MIDL Insight Meditation Teachers

Criteria for teaching in MIDL is not based on studying books or paying for a training course and certificate but rather on your own honest engagement and development of skill in the framework of the MIDL Meditation System.

You are welcome to integrate meditation methods you learn in the MIDL Meditation System into other meditation methods/systems for teaching purposes. 

Your study will be supported in learning MIDL techniques by attending weekly online meditation classes, Teacher Training Workshops (Register your interest) and self-study through actively engaging with MIDL.

Listed in this website are meditators who are devoted to MIDL, have reached the levels of skill in their own practice following the MIDL model, and intend to teach MIDL exclusively without integrating other methods.

These accredited teachers are advertised on the MIDL website and a trusted part of the face of MIDL throughout the world. They have access to free private interviews with Stephen Procter and exclusive teacher training workshops to refine their understanding of the structure and functioning of MIDL.

Skill in teaching MIDL is developed by engaging and practicing the system following the Online Insight Meditation Course, engaging in the weekly online meditation classes which contain free-flowing discussion, the MIDL Reddit community and through Private Sessions if these are suitable.

There are no criteria or lessons for this other than experiencing MIDL for yourself, and interaction and sharing with the MIDL community.

Since a very young age I had a fascination with meditation, I was attracted to the idea that we had the potential to better ourselves, to meld the type of person that we could become. To my young mind the idea that we had the power to shape ourselves served as a strong attraction and led to the starting of my study. It has been a long and enjoyable journey, now spanning over 46 years, one that I look forward to continuing each day.

When I was 13, I came across a book on meditation that I bought at a school fete, the book pointed towards the potential to enter into heightened states of consciousness through very deep relaxation techniques. I can remember being impressed when the author spoke about being able to have teeth extracted without any pain killers and without feeling pain, all he used was the meditation techniques.

This fascinated me and I started to practice it, I can still remember spending many hours laying in my parents back yard and also sitting on a rock down in the bush behind their home, experimenting with these techniques. I can remember entering into some quite deep relaxing states and felt them to be a refuge from my day to day life, I continued these techniques for many years but started searching in the direction of discipline in martial arts. 

This was being driven by intense bullying at school, at the time it felt like a bad thing, but now looking back I can see that it created the drive that got me to the point I am at today. Discomfort in life is often the first manifestation of the chance for something new and beautiful to arise, though I could not see that at the time.

Intensive bullying drove me to martial arts at a young age. My parents encouraged me to learn to defend myself and also, looking back, to lower my anxiety and increase my self esteem. There was still some meditation integrated in this part of my life but it wasn't until I was 26 that I took meditation seriously again.

Judo Study

My first proper study of martial arts started at the age of 13 when I started studying judo, I thoroughly enjoyed it and practiced at any opportunity I had, I can remember practicing shoulder rolls and falls on the lawn at my parents place, also throws and holds on any friends that would let me. By the end of the year I entered my first competition and won on points, as satisfying as it was I felt a desire to explore the inner development of martial arts and how they can improve your life, this attracted me more than the path of competition.

Jujitsu Study

During my early teens as most boys I discovered girls and was distracted from training, I restarted my study at nineteen going from judo to jujitsu. I absolutely loved jujitsu, it had the beauty of judo but with more tools, I felt safer studying this art and can remember practicing shadow movements of the throws for hours whenever I couldn’t get a partner to train with. I was my mother’s son, she taught us to love sports and to give everything 100%, to be the best we could at anything we did. I studied Jujitsu under two different teachers, unfortunately I cannot remember their names, but the ethic they left with me for discipline and self study has carried on. It was during my study of jujitsu that I also came in contact with my first meditation and tai chi instruction; this gave me a taste of more internal arts that I was not yet to pursue but which stayed with me my whole life.

