October 9, 2024
This Is It: Growing Up and Waking Up
Esto Es Todo: Crecer y Despertar
The session explores the crucial distinction between growing up (psychological and emotional development) and waking up (direct recognition of what is already here). The teacher uses the phrase "this is it" as a central pointer, emphasizing its literal rather than poetic nature. Dialogues with students address identification, the trap of preferring peace over thought, energetics in shared presence, and how what we recognize in a teacher is actually ourselves.
teaching
This Is It
A reflection on the distinction between growing up and waking up, and why both matter even though they point in fundamentally different directions.
dialogue
Whatever Is Happening Is It
A student asks what the teacher means by "this is it," and whether it simply refers to whatever is happening right now.
teaching
This Is It
A reflection on the teaching that what we are looking for is already here, and why that is so easy to overlook.
dialogue
The Literal and the Poetic
A student reflects on the deepening of presence and the merging of waking up and growing up, leading into a discussion about how a teacher's words, once heard as abstract poetry, reveal themselves to be startlingly literal and direct.
dialogue
The Literal Truth
A student shares experiences of sensing subtle energetic presence in another person, leading to a discussion about the nature of literalness in spiritual teaching and why direct pointing is so often misunderstood.
teaching
Energetics and the Mystery of Shared Presence
A reflection on how energetic experience intensifies through practice and shared gathering, and how even bliss must be held without preference.
dialogue
The Peace That Knows Both Sides
A student explores the trap of choosing between thoughtless peace and identification, and the teacher points to that which is prior to both.
dialogue
The Mirror in Another Person
A student reflects on an experience of profound recognition that arises in the presence of a particular teacher, and what it means that the source of that recognition is oneself.
dialogue
The Habit You're Fighting Is the One You're Choosing
A student describes clearly seeing through the sense of self in direct investigation, yet struggles with the persistent habit of identification in everyday life. The teacher points to a subtler layer: the sense that this habit is "happening to me" is itself the identification, and the dynamic is being chosen, not merely endured.