18th December

Five of us met up today to understand what might seem heavy going philosophy.

IN THE SERVICE OF DIVINITY where Rachel Hillel dealt with a variety of ways of achieving self-understanding which she equated with living life in all its fullness and thus learning to know God. These ways include the psychological expressions of C. G. Jung, sayings of the ancient Chinese book of changes, and teachings to be found in Hasidism, the Apocrypha, and the Gnostic gospels.
In speaking of the search for one's soul as an essential part of the human tradition, she referred to a legendary "Golden Chain" of wise men, who have passed a central message down through all ages. Jung, whom she sees as a part of this chain, said, "Anyone who has insight should concern himself with his soul. Our destiny lies in the unconscious, for the unconscious is the source of everything… The word, unconscious, does not count. What counts is the true idea behind it."
Jung had an "ability to give new terms to the very mysteries which emanate from the eternal traditions of man … (enabling man) to penetrate his own being and to look for God … The archetypal idea of the Divinity within assumes in Jung's writing a modern, psychological terminology, but it remains a fundamentally religious concern." He is honoring a "living psychic reality … whose nature is bound to transcend human understanding forever. This has always been the essence of the religious experience."
"Helping people recognize their religious potentialities by providing a method for relating to numinous experiences" sums up Jung's view of the aims of analytical psychology. As Rachel Hillel put it, "Ultimately the individuation process is a religious process … To be healed is to become whole, and there is no wholeness without asking God into one's life as guide and partner." Jung concluded that "in order to gain an understanding in religious matters, all that is left us today is the psychological approach."
Rachel described a young man's dream, which clearly indicated that an institution, such as a church or a dogma can be an obstacle or hindrance to a direct experience of God. "Psychic contents break into life with a living force. (They) seem to come from another realm… a living manifestation of the transpersonal. The encounter (with them) … becomes a religious experience… The experience of God is a psychic reality because it comes from beyond one's self." Jung said, "God is the name by which I designate things which cross my willful path, which upset my plans, my intentions, and change the course of my life … Religious and spiritual events … cannot be made; they happen to us." She illustrated the point with poetry and dream material provided by her analysands and brought out the paradox that though God is perceived as an objective, transcendent reality, we know him through our own subjective experiences.
The Jungian goal of individuation "is essentially concerned with personal religious experiences. Yet experience of the numinous is a reciprocal process between man and God, since the contents which are revealed … have a gradual transformative effect on the unconscious and thus on God. In this way we have become active participants in the divine drama."
Rachel went on to relate these conclusions of Jung to Jewish Hasidism and Christian Gnosticism, which despite their differing origins had in common a search for the inner way to God. The central idea of Hasidic philosophy is "the reciprocity between man and God. God needs man in order to enter reality. Man is destined to be redeemed through the meeting of divine and human need." Also in the Jewish lore it was believed that there are humble, insignificant people whose saintliness holds the world together.
Jesus is revealed in a Gnostic papyrus excavated in the 19th century where (going beyond the familiar biblical quotation) he is quoted as saying," Whenever there are two, they are not without God, and whenever there is one alone, I say I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there I am."
As with Jung's reliance on myth, the Gnostics interpreted events symbolically rather than literally. For example, they perceived the resurrection as symbolic, "a spiritual movement of enlightenment, from death to awakening." Jesus, in these gospels, is treated as a model of the spiritual potential in every person. Every person can become a child of God—as Jesus was—and, at a deep level, identical with Jesus.
"it is the unknown power of the Divine within, which guides (us) toward realization and demands loyalty to inner laws. Self-knowledge … the most difficult and challenging religious obligation … directs one to become what (one) was born to be."

November Meeting

Low in numbers again but it was a nice morning and all those who were there enjoyed the company. We didn't start until 10.30 after settling down from discussing various topics. We then went on to read about one man's idea on how to break through to the NOW by recognising the scripts we all play in our mind.