Wing Chun Study

At the age of 22 I was fortunate to hear about a teacher instructing Vin Tsun Wing Chun in a garage, students went there by word of mouth, the training was intense and teacher was highly skilled and inspirational. The teacher was Barry Lee, he was unknown at that time, I felt like I had come home and this training enveloped my life, my wife often commented that the relationship was like a religion. I guess it could be said that my devotion to Barry and his skilled teaching was like that, but I fell in love with the intense traditional training, long hours and the potential to gain high skill that he demonstrated every day.

I trained under him for eight and a half years until he moved overseas, I continued on a while longer but it wasn’t the same without his direct teaching. Also around this time that I noticed the effect that this aggressive style of fighting was having on me, I noticed that I was superbly fit on the outside but ill on the inside. I didn't like the person I was becoming, this created an attraction towards meditation and it wasn't long before it became my new path of study.

I started seriously practicing Buddhist Insight Meditation (satipatthana vipassana) at the age of 26, after I was given Mahasi Sayadaw's book Practical Insight Meditation by a Burmese man at my work. After reading the book I felt strongly that this was a real meditation path, one that I could follow. He was an advanced meditator and offered to teach to meditate using the Mahasi method. We spent each lunch time for a number of years meditating together.

I felt like I had come home, and before long my wife and myself were attending nine day meditation retreats every chance we got. I devoted my life to this internal study and at the age of 29, my wife and I left everything and started working at Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, west of Sydney, as live in managers running intensive Mahasi meditation retreats. In this environment, even while working, we managed to meditate at least eight hours a day, and this allowed our meditation practice to progress and become ingrained.

We had a wonderful life there but three and a half years later we decided we wanted to do more intensive practice then we could get in Australia. So we left BMIMC and went to a monastery in Myanmar (Burma) on a meditation visa and studied under Sayadaw U Kundala, a high level Monk in the Mahasi tradition, and did intensive silent meditation under his guidance.

Every moment we were awake was spent meditating, studying the mind, it was a wonderful opportunity and one I will always be grateful for. After four months we had to leave because my body became ill due to malnutrition, so we returned back to Australia and worked at the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre for a while. But things had changed since we were away and my parents were getting older, so we decided it would be best if we moved back to Sydney.

We settled into normal lives again, it took a while after the four years living monastery style life and it was a bumpy road settling back into the day to day grind where internal culture and mental health was not valued. It was at this time that I came in contact with tai chi, I wanted something that I could continue my meditation and mindfulness in daily life but also a way I could get my body physically fit again.

The tai chi helped me return to health and practice some mindfulness in movement, but during this period I found it difficult to sustain my formal Mindfulness practice during my everyday life. The difference was that in the monastery style of life people were genuinely trying to be nice people: kindness, generosity, gentleness, mindfulness of action and speech were valued. 

Here I was back in Sydney, the focus was more on excitement, money and "what is in it for me?". This was a turbulent time, my meditation practice fell apart, I tried very hard to sustain it in the middle of this craziness’, but using the retreat style Mahasi form of insight Meditation, was not possible to sustain the same momentum I enjoyed on retreat in daily life.

During this time the greatest gift I have ever received came into my life, in the workplace that I now worked there was an office sociopath, someone intent on creating suffering and finding fault in others while making themselves look good. All my meditation practice at this stage collapsed, daily I was going to work and daily I was being shouted at, abused, belittled and daily I found myself feeling sick, anxious and depressed. 

It reached the stage where I was sick to the stomach every single day, my body was shaking, I was breaking down in tears, the unpleasant feelings filled every cell of my body. The owner of the company ignored this abusive behaviour, they did not want to acknowledge it, other people had already left in tears and at this time I didn’t realise there would be many more.

This left me with two choices, I could also run away and leave this job, or I could stay, my tendency throughout my life had been to run away, this was another bully, it seemed like an obvious choice. During my years of formal meditation practice I did learn one thing, when I was restless with the discomfort of intensive practice my teacher said to me, "take one seat", this means to not try to change but to be with and accept whatever you are experiencing, sit still on the cushion without moving. 

Could I use this same principal in the workplace, in my daily life? I am also grateful to one of my main meditation teachers, John Hale, John told me to "Embrace all experience as you would a suffering child", he taught me this not only in words but in action as he was quite ill at the time yet not showing any suffering. This inspired me, I decided if I cannot find the right conditions to practice meditation, why not make my life my meditation practice.

