Message from GUGOGS Meditation Guide
I am honored to have served as meditation guide for GUGOGS since this monthly practice began in January 2021, and grateful that recordings are available here from August 2025 to the present. We hope they support and deepen your meditation practice.
My deepest gratitude goes to my meditation teacher, Tracy Cochran (http://www.tracycochran.org). Her teachings have profoundly influenced both my spiritual practice and my work as a meditation guide. Many of the themes, perspectives, and words you hear in these recordings have been inspired by or learned directly from her and from the meditation traditions she so generously shares.
I continue to study and practice with Tracy through her Hudson River Sangha and encourage anyone interested in deepening their practice to explore her work and consider joining her welcoming meditation community: https://tracycochran.org/group-meditation-2/. (Wednesdays at 12:30 ET, and Sundays at 5:30 ET)
Please enjoy these recordings, and join our GUGOGS monthly meditation meeting live on the third Sunday of each month at 7:30 a.m. ET. This monthly group meditation is an open meeting; all are welcome.
With gratitude and metta,
Wayne S.
How GUGOGS Group Meditation Works
Meditation Recordings
September 2026
The Presence in Stillness
“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.” — Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist (1953 to present)
Gordon Hempton has spent decades listening to and recording the natural world. For him, silence is not an empty world without sound. It is a quieting of human-made noise that allows us to hear what was there all along.
In our meditation practice, we often suggest that you come back to stillness. But this does not necessarily mean silence. My teacher Tracy Cochran says stillness can mean not striving—not trying to stop our thoughts, create a particular experience, nor get somewhere else. In this stillness, we may become aware of a presence already here: an attention, light or aliveness within us that also surrounds us and emanates out from us.
August 2026
Tiny Matters: The New Earth
“The older I get, the more I’m conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn’t it?”
— Sandra Cisneros (1954– ), novelist, poet, and artist
Sandra Cisneros reminds us that meaningful change does not always begin with something large. The world is made up of tiny matters, and even a small, intentional act can affect the world around us.
During times of turbulence and disconnection, it is easy to feel powerless in the face of problems that seem far greater than we are. Yet we can reconnect with our capacity to make a difference by attending to the small things—the choices we make, the kindness we offer, and the care we bring to the life directly in front of us.
July 2026
Seeing What Is
“When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole.”
— Rachel Naomi Remen (1938– ), physician, teacher, and author
Rachel Naomi Remen isn’t describing three different ways of acting. She is describing three different ways of seeing. We may spend much time trying to help, fix, or improve ourselves and the world around us. While this drive may arise from kindness and love, it can also quietly shape our vision. We may view ourselves or others as weak, broken or lacking.
Perhaps meditation is less about becoming whole, and more about learning to recognize the wholeness that is already here. Not because life is free of pain or struggle, but because beneath it all there is something that has never been broken.
June 2026
Freedom Is Something We Notice
“The more we practice, the more we may discover that freedom is not something we achieve. It is something we notice.”
—- Inspired by the words and teachings of Robert Thurman (1941–2026), American Buddhist scholar and educator
Many of us spend a good deal of our lives trying to become free. Free from fear. Free from worry. Free from difficult emotions, addictions, or the constant demands of the mind. We may imagine that freedom is something we must attain through effort, discipline, or spiritual achievement.
Meditation points in a different direction. Rather than creating freedom, we have the opportunity to notice it. Thoughts arise and pass. Emotions come and go. Circumstances change. Yet awareness remains. The more we practice, the more we may discover that freedom is not something we achieve, but something already present in our capacity to observe our experience without immediately reacting to it.
May 2026
The Thread: Yes, No, and Awareness
“There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.”
— William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet and pacifist
UIn meditation, we often notice how much is always changing. Thoughts come and go. Feelings rise and fall. The body shifts, tightens, softens. Everything seems to move and be in flux. And yet, there is something else here. A quiet awareness — a thread — that notices. A presence that remains, even as everything else changes.
This quotation points to that steady thread — not something we create, but something we begin to recognize. Not separate from our experience, but quietly holding it all.
April 2026
“You don’t have to change. You only have to be aware.”
— Anthony de Mello (1931–1987)
In meditation, some of us may approach the practice with a quiet (incorrect) assumption: something about us needs to be different — Calmer. Clearer. Less reactive. More peaceful. And so, we may begin to work on ourselves — Adjust. Improve. Fix. But de Mello points in another direction.
Consider that nothing needs to change. What if the invitation is simply to be — to bring a gentle, steady awareness to whatever is already here? Thoughts. Feelings. Restlessness. Ease. Not pushing any of it away, not holding onto anything. Just being aware. In that awareness, something begins to soften on its own. A stillness appears. A stillness that is not quiet, but just not striving.
