Deborah Eden Tull – Threshold to Freedom

All that’s required for our healing is the willingness to remember who we authentically are. Although the mind of separation has carried us far away from the love that is who we are, this love never leaves us — it is only ever we who leave it.

The more clearly you understand that you are not your conditioning, the more you become in touch with your authentic self or essence. Your essence is the unique way that consciousness illuminates you. As long as you maintain an outward focus in life, your attention is turned away from your essence.

Module 1 begins with an exploration of conscious compassionate awareness — the essence of Zen and the foundation for our journey. We will invoke the teaching of Beginner’s Mind and the spirit of curiosity as we step into mindful self-reflection.

The word “mindfulness” translates in Pali and Sanskrit to “remembering”… remembering who you really are beyond your limiting beliefs, identities, and conditioning. We’ll practice gentle attention, designed to help you discover that your sense of self is not solid, but held together by repetitive thought patterns.

We’ll explore how the myth of separation operates within us, thereby distracting us from our natural sense of wholeness and harmony with life.

In this module, you’ll begin to compassionately review your life in 2018 in order to integrate the depth of your experience from the past 12 months. You’ll pull out weeds from the past year, preparing the soil for the seeds of self-acceptance and renewal.

The spirit of Zen teaches that while sitting meditation is our training, ordinary life is our practice. Daily life will be your laboratory throughout this journey, and you’ll discover how to meet yourself with presence and fierce compassion in daily life.

In this module, you’ll:

• Explore how to apply the principles of Relational Mindfulness to your relationship with yourself
• Use gentle self-inquiry to see through your conditioned responses and strategies to a more spacious sense of wholeness underneath
• Consciously review the year 2018 (from the heart rather than through the lens of judging, measuring, or comparing) in order to harvest the lessons from the past year
• Discover how to “get out of the way” so that your personal growth can evolve organically, rather than through striving and efforting
• Allow the realization of impermanence to inspire your willingness to be free… not “some day” but right here and right now

You’ll find great relief in getting off the treadmill of self-improvement. And great relief in seeing that there’s an easier — and also more powerful, demanding, and joyful — path to allowing yourself to be who you’re here to be.

Real practice does not begin until we drop our reasons for practicing altogether. Mindfulness is not about self-improvement. It is only ego that cares about “fixing ourselves,” “getting somewhere,” and “attaining something.” There is nowhere to get to and nothing to change or improve upon. We sit to remember the compassionate awareness that exists when we stop doing everything else. We sit to learn to meet life’s ups and downs from true compassion.

The myth of self-improvement can take endless time, resources, and money as we feed the notion that there is “something wrong” with us. When you access true acceptance and clear seeing, you realize that you’ve already arrived. You finally come home, to yourself and to your place in the world.

Self-acceptance is not a field of stagnant resignation. Ironically, it is the field from which you can love and support yourself into growth and fulfillment beyond anything you’ve imagined.

In this second module, we’ll see through our strategies for self-improvement, leading you to a larger understanding of how to create long-term sustainable change in your life. You’ll further harvest the teachings of 2018. And you’ll clear out obstacles to your heart so you can align with the peace that is already within you. We’ll also practice acceptance and forgiveness… both of ourselves and of others.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn how to see yourself (and others) more clearly, from the heart
• Harvest honestly and fully from life’s lessons in 2018
• Discover how to erase the dividing line that most of us have internalized, which creates the misunderstanding that aspects of us (and thus aspects of humanity) are lovable, while other aspects are not
• Develop clear seeing in relationship to limiting beliefs and ego habit patterns
• Explore a forgiveness practice that you can bring into everyday life, which will help you let go of residue from difficulties in the past year

This is the module in which you’ll be ripe and ready to create your new declarations for the year ahead.