It all became very clear to me at this time, a path started to open and I felt compelled to walk it. I could see clearly that there was no difference between sitting on an intensive meditation retreat and everyday life: isn't there only one thing happening at a time, regardless of whether our eyes are open or closed, whether we are changing a nappy or being abused in a workplace? 

Suddenly my purpose became very clear, I would not run anymore, the pain in my life would become my teacher, I would study it, come to understand it, I started to understand that seated meditation was the way of training both mindfulness and insight for every day the practice. 

Every day I still woke up sick, woke up with fear of what was to come but my relationship to it had changed.

Why did I feel this way?
What is this feeling of sickness in my stomach?
What is anxiety, what is depression?

Instead of running away I started to investigate, when i woke up feeling sick I turned the strength of the Mindfulness and concentration I developed towards these feelings. Where were they located, how was I experiencing them, why do they feel unpleasant? Why don't I like them?

No longer taking pleasant and unpleasant feeling for granted - Investigate, investigate, investigate, soften, soften, soften, ...take one seat. While I was being abused in the workplace, I looked the person in the eyes, smiled, while internally my attention was on my feelings, on the anger, the fear, the frustration. The abuse became my practice, this person became my teacher.

At first I struggled, I fell many times, my habitual tendencies were to run, to react, when the feeling arose this felt like the easiest path, after all, this is what I had practiced throughout my life. But running away from the pain did not work and what I had been taught by my meditation teachers once again came to mind. During intensive retreat I was taught to sit with physical and mental pain, to not run away from but investigate it. Would it be possible to do this while being treated this way, while being abused?

I decided to follow the path of taking one seat and day by day I could see the path of meditation in daily life opened before me, day by day I started to change. I was still being abused, put down, belittled, but the buttons that used to get a response started to weaken until I could stand quite comfortably in the face of the abuse with very little pain. At this stage I could stop being concerned with my pain and started to observe theirs. This person was in pain, they were screaming in pain, I no longer saw them as bad but as ill, confused, living a false reality inside their head. I began to feel their pain and compassion for their suffering started to arise within me.

I then could stand and take the abuse without experiencing the pain they wanted me to feel, instead I stood and spoke quietly, smiling, internally wishing for their happiness and welfare. Aggression needs either a victim or another aggressor to exist; I was now providing neither, I now observed the effect this had. This person became more abusive, more malicious - for a while, until the pain became too great. I started to notice that this path of love and caring, of balanced mindfulness caused them to feel pain, since I was no longer providing a victim or aggressor to feed their anger it reflected back to them, it was their gift to keep, and gradually the pain became too great and so they started to avoid me. 

They still treated others badly but avoided treating me in this way, eventually we could work together without the abuse. At this stage I could see a very clear path, I could practice in everyday life, my practice could progress, I started to rejoice in this opportunity to learn more about myself, to continue self study.

I stayed in this workplace for 13 years, helped nearly as many people leave in that time, often in tears, my practice had turned away from my own concerns and I was able to use the protection it provided to help others. The interesting part is that this person didn't change for the better, they were still a not a nice person, but I had changed or should I say my relationship had changed to the external situation and more importantly to my internal situation, allowing me to sit in peace in this turmoil. I learnt so much in this time, I am so grateful for the opportunity, it helped me refine the path of practising Buddhist insight meditation in daily life.

During this time my mother was very ill, I felt that I had nothing more to gain in this workplace, I had made my peace and learnt a valuable lesson, I handed in my resignation to leave in 2 weeks time with no regrets so that I could spend time with my mother during her last days. The morning of my last day at work I was called to my mother, she passed away that morning. 

Holding her hand through the dying process tested my practice, during this time of grief it continued and deepened, I could clearly see the progression that had been made, this practice could be continued regardless of the external situation. I went to work thirty minutes later and finished my last day, working in a warehouse and unpacking a container, continuously protected from negative people by this beautiful path.

