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've posted a new article on Medium regarding mental health and meditation. It's a thorny subject with many unexpected tangents, so I thought I would offer some thoughts as both a mental case and a meditator... Meditation & Mental Health You can also pick up a free copy of my latest e-book on Gumroad , or purchase the audiobook via the links provided. Be sure to subscribe to Gumroad as I'll have more free, and reasonably priced content coming up in future and you folks will be the first in line to get the best deal.

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

THE MOA PODCAST: EPISODE THREE SOUNDCLOUD YOUTUBE In keeping with the previous plan, here's the next episode of the podcast where I narrate and comment on my previous post, " Practice Playtime ". To be honest, the comment is pretty minimal but there's a bit at the end that might be of use to someone. There's a few bits and pieces in this that I'm inclined to come back to in future posts, and I'll definitely be addressing the whole Actual Freedom malarkey in another post, but that's for another time. In the meantime, please come along and subscribe on YouTube to keep up to date with all things MOA, and follow me on the usual social media. I'm much more active on places like Facebook , Instagram and Twitter than I have been in a long time, so feel free to drop me a line on any of those platforms. Until next time, take care of yourselves and 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...