A year of streaming my weekday morning meditation practice during the pandemic.

If These Clouds Could Talk

What does it mean to let our thoughts drift by like clouds?

Shifting our awareness from what our thoughts mean to how they fluctuate is an attentional exercise that develops liberating abilities over time.

Observing the movement of clouds can provide a glimpse into how we can relate to mental activity more objectively, but it oversimplifies things when the analogy is taken too literally.

Practice in Stillness, Practice in Life, Notice Flow, Clarity, EquanimityDaron LarsonNovember 16, 2017flow, impermanence, thought, mind, attention, thinking, metacognition, analogyComment

Home Sweet Home

"Right as rain, soft as snow,
It grows and grows and grows,
Our home sweet home."

~ Sleeping at Last

Notice Flow, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonJuly 15, 2017home, family, courage, paying attention, memoryComment

Binge Watching Ordinary Events Playing Out in Real Time

I've shared strategies for using movies to strengthen attention. Just as in ordinary life, what makes tending to the sensory components of a film so challenging is the pull of the narrative. But what would it be like to focus on the changing sights and sounds without having to resist the gravitational pull of story elements?

Starting today, you can find out.

See Out, Hear Out, Notice FlowDaron LarsonAugust 5, 2016television, seeing, flow, travel, concentration, complete experienceComment

Watching the Clock

"As conscious human beings, we know we die, and we therefore know our clock ends on, some level. So time just seems foundational. And I think a lot of the gymnastics that we do as human beings has to do with our relationship to the clock, or lack of a relationship to the clock. We squander time until it’s too late, et cetera. I love looking at the building blocks, the raw material, the irreducibles."

~ B.J. Miller

Practice in Life, Clarity, Notice Flow, GoneDaron LarsonFebruary 2, 2016On Being, B.J. Miller, death, time, imagination, suffering, health care, past, future, sensesComment

Bird Sounds Visualised

"Bird sounds captured using a digital audio recorder and fed into a computer to activate particle effects."

~ Andy Thomas

Hear Out, Notice FlowDaron LarsonNovember 4, 2015Andy Thomas, nature, sounds, technology, visualComment

Watching Experience

"This is my daily practice: watching each experience rise and fall within me, like waves in the ocean, while the world goes on doing what it will do."

~ Jillisa Hope Milner

Notice Flow, Practice in Stillness, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonSeptember 26, 2015Jillisa Hope Milner, video, practice, impermanence, wave, senses, gratitudeComment

Everything is Constantly Changing

"When you read it you realize that everything is constantly changing, and that that is, at least often, the key to a great story..."

~ Ben Marcus

Notice FlowDaron LarsonJuly 29, 2015Ben Marcus, literature, Ovid, change, impermanence, transformation, story, storytelling, narrative, writers, mythologyComment

Praise Flow and Change

Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.

Notice Flow, EquanimityDaron LarsonOctober 30, 2014flow, change, impermanence, poetry, Denise Levertov, praise, wonder, awe, mundane, nature, dream, peace, Mary RIchards, photographyComment

Interwoven

A son and his father, I knew
from their looks, the son with his
right hand on the handrail,
the father, left hand on the left,
and in the middle they were
holding hands

~ Ted Kooser

See Out, Feel In, Notice Flow, Friendliness ResistanceDaron LarsonOctober 15, 2014poetry, Ted Kooser, family, connection, vulnerability, aging, kindness, interdependenceComment

The Myth of Permanence

"Contemplating impermanence can be a liberating experience, one that brings both sobriety and joy."

~ Sakyong Mipham

Respites in the Demands of Sensation

I swoon and recoil at the tresses blowing
in an arbor without glow
or flame. These are reprieves. Respites
in the demands of sensation
and flow. Know this: you can you can
you can you can you can.

~ Margot Schilpp

See Out, Hear In, Notice Rest, Notice FlowDaron LarsonSeptember 27, 2014Margot Schilpp, poetry, consumerism, growing up, seeing, hearing, thinking, confusion, impermanence, Wangechi Mutu, art, greedComment

Our One Work

How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren't, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes

Notice Flow, EquanimityDaron LarsonSeptember 3, 2013Galway Kinnell, equanimity, identity, particle/wave, poetry, rebirth, transformationComment

Soothed by the Bell

Why is the sound of a mindfulness bell such a great warm up for any attentional fitness workout?

Concentration, Clarity, Hear Out, Notice Flow, Notice Rest, GoneDaron LarsonJanuary 28, 2012hearing, relaxation, sounds, listening, mindfulnessComment

The Breath of Awareness

Hear In, Notice Flow, Breath AwarenessDaron LarsonFebruary 28, 2010Breyten Breytenbach, listening, memory, poetry, time, writingComment

No Thing Here

If the sun isn’t actually menacing me or entertaining me, and the ground beneath my feet isn’t stationary, where am I supposed to find a safe place to make my home? Our nervous systems crave certainty and solidity and, in their absence, have created a complex process for representing stability.

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