New York City, June 9 2006

 

So welcome everyone.   

We can continue to enjoy the silence, which includes all of that movement as well.  The deep silence, the silence of who we are is similar to the silence of the body or the mind.  When we discover who we really are as this vast silent awakeness, the body and mind may also feel the effect.  The mind and the body may relax, the rest that we’ve been looking for may be found to be who we are and that it has always been here. 

So that rest, or that silence, is not just the absence of activity, movement or sound.  It’s really an opportunity in a place like this, in the middle of a city, to really see what real silence is.  When you go off to the country you can hang out in relative silence and your body and mind get some good quality rest. Then you come back and start again.  But this silence that’s here, that’s always here, isn’t about un-including anything.  Everything is included and nothing is pushed away.  Nothing is opposed and we begin to sense or hear or see directly without looking through the mind, without looking to belief, from belief.   

We come back to our senses and include thought as just one of the senses and include thinking as a movement, as a natural part of this form, of this body-mind.  We don’t look through the eyes of our mind.  We just sense what these thoughts are appearing in, just for one second. Just notice that little movement of awareness to allow however your mind is now, whether it’s agitated or sleepy or trying to understand or find.  

Then just notice what these thoughts are appearing in.  Just move your awareness to the space in which sound is coming and going, in which sensations are moving.  Not trying to change your body or any part of the world, but just letting it be as it is.  Allowing attention to stop or drop or open, look to the openness that’s looking through the eyes.  What do you notice?

In some ways you can say it’s just moving from normal to ordinary, that that’s what awakening is.  That’s it.  We’re not looking for the special effects, not looking to get rid of the experiences of our body and minds, to change them—initially—at all.   

But really just unhooking awareness from where it usually has been trained to go—to the functioning mind, to thought—just letting it stop and let the train of thought just continue.  Get off and just wave.  Not judging it; not making it the enemy, just seeing the subway pass.  Letting the functioning mind operate just like the heart, it beats.  Just like sounds come to the ears.  Like the ears are open, letting the mind be open.  Usually there is an experience, then of some kind of not knowing, something that isn’t connected to the usual way of knowing.  Anyone have a sense of that? There can be a quality with it as it comes into form—peace, stillness.  Anyone want to say a word when you check in and see what it’s like?  What would you say? 

Acceptance?  Yes.  Something that’s here that doesn’t have to try to accept.  But when it’s noticed, when there is a stopping or an unhooking or a dropping or a taking a half step back or noticing the space in which everything is coming and going, including that.  Not an either-or, but a both-and; both the body and the mind.  And this which knows in a different way, which sees without going to the mind, without looking through thought, but looks prior to thought and feels more like its knowing from the heart.  So it’s almost like dropping your awareness below your neck and checking to see what that’s like.  What’s here?  What do you notice?  Anyone?  A word or sense of who you are?  What’s here? 

Voice: Harmony.   

L:  Harmony. 

V: Relief. 

L:  Relief, yes.   

V: Distance 

L:  Distance, yes.  Like a distance like spaciousness or distance from?  Can you pass that back?   
 

DIALOGUES 

Q1: It’s like suddenly what I thought was real or me is not sort of around me.  So I’m not identifying with it maybe?  There’s a distance; it’s like, “Ah, okay.” 

L: So it includes something that’s all around you? 

Q1: Yes. 

L: What about what’s here? 

Q1: It’s in the center. 

L: It’s in the center and yet there is more spaciousness, vastness, or the location has changed? 

Q1: Yes.  I don’t have to control it anymore.  I can just be with it.  I guess that’s the distance?  I don’t have to be involved in it that way. 

L: You don’t have to control it, did you say? 

Q1: Yes, I don’t have to control it or make it happen. 