When I left was now without my beautiful mother and unemployed with no idea of what to do. A young kitten, who had also lost her mother, turned up under our veranda. She was feral and for the next month I spent sitting and talking with her from a distance, offering her food, until one day she stepped onto my had, turned in a circle and fell asleep in my palm. As I had learnt throughout my life, trust in the most important currency in the world. It is difficult to save up and easy to spend. When she trusted me she took the next step and entered Linda and my life (she is still my little girl today). 

I volunteered teaching tai chi and a local school three times per week and people came to me to for private lessons in both tai chi and meditation. This allowed me to bring in some income and my wife Linda graciously supported me in this.  It was at this time I taught myself html and built my first instructional website - Tai Chi Health for Life. This online classroom was supported by donation and my aim was to offer everything I knew about tai chi.

My role as a teacher in both tai chi and meditation grew, my business model based on the understanding I had gained - be generous and kind to others, give all you have and it will return, - take one seat. I had seen this again and again throughout the years, I knew if I treated others well, if I gave all I had to them selflessly it would return, in one form or another. This is the basis my business still exists on today.

Six months later I noticed an advertisement in the local paper, for a Buddhist meditation teacher, the first add I didn't respond to but the second one described me in every way other than using my name. It was placed by Venerable Yangchen, she had started Meditation in The Shire 10 years ago and due to illness needed someone to teach the classes and eventually take over. 

We were a natural fit, I feel very blessed getting the opportunity, it also turned out that she had lost her father a couple days earlier to me losing my mother, our paths were destined to cross as the loss of a parent was a big turning point in both our lives. I am truly blessed to be able to make a living from it and I am also very grateful to Venerable Yangchen for all the work she put into building up Meditation in The Shire as well as her trust in me to take over her project. 

Three weeks later she generously offered me meditation school and I devoted myself to rebuilding the school over the next 12 years. Teaching meditation to me is like coming home again, this is where I am meant to be, everything has once again come full circle. The classes were offered on dana (generosity), and my first in-depth Buddhist Insight Meditation Course on Satipatthana Vipassana was developed, also supported by dana. 

This was the very beginning of the MIDL Insight Meditation System and was largely based on detailed instruction in the Mahasi technique combined with my understanding of softening to allow it to be practiced in daily life. This original course began to attract insight meditation students in the US and EU who donated to keep my work on the online course going. 

During this time I wrote some small books, specifically designed to be posted world wide, that was supported by donations from students in my classes as a gift to heal families and communities. These books were the beginning of MIDL as a system. The local community grew over the next 12 years to hundreds of students and these simple times, embedded within that community was some of the best of my life. 

The main consideration for MIDL is: What is the best way to develop momentum on the path in daily life, outside of a controlled retreat environment, since a retreat environment and daily life are different? 

Things to be considered here are:

1. Daily life continuously challenges sila; in a retreat environment, sila is controlled.
2. Daily life is full of sensory stimulation; in a retreat environment, this stimulation is controlled.
3. Daily life is the playground for the hindrances, in a retreat environment the conditions for hindrances to arise is controlled.
4. Due to all of the above, samadhi (unification of mind) has a very high decay rate in daily life. In a retreat environment, the conditions to lower the decay rate of samadhi are controlled.
5. In daily life, the meditator needs to maintain a healthy relationship with themselves, family, friends, work, and the world. In a retreat environment, the need to maintain this healthy relationship, beyond sila, is controlled.

These are the considerations in designing a meditation system that works in daily life.

Developing a momentum of samadhi on the perception of anicca works well in a retreat environment. Still, it is much more difficult in daily life because of the decay rate of samadhi. It isolates the meditator from other people and develops a lot of dukkha experience. 

While the perception of dukkha through anicca develops disenchantment, which works well on a retreat, it does not work well when the meditator is embedded in family life because the meditator's mind risks becoming adverse toward everyone around them. The perception of anatta, if developed skillfully, does not produce the same level of dukkha if paired with softening, but it does produce the same level of disenchantment. 

