September 27, 2023
Before Memory: The House Built on Thought
Antes de la memoria: La casa construida sobre el pensamiento
This session explores how our sense of self and reality is constructed from memory and thought, and what remains when we set that construct aside. Through guided contemplation and dialogue, the teacher examines reification, dis-identification, the subtle illusion of a perceiver, and how liberated action arises when the contracted self loosens.
meditation
Before Memory
Explore what remains of you and the world when memory is set aside, resting in direct sensation and presence before thought.
dialogue
The Space Between Sleeping and Thinking
A student asks about the fine line between falling asleep and entering a meditative state, and whether the drowsy, in-between quality of their experience is a problem.
dialogue
The House Built on Memory
A student describes observing how memory, future projection, and fantasy interweave during meditation. The teacher explores how our entire sense of identity is constructed from thought and memory, and what lies beyond that construction.
dialogue
The Construct We Forget Is a Construct
A reflection on how the self-image is built on top of something more primary, and how we lose touch with the awareness that preceded it.
dialogue
The Perceiver as a Subtle Construct
A student describes a growing sense that everything experienced, including thoughts, feels "outside" of what they truly are, and the teacher explores how this process of dis-identification can crystallize into a subtle, thought-based perceiver.
dialogue
The Subtle Sense of a Perceiver
The teacher describes a particular stage of practice in which identification has been refined to the point where one can see clearly that one is not what one is experienced, yet a subtle sense of an "I" as a subject or perceiver remains.
teaching
The Snake and the Rope
A reflection on how the sense of being a separate perceiver is a projection of thought, and how recognizing what something actually is dissolves the illusion.
dialogue
The Bubble You're Imagining
A student describes the experience of a separate self dissolving into a unified awareness, and the teacher points out that the separation was never real to begin with.
dialogue
Goals, Desire, and the Contracted Self
A question about whether the dissolution of a fixed sense of self leads to apathy, and how goals and motivation function when identification loosens.
meditation
The Universe Is Doing
An invitation to notice that choice and action arise without a separate doer, and to trust your own unfolding.
dialogue
The Body Shifts Before the Mind Understands
A question about intense body sensations and a feeling of free fall arising during a memory inquiry practice, and how the process of awakening reshapes the body, the mind, and the sense of control.