WARNING THIS SITE WILL SERIOUSLY DISRUPT YOUR BELIEFS
Activating the Seer with Ian Wolstenholme by Susan Barber
We all know that the great Boddhisatvas teach of our need to master the science of "nonattachment." And this idea of nonattachment perhaps communicates well to the Eastern mind. But in the West, that word often reaches our ears as a synonym for "indifference." In truth, however, indifference and nonattachment are worlds apart.
In order to find a way to communicate the inner meaning of nonattachment as opposed to indifference, we sought to speak with a teacher who approached his or her work with this distinction in mind. Such a one is Ian Wolstenholme. Ian sees it as his mission to help people relocate into that authentic Self where we may experience true Lightness of Being. He realizes the confusion that has been caused by the attempt to translate Eastern concepts for the Western mind. And out of this realization, he has developed a powerful and effective way-of-looking at the process of Being Here Now. Ian speaks eloquently of how we may achieve this state of being. For many of us, his words may well provide a missing link.
Susan: How have you ended up focusing on the task of applying Eastern traditions to the Western mind?
Ian: It's because most of the information that I get is about that. I work with people at the point where they reveal to me what they've made something mean.
Susan: I understand you've developed a way of talking about being in the Now that makes it easier for the Western mind to understand what that really means. Could you share this with us?
Ian: I'll begin by saying that the Western mind is extremely sophisticated. It needs to be given information. So the first piece of information that I communicate to people is that we have all been conditioned to believe that we are one person, but we are actually made up of many parts. For example, you may believe that you're Susan. But on a closer examination, you will find that Susan is many different "conditioned selves" — many behaviors and emotional states, each one with a script that gets played out when the part is triggered. And then there is the part I call the "Seer." This is the part that Buddha talked about to his disciples, the place of the Present or nonduality. The Seer is a space that everybody has experienced. It is only when we go into one of our conditioned selves that we become "dual." And in order to locate ourselves as the Seer of our experience, all we have to do is make the distinction between that and the many other parts of the self.
Susan: And how do you teach people to do that?
Ian: We can start in a very simple way. Having said that Susan has many parts, we can say that when she is not in the Seer part — the part that is in the Present — she must be in a part of herself that comes from the past. If Susan believes in this role she is playing from the past, then she is held in that part. And that part of her will do everything it can to get other people to play their parts in her script.
Susan: And if she doesn't believe in it?
Ian: Then she locates as the Seer, and she will now discover the set of attitudes and beliefs of that part. And she will discover the script. We "tag" our scripts, and that helps us relocate into the Seer. That's what it's all about. Location-location-location.
Susan: Can you describe this process of tagging our scripts? Give us an example.
Ian: The most important script is what I call the "resentment script." For example, if we are running a resentment script we may be saying something like, "I've got a right to do this," or, "This isn't fair." These kinds of ideas are good indications that we're in a resentment script. So whenever we feel that we've got a right to something or that the world is being unfair, we can notice that feeling. It's a kind of "tag" we can give to our emotions, to remind us that we've just switched into a part, into a script. We sit there and say, "Oh, I've done all this for them, and I've done this and I've done that, and they've not done this." There's always a huge list of reasons to justify our abusing somebody or dumping our resentment on them. The minute we find ourselves in the middle of one of these lists, we know we're in resentment. It's a wonderful place to "tag." And then we can come back into the present and just allow the present emotion to be whatever it is. It's like moving the cursor on a computer screen. If we put the cursor in one window, then that window is active. We can move the cursor into the Seer and activate the Seer.
Susan: Is the resentment script going to be just one part?
Ian: No. Unfortunately, the parts aren't easily labeled. They're much more complex than that. You can't say the resentful part, because quite a few parts will fit into the domain of resentment. But resentment is, I think, the most powerful source of our scripts, partly because it poses as anger. Some people say, "I'm really angry," but what they really are is resentful.
