Modern Spirituality with Ben Decker

Benjamin W. Decker is a meditation teacher and social activist mentored by Marianne Williamson. He's the bestselling author of four meditation books, including his newest book, Modern Spirituality: A Guide to the Heart of Mindfulness, Meditation, and the Art of Healing, which articulates a spiritual awakening taking place around the globe – and you can be a part it.

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• Website: www.BenDeckerMeditation.com
• Instagram: @BenjaminWDecker
• Twitter: @BenDecker

Most Influential Person

• Dr. Ronald Alexander, Author of Wise Mind, Open Mind

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness really helps me experience my emotions. With one of my clients, I sometimes would say before the sessions, are you excited? He used to say, yes, I'm excited.
• Then we did a mindfulness exercise where we would say, instead of identifying with our negative emotions, we would say that they're present. For example, frustration is present, impatience is present.
• My client now says, yes, there is excitement. It gives that breathing room so you can be an observer of your own life.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Breathing is everything. It is the key anchor. What I love about it is this notion that as we breathe in, we taking in pranic energy, life force energy that animates the body. Then we're releasing it back to its source.
• This idea that when we look into each other's eyes, we're breathing from that same source of life force energy. 

Suggested Resources

• Book: A Politics of Love by Marianne Williamson
• Book: Modern Spirituality by Benjamin W. Decker
• Book: Practical Meditation for Beginners by Benjamin W. Decker
• Book: Daily Mindfulness by Benjamin W. Decker
• Book: Meditations On Christ by Benjamin W. Decker
• App: n/a

Bullying Story

• In high school, I was so insecure and I didn't realize how insecure I was until I became secure a long time later. I was also navigating a challenging identity crisis around religion and my sexuality, puberty, and the cosmos, all at once. I went to three high schools in four years and my family moved around a lot.
• I had endured some trauma as a child so I was in therapy as a teen but I never quite felt I could trust my therapist.
• I was also in the priesthood and sort of felt like I was living multiple lives sort of like I had created almost a mild sense of dissociative identity disorder where I was sort of living these different personalities. None of them were really even me. They were me playing out something that I had seen or I thought I was supposed to do so people would like me.
• A memory that completely evaporated into the past and I completely forgot about was resurfaced when an old friend of mine reached out and said, you did something when we were in tenth grade and it really hurt me. What happened was, a friend of mine, a young woman I was going to school and church with, there was a rumor that she made out with this guy.
• I said, I heard that you and so and so were making out at the football game. She said no and I said, are you sure? You don't have to lie to us. She said, no, that didn't happen. After that, I made a couple jokes about it.
• One of the important things that we do in mindfulness is start to experience things from another person's perspective.

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