L: Yes, that’s it.  And that feeling of not having to control it is a relief.  That feeling of not having to make it happen is the way it is anyhow, whether we feel like we need to make it happen or not.  We’re actually just sitting in the little kiddie driver’s seat, thinking we’re driving the car.  You know, “Beep, beep.” [laughter]  And it’s just driving; life is happening.  The functioning mind, which is very helpful and useful in many things, is trying very innocently to play the role of identity.  And by doing that, it tries to control life.  

Q1: I hear the functioning mind saying, “Well if not that, then what?  And if you’re not that?” 

L: Yes.  That’s the inquiry.  “If not that, what?”  In some ways that’s the perfect inquiry.  When anyone here looks to see, “If not that...” you go, “Functioning mind? Controlling mind?”  And there’s this openness, then what?  Then who?  Don’t go to the mind to answer the question, but look; maybe you don’t get an answer in words, so you have to feel into it, let it reveal itself in a new way that you don’t know what the next moment is going to reveal.  Then what does it seem like? 

Q1: Scary. 

L: Scary, yes.  [laughter]  That’s very honest.   So there’s the functioning mind and then it gets a little help from the emotions.  It spikes the emotions—first it thinks it’s all fun and games, “Oh, this is great!  There is space around here.  But if this isn’t me, then who am I?”  It’s still kind of playful.  Then it goes, “Oh, no!” 

Q1: Because it’s like being in control and not being in control.  So there’s the feeling of falling and having to trust in something that is me and not me at the same time. 

L:  Yes. Yes. 

Q1: That’s how it feels. 

L: That’s right.  It’s almost like the first sense or invitation is this awakening of the mind, or the head.  It’s like pointing out the spaciousness, this awakeness, the feeling of 360 degree awareness.  Most people get a sense of that.  If that’s all we do, go back and forth from that, we can get a feeling of emptiness.  But usually what happens is the habit of ego-mind will just snap us back.  If not here and now with this support, then as you walk down the street.  Or maybe when you go to bed or maybe when you wake up.  Or maybe when you go to work, or some time on the weekend when somebody says something to you.   

The invitation then is almost to see what the awakening of the heart is like.  If the center is not in the head then what is here?  This quality, as you said, what is it that can either trust something it doesn’t know, or at least have the courage?  This quality of heart to see for itself what’s true?  So not to go to belief.  Trust actually goes to seeing for yourself what is true. That’s the movement toward faith rather than belief.  Actually do an experiment for yourself.   

Now your thoughts have been liberated.  Now, a little deeper quality of the emotions—the fear, some of the repressed content, some of the defenses around the heart—there is a sense of where the form and formless really come together.  Not where we live with them coming together, which is kind of in the head, but more where they really come together in the heart.  That’s just a pointing to see what that means to you, what heart is like.  What’s your sense of that? 

Q1: It’s not very verbal.   

L: No. 

Q1: It’s requiring a different way of understanding. 

L: Yes, you can make up a language if you want. 

Q1: Well “Buktadah... dukoo...” [laughter]  It’s also like a pointing. 

L: Yes. 

Q1: Like a doorway. 

L: Yes, that’s right.  That’s it.  It’s a pointing to a doorway.  That’s the feeling. 

Q1: A doorway that allows a coming in and a going out. 

L: Yes. 

Q1: Which is the not-I part of it.   

L: That’s right. 

Q1: The not-I that’s almost like a grace. 

L: Yes, that’s almost like a grace, flowing in and flowing out like the formlessness coming into form and the form recognizing itself as formless. But not staying up here or out here as the pure emptiness, with the emptiness saying, “Now I know I’m nobody so there’s no problem.”  But the heart, moment to moment, doesn’t know anything and it feels empty, non-separate and here.   

The new kind of knowing doesn’t know any information.  That’s where the not-knowing moves into knowing.  You know the not-knowing has moved into knowing when you don’t know anything but you have a feeling of being here and awake.  Something is awake but it doesn’t know, or need to know.  It has a sense of knowing it’s okay even though there may be fear and vulnerability. 

Q1: It’s almost like there isn’t a need to know why; it is. 

