Mindfulness Meditation Class
Come Home
to Your Practice
This paradox from the Zen tradition speaks to the heart of Buddhist meditation. While many seek transcendence, calm, or bliss through meditation, authentic meditation invites us to stay grounded in the complexity of being human. It asks us to meet our defenses, patterns, and unexamined wounds with open eyes and open hearts.
Too often, practitioners become attached to transcendence, bypassing the necessary psychological work of integrating their shadow, confronting their conditioning, and reckoning with the unconscious forces that shape them. The energy required to suppress our wounds, fears, and unexamined parts is immense.
The ego, ever diligent, manages this suppression in real time—it compartmentalizes, dissociates, and represses, all in an effort to maintain a fragile sense of order. Yet, beneath these defenses lies the untapped vitality and depth we long for, waiting to be reclaimed.
"To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things."
-Dogen
What the Class Includes
In this class, Brent Morton will provide teachings from the non-dual Buddhism, existential psychology, depth psychology, somatic psychology, and neuroscience, weaving these disciplines together to offer a grounded, integrative path of self-discovery.
Meditation techniques in this class will include mindfulness of the body, thoughts, and emotions, offering a direct way to engage with our inner world rather than bypass it. Through this practice, participants can expect to develop greater resilience, self-awareness, self-compassion, and empathy for others. As we loosen the rigid grip of ego-identification, we make space for a deeper sense of freedom, authenticity, and aliveness—one that is not dependent on external validation or fleeting states of transcendence, but rooted in a fully embodied presence.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the shadow conscious.”
-Carl Jung
Protecting Your Energy
The energy required to suppress our wounds, fears, and unexamined parts is immense, and most of us have been doing it for so long that we’ve forgotten what we’re carrying. The ego, ever diligent, manages this suppression in real time—it compartmentalizes, dissociates, and represses, all in an effort to maintain a fragile sense of order.
Yet, beneath these defenses lies the untapped vitality and depth we long for, waiting to be reclaimed. Too often, even the tools meant to liberate us—meditation, therapy, yoga—become instruments of avoidance. In their most unexamined forms, these practices can soothe the surface while leaving the deeper structures of repression intact.
We meditate to escape discomfort, stretch to "release" tension without addressing its root, or engage in therapy that medicates symptoms. True liberation requires a different approach.
Walking your Spiritual path
A core danger along the spiritual path is spiritual materialism, the tendency to use meditation as a means to reinforce, rather than dissolve, the ego. Instead of fostering connection, spiritual practice can become a means of separation—fueling a sense of specialness, superiority, or detachment from others.
The ego, ever cunning, co-opts even the most sacred tools for its own preservation, turning enlightenment into an achievement to be possessed, wisdom into an identity, and meditation into a form of self-aggrandizement.
This class will challenge these tendencies, offering a meditation practice that is not about acquiring a more refined spiritual identity, but about dissolving the very structures that keep us alienated from ourselves and others.
Are You Ready to Start Your Meditation Practice?
Let us help!