In this author talk at Google, Michael Taft looks at emotional intelligence — how we can work with our own emotions much more effectively using evolutionary biology, psychology, and mindfulness meditation. And Star Wars. A crash course in mindfulness of emotions. Although emotional sensations can arise anywhere in the body, they are much more likely to arise in the …
The Meditation Induction — How to Meditate Deeply
by Michael W. Taft Mindfulness is awesome because it features a few simple rules that can be recombined to create thousands of different meditation techniques. You could practice a different meditation every day for the next ten years, never repeat yourself, and continuously make progress. With all that variety, however, it helps your meditation practice if you begin each session …
SATISFACTION: Getting the Most Out of Your Life with Mindfulness
by Michael W. Taft ou can’t wait for your romantic getaway in paradise with your partner. You buy tickets for a dream vacation, imagine all of the things you’ll do, make the plans, the dates, the airline and hotel reservations. It’s a major effort, and finally the big day comes when you board the plane and fly away to heaven. …
The Mindful Geek Is Out!
Want to get the benefits of mindfulness without having to join a religion? Want to learn to meditate within a completely scientific, secular worldview? Let me tell you a bit about my new book, which just got published. Called The Mindful Geek, it shows you how to derive the real world benefits of hardcore mindfulness meditation without having to drink …
Coping with Intense Emotions in Meditation
Using Mindfulness to Work with Overwhelming Feelings by Michael W. Taft In the movie Blade Runner, the replicant Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, has a problem. As a genetically-enhanced human-like Nexus 6 organism, he’s been given a brilliant mind and a super-human body by the Tyrell Corporation who created him. He is used to do dangerous and difficult work in space …
Finding Meaning with Meditation
by Michael W. Taft “Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.” ~ Joseph Campbell If you Google the phrase “meaninglessness of life,” you’ll get almost half a million hits. Quotes from great thinkers and pages from philosophy sites wrestle with the …
Meditation: Are You Doing It Wrong?
by Michael W. Taft Albert Einstein once said that “a person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” It’s actually pretty hard to make a mistake in meditation, but maybe the biggest challenge that beginning meditators encounter is the often mistaken belief that they’re doing it wrong. I’m not sure of the reason for this—maybe it’s just a quirk …
The Nondual Roots of Indian Thought and Religion
by Michael W. Taft Nondualism was developed earliest, and was most thoroughly explored, in India. Yet the first Indian scriptures, the Vedas (roughly 1000 BCE) are completely dualistic in their outlook. These Ur-texts of human spirituality consist mainly of poems of praise to nature deities, magical spells, and ritual invocations. After the Vedas, however, we find several important texts that …
Michael W. Taft’s Q & A on Reddit
The following is a reprint of an interview with the Reddit community that occurred on Sunday, Feb 15, 2015. You can find the original here. I’ve corrected some typos, added some links, and so on, for your reading pleasure. Introduction My name is Michael Taft and for over 30 years, I have studied, written about, and taught mindfulness meditation. …
Never Believe Anything
by Michael W. Taft “I don’t believe anything, but I have many suspicions.” ~ Robert Anton Wilson want to share with you, from my heart, something that I have found to be incredibly important. Something that I feel is the best advice I can give you. My life advice is this: Never believe anything. That’s it. It’s really simple. Just …
Want to Learn Meditation without Religion?
Help me make this book a reality at Indiegogo — Michael Taft “Michael Taft is steeped in practice and deeply trained in multiple traditions. He is extremely articulate about subtle states of mind and important distinctions in meditation, for both beginners and long-time practitioners. He’s also very open, warm, and supportive – plus deeply wise.” ~ Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha’s Brain, Hardwiring …
Acceptance: the Most Powerful Practice You Can Do
by Michael W. Taft This is an excerpt from Michael’s book The Mindful Geek If I had to choose just one thing to teach, one single practice to give you that would do the most to improve your life, it would be the practice of acceptance. Although it may seem like a paradox, acceptance is one of the most powerful things your …
Let It Be – Meditation
by Michael W. Taft Your life is filled with too much business, too much hurry, too much stress. Just for a moment, let go of all that. There are too many machines vying for your attention with rings, beeps, blinks, flags, and badges. Just for a moment, turn them all off and put them away. Your body is tense with …