Your essence carries innate qualities — timeless, ordinary, immeasurable — that are unrelated to effort and judgment. The ordinary self has no self-consciousness, no pretense, and no need to be seen as “special,” for it perceives no lack and does not live in the realm of comparison. It can also be called “no self” because it points to the quality of presence you emanate when you allow yourself to be free of identity… and to surrender to the spaciousness of awareness.

You will find it an extraordinary relief to encounter the perfection of your ordinary self in a world that is screaming loudly, “There is something better out there! There is someplace else you need to be. There is something more you need to prove! There is something you might not find!”

Embracing your essence ends the charade of conditioning, and all that’s left is acknowledgement of the preciousness of your unique expression of life — and the unique expression of all forms of life. You finally relax, aware that there is nothing worth more than being who you already are.

In this module, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how to let go of the limiting beliefs that have held you back in the past year. And you’ll gain deeper understanding of the quality of evolution, growth, and joy that’s possible when you fully accept yourself, and set your intentions with clear seeing.

You’ll take a guided journey to access your deepest intentions for your life and the year ahead. You’ll access your dreams, clarity, hopes, and visions. And you’ll explore practices for courageously stepping into and maintaining the powerful intentions you set for 2019. You’ll retrieve lost parts of yourself and uncover knowings that have gotten set aside or covered up by habit.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover how to move on, once and for all, from core limiting beliefs that have held you back
• Create powerful intentions for 2019 through a guided process that takes you beyond limited notions of self and possibility
• Reconnect with lost parts of yourself and commit to further wholeness
• Explore the empowerment of humility, the place beyond self-deprecation and self-aggrandizement
• Gain the understanding that relaxation is the seat of compassionate self-discipline, and that awareness works hand in hand with evolution and life goals
• Discover how to trust the extraordinary nature of ordinary self
• More powerfully take your seat where you actually belong, positioned to live and express yourself from powerful, peaceful presence

We need courage in our world right now.

Even when we’re willing to awaken to interconnection, there are aspects of our psyches that continue to resist and make the process much more difficult than necessary. It’s helpful to understand that resistance in all its forms — fear, procrastination, or attachment to victimization — is just a false protection against the all-powerful force of love.

Even though we say we want peace, freedom, and intimacy, ego is terrified. The more your meditation practice deepens and the more you step beyond the confines of old self, the more you need to learn how to meet ego skillfully — with awareness, precision, and a light heart. When you understand the nature of fear and resistance more fully, you gain insight into how to maintain clear seeing in the face of doubt. You can actualize your commitments and turn your dreams into reality.

With this part of the course, you’ll gain insight into how to show up — again and again — expressing your commitment to love rather than fear. You’ll explore… now that you’ve set powerful intentions, how do you stay true to them? How do you meet every part of you — even resistance — with compassion?

In this module, you’ll:

• Explore the so-called “negative” emotions. How do you hold hands with fear, aversion, anger, grief, and boredom (and work with these states compassionately)?
• Meet your inner resistance as an opportunity to renew commitment
• Discover where to access willingness and genuine courage
• Recognize what’s possible when you’re willing to be generous enough with yourself to call upon support on all sides
• Understand what it means to connect with your future self, through the field of present-moment awareness, and to seek their guidance
• Take even more creative, courageous, and playful steps towards your heart’s intentions
• Learn how to discern when negative motivators impact your decision-making

Are you finding that you cannot keep up with the ever-increasing speed of everyday life?

We can read all the books in the world about meditation and come to a deep intellectual understanding of it without having embodied its teachings. A good teacher can point to the experience of awareness, but it is up to each individual to cultivate an actualized practice. Practice does not just mean sitting on the cushion and finding stillness, but also learning to pay attention in every aspect of our lives.

It is one thing to have an understanding of compassionate awareness, and another thing to fully embody it.

In this module, you’ll take your intentions for 2019 to a deeper level and learn how to trust your body as your guide.

Part of living from our center is remembering the choice that we have in every moment of our lives. Regardless of external circumstances, compassionate awareness is always with us. It never leaves us, though we regularly leave it.

