My teaching draws from both approaches in a complementary way.

In Buddhist based systems and traditions such as Insight and Mindfulness, one practices meditation techniques to quiet and focus the mind, and eventually see through the limited, fixed sense of self. These meditation techniques concentrate attention on objects such as the breath, body sensations, thoughts, feelings, sounds, etc. Little by little the mind and body are clarified and purified.

We can collectively call these approaches Progressive, as they are based on progressing through increasing levels of skill, purification, and insight. This approach is extremely powerful in quieting the mind, lessening stress and emotional reactivity, and healing past traumas. It also takes work and effort to develop sufficiently effective meditation techniques to gain these benefits.

In the Direct Path we go directly to awareness, where experience is known, without regard to the content of that experience. There is no attempt to focus or quiet the mind, or change any aspect of our experience. We simply let go of effort and abide in what is, exactly as it is. This is being, not doing.

In this approach meditation is not something we learn, practice, or even do. As the mind is the source of all action, when we abandon action, goal, and effort, we naturally relax and fall back into awareness, which is behind the mind. Awareness is aware of the mind, but it is not the mind, it is the being that we are, experienced simply as “I am”.

The words being, awareness, consciousness, and true nature, all mean the same thing: who and what we are. Being has been, and will always be accessible to us directly, when we relax our habitual focus on experience, and naturally return to who we are. The nature of our being is peace and happiness, and when the struggle to create pleasant and avoid unpleasant experience is let go of, being remains. Abiding in being we truly relax. 

This approach is direct but it is not instantaneous: for almost everyone it is gradual, as one habitually gets drawn back into thought, sensation, and perception, and loses the immediate awareness of being. But every moment of pure awareness, of pure being, is a moment of awakening. There is no degree of being that is more or less awakened, there is just being, so there is no progress. “I am” is always fully and completely “I am”; we are always fully who we are, regardless of what is happening in experience.

Many people who have meditated in other traditions and practices, often for years or decades, have found that the Direct Path brings the peace and happiness they have been longing and hoping for but not yet fully realized. And for those just starting out, it can be motivating to realize that for spiritual awakening our minds and our experiences do not need to be totally transformed, purified, or changed, but can be left as they are. Awakening is not something that happens to our minds or our identities, “we” do not awaken; awakening is revealed as our true nature when we cease the activity of identifying with a mind, body and world.

Mindfulness is still one of the most powerful and effective ways to calm an over-stimulated mind, and integrate and heal internalized emotional patterns and trauma. Even as we delve deeply into being, the mind, body and emotions need care, support and healing, and these practices provide that in a deep and meaningful way. If we do not mindfully attend to our relational, psychological and emotional patterns and conditioning, we can continue to harm ourselves and others with patterned behaviors, justifying this with our supposed “spirituality”. This is spiritual bypassing, and mindfulness can be a powerful antidote.

Johann teaches the Direct Path along with focused, powerful Mindfulness techniques in small dedicated groups and on nature retreats. Using a mix of guided meditation, sharing, discussion, personal experience, and conceptual instruction, we gradually heal reactive emotional patterns and open up, relaxing into our true nature, moment by moment.