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The Art of Meditation presents
"The Art of Concentration"

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Dear Friends,

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I hope you have all had a wonderful summer. As we enter into autumn I am working with the team on the upcoming year's online programme offerings.

I believe there is much great material available in the marketplace to the many people looking to start out with meditation, and our strengths at AoM and my strengths as a teacher perhaps lie more in what we can offer to intermediate and more experienced yogis and meditators.

Having spent the last few years focusing on helping others get established in the fundamentals of meditation, this year I want to start sharing specific teachings on developing deeper concentration.

Concentration is absolutely the bedrock of deep meditative experience and what delineates it from preliminary or early stages of practice. Furthermore concentration is often the most poorly taught aspect of meditation as well as being the hardest part of our mind to cultivate.

Below is an outline of what we will be offering over the next 18 months.

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The Art of Concentration

Concentration is the theme of the online programme starting this autumn into next year. It will be delivered in 3 parts.
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1. Intensive online weekend retreat - "The Art of Breathing: A Doorway to Higher Concentration"​
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​Live Date: Saturday 5th - Sunday 6th October 2024​
Rerun date: Saturday 9th - Sunday 10th November 2024 ​
Price: £25 Registration admin fee plus teachings on donation
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​During this weekend I will be exploring the practice of Anapana (meditation on the breath) and teaching how to develop this practice to train both deep levels of sustained concentration and serenity, as well as how to practice to train focus concentration and mental flexibility and wieldiness. This single meditation can be developed as an entire mind gym in which to train and hone a wide range of important mental faculties.
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This intensive weekend retreat can be followed as a stand alone experience, or can be used as preparatory work for our curated journey into developing The Art of Concentration. Burgs will be hosting the live broadcasts on both weekends.
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2. "The Art of Concentration Stage 1 - Developing your meditation skill with Anapana"​
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Start Date: Saturday 16th November 2024​
Price: £125
​Registration: Mid October 2024​
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Developing concentration practice is not simply a question of receiving the instructions in how to do it. It takes careful and patient ongoing commitment to regular practice to be successful.

Following on from our intensive "Art of Breathing" weekend retreat, Burgs will go on to hold a six week programme of lessons and teachings looking at:

• the subtle nuances that determine success with concentration practice
• how to continue to build and develop concentration over a longer periods of time
• how to avoid the cul-de-sacs that many meditators find themselves in

This is designed to give you time to develop and deepen through regular ongoing practice. It will coincide with the beginning of our 5 month long winter retreat. Lessons will be released weekly as we build up our practice step by step. To profit from joining this course it is recommended that you be able to commit to daily practice ( or at least 5 times a week).​
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​This 6 week course can be followed as a stand alone course, or can be followed on from the intensive "Art of Breathing" intensive retreat weekend.
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3. Year long live curated online course - "The 40 Meditations of the Buddha"
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​Start date: mid-January 2025
​Registration: Click the button below to register your interest​
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The two offerings above will lay the preparatory work for the main focus of our time this winter and next year. It is not essential that you follow these two stages before engaging with this longer online course. However the teachings shared in "The 40 Meditations of the Buddha" will really come to life if you have some previous experience and knowledge of concentration practice.
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As many of you know, I myself was trained in the system of meditation outlined in the classic "Vissudhimagga". This is quite possibly the most thorough manual of the Buddhas teachings of meditation and insight ever written.
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You may also know that the Buddha taught 40 meditation subjects for the purposes of training in concentration (Samandhi). Our ability to sustain our concentration as the mind becomes subtler is absolutely crucial to success in both the direct and gradual approaches to the development of liberating insight.
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Over the next year, starting early January 2025, I will be offering a longer course, during which we will cover all 40 of these subjects. The idea behind making this offering is to give you the opportunity to learn the wider arena of concentration practices. Over the duration of the course we will explore the various roles each of them play in ripening us to the many stages of awakening that free us from suffering.
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That said, we will not be presenting these meditations simply as a dry commentary on the Vissudhimagga, nor in the same order as the Vissudhimagga is written. I will be teaching them using the methods and system I have developed myself over the past 25 years of sharing these practices. The intention behind this course is to help you to breathe life and Living Dharma into your practice itself. It will be quite a special program and one that I have not taught for many years in this kind of format. At the end of which all participants who have shown that they have completed the program will be recognised as such with an accreditation from the Art of Meditation.​​
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​More details on this course will be available in the coming weeks.

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We invite you to click the button below to receive an application to join this course. More detailed information about the programme and registration details will follow in the coming weeks.
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The value of joining live intensive online weekend retreats

Besides the main online programme of developing concentration, I am hoping to host a series of special weekend intensive online retreat experiences for those who like to work in a more focused way on specific areas of practices. These weekends can be seen as a series of masterclasses where we will do a deep dive into various themes with the intention of facilitating significant shifts and transformation in a contained online retreat environment.

This is the time where big breakthroughs in healing and shifts can occur, while a regular structured practice is where everything gets fully integrated and embedded in an accomplished stable practice. I will be offering several of these intensive weekends over the coming year, looking at various threads to our meditation practice such as Internal Alchemy, Spiritual self-care, Death and Dying.

In-person Retreats in 2025

And for those of you who prefer to learn and practice meditation in an in-person retreat environment, we will be updating our schedule with reset weekends in Sussex, and some 7day retreats in 2025. Keep an eye on the retreat schedule on the website for more updates.

So that's all for now.

Thank you everyone and please do get in touch if you have any questions.

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Much love to you all
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Burgs

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