L: Yes. Yes. Right. 

Q1: There isn’t a striving for explanation. 

L: Yes, no reason to know why but learning now to know what is, learning how what is knows itself.  How does it know itself?  How does this awareness know itself as awareness?  How does this formlessness know itself as form?  How does this formless awareness know itself as everyone, as everything?  “What’s that like?” is more the question.  You can get glimpses of it because you can’t hold onto it.  That’s why they call it realization—because you are realizing it, you’re not understanding it.  It’s something that’s already here in one sense and yet unfolding in a new way.  

So right at that point of the recognition of the awakeness meeting itself as form is the new territory that a lot of people, I find, are in now who are on this awakening journey together.  Many people have had some recognition and some glimpses of this openness, of this awake awareness.  But seeing how it then comes home, and learning what kind of knowingness is here as it looks through these eyes, and discovering how it lives this life is an adventure.  Anything else you see right now? 

Q1: Just telling, reminding myself, that I don’t need to. Letting go of the need to go, “I understand what you are saying, Loch.”   

L: Yes.  Yes. 

Q1: Listening to you speak, the functioning mind wants to run back in and say, “Let’s take notes.” 

L: That’s right.  And remember it. 

Q1:  When we get home we can talk about this in the privacy of our apartment. 

L: That’s right.   

Q1: I’m trying to let go of that and just keep going back and just, “Okay.  He’s just talking. I’m just listening.” 

L: I’ll give you something to remember.  

Q1: Go ahead.  My functioning mind thanks you.  [laughter] 

L: Okay, here it is. The most important things are not worth remembering.  [laughter] 

Q1: Thank you.   

L: [laughter] You’re welcome.  It’s like learning how to remember without going to memory.  What’s that like? 

Q1: Just letting go.  Back to not controlling again. 

L: Back to not controlling.  And then when the control is let go, then there is some recognition or realization of what? 

Q1: That I have absolutely nothing to do with it. 

L: That you have nothing to do with it.  And that it’s not like a blankness or a sleepiness or the opposite of knowing something? 

Q1: No, it’s actually much bigger. 

L: Much bigger, yes. 

Q1: Which also makes it scarier because I had life neatly contained, fitted in my closet. 

L: That’s right. 

Q1: I’ll have to get a bigger place.  [laughter] 

L: That’s right.  Yes.  The whole place is you.  It’s like the functioning mind, the controlling mind, wants an orthodoxy. It wants to land somewhere.  It wants one place.  So we’ve got to move from orthodoxy to paradoxy.  We’ve got to move to, “Is awareness both nowhere, vast and infinite and also here?”  It’s like the field is awake and it’s also awake in every particular place.  

It’s like the universe creates all these planets and solar systems, amazing things are going on all the time; we know that, right?  So where is the brain of the universe?  Where is it located?  We think because this is here and we feel like it’s here that this is where the intelligence is coming from.  But when we get that it’s just the way it is anyhow, it’s more like quantum metaphor: that it’s already living this life, and it was or we didn’t think it was, and we’re just suffering more trying to control it.  The scary thing is that losing control doesn’t mean that we’re out of control, it means we are just able to be ordinary—just ourselves without the extra effort.  Without trying to get it right or fearing getting it wrong.  Without struggling to be somebody some day because we already are.  Without fearing judgment and shame and guilt of this little one who is judging itself and afraid of the judgment coming outside.  But somehow finding that innocent sense of this natural being that has this quality of wisdom and compassion naturally, that knows that it’s okay.  That there is no loss of the normal functioning civilized behavior.  There is even a finding of what we thought was out there, which is some peace, some rest, some love that is who we all are already.  Yes?   

Q2:  It’s been interesting over the past couple of months because a new signpost for me is any kind of effort.  What’s really very unusual is that when I’m living out of that effortlessness, and I mean effortlessness, things are really beginning to manifest effortlessly.  And things that used to require a lot of work on my part, or intensity, actually any kind of intensity now creates a tremendous amount of pain, so I know that’s not the direction I need to go in.  So I’m in one of two places now: I’m either in some kind of pain or effortlessness. 

