Living With Less Fear with Dean Sluyter

MP3 Download

As life unfolds, we all experience many successes as well as challenges. Sluyter warns us that “we get distracted by the good and the bad shiny objects. We get caught up in stuff and then we come to define our lives in terms of how things work out.” He reminds us of what it is that we can truly rely on, the place of perfect delicious silence, which is actually what we are at our deepest core. He gives an analogy: “All this ‘stuff’ is tossing and turning on the waves, the surface of life.” And he advises us to not try to flatten out all the waves, “That’s a hopeless task. But if you can settle down just a foot or two into the water beneath the waves, it’s already always silent and that’s what you are and anyone can access it.” He goes deeply into the concept that love is a lack of otherness and how fear and love cannot occupy the same place at the same time. He gives us an analogy of grief: “It’s as if the person that we loved was like a window through which the beautiful sunlight was streaming into us. Then, when that person dies, it’s as if the window shatters. That can seem like an ultimate disaster. But if we pay attention, we realize that the window was just the aperture, the opening through which the sunlight was reaching us and the sunlight is still there. In fact, the sunlight surrounds us.” (hosted by Justine Willis Toms) 

Bio 

Dean Sluyter has taught natural methods of meditation and awakening throughout the United States and beyond since 1970. He’s taught at colleges, yoga studios, corporate offices, and maximum-security prisons. He’s known for his funny, down-to-earth style, and for making life-transforming teachings accessible and easy. 

Dean Sluyter is the author of many books including: 

• The Zen Commandments: Ten Suggestions for a Life of Inner Freedom (Tarcher/Putnam 2001)
• Why the Chicken Crossed the Road: & Other Hidden Enlightenment Teachings from the Buddha to Bebop to Mother Goose (Tarcher/Putnam 1998)
• Cinema Nirvana: Enlightenment Lessons from the Movies (Three Rivers Press 2005)
• Natural Meditation: A Guide to Effortless Meditative Practice (Tarcher/Penguin 2015)
• Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction (TarcherPerigee 2018) 

To learn more about the work of Dean Sluyter go to www.deansluyter.com

Topics Explored in This Dialogue

• Why meditation is important
• How meditation is more than just a “time out” from everyday distractions
• What is natural mediation
• How fear, anxiety, anger, and addictions are all symptoms of a deep state of homelessness
• How tapping into our inner silence can lead us to more effectiveness and clarity
• How practicing meditation is like practicing a fire drill
• How practicing meditation can serve us in dealing with the anticipation and mental shadow of death
• How hope is the flipside of fear
• How fear and love cannot occupy the same space at the same time
• Why grief is like a window through which sunlight streams
• What his work in prisons taught him
• What does it mean to “relax at the moment of contact”
• What is the practice of breathing through your feet
• How the practice of smacking your hands can help to be present in the moment
• What is the “Silly Walk Olympics”

Host: Justine Willis Toms        Interview Date: 4/6/2018        Program Number: 3644

Music Playlist

From Album: Intervention
Artist: Helen Jane Long
2012 BLE Music Records 9790900213570      

Opening Essay: Track 01 Intervention
Music Break 1: Track 02 Free
Music Break 2: Track 08 If I could
Music Break 3: Track 11 Renewed