Peace with and without a cause - Part 2

·45 min·4 clips

Stephan Wormland explains how paying attention with kindness, not just mindfulness, can liberate your feelings.

This episode is part two of a series on finding peace with and without a cause, delivered as a solo instructional talk by Stephan Wormland. He begins by distinguishing between mere mindfulness and paying attention in a liberating way that combines kindness and wisdom. The first step is to embrace feelings as they are, avoiding spiritual bypassing or fake positive thinking. Stephan uses the metaphor of a stream to describe experience, teaching listeners to step out of it into the witness role, where they can observe thoughts, sensations, and feelings without identification. He provides guided meditation instructions, including focusing on the breath and body to stabilize awareness. Stephan discusses the emotion-phobic tendencies in Western culture, highlighting habits of self-judgment and unworthiness. To counter this, he suggests cultivating self-compassion through practices like loving-kindness meditation, touching oneself for comfort, and imagining caring figures like the Dalai Lama or Jesus. He emphasizes that this loving gaze naturally extends to others, as humans are social animals with an innate desire to be relevant positively. The episode then shifts to the insight (vipassana) aspect, starting with anicca, the impermanent nature of all experience. Stephan gives examples like panic attacks and morning blues to illustrate how trust in change can be built from personal experience. He encourages investigating feelings by removing labels and exploring bodily sensations directly. Finally, he mentions the other two insights—dukkha and anatta—stating that anatta (no-self) is the most direct path to natural peace, to be explored in a future episode. The talk blends theoretical Buddhist concepts with practical exercises, maintaining an educational and reflective tone throughout.

As heard by us

A meditation talk on meeting distress with trained compassion before turning toward inquiry into self.

Peace is framed as a relationship practice, starting with how someone meets difficult feeling. The host draws a clear line between bare mindfulness and attention warmed by tenderness, kindness, care, and curiosity, then turns to the familiar reflex of deciding that stress,…

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Want a gentler way to meet stress before your mind starts cross-examining every feeling?

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