L: Right. 

Q2: What I’m recognizing now is the effortlessness, or whatever I’m getting or creating effortlessly, that’s been getting scary.  It’s just something I’ve been acknowledging that to really trust the magnificence of that and the power of that is so incredibly easy that it’s like my mind wants to jump in and say, “It can’t be. This is impossible.” 

L: Right. 

Q2: But the power, the power is both a power and an acceptance.  It’s not that kind of power where you want to abuse it or anything, it’s like an acknowledgement of pure magnificence.  It’s amazing.  

L: Yes.  It’s like that point where the not-knowing goes to knowing and then the not-doing, the just hanging out and being, the actions begin to flow from naturalness.  That there is a natural responding instead of reacting or needing to check with the old programs in order to make sure you are doing it right, or get the motivation from the old motivations to jump-start your actions.  So it’s a whole different feel when this natural wakefulness starts to live this life and you are on board.   

Q2: That’s pretty wild. 

L: Yes. Yes.  That can be a good time for sangha (community} and stuff, as people going through these shifts and changes and awakening and unfolding, to really not recoil.  Because I find that though the awakeness unfolds by itself and it liberates without any doing, at any point along the river there are points where you can kind of get off in a little eddy of the unfolding and either hang out in a nice warm tidal pool or get off in a little egoic one on the other side and just spin.  Keep finding a way to know that there is always awakeness that doesn’t change but as it meets this form there’s an unfolding that happens and it’s new and it goes its own way.  So on this path, rather than the gradual path of awakening there is almost a direct introduction to awakeness that allows awakeness to gradually unfold into this life of being.  For some people it happens very quickly, the whole journey, but for most it happens medium to slow.  [laughter] 

Q2: But even the rate is not me, the personality, that’s doing it. 

L: That’s the key.  Yes.  That’s the shift.  Even any movement of awareness or re-recognition, even any discrimination, can either be coming from the egoic personality or from the heart, from the awake prajna—the wisdom of awakeness—coming into form. 

In some ways that’s one of the simplest ways to see what’s happening.  It’s one of the inquiries to really see who this is occurring to at any moment.  So you can have fear, you can have joy.  The problem is never in the experience. There is actually no problem with experience of any sort; it’s not a sign of anything.  It’s not a bad sign. Joy is not a good sign; bliss is not a good sign.  Fear, terror, rage is not a bad sign.  It’s not the place to work; it’s not the place in the direct path, though relatively there are things to do, but in terms of just this, it’s just a matter of who that is occurring to.  If anger is occurring to the ego, to the manager, to the controller, to the judge, to the worrier, and is identified with it as if it’s true, that’s one experience happening to who you take yourself to be.  In any experience, state, condition, or emotion that appears to this awakeness, there is space.   

Another common sidetrack is a subtle judging. Ego can get in there in the middle and go, “Oh, I can see this, but it’s not good, [laughter] but I’m aware and I have insight into it.  I’ll just watch it.”  So even there, a subtle witness can form.  It’s not that.  It’s even more out of control than that.  It’s not an out-of-body experience, but it is an out of mind and out of control where the fears have some grounding. 

Just that kind of self-inquiry, small moments of returning, of looking for your self, of who you are in any moment, what is here, is really where the great discovery, from my experience, happens.  So even though there can be experiences of satsangs and some inquiry with teachers, it’s really when you take it to heart that it’s important.  That it’s your heart desire to know.  When it’s from the heart, when it’s sincere rather than a technique for the ego to get some experience, when it’s really coming from the heart, it’s already coming from awakeness to know itself even before awareness looks; it’s already started.   

