Home Base with Jeff Warren
Home Base with Jeff Warren
The Cutting Edge of Now
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The Cutting Edge of Now

One year in: a look inside all things Home Base.

This week, Home Base turns one. So I’m doing something different… I’m getting Lilli to do all the work! Lilli is Home Base’s Editor-in-Chief, who had the idea for this thing in the first place. She’s gonna do a short state of the union overview of where we’ve been and where we’re going - apparently (some) people like to look under the hood. If that isn’t your thing, skip the post and just listen to this week’s meditation, called “I Hate Excel Sheets” – no, that won’t work, let’s make a virtue of all this precision. The guided meditation is a game I like to play with my attention called “The Cutting Edge of Now.”

A big thank you to those of you who’ve been with us all year, to those who just joined, and to everyone in between. I love doing this, and feel the community connection and support in a very palpable way. Which surprises me, actually – I guess I’m finally learning to let this ridiculous love stuff in. I hope you’re able to let it in too.

Love (deal with it!),
Jeff


Hi there, Lilli here.

Most of the Home Base team! From L to R: Mylène, our VA extraordinaire, Jeff and little ol’ me. (Sadly, we have yet to meet our audio engineer Joe in person – he’s a big part of our team)

I’ve been Jeff’s partner in crime for 6 years now, editing his guided meditations and functioning as his “logistical frontal lobe,” in his words. I work hard to make Home Base as enjoyable and helpful to all of you as possible. Today is a look behind the curtain, sharing some reader input, as well as stats and figures. Yes, this is my kind of fun. I think of Home Base as a collaborative endeavor, which means you’re a big part of what makes it work, so you should have access to the same information I have. I will share some ideas we have for the coming year, based primarily on your wonderful feedback.

WHAT IS HOME BASE?

Home Base is Jeff’s studio for building and sharing meditations, as well as his writing. Jeff has a lot of ideas. A LOT. The ideas come out in all sorts of places: Calm, Happier, in-person retreats, his books, the CEC, the Mind Bod Adventure Pod, the Do Nothing Project, random texts to me and his friends, and so much more. We wanted a single place where he could consolidate his ideas and create an archive of free meditations for everyone. Thus Home Base was born. (Proud to say that I thought of the name while meditating during a long flight).

This first year we’ve tried a bunch of different things, and we’re still experimenting. Here’s the current breakdown:

  1. A written post and 10-minute(ish) guided meditation on different topics. These happen three times a month, for all subscribers.

  2. An extended 20-minute(ish) version of the meditation for paid subscribers.

  3. Hey Jeff: a column with a customized meditation, based on your individual requests. This comes out every 6 weeks or so and is for paid subscribers.*

  4. Home Base Hangout: an opportunity to sit with Jeff live and chat and share questions. This happens once per month and is available to paid subscribers.*

  5. Guest posts and meditations written by other great teachers, available to all.

  6. A searchable archive of each episode of The Do Nothing Project, Jeff’s free Sunday night meditation and community hangout on YouTube.

  7. Original, beautiful illustrations for (almost) every post, created voluntarily by a variety of Home Base community members (my favorite feature).

*If you’d like access to everything and a paid subscription is out of reach, email us at info@jeffwarren.org. Happy to offer a subscription, no questions asked.

READER FEEDBACK

Recently, we asked you all to answer a short survey about Home Base. Here is a summary of the responses.

Jeff usually writes about whatever is top of mind for him. Which, somehow, is often what many of you actually want to hear at that moment. Even so, we’re curious and want to know what you like, so we can be more balanced and responsive. Here are the topics you love the most:

Lots of you had excellent ideas for topics we can delve into. I read all 500+ of your responses and picked a few fun ones. I’ll post these here and let Jeff respond:

  1. Relationship stuff -- like how to make friendship and love less fraught.
    Jeff: Monkhood. Except even those guys fight! If anyone has any ideas, let me know. Also, we have a new category of posts and practices all about this, called “Relationships.”

  2. Meditation adjacent practices, like hypnosis.
    Jeff: I love hypnosis! I wrote a chapter about it in The Head Trip. We also had a good episode of The Mind Bod Pod with one of the pioneers of clinical hypnosis. It’s a great healing modality that works for a lot of people, although there’s also a whole continuum of who exactly is and isn’t hypnotizable. The bigger subject is trance: the human capacity to surrender to a particular reality, and I suppose to allow that reality to have its way with you. There is an overlap with meditation. Some teachers describe meditation as learning to see things how they really are. I think of it more as confirming to ourselves a particular way in which things are. And the deep peace that comes from this confidence.

  3. I like the ‘deeper end’ stuff. It tends to blow my mind.
    Jeff: Me too. Expect to read more in the coming year.

  4. Success stories about the healing nature of meditation, those absolutely delightful Jeff sighs of relief that give the listener permission to do the same!
    Jeff: Sigh. The healing is real. And… human nervous systems are diverse and complicated. That overlap is the practice space I like to hang out in.

