Waking Up: Meditation & Wisdom

I have meditated for many years , cobbling together my own rather sub-standard daily practice with snippets of information gathered here and there. My daughter subscribed to this app last year and strongly suggested I try it , but I was put off by the cost. Living ( now unemployed) in Africa means that I do not easily have the means to pay for online resources, especially in First world currencies. At the end of 2020 an unimaginable disaster hit our family. Daily meditation became essential for my husband and I to get through our days after temporarily translocating to help our 30 year old son who was diagnosed with Brain cancer . Without this incredibly generous gift provided to us by Sam Harris I am not exaggerating when I say I would barely have survived these past 3 months. Without it we would not have been able to sustain our hands-on daily practical help for our son and his young family who suddenly have to navigate the impacts of brain surgery, radiation therapy and a very uncertain future. The meditation courses provided here have strengthened our daily practice immeasurably. Our emotional coping strategies have been enhanced as a result. The rest of the app has provided a wonderful resource for me too - opening up a whole new world regarding the theory of Mindfulness. Many many thanks for your gift. Words cannot express our gratitude enough.

Thank you for helping to change my life! This app is transformational!

The title says it all-mindfulness training without the religious baggage taught by a real spiritual savant(that’s meant to be a compliment, Sam 😀).

Waking Up is hands down the most valuable app I’ve ever encountered. From in-depth conversations with world-class experts to diverse meditation styles rooted in real practice and research, the content is unparalleled. Each session tackles important topics—procrastination, distraction, and pain management—and is both enlightening and practical. As someone dealing with ongoing health challenges, I’ve found genuine relief and support through its guided meditations for physical and emotional pain. With experts from Zen, Dzogchen, and beyond, Waking Up offers an inclusive, comprehensive path to mindfulness. I’ve recommended this app to everyone I know not for any incentives, but simply because I believe in its value.

i am immensely grateful for the revitalized experience of daily living you furnish through teachings of this platform please never stop (pardon typos that follow) —- make room/ i know the nuance of feverish contraction/ first from the vantage point of being captured/ in the present moment ensnared by the influence of horse blinkers/ so restricting sensory experience/ there is an entire world in the periphery ceasing to exist/ having been made such a distant memory/ almost relegated as an element of imagination/ while the sear of that brand of anxiety/ freshly removed from between the coals and forcefully applied/ collapses all of existence into the ingress of intolerable… high pitched whines and blindingly bright convulsions of the mind/ this is the forest of misery from which the trees cannot be seen while in the thick of it/ even while unable to expunge the catalogue of catastrophic drops in the gut as such/ through the lens of contemplative practice/ the key hole broadens to an open door/ grisly sensations need not relinquish for coordinates located at my lonely to grasp point of reference/ see self as set of conditions where these transient elements collide/ furnishing them ample room to rage/ and scale the crazy to apocalyptic/ with neither clinging nor aversion activated and engaged/ still in the forest but catapulted to an elevated position from which valleys… summits and rivers remain visible/ make space for it all/ be taken by and identify with none/ dropping back into the space of consciousness/ there is just this/

I joined for a free month a while back and I got a taste of the 28 introductory course with Sam Harris. I love his style of guided meditation, and that there’s time to sit quietly (I add his background music too), and also to contemplate the concepts he’s bringing to my attention. Now I’m in the daily guided meditations and I love that you can add minutes to them, in the middle of the meditation to have more time to sit. I’ve never been consistent at meditation and Sam’s app has been drawing me into it on a daily basis. I love it. Thank you!

I had tried other meditation apps and enjoyed them. I was familiar with some of Sam’s work, and I had always respected his approach. So, I was curious to try Waking Up. To say it’s changed my life just doesn’t capture it. I started using it for meditation, but I have come to love all of the other content provided by the app. The conversations are powerful, in the way that Sam draws s much wisdom out of others. I also love the Life section that was added after I subscribed. There is so much practical wisdom for living a better life there from so many great teachers that I continue to grow from listening and implementing it. After a year, I got the lifetime subscription, and it’s been worth every penny. I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t listen to something new on here, and I could see myself happily doing so for the rest of my life.

I can’t explain it, but Waking Up is a life changer. The saying “if you work it, it works” applies here. I am past the intro course and I wish the secondary courses were as structured. Also it would be awesome if we could add certain courses to our Home Screen. Thanks for it all, Sam.

I wish I would’ve got it sooner

Thank you for the wonderful insights and meditations