Having a practice in today’s world requires that we bring discernment to how we engage, or not, with collective conditioning. While there is a collective habit of busyness, burnout, stress, and the belief in “not enough time,” through practice we can find a more authentic pace and organic rhythm.

When we turn to the teachings of mindfulness and of nature, we learn how to reside in the spaciousness within, no matter what we are doing. In this module, we will explore practices for slowing down and finding our authentic pace in everyday life.

You’ll explore the teaching of process over product, and learn practices for personal sustainability and balance. Working in partnership with nature and cultivating sustainability begins by learning to work in partnership with yourself in a more subtle and attuned way.

In this module, you’ll engage in:

• A personal exploration of balance and personal sustainability
• Tuning into your physical experience and breath as the gateway to stillness
• A Buddhist perspective on energetic hygiene and self-care
• Practices to help you stay connected to your natural feedback system and make choices from your body and the still, small voice within
• Practices for self-care and peace through both stillness and chaos
• Setting goals for the year ahead — through the lens of presence and wisdom rather than future-focused and disembodied planning

Relational Mindfulness is based on the understanding that we are inherently whole, connected, and lovable — even with our imperfections. It asks us to affirm this understanding through how we relate.

Relational Mindfulness invites us to acknowledge our innate capacity for intimacy. It invites us to release or let go of who we’ve been and the perceived limitations we’ve been operating under, and instead be willing to risk. As we do so, we find that we do indeed have the capacity to meet each moment with loving presence.

We find that we become more loving and receptive to love. We find that when we are powerfully present we are equipped for intimacy with others. We find that by reclaiming our inner authority, we give others permission to do the same. We find that we have increased capacity to navigate challenges and conflict from the heart and are more empowered to contribute positively to any situation.

The teachings of Relational Mindfulness, which we’ve been learning to use within ourselves throughout this course, offer generous guidance for how to engage with each other more skillfully.

Every relationship we will ever have begins with the quality of relationship we have with ourselves. All of our relationships and communications are impacted by our willingness to live from compassionate awareness.

In this module, you’ll receive a teaching on how to bring the following principles of Relational Mindfulness to your interpersonal field:

• Intention
• The Sacred Pause
• Deep Listening
• Mindful Inquiry and Clear Seeing
• Transparency
• Turning Towards, Rather Than Away
• Not Taking Anything Personally
• Taking Responsibility
• Compassionate Action

It is natural for every single human being alive today to feel some degree of sadness, confusion, rage, powerlessness, and grief about the state of the world.

We would have to be utterly numb to not be impacted by the ongoing destruction of the living systems on this planet. When we witness life with an unguarded heart, we feel our deep cellular sensitivity and pain for the 500-year-old tree being cut down, for the whale being blasted out of its habitat by sound pollution, and for the young man incarcerated as a result of bias related to his skin color.

When we ignore our feelings and allow ourselves to “numb out,” we diminish our power. We also diminish our sensitivity to life, which is the signature of interconnection. When we are healing, it’s not just for ourselves, but for all beings we share this planet with, now and in generations past and those yet to come.

In our final module, you’ll look more deeply at how to embody your personal intentions and practice Relational Mindfulness within the context of tumultuous times.

How can we meet the state of our world with a wide-open heart rather than from fear and reactivity? The principles of Relational Mindfulness are helpful in how we relate to the larger world, and what it means to live in partnership with nature and with life. They help you take care of yourself while responding to the struggles and suffering of our world.

In this final module, you’ll:

• Explore your intentions for the world at large by turning towards your feelings and investigating both your reactivity and your perception of limitation
• Acquire skills for compassionate engagement and communication
• Gain insight into how to meet global uncertainty with a wide-open heart rather than fear and reactivity
• Understand your personal intention and practice as an offering to all beings everywhere
• Balance action in the world with withdrawal from the world to practice self-inquiry
• Discover how to know when to act on behalf of others — not out of fear or judgment, but out of wise action