Then it can be met.  Just that little sense of integrity, of valuing something deeply, sincerely, of what’s important that only you can answer for yourself.  Nobody can tell you what’s important, what’s better than what.  It’s really the first level of inquiry to see what’s valuable.  Sometimes what’s valuable is just the value of whether it’s valuable to even do the experiment because in some ways that’s what it is.  It’s really more that, to inquire, to see who I am, to see what’s the root of suffering.  “Is it possible to be free of suffering?  Let me see.” 

There have been reports from these inner astronauts of something, but it’s only by looking for yourself.  In some ways that’s what inquiry is about. Inquiry and meditation is really learning how to look, learning how to move from where you are, from being right here, from the mind.  So usually inquiry is a question that starts with a question of the functioning mind, “Who is this occurring to?”  It starts in a rational, dualistic way, “Who?” Who is this?   

Then the next part of inquiry is where is that question is going and how is it going?  Is it going as a sentence or as a thought?  “Who is this experience occurring to?”  You can ask your mind.  “It’s occurring to me, of course.  Oh, that’s not right.  That’s the wrong answer.  I’m supposed to have another answer.  Okay, that’s right.  Let me try again.  Who is this?  Who am I?  Who am I?  Who am I?  That’s not it.  Who…am I?  That was sincere. [laughter]  That was very sincere. Who am I?” 

So really the movement of inquiry is to move from thought.  It’s like local awareness is identified with thought, so we start with thought and local awareness.  “Who am I?”  Then we say, “Can I go to the mind?  No, that’s not working.”  Then local awareness has to let go of thought. “Who am I” and look or drop—let thought go by.  “Hmm.”  There’s not a verbal, conceptual thought-based finding.  “Hmm.”   

Anyone have a sense of that?  Just that movement of what inquiry really is and how you can do it at any point.  In the Dzogchen tradition they talk about “the practice of recognizing who you are is in small moments, many times.”  So looking, finding and then when you find, you just let it be.  Let it know itself and don’t try to hold on or know it.  Let it be. “Hmm”, and let it go.  Anyone have a sense of that?  Yes? 

Q3: I had an experience, when you were talking about letting go.  I was sitting with the letting go but then I have the feeling that I was wanting to let go but then wanting to find something else. 

L:  That’s it. That’s right. 

Q3: It was really fascinating when I realized it was just about letting go. 

L: Yes, because that’s the normal tendency.  When we look through the eyes of the mind we’re looking for something.  We’re looking for an object.  We’re swinging from branch to branch—we’re letting go but we’ve got to get that next branch because we’re a human monkey [laughter] and that’s who we are and that’s all we are and we’ve got to survive.  We’ll let go if that’s the game, but we’ve got to find the next thing.  But if we’re not just a human but we’re also beingness, then the letting go is of beingness to beingness and humanness to beingness without losing humanness.  So the humanness lets go but it doesn’t fall, it doesn’t hit anything.  The humanness lets go into beingness which has no [pause… laughter] Right?  Yes.  Then what’s that like, when you look and find nothing? 

Q3: [laughter] Nothing. 

L: Right.  And then is nothing who you are? 

Q3: No. 

L: Or is it an experience?  That’s the next inquiry.  Is it an experience of vastness—nothing—that you’re having?   Or is emptiness, vastness, having the experience of you?  Of this?  What does it feel like? 

Q3: It feels like a huge clarity, like it was a huge... 

L: Huge clarity? 

Q3.  …openness of my heart.  I had the feeling that, as you mentioned before, there was nothing there and there was nothing to explain. 

L: Yes. 

Q3: But then there is the oneness, to know oneness. 

L: Oneness? 

Q3: Yes. Like I am living my life now where I look at you and I see myself. 

L: Yes. 

Q3: And I think that’s what it is. 

L: Yes.  So how does it feel if it’s both; the emptiness and the non-separateness?  You don’t have to land in either one.  How’s that? 

Q3: I think that was my experience of letting go because I was letting go and trying to land somewhere and I realized I didn’t have to land anywhere. 

