November 16, 2022
The Map and the Ocean: Seeing Through the Mind's Tricks
El mapa y el océano: Ver a través de los trucos de la mente
This session explores how the mind acts as a mapmaker, constructing a sense of separate self through subtle thinking that divides experience into inside/outside, self/other. Through meditation and dialogue, the teacher examines how physical practices can blur these boundaries, how we are addicted to the contraction of identification, and how the mind acts as a shape-shifting magician perpetuating the illusion of separateness. Students bring questions about the role of the body in awakening, working with discomfort, and recognizing the self-reinforcing loops of identification.
meditation
The Map and the Ocean
A meditation exploring how the mind maps and divides experience, and what opens when we look beyond those familiar boundaries.
dialogue
The Role of the Body in Waking Up
A question about whether physical practices are necessary for awakening, and how much attention one should give to the body in spiritual work.
dialogue
No Requirement for What Already Is
A question about whether any prerequisite or condition is needed for recognition, prompted by something the student had heard elsewhere.
dialogue
Going Into the Contraction
A student describes intense physical discomfort during meditation and asks whether the mechanism that labels experience as pleasant or unpleasant is the same classifying function of mind that creates the sense of a separate self.
dialogue
The Magician of the Mind
A student describes feeling trapped in a loop of trying to find and eliminate the belief in separateness, and the teacher responds by exposing how the mind itself acts as a shape-shifting magician that perpetuates the very identification it claims to dissolve.