Susan: What's the difference? Ian: Anger is an immediate response. Something happens and you blast. Anger is a flash. Anger is raw. Anger doesn't sit there. It's resentment that sits there. Resentment is a really, really nasty, squirming place to be. We have a list of "hard done bys" as we would say in England — all the bad things we think have been done to us — and we use that list to justify that we're treating the other person any way we care to treat them.
Susan: In my experience, when people are running resentment scripts and we are not playing our correct roles, we may be accused of being cold or unfeeling. For example, I have a friend who has lost his job, and his wife is going ballistic trying to make him upset about that. She keeps accusing him of not caring about his family. How can he remain in the Now without being perceived as cold and unfeeling?
Ian: The answer to this kind of question is not simple. Because it's highly possible that although this man is appearing to be disengaged, he is actually withholding his true feelings. And withholding is also a resentment script! Let's say that the man you spoke of is only appearing not to be upset by his situation. Doesn't he need an income? Doesn't he need a job? What is he doing about it? There's a lot that happens with the emotional energy between people. It's not just the words that they use to communicate with each other. The emotional energy with which words are delivered is what's important. Emotional energy is the thing that really defines what's going on. We could look at this situation and say that although the wife appears to be the one who is upset and angry and out of control, it may be her husband's "calm script" that is driving her. The man may well be saying, "I'm not doing anything to cause this behavior!" when all the time he's withholding his true feelings. And that is part of what I call a resentment script.
Susan: Wow! I know these people, and I think you may be absolutely right about the dynamics that are happening. I never even thought of that. How can we get rid of these scripts?
Ian: The aim is not to get rid of them. We can't get rid of them. The aim is to know that this is what's happening when we are feeling a particular way. For example, if you talk with your mother, it's highly likely that she will get you to locate in "little" Susan — or one of the little Susans. The freedom in all of this is in knowing what it means when we are feeling upset or whatever we don't want to feel, and using our awareness to see where we are in ourselves. Being upset means that we've been triggered into a particular part of the self. It's the script within the part that triggers all the feelings that we're feeling.
Susan: And what about cases where others are really trying to get us to engage in their scripts and we're not buying it. Won't it create distance in the relationship if we refuse to play the game? How can we do that without being perceived as cold and uncaring?
Ian: The first answer is, we can't. In order to stay out of the other person's script, we simply need to know that it's the right thing to do. If we understand the way we work and have verified this in ourselves — in other words, we see that what I'm saying is not just an idea but is an accurate description of what happens — then we know that if we get drawn into the other person's script, we're colluding in keeping them there. But the second answer is to realize that the Seer in the other person doesn't want us to play the role in their script. When your friend rings up and tells you some awful thing has happened, it does seem supportive to say, "Aw, how terrible!" It does seem that your friend wants you to play your part in her script. But in truth, your friend is really saying, "Help me out! Don't buy this!"
Susan: I've been on this path a long time, and I talk to many others who have, as well. And we all understand about these things. And we have, most of us, been in the space of lightness of the heart. But we want to live there all the time, and this is eluding us. How can we make this state more permanent?
Ian: There's a lot we can do to prepare the space for this to happen. And one way is to make use of what I've been talking about. Use our awareness to see as quickly as we can when we are in one of our scripts. And then move into the Present. But how to make it a permanent state? I don't have any advice. We seek this, and then someday it happens by grace. The permanence comes by grace.
Ian Wolstenholme is a teacher, workshop leader, and author of the book Emotional Hostage — Negotiate Your Freedom.
In 1970, while working as a design consultant in London, Ian had a profound experience of "realization." In 1979 and 1981, becoming aware of a need to incorporate this experience into his life, he went to India and spent time in a community there with the enlightened mystic Osho. Later, he met the enlightened teacher Barry Long, and for ten years after that organized and ran the Barry Long Centre, which came to be a successful worldwide organization.
Today, he works with people in both the UK and Europe, facilitating workshops, courses, and retreats, holding satsangs, and giving private consultations. You may visit his website at Realised.org, or contact him by email at nutanian@Hotmail.com.
Ian lives in Somerset, England with his partner, Anna. (Repoduced from http://www.spiritofmaat.com)