L: Yes.  Yes.  So then the next inquiry for everyone here, is when you have that experience of this non-location or this opening—is that awake?  The vastness, where is the boundary of clarity?  Is the clarity clearer, meaning knowing, everywhere?  And, then is the clarity you to which this is appearing?  This form, these thoughts, these emotions are appearing to you, the clarity.  So even my heart is a door to you. Your heart is as big as the universe—that’s your heart, that’s you.  Then within your heart you appear, as you say, here and there, and particularly there.  Also here, but locally there.  Non-separately here and there.  Nowhere.  Everywhere.  And then this appears here and that appears there and that appears there and this appears here.  But where is the location of the knowingness?  Of this that’s appearing locally?  Where are you? 

Q3: I feel everywhere. 

L: Yes. 

Q3: I feel it’s everywhere. 

L: Yes. Yes. And here.   

Q3: And here. Yes. It’s very present. 

L: Yes, very present.   

Q3: Just present because it’s everywhere. 

L: Yes, there is no binding to it.  Yes. 

Q3: Yes.   

L: And yet if you are just everywhere, you are a bit spaced out.  You have to be here, but then the here-ness can feel like it’s this that’s having the experience of that.  Does everyone feel that?  The difference between that?  It’s really moving from recognition of this spacious, vast awakeness to realization.  Realization is that it’s not just an experience of peace, of freedom, happening to me.  It’s that this is awake and there’s this ordinary me appearing here.  Do you have a sense of that?  It’s the thing that really pops the identity.   

It’s the place that the ego puts up its last barriers, like gargoyles at the gate.  It’s like, “Okay, you can have this experience of vast peace and freedom, but it’s mine.  I’ll hang on a little bit and go for oneness.  Even, “I am one with everything.  I am one with everything!  We can do that!” [laughter]  But this appearing to that is where it all frees up.  

And it’s natural, too, because even those ego programs are ego programs of fear that it habitually has been conditioned to believe.  They are not a threat to this ordinary being.  There is no threat to knowing how things really are. The body is actually completely happy and safe without this ego manager as the intermediary controller.  The ego manager tends to get it all worked up. “What’s that?  What’s that? What did they say to me?  I can’t believe that!”  [laughter] 

If you check with the body, what is it like without the intermediary?  Even for a moment, what is it like without the manager?  Just this open-hearted awareness and this form.  How does this body feel with this spacious awareness inside and out?  What do you notice?  Anybody? 

Voice: Secure. 

L: Secure, yes. 

V: Wholeness. 

L: Wholeness, yes. 

V: Unimportant. 

L: Unimportant.  The question is unimportant, right? 

V: The body feels unimportant. 

L: The body feels unimportant?  Unimportant, like..? 

V: That it’s not even necessary in a way for the experience. 

L: Okay.  So check that out again.   

V: There is no way to feel it without the body. 

L: There is no way to feel it without the body.  There is no way to feel that the form and the formless have some dance.  It couldn’t locate even its vastness without the form.  That there is something about appearance and emptiness, form and formlessness, because they are they same; because form is formlessness and formlessness is form.  Once there are not two things, how do they feel together? 

Voice: Invisible. 

L: Invisible.  Yes.  Kind of clear, clean.  Light.  Transparent.  Fluid.  Like a tai chi guy.  The body feels very unencumbered, very light, free, open, not micro-constricted by holding together, but naturally able to let its form be natural, the way it is.  Yes?   

Q4: For a while I was really in harmony and in-tune when you spoke about the awareness.  Then as you began to speak a lot I began to get lost a little bit.  Even though I tried to come back to the openness, the mind was struggling on some level to try to understand.   

L: Sure. 

Q4: But then when you started to talk about the body it became a tremendous anchor and the two needed to be present.  The body felt alive and present.  And the awareness and the openness was also present.  But one without the other felt like there was no ground.   

L: Yes. 

Q4: So the body is just very important. 

