Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness

Loch Kelly

Sep 2015 · Sounds True

About this ebook

It is possible to access the same sense of well-being, clarity, inner freedom, and loving connection realized by the world’s meditation masters. We can do this by shifting our awareness in the midst of our daily lives. Shift into Freedom presents innovative teacher Loch Kelly’s training manual for actively participating in the evolution of your own consciousness.

Synthesizing insights from neuroscience and psychology with wisdom from the world’s contemplative traditions, Shift into Freedom offers an accessible and remarkably powerful series of meditations that lead us to a little-known natural capacity called “awake awareness.” Through an unfolding process of “small glimpses, many times,” these exercises shift us from a thought-based knowing to an awareness-based way of operating in the world. With continued practice, we learn to “unhook” from our customary home in our ego-based identity—and then sustain an embodied presence and relatedness known as “open-hearted awareness.” Loch Kelly teaches that this is “the meeting place of awakening and growing up, where we have the capacity to handle a fully emotional, intimate life and act with authenticity and compassion.”

Learn more about:

• How to separate awareness from thinking to realize that thoughts and emotions are not the center of who we are

• How insights from neuroscience can help us learn how to embody awakening

• Ego-identification, a pattern of thought that co-opts the body’s boundary program and creates a mistaken identity

• The paradox of “being home while returning home”

• Finding the off-switch for the chattering mind

• How to intentionally and immediately shift into peace of mind any time of your day

• Awakening as a natural process of human development, which unfolds as waking up, waking in, and waking out

• Meditation practices for all phases of the journey of awakening and embodiment

• Four stages of spiritual growth: recognition, realization, stabilization, and expression

• Untying the “knots” in our mindbody system to liberate us from our deepest doubts and fears

• How to move from deliberate mindfulness to effortless mindfulness and heart mindfulness

• How to effortlessly focus without using attention

• Discovering your innate happiness that is not dependent on circumstances

• How to welcome and liberate sub-personalities after initial awakening

• A user’s manual for your consciousness to help you free yourself from the limits of ego-identification and live from open-hearted awareness

About the author

Loch Kelly
Loch Kelly, MDiv, LCSW, is a leader in the field of meditation and psychotherapy. He is author of the award-winning Shift into Freedom and founder of the Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch is an emerging voice in modernizing meditation, social engagement, and collaborating with neuroscientists. For more, visit lochkelly.org.
Adyashanti

Adyashanti is an American-born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence. His books include Emptiness Dancing, The End of Your World, True Meditation, The Way of Liberation, and Falling into Grace.

Asked to teach in 1996 by his Zen teacher of 14 years, Adyashanti offers teachings that are free of any tradition or ideology. "The Truth I point to is not confined within any religious point of view, belief system, or doctrine, but is open to all and found within all." For more information, please visit adyashanti.org.