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Showing posts from November, 2017

The Answer 5

“May all beings be at peace may all beings be free of suffering.” That is a Buddhist Blessing that I begin my talks with. This morning I came to a deeper awareness that all suffering and “unpeacefulness” comes from attachment. Attachment to a material object, or person, or a relationship or an idea or belief. It is fairly easy to see that our attachment to material things not only creates a barrier to our spiritual growth, but also is an illusion. The example that I give quite often is becoming attached to my new car. It does not take long for my car to go from new to used, but I remain attached to my new car that no longer exists. I want it to exist the way it did in my perception few days or a few hours ago, but that is not going to happen. So my attachment to an illusion is a gigantic form of suffering. And it is obviously useless. The questions that are being asked and answered today are a reflection of our attachment to the illusion of safety. The mind is always looking f

THE ANSWER #4

“Why don’t I know anything? Why do I feel like I don’t know?” Love this question. Taking the first part— if you were studying with the Buddhist teacher they would smile and congratulate you for realizing that you don't know anything. For the Buddhist that would be what is called the “Don't know mind,” the mind that is free of attachment. The descriptive words that are used in the Holy Spirit's Interpretation of New Testament refer to this as being an “Empty shell.” Both concepts, the “empty shell” and the “don't know mind” are descriptions of a being who is not attached and is also not holding onto an intellectual description or definition of things. We are not denying the inquisitiveness of the intellect, but what we are pointing to is that the “knowing” that we speak of is often beyond words and deeper than thought. For instance, you can know someone loves you and this knowing goes beyond words and beyond intellectual understanding. In fact, if you try to

THE ANSWER #3

I noticed (too late ) that I had included a good bit of last weeks reading in this section. Sorry! “Where do I go when I die?” Is pretty obvious here that references are made to reincarnation. I do not think this is necessarily the place to debate the issue. Let us just say that it is assumed by many spiritual writers that our process of learning does not stop once we have left our body behind. For me, much of the weight of this question surrounds another question, “How attached or identified am I with my physical body?” We have stated often in the past that this work is not about denying the body because not only is it my chosen vehicle for our work here on earth, it can also be our teacher in many respects. So one of the huge lessons I can learn from this is that I have a body but I am not my body, I am more than that. “Is this happening to everyone and how?” If we were to take a step back from this work and simply observe ourselves and become aware of wh

THE ANSWER 2

                           p. 345-348 I apologize for being  much too talkative this morning. I was picking up a lot of energy around the question book that we covered last week. The person asking, “I’ve been reading this book so far, and I can’t feel it. Is there something wrong with me?” Questions like that spark something inside of me and perhaps this is a very deep lesson that I need to learn as well,  and that is that my feelings do not define who I am nor do they define my spiritual state. The majority of responses to life situations that I call feelings, are internal reactions to thoughts, ideas and patterns of behavior that might be very unconscious to me but are still there. They are the responses of my personality self, many times to another person’s personality self. They are real in the sense that we experienced them, but they are not real in the sense that they define the truth. The question I asked in the beginning of class was, “What is the diffe