23rd October

Only six of us so instead of the planned progam we discussed the Horizen TV show about exploring the mind. Some interesting experiments were conducted. The investigator reporter's seat of consciousness shifted to another person and different angles while viewing through a minature TV screen direct through a head camera.
Also he was shocked to find technicians analyzing the brain pictures knew 6 seconds before he did as to what decision he made.

Quote "If you change the way you look at things the things that you look at change."
After tea we looked at the following.

"Our basic problem is the identification with ourselves as the 'doer'", he went on to say. "As long as we are identified with the 'doer', we think we have choices in life, chasing pleasures, avoiding pain. We think we are making wrong choices and feel guilty. Or we make choices because we are afraid to live out our own truth. But every action we take is simply a result of our current conditioning and our genetic inheritance. They are all choices based in fear. Do we really have free will?"
"We are free only when we no longer identify with the doer," he went on to say. "Then we become a doing, and life becomes a happening. No longer identified with the doer, we no longer live in fear of making the wrong choices, or that somehow the universe can do us harm. We release our guilts and our fears, and engage spontaneously with life in the present moment."
"To be enlightened is to accept the divine flow as it moves through us without identifying with a personal doer. To be enlightened is to no longer live in fear. To be enlightened is to recognize that there is nothing and no-one to blame for anything we might encounter in life, since everything that happens is part of God's will, divine destiny, and cosmic plan."
"The problem is not with the ego," he emphasized. "We are all subject to the subconscious influences of the personal ego, the psychopath as well as the sage. The difference is that in the case of the enlightened sage the sense of personal doership has been uprooted."
"If we are not the doer", he went on to say, "how can there be karma? Karma is only real for us if we are identified with the physical form, trapped in a world of duality, subject to the wheel of responsibility and consequences. Once beyond this limited identification, we are free to manifest the full power of our divine destiny."
"Once we recognize that we are not the doer, everything changes. Our identity shifts to someplace beyond, we recognize that everything is governed through cosmic law, and therefore there is nothing to resist, nothing to fear. The doer becomes one with the doing, and our destiny unfolds each moment in a spontaneous flow of life."
"A personal 'entity' and enlightenment cannot go together," he concluded. "There is no 'me' or 'you' to seek enlightenment. Indeed, there is no such thing as enlightenment, and to truly grasp this is itself enlightenment!"
Thus, the essence of enlightenment is to understand that I am not the doer, simply a vehicle for doing to happen. If I am not the doer, then 'who' remains to feel guilty, fearful, or judgemental about anything life has to offer?
Our memories of the past, our hopes and fears for the future, all arise from our identity as the doer. Life is meant to be lived in the eternal moment of spontaneous doing birthed in our identity as multi-dimensional consciousness. We become trapped in a world of time, however, once we identify with ourselves as a doer.
We are simply a witness to divinity passing through us, creating itself in each moment fresh from infinitely creative source, according to its own wisdom, its own timing. As we practice shifting our identity from the doer to spontaneous doing, from ego to soul, we realize that it is ALL divine will. This is a perspective that our limited body-mind organism cannot easily grasp. Enlightenment is simply realizing that this has always been true, and not resisting the perfection of what already is!
Ultimately, from this perspective, we realize there is nothing we can do to silence the ego, drop the mind, or gain our enlightenment, because all these attempts to change ourselves come from resisting the perfection of what already is. All we can do is simply to love and understand the perfection of our place within the whole, exactly as we are. As soon as we acknowledge this, the curtain lifts, and we realize that we are not so much the actor on the stage of life, but life itself desiring to express itself in each moment of existence.

18th September

Interesting morning with good contributions by everybody that we never got round to watching a film. We discussed the philosophy of the Masons as some of us having visited a temple found it interesting. On searching we find that its aims are the same as ours in searching and hopefully finding the same spiritual truths that are in all religions.
Geoff brought up about the difference in morality between people but we know that if we had been born in the Islamic faith we would have a far different code to believe and live by.We then finally read from 2 texts one on Masonry and the other on enlightenment.

