Diana Winston on freedom and pure beingness with natural awareness Intimacy with the world

Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). She is the author of The Little Book of Being and the co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness. Her work has been mentioned in the New York Times, O Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Allure, Women’s Health, among others. The LA Times calls her one of the nation’s best-known teachers of mindfulness.” A former Buddhist nun, you can find her on the UCLA Mindful, Waking Up and Ten Percent Happier apps or at www.marc.ucla.edu and www.dianawinston.com

In this episode Diana gives us an Introduction to classical mindfulness, and how we train our attention to stay on one object in the present moment, but mindfulness isn’t just that. There is a whole territory of mindfulness teachings, that teach about something more expansive and spacious. Diana Winston calls this “natural awareness” and it is like classical mindfulness is like the lens of our awareness and attention very narrowly focused, whereas natural awareness is like opening that camera-lens of our awareness wide open.

Diana also tells us about her experience as a nun in Burma, and how she totally crashed after a while, feeling so frustrated with her meditation practice, and how that is when she discovered the teachings and practices of natural awareness where the gist of it is that there is nothing to get, nowhere to go, there is no goal, it is all about the awareness that is already existent. The awareness that is already present inside of us, and how we can open up and get access to that natural awareness and experience a shift in our being, in how we experience ourselves ant the world around us in that moment

Interestingly Diana shares, that it tended to be the westerners at the Burmese monastery that got frustrated in their meditation practice, perhaps because we are so goal-driven and have a tendency to over-effort - which is not beneficial when you are meditating.

We also talk about this frase from her book: “I wanted to reach enlightenment so badly because I didn’t want to be me!” Ad about how that really was rooted in a sense of unworthiness, and how inherent in the natural awareness teachings is a notion, that we inherently are filled with natural goodness. And she also talks about her practices with loving kindness and different compassion practices

She also dives into what awareness actually is and from there she goes into explain the spectrum of awareness: focused awareness, investigative awareness, choiceless awareness and natural awareness

She explains to us that there is no hierarchical relation between natural awareness and classical mindfulness - but that each of them is called for in different situations

We speak about Our modern lives of speed and distraction - why do we want so badly to distract ourselves from ourselves?

Mindfulness brings us face to face with ourselves

Diana says: Meditation is like a doing in the service of being.

And of course in this regard se speak about neuro plasticity.

And she explains to us how awareness is capable of holding anything and healing anything.

How awareness doesn’t judge, awareness is infused with a compassionate holding. The willingness to sit with ourselves without exiling any part of us, but bringing compassion to the wholeness of who we are - also our traumas. How awareness can provide us with that safety.

She speaks about Enlisting the wisdom mind

And of course Diana leads us trough a glimpse practice!

My website: www.duritaholm.com