What is Meditative.dev?
A human development initiative grounded in truth seeking and the reduction of suffering. We teach a plethora of meditation tools in the spirit of pragmatic dharma, which guide people towards awakening (stream entry and beyond) as a real human possibility. We run a weekly meditation session and interact as an online community.
No Gurus Here – at meditative.dev we are deliberately avoiding a hierarchical guru model. There are many obvious pitfalls, falsehoods and deliberate disempowerment traps which come from pedestaling one figure above others. No one human being is beyond fallibility or criticism. In different circumstances, sometimes we are the student and sometimes the teacher. And both the student and the teacher should be open to hearing feedback from each other. We wish that everyone realise their own inner wisdom and what great value they have to offer others.
Shawn
When Shawn first waded into meditation, he really didn’t know what he was getting into. A number of years later, after countless hours of cushion and retreat time, and many transformative experiences, he wanted to share what he’d learned. This marked the start of Meditative.dev—a initiative to help others in exploring the fascinating world of consciousness, and more importantly, making life an easier thing to live. He has experimented with a wide range of meditation techniques over the years, going deep into many deconstructive insight practices and working with the absorbtion states know as the jhanas. He’s spent over three months on silent retreats in Spain, Sri Lanka, Portugal and Australia, and has done courses in MBSR and with Buddhist Geeks.
Originally from Canada, Shawn now resides in Australia, where he’s undertaking a PhD at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS). His research focuses on better understanding the mechanisms through which meditation transforms the brain and experience over time.
Single-person led projects, however well-intentioned, can inadvertently turn into stagnant echo chambers. Knowing this, Shawn jumped at the opportunity to bring Roger into the fold to co-host the sessions and other project initiatives. Roger’s presence, ideas, extensive meditation experience and knack for precisely articulated phenomenology, have truly enhanced every aspect of the project. Teodora has been another phenomenal addition to the team. Her energy, enthusiasm, curiousity, skill as a meditator and a whole lot of heart really help make the whole project be much more than it could be otherwise.
Roger
From a young age, Roger had a very low hedonic set point but over the years, through introspective and meditative practices, he has managed to tremendously increase his baseline well-being to a level much above the norm. He now has a mind which represents itself as permanently centreless and without the sense of a singly positioned epistemic agent. He aims to help others achieve similar levels of baseline well-being and mental unperturbability.
Roger met Shawn in 2019, and the two immediately bonded over their similar interests in rational, detailed phenomenological descriptions of the mind, the project of awakening and developing wisdom. Soon after Shawn started Meditative.dev, he asked Roger to join him in hosting our meditation sessions.
Roger is also part of the EPRC (The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium) and is interested in working with others to detail the specifics of phenomenal content in order to better understand consciousness, valence and ultimately reduce sentient suffering. Alongside this, he is currently undertaking a master’s at The University of Edinburgh (Scotland) in Epistemology, Ethics and Philosophy of Mind with Cognitive Science.
Teodora
Teodora was the first member of Meditative.dev, having met Shawn at the start of his teaching career as one of his first students. Teodora’s passion for mediation was ignited and she became extremely enthusiastic about practice and anything meditation-related. She has since developed strong meditative skills thanks to the work in meditative.dev, retreats and from reading anything she could get her hands on.
Teodora has been an active supporter of Meditative.dev from the beginning. In 2022, she was invited to contribute her skills as a facilitator in the weekly sessions alongside Shawn and Roger. She combines an array of practices, working with compassion, insight, open awareness and the subtle body. She is also interested in the phenomenology and effects of emergent experiences arising from contemplative practices.
Teodora is a member of the EPRC (The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium), involved in the Big Data Project, aiming to use meditation reports available online as a resource for the analysis of emergent phenomena. Teodora works as a post-doctoral researcher at The University of Zurich (Switzerland), in the VIAN-DH project, developing software for multimodal annotation of human interaction.
Allies of the EPRC
