Awareness Explorers

Awareness Explorers

If you want to awaken peace and love in daily life, pure awareness is always available as the background of all experience. Jonathan Robinson and Brian Tom O'Connor explore ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.

Episodes

October 14, 2025 56 mins

In this episode we talk to Michael McCord, president of San Francisco Zen Center, on bringing Zen practices into daily life and work, and how enlightenment is seen as an ongoing process of increasing awareness, not a fixed end state to achieve.

• Includes a guided meditation introducing the Zen practice of breath counting.

To learn more about Michael McCord, please visit these San Franciso Zen Center pages: 
https://www.sfzc.org/
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In this episode we talk to Stephen Zerfas, co-founder of Jhourney, which offers retreats facilitating rapid access to jhana meditation states, described as positive feedback loops between attention and emotion, offering profound states of gratitude, peace and non-duality.

• Includes a guided meditation focusing on relaxing the body while turning our attention to positive concepts such as gratitude and wishing for the well-being of ...

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September 12, 2025 41 mins

In this episode we discuss strategies for handling bad news as an awakening person, balancing awareness and action..

• Includes a guided meditation addressing the dichotomy between taking action and acceptance, and how to bring these two seeming opposites into a workable equilibrium.

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.

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Awareness Explorers has mad...

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August 29, 2025 42 mins

In this episode we discuss the concept of the Middle Way and explore how to move beyond polarities in spiritual practice and daily life, thus finding a balance between extremes and recognizing the interconnectedness of all things.

• Includes a guided meditation in which we bring two opposite energies together to sense how they are intertwined and to feel a balance and a gentle equilibrium as we use breath to weave the two together.

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August 15, 2025 54 mins

In this episode, we talk to Kat (Katrijn) van Oudheusden, author of Seeing No-Self, and Beyond Illusion, about discovering the illusion of separation, and her set of essential inquiries that use empirical investigation of direct experience to point to our true nature.

To learn more about Kat van Oudheusden, please visit: 
https://katoudheusden.com/

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present still...

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August 1, 2025 58 mins

In this episode we talk to Samuel Jacob, a contemporary spiritual teacher specializing in radical self-inquiry. He emphasizes the immediate availability of awareness, completeness, and happiness in the present moment.

• Includes a guided meditation focusing on being aware that all appearances arise “here” without effort, and emphasizing the relaxation of any attempt to arrive here, which is where the I, awareness is.

To learn more ...

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July 18, 2025 41 mins

In this episode we explore the concepts of the inward and outward facing paths. They are presented as different approaches in various traditions that, if pursued to their core, eventually arrive at a direct experience of a unified life.

• Includes a guided meditation that extends the ancient neti neti practice of excluding all concepts of what you conceive yourself to be, and then re-including all so-called outer experience, thereb...

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July 4, 2025 58 mins

In this episode, we interview John Travis, founding teacher of Mountain Stream Meditation Center, exploring his spiritual journey and teachings, and his emphasis on the importance of integrating mind, heart, and body in spiritual practice.

• Includes a guided meditation grounding attention in the body and sense perceptions as a pathway inward to the recognition of awareness as encompassing everything, thus breaking the illusion of ...

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June 20, 2025 49 mins

In this episode, we discuss the relationship between trauma and spiritual awakening, and how trauma can not only obscure awareness but can also catalyze awakening. We also describe some effective trauma healing approaches.

• Includes a guided meditation helping us to see an upsetting incident from the past within the larger peaceful space of pure awareness, which is unshaken by traumatic experience, and which holds and supports eve...

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June 6, 2025 45 mins

In this episode we discuss intuition, its nature, how to access it, and its relationship to awakening.

• Includes a guided meditation helping you to cultivate the open receptivity required for intuition.

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.

NEWS:

Awareness Explorers has made the following top listener charts on Goodpods: 
 # 5 in the Top 100 awakening A...

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May 23, 2025 55 mins

In this episode we talk with Robert Rugg, author of Awakening to Effortless Being: Realizing Your Infinite Self, about his spiritual journey, his teachings on effortless being, his approach to self-realization, and how to incorporate the principles of wholeness into daily life and interactions with others

• Includes a guided meditation inviting us to rest in the stillness, the silence, the presence, the space of beingness, the aliv...

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May 9, 2025 48 mins

In this episode we explore the topic of rituals and their impact on experiencing deeper peace, love, and joy in life.

• Includes a guided meditation in which we reflect on past meaningful ritual experiences, imagine new possibilities for personal rituals, and consider timing and context for implementing new rituals.

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.

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In this episode we talk to Pernille and Todd Lent Damore, founders of the Awakening Curriculum, about the Wheel of Identification, which is their framing of the Ten Buddhist Fetters, as well as practical applications to wake up moment to moment in the midst of everyday life. Their focus is on direct experience with no resistance and no labels.

• Includes a guided meditation exploring the felt sense of where “you” are located, by ex...

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April 11, 2025 53 mins

In this episode we look at twenty-five possible qualities of being an ideal human, and explore their relevance to awakening.

• Includes a guided meditation taking several qualities of an ideal human, and sending them in a circle from fully imagining them to be your experience, through letting them go, to being with the wordless knowingness that you are.

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present ...

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In this episode, we discuss neurofeedback, consciousness, and practical techniques for achieving higher states of awareness with Dr. Amy Albright and Dr. Drew Pierson , founders of Holon, a blend of science, technology, and spirituality.

• Includes a guided practice combining breath awareness, skin sensation, and tailbone alignment to help connect to a sense of oneness and earth energy.

To learn more about Amy Albright and Drew Pie...

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March 14, 2025 79 mins

In this episode, we talk to Kat Adamson, widow of the late non-duality teacher Sailor Bob Adamson, about his life, teachings, legacy, and Bob’s core message: There is no separate self, only awareness expressing through various forms.

• Includes a guided meditation helping us to relax into present awareness and recognize it as our essential nature, prior to all experiences, thoughts, and sensations.

To learn more about Kat Adamson a...

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February 28, 2025 46 mins

In this episode we talk about the negative associations of aging but also how it can be a doorway to the gifts and spiritual opportunities that come with growing older.

• Includes a guided meditation leading us to an appreciation of the wisdom and lessons we’ve learned as an entrance into this precious moment.

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.

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February 14, 2025 66 mins

In this episode we talk to Craig Hamilton about his “direct awakening” approach to meditation that aims to immediately connect with one’s true nature. He also emphasizes the importance of integrating awakening insights into daily life through specific practices and radical surrender to a higher principle.

• Includes a guided meditation inviting us to notice the vast open spacious awareness within all of us, where there’s room for a...

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In this episode we talk about how the things in our lives that we don’t like can show us where we are resistant and attached, and can trigger new ways to transcend and learn from those daily occurrences.

• Includes a guided meditation that shows us how we can hold two opposites in our minds together, for instance, pain and ease, anxiety and peace, as a way of healing resistance.

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January 17, 2025 46 mins

In this episode we explore methods for entering into a state of mystery and wonder through specific questions and contemplations.

• Includes a guided meditation that uses questions to direct you into an experience of mystery, humility, and awe.

Don't forget to subscribe for more ingenious ways to tap into the ever-present stillness and joy of our true nature.

NEWS:

Awareness Explorers has made the following top listener charts on G...

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