Every Monday – ongoing – 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Facilitated by Doug McGill
Sessions are a Free Will Community Offering
Dear Friends,
I’m truly excited to announce this brand new weekly opportunity to practice meditation more deeply, more intuitively, and more effectively than ever before.
The weekly one-hour meetings will also highlight and help us to develop bonds of spiritual friendship which the Buddha called “100 percent of the spiritual life.”
Starting on July 11, and every Monday evening following throughout the year, I will host a Monday Friends meeting on Zoom from 7 to 8 PM CDT.
As many of you know, we practice the Buddha’s “Four Foundations of Mindfulness” together on the four online weekend retreats that I offer each year, one weekend every three months.
There’s been a problem, though, with this arrangement. The problem is the three-month hiatus between the retreats.
During these longish periods it’s all too easy to lose the powerful momentum that we build in our practice during the weekend retreats.
The close spiritual friendships that we form on retreats can also fade away.
But all that changes now!
In content as well as consistency, the weekly Monday Friends sessions will help us build on the skills that we learn on each retreat, allowing those skills to really sink in and become second nature.
The regular Monday Friends format will include:
• Time to start by settling, realigning, and relaxing
• A slow and gentle 40-minute guided meditation
• Twenty minutes of sharing and Q&A
Each guided meditation will alternate between an initial review to deepen the skills already learned, while learning that week’s new skills carefully and with patience.
A special feature of Monday Friends will be a Monday morning email practice reminder.
Every Monday morning I will send out an email to briefly introduce that week’s focus, drawing on master teachers of the Four Foundations meditation such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Ajahn Chah, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Ajahn Sumedho.
Monday Friends will help us start every week by touching in with dear spiritual friends, and as well with the highest ideals and intentions we hold for our one precious life.
Through the coming year, the weekly Monday Friends sessions will focus on four key meditation skills per quarter, as taught by the Buddha.
The four skills we will practice—with patience, an exploring spirit, creativity and fun—from this coming Monday, July 11 through Sept 16 will be:
- Experiencing joy
• Experiencing ease
• Observing stress
• Dissolving stressThe Monday Friend meetings are free and open to anyone, and thus not “membership-only.”Just drop off your email here, and you’ll get the Zoom invite by email every Monday.The four quarterly retreats that I offer each year are not a prerequisite for attending Monday Friends. So feel free to attend any or all Monday Friends meetings, whether you attend the quarterly retreats or not.
Of course, attending the quarterly retreats would be a big boost to your practice and for all of us as spiritual friends, so I hope you will consider it!
Also, regular attendance of Monday Friends is encouraged to support spiritual friendship, but is not required. Feel free to come whenever you can.
To receive the weekly Monday Friends email practice reminders and Zoom invite, and a welcome message to Monday Friends, click here.
And feel free to email me with any questions at doug@dougmcgill.com.
Current info on my retreats, talks and writing always at my website.
It would be wonderful to practice with you.
With much love 🙏❤️
Doug
Doug McGill founded and for 16 years was the Guiding Teacher of the Rochester Meditation Center in Rochester, MN. In 2019, he edited “Relax and Be Aware: Mindfulness Meditations for Clarity, Confidence and Wisdom,” by Sayadaw U Tejaniya. Since 2013 he has published “The Daily Tejaniya,” a daily email practice reminder from Sayadaw. Since 2013 he has taught a six-week “Introduction to Awareness Meditation” class several times a year. He learned insight meditation from Steve Armstrong, Kamala Masters and S.N. Goenka; and non-dual self enquiry from Rupert Spira. From 1979 to 1999 he was a reporter at The New York Times and a bureau chief for Bloomberg News based in Tokyo, London and Hong Kong. He currently writes a newsletter, “Spirituality for Citizens,” which looks at the day’s headline social issues through the lens of the Dhamma.
Visit Doug’s website at www.dougmcgill.com
Read testimonials from Doug’s meditation classes over the years
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