PODCAST · religion
Rope Burn
by Ryan Lowe
Short bursts of wisdom stemming from Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and mixed meditative approaches.
Episodes
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The Myth of the Lone Wolf is Killing People
This is a voice message I left for my uncle who at one point was suicidally depressed and working as a police officer. It's taking him about 50 years to figure out that his own mind is the source of his suffering, and yet not the only source. Culturally, we tend to believe that strength and...
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I Had a Panic Attack
I had a panic attack yesterday, and wanted to hide from my life but couldn't. I still had to participate. I thought it was going to be excruciating to be around people, because I didn't have the energy to be myself. But I may have stumbled across an insight, where if I don't have to be myself…
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I Want to Hide When I Feel Sad
I've been experiencing a terrifying and familiar blanket of misery for the past week or so, and struggling like hell to try to get out of it, to try to get back to how I was before — which was energetic, optimistic, positive, powerful. Just, in short, feeling good. And I've been feeling bad. In…
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The Effort it Takes to be Effortless, with Pia Leichter
Pia Leichter is a creative partner, certified coach, author of 'Welcome to the Creative Club', and founder of Kollektiv Studio. A recovering nomad and chaos curator, she’s worked as an award-winning creative director for some of the biggest brands in the world. Now, Pia co-creates wild visions…
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Arthritic Porn Star
I currently feel like an arthritic porn star who made a name for herself deep-throating cheese graters. In other words, I’m in pain—and I think it’s probably a good time to talk about my experience while I’m in this state. Because, honestly, most days lately, I’m walking around in a kind of…
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It's Fucked and It's Okay
In this session, I narrate (in real time) the process I go through when I feel flooded with anxiety, and decide to give it my full attention. At first, I struggle to locate anxiety in my body - but with time, unpleasant sensations become clearer. I'm able to work with my emotional bind, even just…
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Childlike Freedom (on the Other Side of Hell)
Leading into the new year, I experienced what felt like an uninterrupted depression for about 6 months. To date, this had been the darkest period of my life. But in some way which remains mysterious, it felt deeply necessary. And now, on the other side of it, I seem to be experiencing a level of...
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Blinking Doesn't Actually Interrupt Seeing, Thinking Doesn't Actually Interrupt Being
Each time we blink, it can feel like seeing goes away. But actually, we're still seeing darkness, and we can't help but keep seeing as long as we're conscious and have functional eyes. In a similar way, each time a thought arises, it can feel like our awareness recedes or vanishes completely,...
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Awake with a Hangover
I got way too drunk with a friend last night and this is what it feels like to continue abiding in awareness through a hangover.
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Being Burnt Out and Depressed for 6 Months
I was pretty depressed for a long time. I had no energy and I couldn't sleep very well. In the end, it seemed helpful to just take a bunch of time off, unplug from everything and sleep. I more or less forced myself to exercise most days and that helped too. But I did learn that spirituality isn't...
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The Step Back Into Pure Awareness
It can seem as though we live in two Worlds, one with eyes open (the "real" world) and the other with eyes closed (an imaginary world). But a pawn closer inspection of how our brains render our sensory input, it can be possible to see that both of these are actually the same. Playing between the...
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When to Think
The danger with thinking is that it easily becomes the primary lens through which we experience reality. The advantage to thinking is that it's a powerful tool with which we can navigate the world. The time to think is only when it's necessary, on an as needed basis. The rest of the time we can...
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Rushing Through Life, Slowly, with Great Discomfort
The feeling of rushing is a signal that "the factors of enlightenment" are out of whack. And so it can help to slow down and be with the pressurized feeling of purposefully slowing down.
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Meditating in the Space Beyond All
This is a guided meditation in which we use labeling to extract ourselves from identification with the six aspects of experience: sight, sound, body sensations, visual and linguistic imaginings, and emotions. Once freed of identification with the above, we abide in/as the space beyond it all.
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Who Would I Be If I Had Different Parents?
