INTERACTIVE Guided Meditation

So as far as I know you have developed a form of teaching that I've never known of before.

Interactive method guided meditation where instead of telling someone what to do to meditate or describing it to a group while they meditate you one on one interactively work with someone and talk to them, while their meditating with them talking back to you. Can you tell me how you came up with this?

First, let me say of course, that's not the only way that I I do those other things, too. You know groups right now, so forth, but very well. But what I really love is the one on one work, which can be done face to face in person, but also works very well over the telephone which is enormously convenient because People that study. With me give them my telephone number and they could call me when they are in.

Crisis or when they just need to tune up and so forth so we can work over the Phone also that way.

So I can do it face to face or I can do it over the telephone with someone.

How it developed was that?

I have my own center in Los Angeles, many years ago and we had residents and they would sit.

We would say as a group early in the morning and then they would go off and do their jobs and then we come back and we'd sit together in the evenings, So what I would do is during the morning sets is I would give them interviews. And that's very standard. You go into a teacher and you sort of talk about in practice, but typically.

The interviews that are done last for 10 minutes, something like that, you get a chance to ask some questions. We sought to touch base and so forth. So when I started I was doing those kinds of standard interviews and I don't know quite how it occured to me, but it's just sort of gradually dawned on me well wait a minute.

You know what's the metaphor for meditation teacher well. There's a lot of possible metaphors. The described himself as a physician. You know there's a disease called suffering and I have an intervention that is sufficient to cure for that.

So.

I thought well what's the metaphor for me.

I'm a coach.

So what is a coach do?

Well, if you go to the YMCA.

You ask a staff member to show you how to use the equipment and then they stand by you and they make sure you're using the equipment properly and they have good form and they give you some encouragement so they answer your questions and they sort of check in with you.

So I thought well Gee. That's a natural way to go about this so I started to say OK.

Do this.

And then I would just sit with them and do my own meditation and then so 10 minutes later, OK, when you did that what happened.

And they would say, Well, this happened, or that happened, and then I would say OK. It means this, or I think you should modify it just a little bit, it might help and so forth, then we sit for a few more minutes. We do that, and I started to notice it was really working.

Because when you

First learn how to Meditate.

If you're working with them in the mindfulness tradition, you're really wearing 2 hats.

On one hand, you're the meditator.

On the other hand, you're trying to observe yourself and that's very tricky is very hard to do that until you internalize the skill.

So if somebody interactively got it, you.

You can let go of the head of being the meditator. You're just following you just follow their guidance and you could stay with your experience so as time went on, I started to develop a more and more elaborate decision tree.

Until it became this incredibly powerful algorithm that just loops and branches until the person has a breakthrough experience and works with a high degree of reliability.

And so it's a combination of.

You not having to wear the 2:00 hats.

Plus, the sort of presence of an experienced teacher as a sort of contact. I kind of impact. Plus, the sharing of a lot of expert knowledge because I know the windows of opportunity that nature presents literally minute to minute nature is constantly presenting people with windows to transcendence People don't know how to recognize them.

When I'm working interactively with somebody. I spot when a window is open and I point them in that direction.

And it just works like a charm and that's where it's really like a designer meditation because when someone does a guided meditation you still handing over the wheels someone else is still driving on that. But what this does is it no to guidance is I think I've been guided privately in meditation over the years with you. I don't know how many times dozens and dozens and it's never been the same way twice.

So you know, I think of it kind of is a designer meditation in that moment. Using those opportunities. Yes, that's the general idea. The trick is not so much knowing how to answer your questions. The trick is for me to know what are the important questions that's what's taken all the years?

To find out what are the important things to look for as a person meditates so I'm looking. I know what the right questions are the most significant ones. The questions for you to ask good questions that I ask you as you're meditating right? That's been the challenge and then define optimal answers for each one of those questions so if I asked you 10 questions that are absolutely fundamental.

Uh.

And let's say each one has 2 possible answers.

That means after 10 questions. I have found the one out of 1000 guidance is that is optimal for you.

If I ask you 20 questions, which could easily happen in an hour period of practice. I have found the one out of one million guidances.

It is optimal for you so it's like having a tape library with a million tapes and a wizard that decides for you? What is optimal for you by asking you the right questions. So yeah, you better fix even wizard bed? It works that's why it works. Well, that plus the other things we talked about.