All posts tagged: Unlearning

The Need For Better Questions

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Course Ideas / Reflections

Lately I’ve been listening to a few more podcasts and reading a few more op ed pieces in the media than I ever have before, and one really interesting observation has become clear to me. We are (all of us) biased in ways I think would surprise us were they actually understood. While it may seem obvious, nevertheless this had the feel of real discovery to me. And I think there is a reason for […]

Remembering

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Poetry

Remembering perfectly, so that you produce the type of knowing that actually yields light, does not take practice. But you do need to clear a space. Give it time, and allow it to happen. I left home once, you see— pulled the door softly-to behind me so the others wouldn’t be woken. Clapped my hands in the cold and breathed into their midst. The night was so thick you could smell the absence of light. […]

What I Believe and Why, Part 6

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Christ / Course Ideas

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] I want to close this series by stating that I believe Love, and expressions of Love, are all that truly exist. When I say that expressions of Love truly exist, I mean that they endure, they are timeless in a sense, they add unto the eternal fabric of being, they open pathways to new modes of being, and they enrich all aspects of being simultaneously. […]

A Review of Lincoln in the Bardo

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Book Reviews

This morning I finished George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which I greatly enjoyed. I enjoyed it not only for the quick flecks of prose that struck like the tongue of a benevolent snake; not only for the scenes of the self-evinced departed rummaging through their own private psychoses, e.g. the Bardo; not only for the utterly imaginative mechanisms and rules of the in-between to which they clung; but for the manner in which […]

A Meditation on Fear

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Course Ideas

When we are in a fearless state, the edges that delineate us as individuals blur. We flow into the world comfortably, and the world flows into us without resistance or hesitation. This is the primal form of giving and receiving on which I think all beings are nurtured and sustained. It is not a state of excitement or of euphoric abandon, but of peace and of enduring joy.  When this is our experience we respond […]

Navigating to Joy

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Course Ideas

Things that appear to be so under one set of conditions, are often found to be quite different under another.  It is for this reason that most of our conclusions formed historically, in the context of separation consciousness, are erroneous.  What’s remarkable about the experience of life is that we can be completely incorrect about ultimate reality, and have a very real and vivid experience of our own false conclusions up to and even through […]

Just Right

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Course Ideas / Creative

“I feel better.  But I did that thing again, didn’t I, Hafiz?” “Yes.” “How come we both know what I’m talking about, but we can’t explain it?” “The horses giving chase always get mud in their eyes.” “That was easier than I thought.  But giving chase to what?” “To whatever you think is over there.”  He waved his hand limply towards the distance, indicating that somewhere along the periphery of my mind there were these […]

This I Know

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Course Ideas / Reflections

The last few weeks have been challenging for me, and I have felt the awkward stretching that comes sometimes when change is upon us.  There is this desire to be certain of things, to know what lies ahead, to make nothing but informed decisions, and to navigate the consequences with aplomb.  We want to understand the right way to go about things, to think about things– the proper way to perceive, and to know. Today […]

On Seeing, and Seeing

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Course Ideas / Reflections

It is in my response to the world that I discover the thoughts most active within me, and it is quite often a humbling experience.  The movement stretches and pulls and teases to the surface residual uncertainties and doubt.  I have taken in reams and reams of information over the years intended to set me (and all of us) free, which my Undersecretary of Actual Motivations has taken under advisement, and accepted with a begrudging […]

And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

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Creative

After a day of you gotta’ be kiddin’ me and please listen to the following menu of options before making your selection, I sat on the couch with one knee up– one arm dangling off it like I could give a damn– and eyeballed the Flyers in a must win game.  I eventually slid down the hill of one day I’m gonna’ teach this world a lesson and drifted off to sleep, only to find myself […]