Awakening & Human Flourishing with Shamil Chandaria

“liberation and human flourishing should be happening along your path, not just a prize at the end of 20 years”

We are thrilled to be hosting an evening of  meditation and discussion with Shamil Chandaria, translating awakening into liberation and human flourishing. The event is live online, as well as recorded and emailed to everyone registered. 

Shamil is a meditation researcher and thought leader in consciousness studies at both Oxford, Cambridge, Google's Deep Mind and Imperial College London. 

Drawing on the most recent scientific perspectives on how our minds construct experience, Shamil offers a clear framework that demystifies spiritual awakenings and a path towards greater human flourishing. His approach reveals how you can harness practices like meditation to systematically reshape your brain’s predictive processes, reduce suffering, and reconstruct a whole new experience of reality. 

"Our nature is the empty, luminous space of expression, the canvas of the universe. This canvas, this drum skin, wants to express, wants to vibrate. Initially, we have all these strong vibrational modes called priors, which dominate the way that the drum vibrates - crusty stuck vibrational modes. When we can soften those sticky resonant patterns that want to dominate, we can allow energies to express, and we can resonate beautifully with the universe. Our hearts can resonate, our bodies can resonate, our minds can resonate, and we can play beautiful music and be a shining, resonant flower, vibrating in sympathy and harmony with the whole.

Learn to be a light, open instrument of the universe, not crusty old patterned one but a flexible, malleable, responsive instrument. If that was all - just flexibility - then you would resonate with all the jangly energies around -- all the crazy negative social media vibe energies, all the down or graspy energies. Rather than that, we want to be playing beautiful music and allow that music to spread and resonate into the universe, into other people, so that they can loosen up and hear our tune and resonate with that tune with their own particular patterns influencing the music that shows up in them. That could be called transmission. Transmit fragrant music through this instrument and through the world.

We want to be the master of our music, the master of our energies, manifesting beautifully, sparklingly, appropriately to the circumstances. This is human flourishing. Grooving with the universe. Allowing the universe to shine more beautifully. 

This doesn't only mean joyous energy. It could mean:

• loving energies
• compassionate energies
• helping energies
• poignant energies
• empathetic energies
• energies of gratitude and awe, the majesty of it all
• Probing energies of exploration and wonder.
• Energies of strong action to right the world.

Be a shining, dancing, vibrating sympathy flowing with the universe. Rowing your boat in the river of life, not rowing against the current but still being able to row within it, having freedom to express. Gently, gently down the river so that the whole becomes beautiful.

THIS is how we use our freedom, our liberation!"

This event will feature guided meditation, discussion and Q&A. You can attend live, and a recording is sent to everyone registered. 

For a complete guide to Shamil's approach, his "Rewiring your Reality" course is recommended for a complete guide to the philosophy & neuroscience behind it: https://dandelion.events/e/m9nea

Shamil Chandaria

Shamil is a meditation researcher and thought leader in consciousness studies at both Oxford, Cambridge, Google's Deep Mind and Imperial College London. 

Drawing on the most recent scientific perspectives on how our minds construct experience, Shamil offers a clear framework that demystifies spiritual awakenings and a path towards greater human flourishing. His approach reveals how you can harness practices like meditation to systematically reshape your brain’s predictive processes, reduce suffering, and reconstruct a whole new experience of reality. 

Shamil offers an empowering synthesis of disciplines ranging from computational neuroscience and predictive processing to the nondual traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta and Kashmiri Shaivism. Shamil draws on 38 years of meditation and academic experience, having collaborated with some of the world's leading scientists in Bayesian brain theory, perception, artificial intelligence and psychedelic research. He is sought after by institutions such as the Centre for Eudaemonia and Human Flourishing at Oxford University and Google's DeepMind.

You can sample Shamil's work in the recent paper ‘A Beautiful Loop,’ or in podcast conversations with Sam Harris and FitMind.

• Senior research fellow at the centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford.
• Research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, London University, where he focuses on philosophical issues in neuroscience and well-being
• Research fellow at Imperial College in the neuroscience of psychedelics
• Bye-fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University.

“weaves together the latest ideas emerging in computational neuroscience, active inference, predictive processing, and the free energy principle into a compelling narrative of how our minds construct reality and indeed our ‘selves'.”

Constructing Self and World: A Conversation with Shamil Chandaria (Episode #320)

Wellbeing & Participation Guidance 

• This session is educational and contemplative; it is not therapy or medical care.
• Participation is voluntary. You may pause, skip any practice, or sit out.
• Body-centred practice can surface strong emotions, memories, dissociation, dizziness or anxiety. If this happens, please tell a facilitator; simple grounding options will be offered.
• Suitability: If you are experiencing psychosis, mania, severe dissociation, active self-harm, or have been psychiatrically hospitalised in the past 3 months, please do not attend this format. If you live with PTSD/complex trauma or eating disorders, or trauma that is exacerbated by placing your attention on the body, we recommend working first with a trauma-informed clinician and attend only if stable and well-resourced.
• If symptoms worsen during or after the retreat, stop the practices and contact your GP/mental-health team.
• Please let us know about relevant physical/mental-health conditions, current medications, pregnancy, or recent surgery so we can offer adaptations.
• Age 18+. Please arrive sober; alcohol or non-prescribed substances aren’t compatible with this work.
• By attending, you confirm you understand the above and take responsibility for your own wellbeing. No specific outcomes are guaranteed.

REFUNDS: Please note that we do not arrange refunds or exchanges. We welcome swapping or reselling your tickets with people you know.