Methods of Awakening

I've published two free ebooks on meditation and mindfulness , aimed at beginners. These have both been based on reworkings of some of the content on this blog, but both have been updated quite a bit. Please help yourselves to your free copy by clicking the links below! If you enjoy my content, please let me know in the comments or via e-mail. I'd love to hear from you and hear more about what you'd like me to talk about. Stay tuned for much, much more activity from your friendly neighbourhood agnostic mystic! The Urban Yogi's Handbook Vol. 1: Concentration The Urban Yogi's Handbook Vol. 2: Mindfulness/Attentiveness Audiobook Version Open Skies: 60 Minutes of Meditation Music

Spiritual bypassing is something that many don't discuss, but is likely far more common than you'd imagine. In short, it involves using the world of spirituality to avoid dealing with real world problems. People will basically bury their heads in the sand, deny reality and live in a fantasy world of spiritual perfection and bliss. The reasons for this can be many, but it all really comes down to trying to avoid dealing with your real-life problems. This is something I'm very familiar with, because it's something I've done myself. I didn't even realize it until after the fact, but I can confirm that it does happen. My own experience of spiritual bypassing came during a very difficult and painful time in my life. My long-term relationship with the mother of my daughter was falling apart, so I threw myself into hardcore meditation practice and study. I had been actively meditating and studying spirituality for 10 years by this point, so it wasn't j...

I see a lot of people within the dharma community who have become quite vocal in their judgement of others. Typically it comes down to politics, which seems to have poisoned the minds of many. These are people I once had a lot of respect for, but whose authenticity I now question. It pains me, to be honest with you. One of the reasons why I found myself resonating with the Buddhadharma, was its focus on the individual. Only through investigating our own experience will we find answers. We apply what we learn to daily life, and in a way that benefits not only ourselves, but our communities as a whole. In benefiting our community, we can begin to benefit the world at large. Seeing self-proclaimed teachers spewing bile on social media really gives me, as the kids say, that big think. Don't get me wrong, I am all for people being able to voice their opinions. Especially when I completely disagree with them. That's what free speech is all about. What I object to i...

Episode Four on YouTube Bitchute: The Home of Free Speech Online Evenin' readers, Here's the latest, and last of the narrations of the old blog posts, masquerading as new content in the form of a video and Soundcloud version. I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to sign up to BitChute, which is a torrent-based alternative to YouTube, a site whose policies have becoming increasingly censorious, political and biased, which is something we really don't need in an already divided world. There'll be a few new developments coming up in the coming months for Methods of Awakening, so stay tuned and be sure to subscribe, follow and like on social media. All the best and practice well, - Tommy M

OCCUPY NOW I've just uploaded the narration of the Occupy Now blog post, which is the last post I made before stopping the project entirely in 2012. It was only a short narration/recording, so I figured it wasn't worth uploading as a podcast episode in and of itself. I've got the jhana piece recorded and ready to go, but I won't be uploading that until later on this week 'cause I'm trying to actually develop some sort of schedule. Lots more content coming up in the months ahead, including the podcast, more articles and more blog posts on the ins and outs of meditation practice. I'm planning to start a crowdfund so that I can get a video camera, a video-producing PC setup and the equipment to film on-camera material as I think it'll help people to understand this stuff way better. Explaining it in person, and being able to create complex animations to illustrate certain subtle aspects of this stuff will make it much easier for people to grasp, and...

I've just published a new article on Medium.com regarding the realities of awakening, the phenomenology involved and some of the potential pitfalls one can encounter along the Path. What is Awakening? - MOA on Medium Please come and give it a read, share it around if you enjoy it and let me know what you think in the comment, or on social media at all the usual places! Take care & practice well, - Tommy

A Guided Meditation For Beginners YouTube Version Soundcloud Version As I'd mentioned previously, I've been doing a lot of freelance voice work lately. One of the jobs I'd recently auditioned for involved creating guided meditations for commercial use, so obviously I jumped at the chance given that I'm doing voiceovers already; and also have loads of experience in meditation and can also produce broadcast-standard audio and video super quickly. While I'm writing this blog post, I'm waiting to hear back from the client as there's still the small matter of my impenetrable accent and its clarity. In fairness, I have tried to soften it considerably and to pronounce things clearly, but whether they take me on board to produce for them remains to be seen. In the end, it's no great loss if I don't get the gig and in fact you folks actually come out winning either way 'cause I get to upload a free guided meditation! Guided meditation...

I've finally gotten around to writing an essay for Medium.com  on the topic of what I call "Corporate Mindfulness" - basically the diluted New Age-y, armchair psychology garbage that's peddled by unscrupulous employers for productivity purposes. In the essay, I've tried to explain my objections to this "Corporate Mindfulness" in a way that isn't just some 'ancap' rant, but that actually focuses on the potentially detrimental experiences that await the would-be urban yogi and how businesses don't actually understand the power of what they're teaching people. Anyhow, expect another Methods of Awakening Podcast in the next few days as I continue rambling about meditation in my incomprehensible Scottish brogue. Much love - Peace out - Tommy

I know that my most recent posts haven't exactly been educational or even necessarily related to awakening per se, so I'd like to take this opportunity to explain a bit more about where I'm at personally, and in terms of the overall development of Methods of Awakening. In doing so, I hope you'll be able to see why this is and what I've got planned for the future with the project. I quit my job on the 28th of December 2019. After over 20 years of working for other people, I decided I'd had enough and that I wanted to take control of my life. I'm now a freelance voice actor and voiceover artist, and I've actually managed to make money within the first month of putting myself out there. It's exciting and terrifying, but it's a decision I'm glad that I made as it now affords me far more time to devote to the projects I really want to work on - Methods of Awakening being a prime candidate. I've spent quite a lot of time recently just b...

Updates & Changes I've gone back through my previous posts and edited them a bit to correct a lot of dreadful grammar! I was young and impressionable...o.k., so maybe I wasn't that young but the point remains. 😁 I intend to start posting more regularly as my set-up expands, so I wanted to make sure that the information already available on here was up-to-date. If you'd like to check any of the new edits out, please click the following links and share them wherever you think they'd be useful! Attentiveness: A Primer Access Concentration Practice Playtime: YouTube, Attentiveness & Insight Stop! Jhana Time! Occupy Now Remember to subscribe to the Methods of Awakening channel on YouTube. I'm currently working on setting up a small studio for filming material, so there will be new uploads in coming months. I might look into possibly crowdfunding the studio idea 'cause it'd be fairly cheap to set up. I do all of ...

It's been a long time. I could make a Led Zeppelin joke here, but I can't be bothered. Anyhow, it has indeed been a long time. A long time away from this blog, and probably even more time away from discussion of spiritual progress and meditation. Not that it's something I've ever lost interest in; on the contrary, I still walk the Path and practice daily in some form or another but I lost interest in talking about it. It's only now, as 2020 takes its first burning breaths, that I feel moved to begin writing again. Let's cut to the chase: I claimed to be 'enlightened' but I can quite confidently state that I am not. What I do know for certain is that I have experienced several different, what we could call “shifts” for the sake of convenience, wherein my baseline of consciousness has changed dramatically and without ever reverting to its previous state. Having been actively engaged in meditative practices for about ten years before ...