This Extraordinary Moment: Meditative Inquiry w/ John Astin
This podcast is drawn from weekly meetings hosted by John Astin, author of the book, "This Extraordinary Moment." In these recorded sessions, John introduces a novel approach to meditative inquiry that invites the listener into a deep exploration of moment-to-moment experience, one that reveals the myriad ways reality transcends everything we imagine it to be and points to the profoundly liberating implications of this discovery.
Episodes
69 episodes
Already Here, Already Welcomed
This episode invites the listener to notice the way in which Life itself allows everything to be, exactly as it is, because it IS everything that is.
Keeping it Simple
In this episode, I focus on the absolute simplicity of Being itself, the fact that it is already here, being everything.
Nothing Required
In this episode, I read and comment on a chapter (Nothing Required) from my newest book, "Everything is the Doorway."
What is Life?
In this episode, the listener is invited to feel the sense of aliveness to discover its fundamentally unresolvable, mysterious nature.
Unfindable Yet Continuously Appearing
This episode explores the paradox of reality always slipping away (and hence impossible to pin down) yet always being here.
Reality, Forever Opening
This episode explores the way in which what we call "the moment" never actually fixes, never actually becomes something concretized and the freedom that's realizing by seeing this.
Absolute Intimacy
In this episode, I explore the question of whether any separation can be found between experience and what we think of as that which is experiencing (e.g., the self, awareness, etc.).
Experience Deviates From What We Think It Is
This episode invites the listener to notice the myriad ways our actual experience deviates from the different ways we hold it to be conceptually.
Inherent to Life
This inquiry examines the way in which the things we're searching for as humans (openness, equanimity, ease, wakefulness, presence) are actually inherent to life itself.
Ever-Present Ground
This episode explores the ground of being, ever-present as the basis of every momentary perception.
The Well-Being Implications of Realization
This episode explores some of the well-being implications of discovering the ways in which our experience transcends everything that we think it is.
Always Here Always Shining
This episode explores the paradox that while reality is always slipping away owing to its ever-changing, alive nature, it is, at the same time, always here, always present.
Everything, the Unfolding of This
In this episode, I explore the way in which nothing that appears can be any more or less the one reality since everything is its unfolding.
Wave World, Water World
This episode explores the perspective of seeing what is common to all the experiential waves, the :"water" of being that's the very basis of everything.
This Shining
In this episode, I invite the listener into noticing the way in which reality, in its being present, is always shining, always here.
Ever-Present Knowing
This episode explores the ever-present knowing underlying all experience.
No-Thing Being Some-Thing
This episode explores the paradoxical, really magical way in which the whole world of appearance cannot be found as a thing, even as it keeps appearing to be some-thing.
In Every Little Ripple, the Entirety of the Sea
This exploration invites the listener to notice the wholeness of life appears as everything.
The Unbreakable Nature of This
In this episode, I point to the way in which reality itself, this wholeness of life being everything, is fundamentally unbreakable, indestructible.
This Equalness
In this guided exploration, the listener is invited to notice what is the same/equal about all experience, despite the obvious differences. For example, all experiences, from the most pleasurable to painful are equal in their being here, their ...
The Meditation of Life
This episode points to a very different approach to meditation, one I sometimes refer to as the meditation of what is, the ever-present flow of experiencing itself.
The Meditation of No Meditation
This episode invites the listener into a different style of meditation, one in which no effort is made to direct attention or any aspect of experience, simply relaxing into the flow of what is.
This Magical Appearing
In this episode, John invites the listener to re-orient the focus of attention from how things seem to be appearing descriptively to the miraculous fact of appearing itself.