Beyond Mindfulness: The Direct Approach to Lasting Peace, Happiness, and Love

Happiness is your birthright, your natural state. Beneath all the frightening and depressing stories you tell yourself lies a deeper level of intrinsic peace and well-being. Mindfulness teachers insist that if you practice certain meditations daily for months or years you’ll gradually get happier. But there’s a more direct approach—just turn around and recognize the inherent perfection and completeness of this moment right now, just as it is. This is the secret to fulfillment that the great masters and sages have taught for millennia—and it’s available to anyone who reads this book.

Drawing on his own awakening and his years of study with teachers of the nondual wisdom traditions of Zen, Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta, spiritual teacher Stephan Bodian offers powerful teachings and guided meditations designed to point you directly to your radiant true nature, beyond the mind, which is compassionate, joyful, and undisturbed by the roller-coaster ride of life. Prior to every experience and identity lies the ultimate experiencer, the one who is eternally wakeful and aware—and that is what you are!

If you came to mindfulness in search of spiritual awakening, here’s your bridge beyond technique. If you’re tired of efforting to get somewhere else, learn how to take “the backward step” to rest and abide in your own natural wakefulness and love. And if you’re already familiar with the “direct approach” and want to follow it all the way to enlightenment, this book will guide you home.