Next's month meeting is a week later on the 23rd October

Is there Enlightenment, Realization or Awakening?
Your own true nature is an "expression of the One Life" - the Aliveness - Consciousness - Awareness. It cannot be anything other than that - as this would be Dualistic.
Your own essential nature - Aliveness - Life itself - is not personal. There is not a separate entity there which is 'you'. It is pure Life itself. NonDual.
We have a sense of self when the conceptual self-image builds up - and it is just that - a mental image. It is not who or what we actually are.
That self image becomes a reference point. But it is a 'cherry picked', modified and edited version of your characteristics, your foibles, your personality, your attributes, your history, your good points, your faults, your tragic qualities, etc. Just a mental image - not 'you'.
It is insubstantial and has no existence other than the content of thought. The apparent 'me' actually does not exist and when looked for cannot be found.
The 'me' is an abstraction. The actuality of what you are is what exists in the immediacy of the moment - which is Presence - Awareness / Aliveness.
All the rest is a mental construct - an abstraction. What that means is that 'the one who you think you are' is a mental abstraction and is 'not it'
So then comes the 'desire' to become enlightened, or to awaken, or become self realized.
But your essential nature, which is present and aware right now as you read this, is an expression of the One Life. It is completely NonDual and completely untouched by the travails of life.
Your essential nature does not need to become enlightened, or to wake up, or to become self realized. It does not need to 'learn' how to become 'more Present', become more compassionate, be able to 'surrender' or 'go 'deeper'. It is already 100% Present and the concept of 'surrender' does not arise.
Who then 'wants' to be come 'Enlightened'? Who wants to 'Wake up'? It is the one who feels incomplete, unsatisfied, unhappy. Who is the one who suffers? It is the Self Image, the Reference Point, the Ego, the one who we think we are. The one who we believe is us.
It is entirely a case of mistaken identity. We are not who we think we are and we want to fix that one up.
Our real nature does not need 'fixing up'.
Our true nature does not need to become 'enlightened'.
Our true nature was never asleep and does not need to 'wake up'
Our true nature does not need to become 'realized' as it is already fully Real.
The reference point, the Ego, has no existence beyond the content of thoughts, has no aliveness of its own and has no awareness whatsoever in its own right. No wonder it feels incomplete and miserable! No wonder it suffers.
Who is the one that is the "I" in "When I awoke" or "I am enlightened", or "I am self-realized"? The only 'one' there that regards itself as a separate entity is the Ego itself - the reference point.
In fact there is no one there at all. The reference point, the so-called ego, does not exist beyond the content of thought. It has no substantial nature at all.
Our essential nature is Aliveness / Presence Awareness /Consciousness - but that is entirely non-personal - there is no separate entity at all. No Self, as the Buddha puts it.
So there are three good reasons to discard the old concepts of enlightenment, awakening and self realization.
Firstly there is no separate 'me' there to 'achieve' enlightenment, an awakening or self-realization.
Secondly, our true nature does not need enlightening, waking up, or self-realization.
Thirdly - 'enlightenment', 'waking up' and 'self realization' are actually concepts - more than that - they are abstractions.
Far better to look into the matter of mistaken identity - just that and only that.
There-in lies the end of suffering and the end of seeking.
Written by Mike Graham, 19 Jan 2008, last edited 29 Apr 2008

August Meeting

Low in numbers like may other groups this month but we still went ahead and I believe we all enjoyed the get together.
We first listened to a recording from a team building life coach - interesting but only applicable at certain times when set a task her philosophy of belief in ones self that you can win is useful at times.
We then read up on the technique of centering the self (below).
finally we listened to David Icke talking about the Law of Attraction and like him we agree that it is mainly true.

Centering Yourself: The Key to Sustaining Healthy Boundaries
Martha Baldwin Beveridge is a psychotherapist

You can handle whatever tough situations you encounter with grace and wisdom. The key to doing so is keeping yourself centered in love and firmly grounded in your space – with your boundaries held securely about you.

Centering and grounding yourself are processes you practice – ideally a number of times everyday. Healthy boundaries flow from your steady center. They embrace the whole of you, define you as distinct from others, and protect you from harm as you interact with others.

Healthy boundaries make intimacy possible. Without them partners can't connect as two complete people who love and respect each other. Instead they become entangled. They function as if one of them wears a T-shirt that says, "We are one, and I am the one," while the other's says, "We are one, and you are the one."

That kind of thinking comes from the relationship model that was our cultural standard before the women's movement took hold. In the past thirty years, relationship roles have shifted significantly. Yet many people still are running mental software that dates back to the first half of the twentieth century. Though they may pay lip service to equality of the sexes, old ways of thinking determine much of how they relate to their mates. Especially when they are stressed, they automatically default to their most obsolete but firmly embedded behavioral programming.

When this happens, they violate each other's boundaries in a variety of hurtful ways. We'll take a look at how boundary violations happen and what we can do about them in my next article. In this one, we'll get clear about what boundaries are and how centering and grounding help us sustain them.

Do you remember having a protractor when you were in grade school? Your teacher showed you how to use it to draw a circle. You placed the arm with the pointed end where you wanted the center to be, adjusted the arc of the radius to determine your circle's size, and then traced it with the little pencil attached to the other arm of the tool. A perfect round emerged on your paper – and you could make others like it again and again.


