February 15, 2023
The Refuge of the Virtual World
El Refugio del Mundo Virtual
A guided meditation on noticing the constant pull toward the mental sense of 'me' and choosing instead the direct experience of sensation and perception. The dialogues explore raw bodily experience versus mental images, the oscillation between glimpses of reality and forgetting, the dangers of defining the unknown, and the substantive nature of being that emerges as ego resistance gives way.
meditation
The Refuge of the Virtual World
A gentle practice of noticing how attention contracts into a sense of self, and leaning instead into open sensation and perception.
dialogue
The Hand Beyond the Image
A student describes how a simple shift in attention during meditation led to an unexpectedly vivid, direct encounter with bodily sensation, prompting a discussion about what it means to truly experience the body rather than its mental image.
dialogue
The Oscillation Between Glimpse and Forgetting
A question about the back-and-forth experience of glimpsing a deeper reality and then losing it, and whether one has any control over this oscillation.
dialogue
The Unknown That You Already Are
A student revisits a powerful inner experience in which they were told to stop pretending they don't know what they are, and the teacher explores why that knowing must remain undefined and mysterious.
teaching
Why We Give Power to Beliefs
A reflection on why beliefs feel so compelling, and what we gain from the experiences they create.
dialogue
The Only True Statement
A question about the nature of belief, the limits of language, and whether any statement can be called absolutely true.
teaching
The Mind's Capacity to Draw Boundaries
A reflection on how the mind creates the world of separate objects by drawing boundaries, and how observation can dissolve that very process.
dialogue
Substance and the Fear of Dissolving
A question about whether we are emptiness leads into a discussion of substantiality, ponderability, and the terror of ego dissolution.
dialogue
Inverse Proportion
The teacher explores the idea that the more something can be made into an object of thought, the less real it is, and how realizing this inverts one's entire experience of substance, self, and depth.
dialogue
The Luminous Nature Behind Form
A question about a sudden experience of seeing another person as pure light, and how such moments relate to the deeper work of emotional integration and lasting freedom.
teaching
The Teacher Who Screamed With Love
A reflection on how a student came to understand his teacher's radical methods over time, realizing that what once seemed like poetry or madness was in fact precise, literal description.