargon. It comes down to one simple, ancient habit: the mind’s i...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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18:16
Discovering the Nature of Mind
Behind the restless flow of thoughts lies a vast, silent field of awareness – the natural mind that precedes and sustains all experience. We live mostly within a fragment of this wholeness, mistaking our conditioned patterns, stories, and ident...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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19:42
Bottom-Up – Top-Down
A question that all meditators confront is how to stabilize the qualities we experience in our natural state – serenity, spontaneous realizations, freedom from conditioning, and a natural simplicity and ease. These qualities often appear only a...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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18:13
Freedom from the Known
We are born with a simple, clear, and open awareness. Yet, this pristine consciousness is short lived. As we navigate life, our experiences – linked to external approval or criticism – progressively reduce our scope of consciousness to limited ...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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20:32
Where Stillness Waits: Beyond Circumstantial Calm
We have all experienced moments of circumstantial calmness – whether through a relaxing walk in nature, immersion in art and beauty, or through music, yoga, intimacy, meditation, and other such events that can calm mind and body. These moments ...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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19:07
The Peak Experience
A peak experience is a fleeting moment of profound inner peace, harmony, flow, and oneness. It’s T.S. Eliot’s image of children playing innocently in the apple tree, Wordsworth’s moment of splendor in the grass, or you and I “lost” in nature, w...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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21:21
The Vanishing ‘I’: Finding Freedom in "Otherness"
Shantideva, a famous 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk, shared with us a very wise realization: "All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others." When...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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23:31
Liberation on Arising: The Secret of Mental Stillness
"Self-liberation on arising" describes the natural dissolution of thoughts, feelings, and sensations when the mind refrains from grasping, elaborating, or fixating on them. Mental appearances arise and pass naturally, but fixation extends their...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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18:10
This Precious Life
"This Precious Life" explores the human journey from the expansive, limitless consciousness of childhood, to the constricted identity shaped by societal demands and ego, and in fortunate ones the return to the precious essence of an expanded co...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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20:14
The Gap: Glimpses of Essence
This podcast explores the distinction between two aspects of self: the essential self, characterized by unconditioned awareness present from birth, and the personal (ego) self, a constructed identity shaped by experiences and soci...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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18:46
Virtual Reality to True Being
Simply stated, virtual reality is an experience that on first glance appears real but on further examination is found not to be real. The experience seems real, looks real, and sounds real, but it is isn’t. It doesn't appear in the manner in wh...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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20:40
Zooming In – Zooming Out
"Zooming In – Zooming Out" explores the practice of reconnecting with our fundamental, unconditioned awareness, which we are born with but often lose touch with as our ego and personal identity develop. This is called "Zooming-In." When we need...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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19:41
Personal Love – Essence Love
We can begin by agreeing that there are two fundamental kinds of love – personal love and essence love. Although the first, personal love, may take many forms, it is characterized by the love of one person for another within t...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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17:58
Seen But Not Real – Not Seen But Real
A desert mirage, an echo, train tracks appearing to meet in the distance, and magic tricks are among those experiences that we can see or hear, but they are not actually real. These are sensory-based illusions that we initially think are real, ...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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17:26
Reclaiming Your Center: Small Self to True Self
Our lives are influenced and guided by our sense of “self.” When we refer to our self – I believe, I think, I feel – it is important to ask what self, what “I,” are we referring to. Is it our customary, personal day-to-day ...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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20:21
The Decisive Experience
We have all had moments when the tumult of life stops and clear and truthful insights arise from the depth of our being. We call them “aha” experiences. These moments of understanding are neither planned nor organized. They come unexpectedly an...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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18:40
Come to Me as a Child
A child is born with a clear, pure awareness. Not an awareness of this or that or an awareness accompanied by interpretations, commentary, judgments, or preferences. A simple clear awareness is experienced without labels and filled with a natur...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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18:36
Glimpses of Beyond
We have all experienced glimpses of a larger consciousness that lies beyond our personal identity and day-to-day life. These glimpses are characterized by a sense of flow, ease, wholeness, peace, delight, and freedom. They are a welcome release...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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20:02
Consciousness: The Ground of All Being
Consciousness is not a “thing.” It has no form, shape, color, texture, weight, mass, contour, or location. These qualities refer to tangible objects with tangible characteristics that can be described and communicated through language. That is ...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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19:48
The "Mere I"
There are five increasingly complex and dysfunctional levels of ego development, the development of our personal "I." These are: the Mere "I," the Reified "I," the Self-cherishing "I," the Protective and Defensive "I," and the Social "I."
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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18:43
Wear the World Like a Loose Garment
While meditating we’ve all had the experience of a blissful moment of serenity, clarity, or realization, only to be pulled back into the stresses and strains of daily life. That can feel quite frustrating and even disempowering. We touch the gl...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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19:17
Meditation, Transcendence, and Psychedelics
The transcendent state of consciousness is a non-sensory experience. It is a non-ordinary experience. It can neither be experienced or known through our senses, nor through our usual intellectual capacities. It is an inner, personal, “invisible...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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19:38
The Dance of Subject and Object: A Journey into Self-Discovery
For a young child, prior to psychological development, the world is experienced through an innocent present moment awareness. As adults, our world is experienced through memory, concepts, interpretations, and perceptual patterns. We no lo...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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20:42