The core of you is like the expanded center of that circle. The rest of you flows from your center out to the boundaries that define you as unique and distinct from everyone else you meet.

Your boundaries encompass the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of your being. Your physical boundaries are easy to see. They are defined by your body which obviously is separate from everyone else's. But there is more to you than meets the eye. Your physical form is not all of you. This is because you are not inside your body. Your body is inside you.

Beyond your physical form a field of energy surrounds you. Your emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries are like concentric circles of light that extend far beyond your body and radiate all around you. Your energy field reflects what you feel, think, and believe. It moves and vibrates at different rates as your emotions, thoughts, and spiritual experiences vary.

The hurt you feel when your physical boundaries are violated is clear and visible. If someone hits you, you have cuts and bruises. If you fall or suffer other accidental injuries, you bleed. If another person steps on your toes, you feel pain. You instinctively do your best to protect your physical boundaries because your survival depends upon your body remaining healthy and in tact.

When someone violates your mental, emotional, and spiritual boundaries, you feel hurt, angry, confused, misunderstood, and discounted. Emotional, mental, and spiritual wounds are very real, but they are not clearly visible. You may try to hide them from others and sometimes even from yourself. Protecting your emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries is just as important to your well being as protecting your physical boundaries.

Healthy boundaries allow you to relate in loving ways with others without intruding upon them or being intruded upon, without neglecting them or being neglected, without freezing them out or being frozen out. Ideally your boundaries are both firm and flexible. You can expand or contract them as you deal with different people and different kinds of relationships.

You can best establish and sustain healthy boundaries by being centered in the loving core of your Self. Being centered is like firmly planting the point of your protractor in the heart of you and expanding the love you feel there – then drawing a beautiful circle of light that radiates from your center and surrounds you as you interact with others.

A long time ago, I asked one of my wisest teachers, "What is the most important thing people need to learn to live life well?" Her answer was simple. "Teach them to center themselves."

Since that exchange, I've shared centering experiences with lots of others over the years. Like most things that are really valuable, centering is basically a simple process. And it is one that most of us intuitively recognize and easily embrace.

One way to center yourself is by putting your hand over your heart in the center of your chest. As you press your hand gently against your chest, take three deep breaths and slowly release them. You can say to yourself, "I give thanks that I am centered in love," or "Come Loving Spirit and fill me." Ron Roth suggests saying, "I am," as you inhale and "God breathed" as you exhale.

Let your face relax and soften. Feel light flowing throughout your body and all around you. Imagine that strong roots are growing from your feet, nourishing you, grounding you, and anchoring you to the center of the earth. Then rest in that peaceful place with your eyes open or closed for as long as you like – a few moments while waiting for a traffic light to change or several minutes in the midst of a busy day or a stressful situation.

The more you practice centering at odd times, the more naturally it will come to you when you find yourself feeling frightened, anxious, defensive, confused, discounted, or overwhelmed. When you center yourself, you automatically set your invisible energy boundaries in place. As long as you stay centered – and keep returning to center if you feel yourself slipping into fearful reactivity – your loving presence overrides whatever negativity others send toward you. Centering firmly establishes and sustains the healthy boundaries you need for all the ins and outs, ups and downs of living.

Centering gives you genuine power as you connect with your partner and everyone else. Genuine power is quite different from competitive force. It flows from your place of essential wholeness – a place where you embrace all of yourself and are not afraid of the shadow parts when they show up – in yourself or in others. Genuine power pours forth from an attitude of gratitude and forgiveness rather than dissatisfaction and judgment. It manifests as tender toughness and gentle firmness rather than challenging confrontation.

The Love of God that is the core of your being is always stronger than fear and negativity. Centering yourself – moment by moment – gives you the clarity and genuine power you need to face whatever challenges are before you. Centering establishes and protects your boundaries and makes intimacy possible. Centering yourself in Love gives you miraculous moments of healing – again and again – miracles that are yours right now in each instant of your opening to receive them. Try it out! Being centered is your natural, God given, healthy and most satisfying way of being. And it is yours – simply for the allowing.