You would still be you, because everyone is always "I" and feels just as much "me" as anyone else. We all are this mysterious "I" in different costumes.
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Am I Fully Enlightened?
How will I know if I'm fully enlightened? I think it can be a strong signal that the finger is pointing at the right moon if, during hard times, the mind remains as beautifully joyous and radiantly happy as during easy times.
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Where is the Past and Future, Other than in Thought?
If you worked out yesterday, how can you tell you worked out? If you have no memory of the experience, what of that experience leaves residue on the present moment?
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Reality is Perfect, Until We Think About It
Reality is already perfect in every moment exactly as it is, it's only when I bring my own preferences and desires into the picture that any unsatisfactoryness at all is capable of existing. But prior to all of that, everything is perfectly okay.
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Buddhism in a Sentence
Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as "I" or "Mine". Those who have heard this have heard all the teachings. Those who have practiced this have covered all of the principles.
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Who Am I?
When we ask the question, "Who am I?" and wait in the not-knowing of the question itself, not turning to thought for an answer, the not-finding itself becomes an experiential resolution to the question.
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The End of Stress and Unhappiness
Buying reality in "as is" condition has the potential to end stress and unhappiness. When we practice leaving all sense perception, thought and emotion as is, we relax our reactivity and come into harmony with what is.
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Dissolving Into The Void
Last night I had a full-blown awakening experience without the help of psychedelics or extended meditation or breathwork. I was however, on the tail end of an IFS session and this certainly had me in the right neighborhood for magic to happen.
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When I Was High
When I was high and experienced oneness with everything, I looked to see if there were stepping stones back to this perspective in sober consciousness. What I found was that the breadcrumbs were hard to see because absolutely everything was a breadcrum, and so became hidden as separate "things"....
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Recognition is Not Mindfulness
I've made a recent discovery that my mindfulness practice wasn't working because what I thought was mindfulness was actually recognition. True mindfulness needs to be free of aversion and clinging. What I was practicing was recognition without an awareness of my attitude toward what was being...
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My 24 Hour Emotional Dumpster Fire
As it turns out, I have even less control over my mind and mood than I thought.
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Evidence of Self
It seems as though the only way for there to be some suggestion of my existence as a separate "self", it can only be hinted at through assumption. The second I start looking for it in my direct experience, it vanishes.
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Alarm Triage as an Antidote to Overwhelm
Coming out of a few weeks of fairly potent sadness and overwhelm and depression, I've gained a little bit of insight as to what I can be doing as unpleasant thoughts and feelings arise (alarms) two more skillfully triage my taking action into "now", "later" or "never."
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I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
The last time my wife and I were really high together, we came up with a saying that seemed to capture the feeling of being completely open to everything that was happening. Now, that same saying is a window which either opens to happiness or closes, and keeps happiness out.
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So Stressed Out
Somehow I thought all the spiritual practice had put me in a position of being immune to overwhelm, burnout and feeling stressed out. Turns out, I was wrong.
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Conditioning the Nervous System
We are fortunate in that we can actually conditioning service systems to become more accepting of unpleasantness while simultaneously accessing states of relaxation. This means external circumstances are no longer what govern our sense of "things being okay," and instead we find ourselves in a...
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Abandoning Our Trains of Thought (Meditation)
In this meditation we're going to be practicing noticing when we have been carried away by trains of thought, and simply getting off each train. We will be shifting our attention to the in-breath, and abiding in a state of mental tranquility if it arises.
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I Am The Problem
As I record this episode I'm in the middle of feeling resentment and anger. Normally, these feelings would be directed at another person. But the deeper truth is that I am the problem.
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Fire of Awareness Meditation
Inviting all aspects of experience into the traveller's inn of awareness, and tending the fire of awareness that illuminates them all.
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Joy in the Face of Disappointment
Rumi (an ancient enlightened poet) was asked, "What is Sufism" and he replied, "Joy in the face of sudden disappointment."
