Deep down we all suspect that something is very wrong with the way we perceive life but we try very, very hard not to notice it. And the way we remain blind to our frightful condition is through an obsessive and pathological denial of being -- as if some dreadful fate would overcome us if we were to face the pure light of truth and lay bare our fearful clinging to illusion.
My experience of fundamental Truth is that it’s a place of extraordinary intelligence. It’s a place from which great intelligence arises. I call it a place of absolute infinite potential.
To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true non-duality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream.
Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answers to life's biggest questions,
but actually, the opposite is true.
The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to
answer your questions, but to question your answers.
Meditation is a teaching which offers you the possibility of breaking free of this egoic state of consciousness and coming into a whole new realization of who and what you truly are. And all this starts with the willingness to question. To pause for just a moment and realize that maybe you aren't who you imagine yourself to be.
Meditation is not something restricted to times of formal seated meditation; it is most fundamentally an attitude of being-a resting in and as being. Once you get the feel of it, you will be able to tune into it more and more often during your daily life. Eventually, in the state of liberation, meditation will simply become your natural condition.
Retreat is a response to the call of the heart-that call which beckons us toward reality, to the truth of our being, to that which is truly sane, really real and liberating ... When a group of people come together as a response to that kind of inward call, it creates a very powerful environment, where truth is held in the highest esteem and the reality of our being responds to that deepest intention.
As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy. It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating effect on others.
When you stand in your own authority, based in your own direct experience, you meet that ultimate mystery that you are. Even though it may be at first unsettling to look into your own no-thingness, you do it anyway. Why? Because you no longer want to suffer. Because you're willing to be disturbed. You're willing to be amazed. You're willing to be surprised. You're willing to realize that maybe everything you've ever thought about yourself really isn't true.
Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it.
When we really start to take a look at who we think we are... we start to see that while we may have various thoughts, beliefs, and identities, they do not individually or collectively tell us who we are. [And yet] it is astounding how completely we humans define ourselves by the content of our minds, feelings, and history.
The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere.
Our own intuition of what we're called to is reality speaking to us individually and perfectly. We have to listen to how the Infinite talks to us and leads us. Reality, Life the Infinite, God, has a way of leading us in just the perfect way, if we will only just listen to it.
Most people don't get out of childhood, or adolescence, without being wounded for telling the truth. Someone says 'you can't say that' or 'you shouldn't say that' or 'that wasn't appropriate' so most of us human beings have a very deep underlying conditioning that says that just to be who we are is not OK.......Most human beings have an imprinting that if they're real, if they're honest, somebody's not gonna like it. And they won't be able to control their environment if they tell the truth.
One doesn't stay in a state of nirvana by hiding from difficulties. You stay in nirvana by lavishing nirvana on everyone you meet, by giving it away as fast as you receive it.