Practices

If open awareness sounds like too much, put it plainly: look at the background instead of the thing in front of it. That is the entire instruction.

People who bounce off contemplative language will happily follow a physical direction about where to point their eyes. Say background, say the space…

Open gazing and long unfocused staring do not suit everyone. If things start to feel unreal or far away, stop and look at something you can name.

This caution is usually left out, and it should not be. Practices that are open, unguided and without an anchor are the ones most often followed by…

When someone tells the story with every detail, the exact words, the way the door shut, what she was wearing, they are not wandering off the point. The detail is telling you how unsafe it felt.

Steering them back to the summary usually lands as being told their experience is a nuisance. Let it run a while and hear the detail as a reading of…

You cannot argue anybody out of certainty, yourself included. What loosens a grip is play: a puzzle, a small experiment, a question where nobody has to lose.

If you want someone to hold a view more lightly, resist correcting it. Give them something to look at that shows them their own mind at work, and let…

Have three or four openers ready before you need them. For what it is worth. Can I run something by you. You might not like this, so give me the benefit of the doubt.

When you are stirred up you will not compose diplomatic language on the spot, so the phrases have to be picked in advance and worn in. Say them aloud…

When you offer a practice to someone, use their words for it rather than yours. Keep the fuller version ready for the day they ask where it comes from.

A plain, unmystical version suits most people and costs them nothing to accept. Anyone who gets curious can have all of it, and they will take more…

Learn a new practice in that order: the picture of what it is, then the plain steps, then actually doing it. Knowing what is coming settles most of the resistance before it starts.

Say to yourself, or to the person you are teaching, that in a minute the talking stops and the doing begins. It sounds trivial and it removes the low…

Afterwards, ask what that was like rather than whether it worked. Every answer is usable, including the ones that sound like complaints.

People come back with all sorts: restful, stressful because my head is so fast, mostly sounds and aches rather than thoughts, strangely reassuring.…