The message of insight and wisdom into anicca, dukkha, and anatta is always: "let go." If the mind develops disenchantment and tries to let go and has no safe place to do so, then it will become scared and produce dukkha. With this insight-based fear, the mind will produce fear and dread as it tries to find solid ground and is unable to. Any resistance from the meditator at this point will just enhance the dukkha experience.

If the insight meditator pairs samatha-based calm with vipassana insight, and the message of both matches, then the amount of dukkha the mind produces with the perception of anicca and anatta is low. By matching message, I mean that deepening of both samatha and vipassana needs to give one instruction: "let go". To match these messages, samatha needs to be developed through letting go of rather than by controlling attention. If samatha is developed by control, then the message between insight and calm will not match. The mind turning away from its experience will seek to control, suppress block it out, because that is how it was trained.

In MIDL, the insight meditator develops samatha calm, by relaxing and letting go with clear comprehension of the process, while training their mind to perceive pleasure in letting go. When samatha is developed this way, it still leads to jhana, but it also carried the instruction within it: "Calm and safety is accessed through letting go". The mind training in this way, when developing insight into anicca, dukkha and anatta, develops disenchantment, hears the message, and begins to let go. When it lets go it does not feel threatened, or dukkha-based fear and dread, because it understands where to go to, it has a place of safety within samatha and knows how to find pleasure rather than fear in letting go of control.

So, my question was, how can I take advantage of these difficulties as an insight meditator in the midst of day life that addresses the above problems.

Based on the above criteria:

1. Use sila not as a set of rules but rather as a morality line from which to highlight the kusala (wholesome/skilful) and akusala (unwholesome/unskillful).
2. Train the mind to soften and relax interest in sensory stimulation.
3. Use the hindrances, stirred up in daily life, as a path of insight.
4. Develop stability of samadhi through insight into the hindrances in terms of their anatta nature and the conditions for them to arise and cease to significantly weaken them in the meditator's mind. This weakening of hindrances, by making them the object of insight, allows the meditator to develop samatha jhana in daily life. Jhana developed through khanika samadhi is more difficult because of the continuity of noting that is needed in daily life to support the stability of samadhi necessary for vipassana jhana.
5. The MIDL meditator uses their relationships with themselves, family, friends, work, and the world in a way that highlights sila, weakens the akusala (unwholesome/unskillful), cultivates the kusala (wholesome/skillful), and leads to harmony or harmonising.

• YouTube: Talk by Stephen Procter on Insight Meditation in Daily Life (MIDL).

When covid arrived due to regulation all my classes were closed down overnight and we were required to stay within our homes for lockdown. On the first day (Friday) I was unsure what to do as I was unemployed again. The next day a donation was placed in my PayPal account (I am still so grateful for this) for the exact amount needed for a ZOOM subscription. I bought the subscription and rebuilt the my website for online classes over the weekend and started teaching online on Monday.

Over this period I meditated, taught online classes and and built the Online MIDL Insight Meditation Course on this website today. My local Australian students did no adapt to classes online and by the end of covid lockdowns I only had a few students left. Fortunately over this period the overseas student base began to grow worldwide to a large community of students following MIDL today. 

MIDL is now a worldwide Insight Meditation practice with many meditators practicing satipatthana vipassana in their daily lives. I am blessed and grateful to have many dedicated students throughout the world who have matured within themselves through MIDL and are bringing this maturity into their homes and community. This was always my goal - to help to heal the world from within.

After covid lockdown Linda and I moved from Sydney to a beautiful community in Mylestom on the north coast of NSW. We are still living together happily and healthily after 38 years of marriage in our beautiful home with our cat Skitty. We like to spend what time we can together and every morning we wake up and look out the window and say "How lucky are we?"

I am grateful each week for the opportunity to spend time with and share with the MIDL community. I share with them what I have experienced and they teach me through questions and sharing of their experience. Between all of us the MIDL Insight Meditation System continues to refine into a beautiful way of practicing Buddhist Insight Meditation in daily life, in a way that transforms families and communities from within.