L: Yes, that’s right.  It’s almost that when we come back to our senses and through our senses it’s easier to contact the formlessness. And the formlessness comes into form through the senses.  The intelligence of the formlessness then can use the natural mind.  It can use speech as needed, but it doesn’t have to use the mind to orient itself to being here.  It uses more the body moment-to-moment.   

And just like with other senses, we don’t need to use or focus on our taste all the time.  We don’t need to focus on thinking all the time; we don’t need to go to it.  In Buddhist thought thinking is the sixth sense.  So it’s just a sense, like hearing and feeling, and it serves this awakeness and it reports.  Then it can just rest like the ears—open.  Then the awakeness can learn to be in contact through our senses in a way that the form and formless are learning to live this life.  I’ll have one more.  Yes?  Hi. 

Q5: Hi.  If thoughts, if thinking is really in the Buddhist idea “another sense” it seems hard to believe, although I’ve heard of it over the years.  For instance, you’ve just likened it to taste. And at least on the relative scheme of things one thinks, or I think, I depend on right thinking in order to make skillful choices or decisions, to take care of the self.  How to make money, let’s say.  And the sense of taste doesn’t seem so important in that way.  In that sense it doesn’t seem like it’s a very equal sense.  Could you discuss that? 

L: Thinking is an organizing sense as well.  One of the functions as a sense is to organize.  And it has a more complex function.  But in some ways, like taste, if you taste something poisonous it would be something that would help you survive. The mind functions in the same way.  It remembers certain things—patterns, how to survive, where to drive.  “Okay we’re in England, stay on the left side.”  It knows how to function.  It’s a functioning sense of this system.  That’s the simple answer.   

The main thing is to try, or check out, what it would be like if it were in that category.  What if it weren’t who you were or didn’t need to be consulted for identity?  The mind can be consulted for all functioning until the natural wakefulness just naturally just starts to work or live through it, with it. 

Q5: That’s nice, thank you.  It’s nice to think that thoughts are not more important to your identity than tasting a blueberry and liking it or not liking it. 

L: That’s right.  That’s it.  In terms of your identity that’s exactly right.  It’s not more important.  The thoughts that arise are not any more important than the sounds that arise to your ears. If you hear bad sounds that doesn’t mean anything about who you are.  If thoughts come up, on a relative level, there are functional ways to work with the body, the mind, the psychological system that can help functioning.  But in terms of this one particular thing, which is knowing who you are, it’s not the main way or the main thing.  Just allowing the possibility of the experiment to look to see what it would be like to try that for yourself is really the invitation.   

Q5: Thank you. 

L: Great.  Thanks.  

You are all welcome tomorrow to meet here.  We’ll do some work with what we were talking about—moving from recognition to realization, working with the senses and the heart.  The intelligence of the heart is that place where this formless awakeness can live this life—through this heart.   

And we’ll do some work on inquiry and meditation and just giving you an opportunity to see and feel what that’s like to look through the eyes of the heart, to speak from the heart.  Not in the common sense, not in the sense of just the heart, but the awakened heart.  To really get a sense of what that feels like.   

It’s almost like if we really realize our habit is going out with our senses, like our eyes, it’s almost like we go out to see something.  But what’s really happening is that life is reflecting off of these flowers and it’s coming to your eyes.  That’s really what’s happening.  So if you feel like you can rest back and have seeing come to you, then seeing goes to the heart. And then the center of your awareness can rest in your heart-mind. Then there’s a whole other sense of who you are, right?   

So when awareness can rest as awareness in the heart and not to go out to know, then we can remain at home.  Then it’s like everything is coming to us so we don’t have to scan for danger; there’s a knowing that almost goes out to that sense of non-separation from the heart.  It’s like the local awareness remains here and there is a feeling of the connection that’s just the natural field, the natural quality of being that can even walk the streets of New York without fear and remain open-hearted.  As you know, if you can wake up here [laughter] you can wake up anywhere.  It’s up to you.  Thank you very much.