Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 percent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself—
And there isn’t one.
—Wei Wu Wei
Guest teacher Caverly Morgan led the Weekly Meditation and Talk and discussed Recognizing the Conditioned Mind.
Have you ever noticed how the mind is continually asserting that you should be different; that life should be different; that if X, Y, or Z would change, then you would finally be happy? It’s likely that you recognize this storyline as a trap. This storyline belongs to the conditioned mind. The mind that has been shaped and influenced by parents, school, society, culture. The mind that is habituated to think in a particular way. The mind that believes what we were taught: This is how I’m supposed to be. This is how life is supposed to be. The mind that regrets the past and worries about the future. Through practice, we can recognize the conditioned mind for what it is. This recognition frees us to find out: if I am not this conditioned mind, who am I really?
This teaching not only includes a talk, but an exercise as well. This exercise invites direct experience and is a practical tool that allows us to see the conditioned mind for what it is, thus creating the opportunity to disidentify from it.
Scroll down to see a list of topics covered.
Meditation
Talk
Guest teacher Caverly Morgan covered these topics in the weekly meditation and talk:
- Learning to recognize the voice of “If only…”
- Recognizing our own conditioning.
- Seeing that the conditioned mind is not bad or wrong.
- The value of disidentifying from our conditioning.
- A Practice: Fleshing Out Our Conditioning–A practice tool for seeing beyond the mind of limitation.
- How to step off the train of suffering sooner and sooner—until eventually you won’t be called to board.
- Recognizing that:
You are aware of your conditioning.
You are not your conditioning.
About Caverly Morgan:
Caverly Morgan is a spiritual teacher, non-profit founder, speaker, and writer who blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach. She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness. Caverly is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. Her practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She has been teaching contemplative practice since 2001. Caverly leads meditation retreats, workshops, and online classes internationally.
