Episode 15: Self Love and Enlightenment
Episode 15 of M3CS’s Contemplative Science Podcast saw Janusz Welin come on to the show to talk about the mind, body and falling in love with every part of ourselves.
For the full podcast, check out the episode here.
In this episode, we cover...
What ‘classical awakening’ is, and how it can look different for each individual.
How meditation helps us detach from our thinking to see that everything is connected.
Why we need to ‘learn to fall in love with every part of ourselves’!
Janusz Welin is the Founder of the Deep Mindfulness Collective, whose mission is making industrial strength mindfulness broadly available. A dedicated meditator since their teenage years, Janusz has has led residential retreats all over the world, including co-teaching with meditation master Shinzen Young.
Here are some of the key insights from the conversation...
Let’s discover and appreciate every part of our personalities!
”Learn how to fall in love with every part of ourselves. And if we can't, then to love that we can't. You know, sometimes you'll be guiding someone and they'll say: I feel so blocked. There's so much block. It's like: great! Let's fall in love with that block. Why are we trying to get through this thing? It's so blocky. It's cosmically blocky. It's just doing such a good job at stopping the emotion. Like let's just take a minute and really love that.”
Awareness can help us to realise that we don’t need to change ourselves.
“Traditionally in Buddhism, there's this idea of clinging and aversion, and so it's anything that wants anything. We would talk about that as being a 'part'. If I could hand you a magic wand right now and you could change anything about this moment, there are parts of me that would change things. And so those are 'parts'. You start to talk to those as though they were their own character or personality. And there's aspects that wouldn't change anything at all. And awareness, this overall experiencing, it doesn't need anything to be different. Doesn't need me to be different. Doesn't need you to be different. Doesn't need time to move forward. It could just sit here in dead air.”
Appreciating each part of ourselves can turn negative qualities into positive results.
“The part of me that's very judgemental, I didn't realise until a lot of practice that it was a protective mechanism. It was meant to manage the world, to keep the world kind of in order, so it felt safe. That part is actually very good at assessing things and wants to have aesthetic explorations. So that's what it's good at. And now that's what it does much more than judging people.”
The best place to find Janusz Welin is here.
See you next week!