March 2026
“Engagement where there was withdrawal, generosity where there was self-centeredness.”
— Kevin Griffin (founder Buddhist recovery network)
Meditation is a small but powerful way to practice this movement toward life. Instead of withdrawing into our self-centered thoughts or struggles, we gently turn toward our experience — returning again and again to the breath and to this moment.
For those in recovery, this can be a reminder that healing often unfolds not by escaping our life but by meeting it more fully. And for everyone, meditation offers a simple invitation: to become a little more present, a little more open, and a little more generous with the life that is here.
Feb 2026
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
— Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
In meditation, we are not trying to improve ourselves or quiet the mind. We are not trying to get somewhere else. We are practicing attention.
Weil suggests that attention itself is generosity. When we turn gently toward our own experience — restless thoughts, anxious feelings, whatever is here — we offer something profoundly kind. Not fixing or striving. Just attending. In that steady attention, something softens. We discover we do not need to push anything away. We can allow this moment and meet it as it is.
Wayne S February 15th 2026
January 2026
“There is a way of being present that does not try to change anything.”
— David Whyte (Anglo-Irish poet)
In meditation, we often find ourselves trying to improve our experience — to quiet the mind, to feel calmer, or to get somewhere else. But there is another way of practicing: simply noticing what is already here.
This kind of presence does not require effort or success. Nothing needs to be pushed away or held onto. We rest with our experience just as it is, noticing without fixing, allowing without judging.
December 2025
“May I suggest this is the best part of your life.”
— Susan Werner, Singer/songwriter
Susan Werner points us toward a central foundation of mindfulness practice: this moment is all we ever have. In meditation, you practice meeting this moment fully—and learning not only how to live right here, but how to consider that this moment may be the best part of your life.
As we practice we can get a glimpse of this moment and see what is available there. If we can be present with what is already here, something unexpected may be revealed.
November 2025
“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.” — Jack Kornfield (Buddhist monk and teacher)
Kornfield’s words mirror the practice we return to each month — letting be: softening the inner struggle, quieting the battles we fight in our minds, and learning to rest gently with whatever is present, whether pleasant or difficult.
Please join us as we explore the practice of letting be in the midst of whatever we may be carrying. You may find moments of steadiness and calm, right in the middle of the life you have today.
October 2025
Equanimity is a calm, balanced state of mind that remains steady and undisturbed amid changing experiences. It is the capacity to meet each moment — pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or painful — with openness, awareness, and non-reactivity.
Please join us as we explore ways to cultivate equanimity. Perhaps you will experience moments of steadiness and calm, with and despite what is going on your life.
Sept 2025
Impermanence
“You are the sky. Everything else — it’s just the weather.”
– Pema Chödrön (1936 – present)
Just like the weather, and sand through our hands, life is always in motion, carrying us forward whether we resist or relax into the flow. What seems solid today, softens tomorrow; what feels certain, becomes memory. The invitation in meditation is to rest in the vastness of awareness, steady and open, while the experiences of our lives come and go like shifting seasons. When we meet change with presence rather than clinging, we discover both peace and gratitude — a freedom that allows us to savor what was and welcome what is yet to come.
August 2025
Awareness Beyond Thought
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”
― Eckhart Tolle (1948-present)
You are not your thinking. Tolle invites us to notice the difference between being caught in our mental activity—evaluating, analyzing, reacting—and resting in the spacious awareness beneath it all. In meditation, we are asked to return again and again to this awareness (light, presence, higher power), which is always available to us.
History
In the December 2020 Group Conscience, a decision was made to create a team to develop some ideas and recommendations about how the group should explore meditation.
In January 2021’s Group Conscience, the group decided that on the 3rd Sunday of each month, we will have a group meditation that utilizes the ‘How GUGOGS Group Meditation Works’ document linked above as a opening to our monthly group meditation practice.
Resources
Below are GUGOGS resources that may be useful to those interested in meditation.
Current -How GUGOGS Meditation Works
How Meditation Can Move Us From Conscious Separation To Conscious Connection
Step 11: The Contemplative Mind
The Mysterious Source Of Love & Awareness
Turning It Over and Acceptance
Practicing Metta/ Loving Kindness
Are These Bad Times Or Good Times?
Emotional Equilibrium Welcoming But Not Clinging
Big Book Meditation For Group & Individual Contemplation
Transcript Of Big Book Meditation
Twelve & Twelve (Meditation From Step 11)
Grapevine Articles