Archive for August, 2012

Local Nonduality 2: Start a Meetup Group

August 21, 2012

At our Nonduality Satsang meetup a couple nights ago I encouraged others to start their own meetup grounded in nondual awareness. I don’t know if anyone will take me up on that right away, but eventually one person will. Then another and another. That’s how consciousness around a topic grows and expands. That’s what we did at the level of email forums back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

If you are the leader of a nondual group, you may think that encouraging such activity would make you dispensible or leave you lost in the crowd. And that may happen. So may the opposite. You may draw more attention. Or you may lose the attention of some and gain it from others.

None of that matters.

What I invite is for you to let go of the tendency to hold onto your group and to essentially give it away by encouraging and assisting others with starting their own get togethers.

You may or may not want to attend the meetings of other people. It might be best to stay away so that the persona and style of the new groups are more free to shape and form.

So that’s my message for the day. If you have a group, encourage others to start their own. Release the tendency to hold on to what you think you have.

I like running our gathering with the organizational help of meetup: http://meetup.com. It costs $12/month. You pay every 6 months. For your first year it should be half price, at least it used to be. If you meet once a month and ask people to contribute a dollar or two in order to meet your costs, you may find that there’s nothing wrong with that.

Finally, just imagine the kinds of meetup groups that could be started based on nondual awareness: Things like Nonduality and the Workplace, Nonduality and Eckhart Tolle, Nonduality and the Martial Arts, Nonduality and Addictions, Nonduality and Parenting, Nonduality and Stress Relief, Nonduality and Yoga, Nonduality and Meditation, Nonduality and Gardening.

If you have an understanding of nonduality and serious interest in any field of endeavour, put the two together and start a meetup group. Don’t worry that you’re not a famous sage. Just speak truthfully and see what happens. You might be amazed.

-Jerry Katz

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Local Nonduality

August 9, 2012

The Local Movement is associated with being a consumer of locally grown food, products, and services. Like all movements, it is a fresh way of looking at the world. It can be applied to anything.

The Local Movement can mean connecting with teachers, guides, and friends. Does it seem strange to anyone to suggest that we can find friends locally? Not if you spend a lot of time in the online world where no doubt you do have one or two close friends you’ve never met and probably never will.

While it is obvious that friends can be found locally, it’s not so obvious that sharers of the teachings of nonduality can be found locally. Yet it can be done.

If you are aware of nonduality, chances are there are others in your community who also are. Maybe they don’t talk about it. Maybe they’re not occupying the same online spaces as you are. But they are in your city or town.

You’d be amazed.

My suggestion, if you want to connect, is to put out some ads inviting people to a nonduality meeting. You won’t get a lot of people. Maybe two or three.

You’ll get a few more if you set up a Meetup through meetup.com, but it costs a few bucks to be hosted by meetup.com. The full price is $72 every 6 months. Your first year is half price.

Our Nova Scotia meetup site is at nonduality.ca.

When you do meet, keep the videos of famous teachers at home. Talk to each other. You may want to come up with a theme and a quote from a famous teacher, but you don’t need more than that to get started.

Have the confidence to eschew affiliation. It doesn’t have to be an Eckhart Tolle group or anything like that. Just people.

This is local nonduality. Water and feed it and give it some sun and let it grow in whatever way it will.

Good luck.

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Excerpts from Self-Unfoldment By Disciplines of Realization, by Manly P. Hall

August 7, 2012

Self-Unfoldment By Disciplines of Realization is built around twelve “Realizations.” Here are some excerpts from them:

“The Wisdom Religion teaches us that while in personality we are many, in principle we are one.”

“To attempt to live beyond what we know is dangerous. Not to live up to what we know, is equally perilous.”

“Do not permit yourself the extravagance of any useless expenditure of energy. Adjust to unexpected conditions. Let the expected and the unexpected be accepted with equal placidity.”

“In all your comings and goings, in your joys and sorrows, in your gains and losses, find the Law.” (The Law is another term for Truth, Reality, the Absolute, the unchanging reality, nonduality or not-two-ness.)

“Listen for the Law.” … “Let the mind be still; let the desires be silent; let the body be relaxed; let all the senses and impulses be hushed — and thus Listen. In moments of stress, when problems threaten, when all life seems out of key — Listen.”

“Learn to recognize all ideas as essentially formless, but perceptible inwardly as manifestations of the Law.”

“Of all the fables in all the world, we ourselves are the most fantastic.”

“There is no hurry, for there is no time. There is no delay. There is only a timeless mystery waiting for liberation — waiting and yet not waiting, for here waiting has no reference to time.”

“Appreciation demands nothing but the right to be silent and a little humble in the presence of a great good or a great beauty.”

“As realization extends throughout the departments of life the simple act of picking up something will become symbolic of all motions. First it will be beautified; a grace and harmony will be conferred upon action, and gradually coarse action will practically cease, all action being performed within realization.”

“Realization is the conscious understanding of the unity of life, and of the unity of the living Self with the deathless Cause which abides in the innermost parts of the world.”

You may purchase a pdf copy here

http://prs.org/wpcms/?page_id=8&category=54&product_id=868

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