UPCOMING EVENTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRESENCE OF NOW GROUP - Rest into the moment and live in the presence
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lead by Jeremy Anacker
ABOUT THIS CLASS: There are Modern Sages such as Eckhart Tolle, Ramesh Balsekar, Dr. David Hawkins, Adyashanti and Mooji who are pointing the way to a very liberating realization that you are basically “Presence Awareness.” There are other terms for this transcendent field of consciousness that is at the core of your being but that is not as important as becoming familiar with it’s intuitive power and it’s potential impact on everyday life.
Text, audio, video and practices are given in class as a means to generate awareness of a non-linear reality that is beyond the confines of both emotionally reactive human programming and common intellectual understandings. Participants are asked to show up with curiosity, openness and an understanding that this work has more to do with trusting spirit rather than acquiring new beliefs or affirming the beliefs that have been already gathered.
In contrast to many traditions that suggest a regiment of daily practices such as meditation and yoga, the emphasis of non-dualist teachings is utilized in these sessions. This being that we can acquire an attitude that includes and embraces daily living in a prayerful and meditative way. It is interesting to note that many of the most advanced students of spirituality have yet to include worldly activity into their practice. There are also many frustrated practitioners of traditions who are derailed by unforeseen incidents such as a death in the family or other worldly obligations. This class can be a part of a significant shift towards radical wholeness where all of life is realized as unconditionally one. For many it is now the right time to see that the sacred is available at any moment no matter where they are or what they are doing.
THE FACILITATOR: This monthly event will be hosted by regular presenter Jeremy Anacker. Jeremy has studied for 20 years with the Institute of Self Awareness. He is a Reiki Master and Auric Seer. He has studied alternative consciousness thinking extensively, and teaches classes in Directed Thought. Jeremy will act as a group facilitator, keeping the discussion informative, lively, balanced and supportive.
"The Beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not "the thinker." The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all things
that truly matter --- beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace ---arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken"
- Eckhart Tolle -
Each class has a special focus. Get on the Affinity e-mail list to get updates and more info as the events come near.
All are welcome on the premise that all will be respected and honoredin their beliefs and personal exploration.
This is a free event, but there is a suggested donation of $5-10.
When: See Calendar
Where: Mimosa Bookstore's Upstairs Meeting Room, 260 W. Gilman Street
Recommended Supplementary Material
1) John Grevan text from "Onenes, the destination that you have never left." (This is recommended for all who might come to class)
2) See quotes from the classic self inquiry teacher, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
2) Listen to a class given by Helen Borth, Jeremy's teacher and mentor. This is a great begining lesson that can help you attune to the Meditative Self Inquiry class. - Helen Borth on seeking and resting in what is real.
3) Sunday Class Recordings (Click to open file and listen) - Sunday August 23 2009 (Neutral)
4) Lucid Living Audio (Click to open file and listen) - Lucid Living #1 - #2 - #3 - #4 - #5 - #6 - #7 - #8
----------------------------------------------
A Small Collection of Nonduality-Flavoured Quotes
"What does not change is real. What changes is only appearance."
John Grevan
"Everything
just as it is,
as it is,
as is.
Flowers in bloom.
Nothing to add."
- Robert Aitken Roshi
Not knowing how near the truth is,
People seek it far away, what a pity!
They are like him who, in the midst of water,
Cries in thirst so imploringly.
-Hakuin
"The Way is not about knowing... or not-knowing.
Knowing is only delusion,
and not-knowing is merely blank consciousness."
-Nan-Ch'uan
"That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground."
- David Whyte
from 'Songs for Coming Home'
©1984 Many Rivers Press
Groping after what is empty
and chasing echoes
will only fatigue the mind and spirit.
Beyond awakening from a dream,
and then going beyond this awakening,
what remains?
- Deshan (His final words)
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are.
- Eckhart Tolle
The world exists only when we think about it; creation stories are for children. In reality the world is created every moment.
- Jean Klein
“Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9% of everything you think
And of everything you do
Is for yourself –
And there isn’t one.”
- Wei Wu Wei
"When you really understand that you are
what you see and know, you do not run around
the countryside thinking, "I am all this!"
There is simply all this..."
-Alan Watts
"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."
- Frederick Buechner
"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name."
- Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching
"Does the thought "I see", see? Does the thought "I hear", hear? Yet hearing is happening effortlessly, seeing is happening effortlessly; all natural functioning is happening effortlessly, without any thought being involved!"
- 'Sailor' Bob Adamson
"There's nothing equal to wearing clothes and eating food.
Outside this there are neither Buddhas nor Patriarchs."
- Zenrin Kushû
"Earth, mountains, rivers, hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness, earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows.
There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself."
-Saisho
"Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth (V,v,19)
"Yet Natural Being is such an ordinary and gentle constant. When it is seen it is. When it is avoided it is. It requires no effort and demands no standards. Being timeless there is no path to tread, no debt to pay. When this is heard and confusion collapses, when the contraction of struggling to get something falls away and the vibrant energy of being aliveness becomes apparent, something else is seen, very naturally of course, because it is already all that is."
