**The difference between acquired knowledge/information. And realization, direct experience. The difference between intellectual understanding and wisdom arising in/as the moment. Example of doing your PhD on honey and actually eating honey.

**Change, loss and inevitable uncertainty when experienced from separation often bring forward the emotions of anger, fear, meaninglessness, cynicism, fatalism and despair. But the poignancy of “this moment will never come again” when experienced from the awakened heart brings an almost unbearably precious intimacy with life and all moments.

**The essential shift. Is a shift from the belief in separation and division, which is the core of the ego and felt sense of “me”. To an expanded felt sense of identity with and AS pure, attribute-less awareness. And an intimacy with ALL things. A perceived Unity of existence.

*Surrendering to what actually IS. Leads to acceptance and discernment. And ultimately compassion. One must move out of the endless cycle of attachment/aversion, good/bad judgmental quality of the narrative/associative mind. In order to perceive Reality as it is. Rather than as we would hope it to be. The heart does not dwell in the good/bad world of duality. It dwells in wholeness and discernment. And this leads to compassion that arises spontaneously. Because we see something for what it is. If fear is the predominant level of one’s consciousness then one can only behave fearfully. The heart discerns and sees this Reality. Rather than judging it. And therefore the heart moves freely with love and compassion. Which then leads to changes in what we see as the “other”. We change Reality by virtue of our level of consciousness. What we are. Rather than what we do.

**Aimlessness, emptiness, life without center, no-self. The lived experience of these cannot be conceived from the mind. The mind believes the world will fall apart if it stops judging, planning, and running the show. There comes a point when thinking must be surrendered and dis-identified from. Abiding and resting as one’s True Nature leads to greater and greater states of freedom and Love. A lived UNKNOWINGNESS. Is the actual reality. But the perception is overlaid with the mind's narration and categorization.

All experience is born of a first hand witnessing, that itself IS Love. It can’t perceive love without a reflection of itself. (the eye, “I”, cannot see itself without a mirror) So human love is the shadow, the reflection, the manifested expression of inherent-fundamental- uncaused Love. Ego love, human love is a beautiful expression. But it is not the same experience as uncaused Love recognizing itself in/through/AS ALL.

-----Jennifer Tyler, 2020, All rights reserved.

A Day of Light

by Andrew Colliver

Rainclouds press the sea's

horizon, moist fingerprints

on the curtain of dawn.

To the west,

hunched shoulders of mountains

barely visible through

the cloak of gathered mist.

This could be a day

given to darkness and the ghosts

of regret stalking time

across this shadowed landscape.

We could

look and only believe

in the light of a sun

groping towards uncertain

revelation. Or we

could surrender to

unknowing, and in that know

only our innocence. We could

have eyes for the shimmer

of grace on the matted grey

of a murmuring sea,

watching as this sun

lifts now into

an eternity of sky.

Session 2

Diwali festival of light and new moon in Scorpio- Phoenix energy

Experience vs Realization.

One can’t really learn anything from a spiritual teacher. One must discover the Truth within oneself. A teacher can point and guide. And more importantly influence the student's consciousness by virtue of the teacher’s level of consciousness. Transmission.

Transmission is like the wind. You can’t see the wind. But you know its blowing by watching the objects that are in the wind move. Spiritual teachers in this lineage teach from lived experience rather than philosophy. Adya admitting that he has “never in 24 years of teaching been able to really explain what his experience truly is”. But he hopes to fail well.

The foundation of the teaching is an experiential shift in identification. As a view. As a way. A change of occupancy. From a definable felt sense of “me” to a moment-by-moment wholeness.

Another word for heart is Wholeness, Holy spirit. Connectedness and disconnectedness are transcended. Wholeness is beyond both of these. An intimacy with the 10,000 things. Undefendness. More like an inability to defend or disconnect. Connection is meaningless without the idea of disconnection. When we have realized our True Nature beyond any idea of opposition or duality, the experience is Fullness, wholeness. Hereness, Nowness. Present to and as whatever is appearing in consciousness. One can’t disconnect from or connect to what one inherently IS.

This and That originate and arise together interdependently. There is no garden without the ground, the sun, the rain. This and that are arbitrary terms for The One. Everything is together as everything. Example of Seeds. “dead” trees in the forest. The lines are arbitrary. We use language to facilitate relative reality. But the words never contain the truth or the “wholeness” of anything.

