Loch Kelly on Awareness, Freedom, and Effortless Mindfulness

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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