July Meeting

No written thoughts today we first explored Spiritualism and its faith after seeing a short film. Not too impressed.Then we tried our hand at seeing who had psychic power with a pendulum and a hidden coin - none of us.
We also looked at a film describing the weird world of quantum theory with its multi dimensions and parallel universes. After that we looked at a film of an Australian woman who gave out a peaceful vibes to help the meeting end on a good note.
Next month something different life coaching.

19th June

Anne joined us today so thought best to go over the three enquiries that in my opinion philosophy is all about
1. What we know about the world
The Greeks Romans thinkers thought that if you divided any substance continuously you would come to halt when you reached an atom a solid object the building block of life. Science now tells us that an atom is not solid it is almost empty space. There is a trillion atoms in a grain of sand. The center of an atom is called the nucleus. Tiny electrons spin around the nucleus in shells a great distance from the nucleus. If the nucleus were the size of a tennis ball, the atom would be the size of the Empire State Building only round.
Total stellar population in our galaxy the Milky Way
Recent numbers give about 400,000,000,000 (400 billion) stars, The Hubble Space Telescope has found there may be 125 billion galaxies in the universe."
There are far more stars in the Univese than grains of sand on all our shores of this world
Most astronomers believe the Universe began in a Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. At that time, the entire Universe was inside a bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead. Then it suddenly exploded
Modern ideas of the world compares favourably with Alice in Wonderland.
2. How do we know the world?.
All the five senses rely on electrical signals to the brain. The nose analyses molecules of scent and then turns that into an electrical signal, so does all the other organs. The eyes transmit digitally a picture as an electronic signal to the brain so that all of the world as we know it is in our own brain. You are now "seeing" inside your head. If true there are no "things" no more than there are "things" in a television film. And there is no person looking at what is happening otherwise you have the same problem how does the person see. There can be no movement. So is it true?
3. Who am I?
The prize is finding yourself or enlightenmight. But maybe there is no "I" and we are free now.

15th May

Lively discussion this morning after a review of all the revelations we have learnt during the last year or so we read the following summary:
Contemplating the Nature of Experience The Perennial Understanding
The essential discovery of all the great spiritual traditions, including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Sufism, Kashmir Shaivism and Judaism, is that experience is not divided into a perceiving subject, an entity known as 'I,' and a perceived object, world or other.
The apparent separate entity and the apparent separate, independent world or other are understood to be concepts that are superimposed onto the reality of experience.
If we look for this Reality, for the essential ingredient in every experience of the mind, body and world, we find Consciousness or Awareness, a Knowing Presence that we intimately and directly know to be our own Being, and that is experienced simply as 'I am.'
This understanding, sometimes referred to as Non-Duality or Advaita, lies at the core of all these traditions and although it cannot be expressed directly, teachers, sages, mystics and poets use the language of their culture to point towards this Reality.
This non-conceptual or experiential Reality or Knowingess, although in fact always present, embedded in all experience, is veiled in most cases by beliefs. The primal belief, upon which all others are based, is that Consciousness or Awareness is located in and/or as the body.
With this fundamental mistake we shrink ourselves into a separate entity that resides in and as the body. That is, Consciousness seems to contract into a tiny, vulnerable entity and, as a result, the peace and happiness that are inherent in our true nature, in Consciousness, are veiled and seem therefore to be lost. This is the beginning of the search for happiness.
Consciousness seems to contract into a separate entity that we know and feel to be 'I,' and the world (including all others) simultaneously seems to become outside, separate, other, 'not me.'
Although this division of experience never actually takes place, it is a powerful illusion that seems to divide the Oneness of experience into two separate things. With this apparent division suffering is born.
In most cases a friend or teacher is required to point out this fundamental mistake, and through association with him or her, through the sharing of Being in conversation, meditation, contemplation, silence, self-enquiry, investigation, exploration and simply spending time together in silence and in normal everyday activities, the dense web of beliefs and feelings that comprise the knot of separation is dissolved.
This is sometime called Awakening. It is the awakening of Presence, Consciousness, Awareness to its own Being as the Reality of all things.

Afterwards we listened to Florian Tathagata
People have always loved sitting and sharing in the presence of an awakened human being and experiencing that tender beingness. For about 7 years Florian Tathagata and his life companion Julia have travelled around the world untiringly inviting seekers to recognize in their own experience who they really are and to live as an embodiment of truth in everyday life.