The “self” desperately needs something to identify with and as. But there is only IS. There is nothing whatsoever to grasp or identify as. Self is the act of grasping and pushing away. That’s what self is. But there is only the immediate moment. Deepok Chopra book Ageless Body Timeless Mind. Imagine amnesia of all past and inability to see the future. What is the experience of “I” without any ability to perceive time?

Too Many Names

by Pablo Neruda

(English version by Anthony Kerrigan)

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays

and the week with the whole year.

Time cannot be cut

with your weary scissors,

and all the names of the day

are washed out by the waters of night.

No one can claim the name of Pedro,

nobody is Rosa or Maria,

all of us are dust or sand,

all of us are rain under rain.

They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,

of Chiles and of Paraguays;

I have no idea what they are saying.

I know only the skin of the earth

and I know it is without a name.

When I lived amongst the roots

they pleased me more than flowers did,

and when I spoke to a stone

it rang like a bell.

It is so long, the spring

which goes on all winter.

Time lost its shoes.

A year is four centuries.

When I sleep every night,

what am I called or not called?

And when I wake, who am I

if I was not while I slept?

This means to say that scarcely

have we landed into life

than we come as if new-born;

let us not fill our mouths

with so many faltering names,

with so many sad formalities,

with so many pompous letters,

with so much of yours and mine,

with so much of signing of papers.

I have a mind to confuse things,

unite them, bring them to birth,

mix them up, undress them,

until the light of the world

has the oneness of the ocean,

a generous, vast wholeness,

a crepitant fragrance.

The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war—-carl jung

The world in this case is the 7 billion mind worlds that exist as the belief-in and identification with the separate ‘me’.

Fear. No danger mantra. Repeated over and over in order to bring discernment into the nervous system. But also to bring oneself vitally and completely into the present moment. Presence is power. Presence is like the solvent for consolidated conditioned patterns.

The process of awakening most usually brings up fear at some point. Context is key. And surrender. And trust. Fear is real. But what’s behind the fear, the conditioned patterns of belief, are they true? We can’t push away these patterns, hope for their demise. We bring Presence which is suffused naturally with light and compassion to the patterns so they are able to unwind and dissipate. We welcome the patterns. “come here sweetheart. What ’s up?”

Creativity or Fear. Fear generates limited scenarios and responses based in history, knowingness and division. Fear is derived from assumption and belief. The awakened view, the awakened heart generates responsibility, unlimited ability to respond from the innate uncaused Love that suffuses experience when Unknowingness is realized. Creative potential. The ego thinks of it as freedom to choose. But its freedom to move from/as unlimited potential rather than limited belief.

Kaleidoscope: the I of the eye and the holy SHE who moves, the Mother, turning the One. What would happen if the “blue pieces” developed self-consciousness and began to believe that they are separate and have person will and personal choice. And are islands unto themselves. Living in their individual “blue piece” mind worlds as the entire Universe shifts, turns and expresses all around and through and AS ALL pieces.

Tsokyni Rinpoche example. Sky bridge between two pavilions. Paralyzing fear based in history and housed in the nervous system. “enlightened” Tibetan lama makes sure to let us all know that fear is real. Fear is part of humanity. And fear can be unconditioned and returned to wholeness.

“Simply let experience take place very freely, so that your open heart is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion.”~ TSOKNYI RINPOCHE

Iconography example. Religious iconography. The sacred heart. Again, I'm teaching from direct experiential, not conceptual or philosophical. The eternal flame at the Heart of Being is an Archetypal experience. Fire of transmutation.

Nelson Mandela story to illustrate collaboration with enlightened creativity, wisdom and skill combo. Not being a good person. Just seeing Reality for what it is. The discernment of “an eye for an eye” is a perpetual cycle, culdesac of delusion. And having the ability to respond from a place of redemption and wholeness. Without thinking about good or bad. beyond good or bad. if he believes in himself as good he must think of the man at the table as “bad” as the enemy. Limited. Locked in division.

Does the fox that brings just the right amount of mice back to the den think of its self as a “good” fox? Or is it moving at One with the inherent “goodness” of Reality ?

There is no doer of deeds and thinker of thoughts. Only the mind believes that in order for the relative world to be experienced there must be “an experiencer”.

“You are something that the whole Universe is doing. Just as the wave is something the whole ocean is doing” —Alan Watts

Humanity’s dedication to the victim perspective.