  5. As a neurodivergent person, I feel a huge desire for more meditations created for neurospicy brains.
    Jeff: Coming up! Here are some past posts on neurodiversity.

  6. Not really topics, I grant you. But more discussion in small groups online. The chance to say out loud the crazy sounding shit that the ‘average person’ thinks without feeling like a weirdo.
    Jeff: I can’t think of anything I would love more than to see more of this in the comments. Then I can chime in with my own crazy shit, and weirdos will rule the roost.

  7. How to deal with my ego.
    Jeff: But I love your ego, it’s so good looking and always says the perfect thing at dinner parties. Except that one time it said the wrong thing. Shame on you. Oh wait, I think I’m talking about my ego.

  8. I’m interested in stories about Jeff or other people actually doing the thing. Sometimes it’s hard to not feel like everyone else is having this Instagram meditation experience and I’m the only schmuck. Even when teachers say that isn’t so they usually say it in Extremely Slow Measured Tones which makes it sound like okay, it’s just *mostly* me.
    Jeff: Happy to talk about actually doing the thing, for those times I actually do the thing, which is not as often as I would like to do the thing – to say nothing of those times when the thing itself doesn’t seem to be working, although usually it is working, in some way, even when I’m not “officially” doing the thing, if you know what I mean. You are not alone!

  9. Learning to be more at peace with feelings of anger or irritation towards a spouse.
    Jeff: I’ve written four draft posts about this subject, even though my partner is a saint - which is infuriating!

  10. What is the “win” of meditation? (What am I trying to accomplish here?)
    Jeff: What you’re trying to accomplish depends on you and on the kind of meditation you’re doing. But if I had to recklessly generalize, I’d say: more space, less abject suffering. More space for connection and wise action and sanity and healing and life. Practically every post written here attempts to address this in some way or another. And I’m still learning myself to tease apart the often unhelpful ideals of practice, from the real of practice. Maybe I will write a post explicitly about this.

  11. I’d like to learn more about bringing meditation into my own community. Is that what CEC is all about?
    Jeff: That’s partly what the Consciousness Explorers Club (CEC) is about. Here’s a free guide I wrote for the CEC about starting your own meditation community group, called “Community Practice Activation Kit.” I’m also working on some new stuff around this.

  12. Keep doing you. You're great at it & the only one who can do it. I feel that if I propose a topic, then: a) it'll take space away from a topic you would do that I can't conceive of until you do it and 2) (ha!!) it would be me trying to get you to do the stuff that’s already available in my head – though I'm sure you'd have a different take on it. I suppose I'm most curious about ADHD & meditation at the super practical level. huge gratitude to you (& the team!) for making the world more interesting & grokkable.
    Jeff: Thank you for your kindness and also excellent use of “grokkable,” my fellow ADHD-curious! More coming on this subject, including practical stuff.

  13. How to overcome the obstacle to sitting down and doing the damned practice.
    Jeff: Structure is my nemesis too. I share some strategies about this in my book with Dan. My biggest tip these days is to take what you already like to do, and find a way to weave meditation into it. Make it part of the ritual.

  14. Guided meditations that do not come from a place where it is assumed everyone is messed up and miserable.
    Jeff: Ha! I hope some of them don’t feel like that. A good reminder to keep a balance, and - look! - we now have a whole searchable category called “Joy.”

  15. The community sessions are wonderful. It would be nice to have a way to connect with others in smaller groups or 1:1 for those interested. Maybe having a meditation buddy opportunity.
    Jeff: Cool idea. Lilli?

  16. Have I really been mediating, ever?
    Jeff: This is so my favourite comment. If you have managed to sit inside your experience and let it be what it is a tiny bit more than a previous moment of not letting it be what it is, then I would say you have meditated. Which sounds confounding and vague and underwhelming – welcome to meditation! The benefits of meditation are seen most clearly over time, since they are about cumulative habits. And since you put your question so hilariously and succinctly, I will write a meditation for you!

OK, back to your tour guide Lilli here … The vast majority of you said some version of “no notes” - thank you! That feels really good. Here are a few of those:

  1. All of it. I’m here for the weird shit. The real authentic human experience & how to survive it and make sense of it all or just accept it for what it is.

  1. I just like being delightfully blind-sided by what Jeff is offering each Sunday.

  1. Jeff’s humor and humility reminds me that being human can be ok. I appreciate that he is never smug and that he acknowledges how hard it is to be alive and also how deeply joyful it can sometimes be.

STUFF PEOPLE LIKE

The most popular post is When Everything Is F*#ked. It was our first Hey Jeff post, available to everyone. In it, Jeff responds to Karen, who has cancer and struggles to access a daily meditation practice. I think it resonated so much because we’re all facing our own hard times, where we feel lonely, scared and just completely fucked.

Interestingly, the second most popular free post is Fuck It. I’m sensing a theme …

Total number of unique meditations: 44

Here is our archive of all past posts. Shhhh … don’t tell Jeff, but these are my top three:

  1. Experience

  2. More Care in the Tank

  3. Unapologetically You

We recently tagged each meditation with a new set of categories. Click on a topic below to see all relevant posts. Hopefully this will make it easier to find the practice you need, in the moment you need it.