In his unmistakable manner he embraces the daily and simple life that he is sharing with a constantly increasing number of 'friends of truth', as he calls all those being interested. Again and again visitors of meetings tell of spontaneous awakening, of an all penetrating silence, of simple clarity and presence and of overflowing love and gratitude which they experience in Florian Tathagata‘s presence.

With both legs firmly rooted in normal everyday life and at the same time in the heart deeply connected with Ramana Maharshi, Papaji, Jiddu Krishnamurti and his teacher and friend Isaac Shapiro, Florian Tathagata speaks and is silent, laughs and cries, is present with everyone who would love to savour the truth of awareness.

20th March

Interesting discussion this morning after talking about last month's subject of the Absolute we looked at two videos of Oprah and Eckhart on the sacred NOW and his book The New Earth.
We then went on to read that at the end of Candide, Voltaire writes, "We must cultivate our garden." This philosophy of working to change the conditions and circumstances of the world, instead of accepting it as "the best of all possible worlds," is strongly advocated by Voltaire in his satire of optimism. Superficially, it seems that Hegel's writings advocate an opinion contrary to this position.
finally we read about the dance of Siva the Indian Way of expressing the same thing.

Gurudeva sums it up beautifully in Dancing with Siva: "The world is seen as it truly is - sacred - when we behold Siva's cosmic dance. Everything in the universe, all that we see, hear and imagine, is movement. Galaxies soar in movement; atoms swirl in movement. All movement is Siva's dance. When we fight this movement and think it should be other than it is, we are reluctantly dancing with Siva. We are stubbornly resisting, holding ourselves apart, criticizing the natural processes and movements around us. It is by understanding the eternal truths that we bring all areas of our mind into the knowledge of how to accept what is and not wish it to be otherwise. Once this happens, we begin to consciously dance with Siva, to move with the sacred flow that surrounds us, to accept praise and blame, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity in equanimity, the fruit of understanding. We are then gracefully, in unrestrained surrender, dancing with Siva."

21 February

Only 5 of us again but we enjoyed a good discussion from viewing a short film of Peter Russel's explanation of how we know the world as realized by Plato many years a go without the benefit of science.
We then viewed a film of a young person who claimed that he was enlightened. We disagreed although the NOW is rewarding it does not happen when you have toothache or stomach ache. We went on to discuss the Aboslute that which is outside of all the appearances the perfect unblemished being which we are.

16th January 2009

A smaller group than usual but all of us enjoyed the discussion and the short film.
We first watched the TED film of a French scientist turned Buddhist who lived in the Himalayas. He believed in training the mind and seemed a very good representative of a person who enjoyed life. Then we went on to discuss the immanent and transcendent philosophy from various sources including this.
The influence of Bergson's thought upon religion and theology may be put finally as follows: We must reject the notion of a God for whom all is already made, to whom all is given, and uphold the conception of a God who acts freely in an open universe. The acceptance of Bergson's philosophy involves the recognition of a God who is the enduring creative impulse of all Life, more akin perhaps to a Mother-Deity than a Father-Deity. This divine vital impetus manifests itself in continual new creation. We are each part of this great Divine Life, and are both the products and the instruments of its activity. We may thus come to view the Divine Life as self-given to humanity, emptying itself into mankind as a veritable incarnation, not, however, restricted to one time and place, but manifest throughout the whole progress of humanity. Our conception will be that of a Deity, not external and far-off, but one whose own future is bound up in humanity, rejoicing in its joy, but suffering, by a kind of perpetual crucifixion, through man's errors and his failures to be loyal to the higher things of the spirit. Thus we shall see that, in a sense, men's noble actions promote God's fuller being. A Norwegian novelist has recently emphasized this point by his story of the man who went out and sowed corn in his late enemy's field that God might exist! But it is important to remember that in so far as we allow ourselves to become victims of habit, living only a materialistic and static type of existence, we retard the divine operations. On the other hand, in so far as our spirit finds joy in creative activity and in the furtherance of spiritual values, to this extent we may be regarded as fellow-labourers together with God. We cannot, by intellectual searching find out God, yet we may realize and express quite consistently with Bergson's philosophy the truth that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being."