Ofosu Jones-Quartey is a meditation teacher, hip-hop artist, and author based in the DC area. He’s a certified teacher with over 20 years of experience bringing mindfulness, self-compassion, and creativity to people of all ages. His stage name is “Born I,” and his new book is called Lyrical Dharma: Hip-Hop as Mindfulness.
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Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here.
Episode cheatsheet
The big takeaway
Ofosu Jones-Quartey, a meditation teacher and hip-hop artist, opens up about how open awareness meditation transformed his relationship with both his mind and his struggles with OCD. He unpacks why feeling like you "suck at meditation" is actually a common—and surmountable—misconception, and how a more relaxed, self-compassionate approach can make practice sustainable and rewarding.
Learning to chill out: open awareness meditation for real life
Key takeaways:
Open awareness (a.k.a. choiceless awareness) meditation teaches you to be with everything arising in your experience, instead of clinging to one meditation anchor (like the breath).
It’s a radical drop in the pressure to “do meditation right”—no need to force focus or achieve perfection.
This approach is especially helpful for folks with busy or neurodiverse minds. You don’t need a super-calm brain to benefit from meditation.
There’s deep freedom and peace in seeing that thoughts, sensations, and even suffering just come and go—they’re not as personal as they feel.
How to practice open awareness meditation:
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