Right Now - Just This

We have just finished our tour with a one day workshop in Hamburg. Dirk has been wonderful driving long distances and taking every care of me.

I continue to be surprised at the ease with which people can settle into the state of effortless being: the state where we are in intimate contact with everything within and around us, without making the slightest demand on ourselves or others. I began be describing the conditioned body mind through a simple diagram. (see below)

We spend most of our time in the past or future, recalling pleasurable or painful events or projecting into the future. In Radiant Mind—in the book and workshops— we return to the here and now. We build bridges to the centerless center. The center point is the space where we are right now — just this. There seems to be a center to our field of awareness. We seem to be located at a point in here. In a sense we are, but if we look, there is no center. We aren’t anywhere. We are here, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The arrows that radiate out from the center symbolize how the center is centerless and includes everything.

In Hamburg we didn’t need to build many bridges. We just found ourselves in the space of effortless being, resting quietly, eyes open, eyes closed, smiling, enjoying sharing pure awareness which is the same no matter whether it being presenced the weekend in Hamburg or centuries ago in India.

At the end of our day in Hamburg someone asked about the relationship between nondual awareness and the ecological predicament of our planet. Some people think that we might be less active in helping repair the planet. To my mind nondual awareness is the most direct and powerful way to help address the damage we are reeking on our delicate environment and social systems, for one simple reason. When we rest in pure awareness we are nourished by the blissful nature of awareness itself. This means that we don’t need to go looking outside ourselves for fulfillment: we don’t need the lastest technology, and distracting entertainment. Instead of trying to extend our life by a few weeks with life-support systems, it may make more sense to spent our final weeks with friends, helping to create a support to the unconditioned, the place where there is nothing that dies

If humanity spent 5 percent more time in a state of genuine, internal self-sufficiency our planet would change beyond recognition. To my mind the most powerful resource for repairing the planet and changing destructive business practices, political and social systems is for people to discover the space of authentic self-sufficiency, and live more thoroughly from a place where we’re nourished and fulfilled by awareness itself.

I want to thanks everyone I meet on this trip, the organizers of events, the people who came to the events, and especially to Dirk for taking meticulous care, and translating all along the way.

I look forward to returning to run a longer workshop or even a short retreat!

Love to all,
Peter