“The ego clings to its unhappiness. And justifies its suffering”.——Eckhart Tolle

Peace… comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us." --Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa), Oglala Lakota

Wholeness: A ray of light is an individual ray of light But it is also fundamentally a part of the sun. It is the shining of the sun. An awakened ray looks around and sees that fundamentally all of existence is nothing more than individual rays of light, that are all essentially Sun-shine. And the ray is awake to the Reality of itself as ray, as SUN, as all of lit up existence, and as the empty awareness of all of these. Its content to live as a ray. It knows that it is inherently no different than the Sun (Source). And also is essentially the same as all the other rays.

Abiding AS IS: Grounded body, open heart, clear mind.

More about fear: The feeling of something missing. Unease in the background. It feels frightening. The separate view of the “me”. Is inherently frightening. It has no foundation. Its caught in time. In a belief in death. It brings about extreme discomfort.

At a certain point the “me” begins to erode under the direction of the soul. And you begin to look at the cause of the suffering rather than the suffering itself. We leave the victim stance, the blame stance.

The difference between the view of the world as a cause of suffering/dissatisfaction (“Hi, what can you do for me?”) and the view of the world as an agent of transformation and opportunity. The “me” is overwhelmed by circumstances but the Fullness of Being sees creation as just that “Creation”. Circumstances will be what they are and some circumstances are begging for our loving attention and creative innovation. But when Life is seen from the view of Wholeness, rather than the narrative of warfare, the wisdom of the Universe is available as the aware Presence. Evolution — a dead end of suffering that requires added energy . The Universe responds with more energy, fresh strength and innovation.

It starts with surrendering the narrative. And contemplating what is actually always present beyond the narrative. The alive, alert, presence. Clear light of awareness. The aware Presence is a power. The ability to be an agent of harmony is a found in emptiness. Expressions become available that can’t be seen in the limited view of “me”.

We are both horizontal and vertical. Horizontal-time, linear, personhood (finances, relationships, food water shelter). Vertical—timeless, global, immediate, Present. And the “still point” at the center. We are fundamentally multi-dimensional. And this can be experienced directly. It can be realized as the Way, the View.

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”—T.S. Eliot

Right Here

Here is something so fine

Can’t be expressed

Can’t be denied

Here is something so rare

You can’t touch it

Nothing to compare

Its You

Its Me

Its You

Its Me

Do we call it heart?

Do we call it soul?

The mystics say to

Call it Nothing at All

Should we look for answers

Out there in the stars

As if we could find

Love anywhere but

Where we are

Just You

and Me

and You and Me

Tyranny is the game of time

A dis-ease infecting the mind

Free yourself

Rest in Truth

Right Here

Its only You…..

and me

and you

What is out there

Among the stars?

How can it be anything else

But who we are.

And when we’ve searched

The farthest reaches of our will

We return to the place where ALL is

still….

You and Me

I am you

You are me.

——-Jennifer Tyler

Iqbal Sufi mystic

Who can tell what miracles Love has in store for us

If only we have the courage to become AS it is?

Everything we think we know now is only the beginning

Of another knowing that itself has no end,

And everything we now can accomplish will seem negligible to us. When the powers of our divine

nature flower in glory and act through us.

The Bodhisatva’s mind is not frightened by the total absence of any recognizable, definable or findable being called a bodhisattva. —Prajnaparamita sutra

The task one is learning is how to become available to one’s heart, one’s soul for assistance and guidance. Setting up a channel of receptivity. Like fine tuning a radio station with a dial. Learning the language and making oneself available to the eternal abundance of Love. Our task is to discover the realm of “soul”, “spirit” “deep I” “luminosity”. And evoke and allow it to bloom, unfold through our authentic lives as illuminated action. Meet our challenges and realize our potential.

Surrendering to what we are. We think that we must surrender to all the division and expressions of conflict. Like throw up our hands and just give in. But we surrender to what we are. What we discover at the heart. We surrender to that and the intelligence that gives birth to all of existence. We surrender to our Light, our True Nature.

That view, from awakened Heart, is a view of indivisible Totality and uncaused compassion. Its suffused with forgiveness, courage, trust, connectedness, non-competiveness and undefendedness. Presence is inexhaustible. Whereas attention has to rest. Consciousness gratefully switches off every night for a bit. But Presence is eternal, boundless, inextinguishable and inexhaustible.