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Dog Mind Meditation
Border Collies need to be challenged physically and mentally in order to thrive. If neglected, and left to their own devices - this breed of dog is inclined to misbehave. The excess energy becomes destructive and the potential for that energy to have been spent skillfully is squandered. Our minds...
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The Less I Know The Better
Exploring the inverse relationship between knowledge and freshness of experience.
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But What About Work Days?
I've always tended to separate formal meditation from tedious and mentally strenuous tasks like those encountered on my laptop at work. My question at this point is how do I maintain an awakened mind during heavily left-brained tasks which by their very nature require my full attention, leaving…
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The Center of the Bullseye
The space between thoughts is all we need to notice during meditation. This silence is the non-dual state, where we have not become identified with thought.
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Plunge Into Battle
A line from the Bhagavad Gita can guide us to the insight needed to skillfully participate in our worldly activities while maintaining an open heart.
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Zen Retreat Debrief
Just returned from a 4 day Zen retreat, trying to communicate what it's like at the moment.
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Trying Not To Try
If you don't know how to get out of your own way, the practice of releasing all effort may be wild new country replete with opportunity.
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Do I Want Anything to be Different Right Now?
We work our asses off to have these enlightenment experiences and then what? What does practice look like on the other side of seeing that you are indistinguishable from the rest of the universe, and the Avatar of our "self" was never actually there in the first place? Oddly, it comes down to...
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Anxiety is Just a Balloon Puppy
Internal Family Systems (IFS) seems to overlap with Zen in one very significant and helpful way: it provides a system for disidentifying from our own challenging emotions and becoming merely aware of them. The surprising part is that we become unburdened by that which we simply notice, versus…
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Just Sit Straight, There's a Reason
For whatever reason, early in my practice I really had a hard time complying with the instruction to always sit straight while meditating. My thinking mind could form all kinds of arguments against it and so I wanted to practice meditation in all these different positions. But as my practice has...
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The Greatest Mistake
In the first written Zen document, the Hsin Hsin Ming - a Zen Master warns us that the greatest mistake is to pursue Mind (nirvana/enlightenment) with the thinking mind. In the shadow of this statement lurks a direct pointing to a meditative technique which we can use to open us up to glimpse the...
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Why Meditating Consistently is so Hard
How we think about our meditation practice can actually get in the way of true meditation. The ability to discard the identity of the "meditator" and to really just continually come back to just paying attention is the antidote to struggling to meditate consistently.
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My Wife Wanted to Murder Me Over a Veggie Burger
Our starving ancestors used to spend days chasing antelope across the fertile crescent. Their hanger served them well enough to get us to where we are today, and so I'm not so sure we should want to turn our backs on this evolutionary gift.
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How ChatGPT's Infinite Hero Paintbrush Made Me Have an Uncertain Epiphany
I've been spending time with ChatGPT trying to rebuild a 1989 computer game. During the process, AI and I have accidentally produced a hero paint brush. And with this hero paintbrush, I unlocked an uncertainty epiphany.
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Thoughts are Like Thieves Breaking Into an Empty House
Considering the possibility that our thoughts are totally inconsequential can offer utter release from being implicated by them. At first, thoughts are like a finger tracing a line in water. As we practice, thoughts become more like a snake uncoiling and slithering away. As our practice matures,...
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Setbacks are Inevitable
Despite the obvious fact that we will always experience setbacks in our day to day lives, we tend to have some underlying expectation that "one day" things will be just the way we want them. How do we free ourselves from this fantasy and engage directly with the freedom already available in on…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Short bursts of wisdom stemming from Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and mixed meditative approaches.
HOSTED BY
Ryan Lowe
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Rope Burn have?
Rope Burn currently has 54 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Rope Burn about?
Short bursts of wisdom stemming from Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and mixed meditative approaches.
How often does Rope Burn release new episodes?
Rope Burn has 54 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Rope Burn?
You can listen to Rope Burn on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Rope Burn?
Rope Burn is created and hosted by Ryan Lowe.
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