Host Michael Taft speaks with Loch Kelly on nondual practices, contemporary forms of ancient awareness techniques, dzogchen, mahamudra, advaita, the role of psychotherapy in awakening, the need—or not—for a guru, open-hearted awareness, internal family systems therapy, and more.

Loch Kelly is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch teaches in a non-sectarian lineage based in the earliest non-dual wisdom traditions, modern science, and psychotherapy.

Loch Kelly’s Website

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Show Notes:

00:43 - Intro

03:05 - Loch’s meditation background

06:59 - Shifting from concentration practice to choiceless awareness practice

10:01 - Meeting Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

12:23 - The experience vs explanation of ‘pure awareness’ in different traditions

14:38 - Mahamudra

15:31 - The dualism in stopping halfway at ‘pure/spacious awareness’

17:54 - Recognition vs realization

20:02 - The possibility of ‘awake awareness’ in different traditions

22:53 - Contacting nondual awareness

24:00 - How can awareness be aware of awareness, if you are not aware from awareness?

28:10 - The contemporary teaching of unhooking ‘local awareness’

34:42 - The vipassana model/map vs natural awakenings

37:42 - Upgrading the mahamudra map and instructions (from ‘pure awareness’ to ‘awake awareness’)

43:07 - The four or five levels of the mind in mahamudra (1. everyday mind, 2. subtle mind, 3. pure awareness, 4. simultaneous mind, 5. open-hearted awareness/bodhicitta)

46:13 - Thoughts and emotions in ‘open-hearted awareness’

50:09 - Teaching moving from ‘spacious awareness’ to ‘awake awareness’

56:02 - Wonder, freedom, and joy in wisdom mind

01:02:14 - Postural yoga and pranayama in mahamudra

01:05:18 - Integrating ‘one-pointed awareness’ into the ‘field of awareness’

01:08:37 - Psychotherapy as a “preliminary” practice

01:10:42 - The “crazy yogi”: waking up without growing up

01:13:32 - The healing power of ‘open-hearted awareness’ in IFS (Internal Family Systems)

01:16:40 - The role of the guru in different traditions; “energetic transmission”

01:21:37 - Don’t stop halfway and come on in the water!

01:27:30 - Teaching vipassana in a nondual way

01:32:47 - Loch’s latest teaching- and personal inquiries

01:35:14 - Outro

What does nondual mean?

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Loch Kelly on Awareness, Freedom, and Effortless Mindfulness

Deconstructing Yourself