Something frightens us and it feels scary to become vulnerable and open in that moment. So we layer our minds and hearts up with beliefs and emotions that mediate the Reality. We compensate and defend. Justify and repress. This veiled living becomes habitual, unconscious. When we endeavor to unveil, unlayer, discover Reality the experience can be very intense.

Physical experience of heart opening can be intense. We can’t hold onto, or make space for, or try……. we have to BE. The only way is through. Relaxing the “doer” and giving way to the Wisdom.

What kind of life is it always to plan and do, to promise and finish, to wish for the near and the safe? Yes, by the heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want a boat I couldn't steer. -----Mary Oliver

The Divine Mother

Archetype: It is a map of meaning. Invisible but totally Present. Psychological/Spiritual DNA. It is in our Being

Mother Nature, Mother Earth, everyone came into Being through the womb of a mother, Mother Mary

Mother is the archetype of beauty, celebration, kindness, reconciliation, forgiveness, compassion, devotion, courage, love, inclusive, embracing, but fierce fierce fierce, she creates us from the very blood of her body

Beyond ideas of gender or human roles. Closer than any abstract idea could ever be. The Great Mother is the fount of compassion and wisdom. The ever-giver. The immediacy, the Presence. To discover this within ourselves is revolutionary. Because we can finally forgive ourselves for being human. We can finally accept our inherent worth. Our inherent True Nature of Love. We can surrender the myth of unlovability. We can finally stop comparing ourselves to the image of perfection we carry around in our heads. We can bring all the parts and pieces into consciousness. Nothing needs to be turned away, exiled to the shadow. The pleaser, the do gooder, the one who must earn love, can step down.

SHE who dances, the holy spirit, Sophia, holy wisdom divine mother of creation. Is often talked about as a wind and flame. Kali ma, Durga ma, Lalitamba, Sophia, Shakti, SHE WHO ANIMATES, Uncaused Love kindness compassion forgiveness within us and through us and AS us.

We are afraid of our wildness our untamedness. Our essential emptiness. Pregnant emptiness. The dazzling dark translucency of potential in the deep mysterious heart of existence. The holy darkness from which Being comes. The dark Mother. The divine Ground. Beyond all notions of beginning/ending, empty/full, dark/light. An attributeless radiant, imminent mystery at the heart of all being.

Mother is a primal word. The Great Mother is a bridge between deep self knowledge and the capacity to Love. So when The Great Mother is forsaken we have violence in the world. —-Angeles Arrian

The five elements are only Her tools for fashioning the universe and obey Her will. She is never restricted to the physical universe alone, but instead remains fully detached yet intrinsically involved — a baffling secret which only She knows how to implement. She is the living Reality underlying and animating all sentient and insentient beings and objects, perpetually existing as their very essence and is therefore the Conceiver of all concepts, the Symbol for all symbols the eternal Subject. Finally, She is the Shakti of the gods, pure and changeless, transcendent and genderless, permeating everything with limitless Consciousness—-Sri Vivekananda

“Although she takes many forms, this goddess—sometimes a Black Madonna or an Asian or Indian Madonna—always carries authority. She guides and advises and acts with absolute clarity…. She is blunt, neither indulgent nor senti­mental. She demands embodiment. Living in the creative intercourse between chaos and order, she calls us to enter into the dance of creation.” Marion Woodard

Without embodied soul, spirit cannot manifest through human feeling. It flies like an angel with no place to land, archetypal energy that merely swoops through, leaving the body a burned-out shell demanding whatever perverted solace it can find.”Marion Woodard

Everyone is babbling about what happens after death

The intoxicated poet who belongs to Kali

Knows all opinions to be void of substance

The mirror mind and the rainbow body

Are her marvelous play.

Through the transparent medium of her elements.

After death her dancing elements flow on,

And simply Mother remains.

The singer of this liberating song

Laughs loud and long:

We will be in the end what we

Were in the beginning.

Clear bubbles forming and dissolving

In the stream of timeless Mother Wisdom——Ramprasad

What is There Beyond Knowing? By Mary Oliver

What is there beyond knowing that keeps

calling to me? I can't

turn in any direction

but it's there. I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,

of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind

playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,

or standing still

in the same -- what shall I say --

moment.

What I know

I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it

on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass

and the weeds.