  1. Core Teachings

  2. Joy

  3. Self-Compassion

  4. Mystical Good Times

  5. Relationships

  6. When Things Are Hard

  7. Fun Explorations

  8. Neurodiversity

  9. Jeff’s Messed-up Life

  10. Challenges in Meditation

  11. Good For Beginners

  12. Greatest Hits

COMMUNITY

So, who are you all?

Right now we have 22,830 subscribers and 1,070 paid subscribers. Our community has steadily grown over the past year, which is beautiful to see:

An astounding 645 of you responded to our little survey - wowzers, thank you for that. We learned a ton that will really help us in the future. Like:

About half of you have been practicing meditation for over 5 years! That’s spectacular. We had assumed many more in the community were new meditators, so this will guide us to make content that goes deeper into practice. We’ll still have foundational stuff, because you can never hear the basics enough.

Home Base is read across 50 US states and 123 countries! How cool is that? Here’s a world map where our subscribers all live (at least everyone who responded to the survey). If you’re looking for other meditators in your area, leave a comment below – maybe we can play matchmaker.

THE YEAR AHEAD

My personal goal is to make Home Base more of a community, and not just an email list. Here are a few of my ideas on how to do this. If any resonate with you, or you have other ideas, please let me know in the comments.

  1. More community discussion threads. I did one of these and it was a ton of fun, so let’s do more and get to know each other. Someone left the comment in the survey: “I’d like to make “friends” with like minded people here, so just more interaction as a community.” - YES, that.

  2. Opportunities to sit with me (Lilli) in silence over zoom in a consistent way. Or listening parties where we all listen to the most recent Home Base meditation.

  3. A column of just Jeff’s writings, without meditations. Lots of weird unpublished shit from decades of writing about consciousness.

  4. Live conversations with other brilliant teachers, including guided meditations.

  5. A clear guide on how best to access all of Jeff’s content, here and elsewhere.

GRATITUDE FOR THE ILLUSTRATORS

When Jeff and I first started Home Base, we faced a creative puzzle: how to find beautiful illustrations for each post? We reached out to our community, and the response has been incredible.* David Kantrowitz was one of our first volunteers, and through his thoughtful perspective on AI's negative impact on artists and designers, he helped shape our approach: we now ask all illustrators to create their work without AI tools. David, along with David Saunders, Alison Moreland, Kris Diede, Joe Walker and Sheila Startup, began us off with an often delightful steam of color and form. When we put out another call a few months ago, we were blown away to receive nearly 20 more volunteer illustrators! Each brings their own unique vision, sometimes creating pieces specifically for a post, other times sharing existing work that captures its essence. I love how this process weaves our community directly into the fabric of Home Base. Seeing the different ways artists interpret each post, bringing their own practice and perspective to the work – all of it creates a wonderful sense of connection. Jeff and I are eternally grateful for this unexpected gift, and we can't wait to see what creations lie ahead.

*Is making art your practice? Email info@jeffwarren.org if interested in volunteering and we'll share more details. Thank you!

A SHOUT OUT TO JOE

Every meditation you hear on Home Base has a secret weapon behind it: our extraordinary audio engineer, Joe Mazza. When we started this adventure, we knew we couldn't afford professional studio time like Jeff uses for his app recordings. At first, Jeff tried recording and editing the meditations himself, but... let's just say it wasn't exactly sustainable LOL. We put out a call to our community for audio help, not knowing what to expect. Enter Joe. For almost a year now, he’s been volunteering his incredible talents. He virtually sits in on Jeff's recording sessions, then works his magic with the edits. And when Jeff and I inevitably request yet another round of last-minute changes (happens more often than we'd like to admit), Joe makes them happen. Home Base wouldn't exist in this form without Joe's dedication and expertise. Thank you, friend, for your technical wizardry and your endless patience and kindness. We hope to meet you in person soon!

IN CLOSING

It's been an incredible first year of building this community together. From f*#cked meditations to worldwide connections, from neurospicy brains to both practical and mystical explorations, you've helped shape Home Base into something beautiful and unique. As we move into year two, we're excited to create more spaces for connection, dive deeper into practice, and – it’s official – go deeper into the cosmic weird shit. Because that's what Home Base is all about: meeting you where you are. Thank you for being part of this adventure. Don't forget to check out Jeff’s meditation this week, "The Cutting Edge of Now," and we'll see you next Sunday.

Cheers, Lilli

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21 Minute Version of Meditation


UPCOMING RETREAT: To Humanity and Beyond!

February 23-25, 2025
Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat, Nassau, Bahamas

I’m hosting three days of offerings in the Bahamas this Feb. A lot of self-directed beach leisure time, with free yoga offered by the old-school Sivananda ashram. Meditation is the art of connecting both to our humanity, and to that which is beyond our humanity. So: to humanity and beyond!

Register Here

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