September 20, 2023
Touching the Undifferentiated Ground Beneath Thought
Tocando el fundamento indiferenciado bajo el pensamiento
This session guides participants into direct contact with sensation beneath the mind's reflections, exploring how the foundational quality of pure being is never lost. Through dialogues, the teacher distinguishes genuine intimacy from psychological fusion, examines how compulsive thinking blocks connection in relationships, and uses a subtractive inquiry to reveal the awareness that remains untouched by all experience. The recurring theme is that freedom comes not from avoiding fear and pain but from fully touching sensation and recognizing the unchanged essence of consciousness.
dialogue
The Undifferentiated Ground of Being
A guided meditation exploring how direct sensation, beneath the mind's images and reflections, touches the foundational beingness we have never lost.
dialogue
Intimacy, Not Fusion
A student describes a new experience of deep connection with nature and other people, and wonders whether it might be an unhealthy "fusion." The teacher and a fellow practitioner help distinguish genuine intimacy from psychological enmeshment.
dialogue
The Center Between Closing Down and Getting Ahead
A question about the compulsive thinking that arises when we have feelings for someone, and how it creates a barrier to actual intimacy.
teaching
The Other Way
A reflection on why we must first hear a new philosophy before we can practice it, and how directly touching difficult sensations reveals something untouched by pain.
dialogue
What Remains When Experience Falls Away
A student reflects on the sense of relief that comes from recognizing something deeper than thoughts and sensations, and the teacher explores what remains when all content of experience is subtracted.
meditation
The Part That Has Not Changed
A gentle exploration of the quiet, unchanging awareness you've carried since childhood, still present beneath every experience.
dialogue
Choosing Identification
A student questions whether identification is something that simply happens to them, and the teacher reframes it as a free choice worth contemplating.
teaching
The Sensation Beneath the Story
A reflection on how the feeling that something is wrong is itself a sensation to be met directly, rather than a problem to be solved through narrative.