- Tony Parsons
“When I heard the sound of
the bell ringing, there was no I,
and no bell, just the ringing.”
- Zen Master
“In the gap between subject and object lies the entire misery of humankind.”
- J. Krishnamurti
"We have all had the experience of looking for something mislaid, perhaps our keys. We’re sure they were left on the kitchen table but they’ve disappeared. We search everywhere but they’re nowhere to be found. Eventually, giving up and sitting down, exasperated, to have a cup of tea we discover the keys. On the table all along, but somehow overlooked and thereafter assumed not to be there. The keys were not lost so hunting for them was pointless. The search for awakening is similarly futile..."
- Roger Linden
"So waiting, I have won from you the end: God's presence in each element."
- Goethe
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
- Galatians 2:20
"Things are always changing, so nothing can be yours."
- Shunryu Suzuki
"Is the abode of God anywhere but in the earth, sea, sky, air and virtue? Why do we seek the heavenly ones beyond? Whatever you see, and whatever you touch, that is God."
- Lucan
“We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up; This is our world.
All we have to do after that – Is to die.”
- Ikkyu
“Nothing is left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh.”
- Zen Master
When Yun-men was asked for the ultimate secret of Buddhism,
he replied, “Dumpling!”
- Zen Story
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
- Matthew 10:34-39
“What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances).The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.’
- Erwin Schrodinger
"If you see Buddha, kill him."
- Zen saying.
"Oneness is like the clear blue sky-
everything arises, unfolds, and subsides
within its all-compassionate love....
Everything is an aspect of Oneness.
And our quest to know this comes from Oneness."
- Abhinavagupta
'A human being... experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison ...'
- Albert Einstein
“What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.”
- Eckhart Tolle
"There is neither creation nor destruction,
Neither destiny nor free-will;
Neither path nor achievement;
This is the final truth."
- Ramana Maharshi
"What is, right now, is perfection – presence has not arisen from the past and is not leading to the future. All appears presently as a play in awareness. The apparently separate individual may be involved with self-improvement, spiritual life or anything else throughout the unfolding of that life. But only the clarity of what You really are undermines the search for awakening or for being anything other than what already is."
- Nathan Gill
"This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful!
What dreamwalkers we all are!
Awakened, the one great truth:
Black rain on the temple roof."
- Dogen
When the great Zen master Fa-ch'ang was dying, a squirrel screeched out on the roof."It's just this," he said, "and nothing more."
- Zen story
"Seeing into nothingness is the true seeing, the eternal seeing."
-Shen-Hui.
"Boundary lines, of any type, are never found in the real world itself, but only in the imagination of the mapmakers. "
- Ken Wilber
"When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly..."
- Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
"The Kingdom will not come while people watch for it; they will not say 'Look, here it is!' or 'Look, there it is!', but the Kingdom of the Father is spread out over the earth, and men do not see it."
- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas
"Many people are afraid to empty their minds lest they may plunge into the void. They do not know that their own mind IS the void."
- Huang Po
"And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero."
- Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes
"Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels,
None other holds you that ye live and die,
And whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss
Its spokes of agony"
- The Light of Asia, Edwin Arnold
"While alive,
Be a dead man;
Thoroughly dead;
And act as you will,
And all will be good."
- Bunan
"Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."
- Wu Li
"I confused things with their names. That is belief."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
'"Jesus said to them, 'When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside... then will you enter the Kingdom.'
- Gospel of Thomas
"Clear water has no taste.
The tongue has no bone.
In complete stillness a stone girl is dancing."
- Seung Sahn, Zen master.
" Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality IS just to peel the potatoes."
- Alan Watts.
"I have seen the Bird of Paradise, she has spread herself before me, and I shall never be the same again. There is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Exactly. The Life I am trying to grasp is the me that is trying to grasp it."
- R.D.Laing, The Bird Of Paradise
"Biting into an apple as I sit before peonies - that's how I'll die."
- Shiki
"Man plans, and God laughs."
- Yiddish Proverb
"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing
but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists.
It is like the boundless void which cannot be
fathomed or measured.
It is that which you see before you."
- Huang Po
"Why does It play?
The "because" withers away in the play.
The play is without a "because".
It plays because it plays.
It simply remains a play:
the most elevated and the most profound.
But this "simply" is everything...
the one, the only."
- Martin Heidegger
Man is never first and foremost man on "this" side of the world, as a "subject"....Nor is he ever simply a mere subject which always simultaneously is related to objects, so that his essence lies in the subject-object relation. Rather before all this, man in his essence is ek-sistent into the openness of Being, into the open region that lights the "between" within which a "relation" of subject to object can "be".
- Martin Heidegger
"All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one..."
-Nisargadatta Maharaj