|
 Dialogue from Boulder Radiant Mind:Beyond pleasure and discomfort
Transcribed by Rebecca Cruz
Peter: So what is that? Are you feeling it now?
Student: Yes. It’s a discomfort in here. It’s an energetic discomfort that got triggered by an external event about myself.
P: Okay, so you’re feeling uncomfortable, yes? That’s it!
S: That’s it?
P: In a way, you’re asking too much to not feel discomfort. This is what I’m saying: we’re going to suffer. To live in some illusion that we shouldn’t feel uncomfortable is crazy, because it’s unrealistic. So again, it’s important to be realistic about how we’re living our lives. To think this shouldn’t be happening to you when it is, there is a disconnection. You’re feeling uncomfortable and that will change. And it will come back again.
S: I feel a lot more spacious just taking that in.
P: Yes, of course. If you say: “Okay, look even though I’m sitting here in this workshop and it’s meant to be all smooth, I’m going to be doing it a little bit differently for the next two hours. I’ll be in discomfort.”
What I’m saying is if you can create the space for yourself, if you can accommodate that, it will change things the moment you do that. You might be in this discomfort that comes and goes for the next couple of hours or for the rest of the day.
The other thing is—don’t look for things to be helpful. For example, seeing: “Ah, that’s good. That was helpful.” is part of the same package. It’s still looking for a way out. That way of thinking is conditioning a resistance to suffering, which perpetuates and intensifies the suffering, and an attachment to the release of the suffering.
This is simply the dynamic that keeps us involved in experiencing samsara, the cycle of pleasure and pain. And so again, what’s possible is this expansion, broadening the river of life, expanding our capacity to feel comfort and discomfort, without needing to change the discomfort or perpetuate the comfort.
In a way, it’s simply maturing our understanding of the human condition.
S: So in terms of resting in unconditioned awareness, if I’m not trying to change the discomfort, I’m wondering if I would be in a place where it can’t get any better than this. Because when I’m feeling discomfort and I ask myself a checking question, I’ll answer: “Well, you can be improved,” even though I might feel a space around me.
P: Sure. If you’re feeling discomfort in that way, there’s not even much point in asking a checking question, because it’s clear and obvious that you’re not in unconditioned awareness.
S: So in unconditioned awareness, anything can arise, including something that’s uncomfortable? Does it just dissolve?
P: Whatever it is, it doesn’t need to go away.
S: Or stay?
P: Or stay. Yes.
Teachers, master trainers and therapists from different nondual approaches in Boulder for the first North American Nondual Teacher Training
Report by Peter Fenner
The second 9 month Nondual Teacher Training started in February this year in Boulder with 38 participants. This is the first training offered in North American and the level of interest and caliber of participation is truly outstanding.
We have people from most nondual traditions in the Training: teachers and masters from Zen, Sufism, Western-style Mindfulness, Dzogchen and Mahamudra. Some participants have developed their own forms for transmitting nondual wisdom. The expertise in traditional nondual modalities is powerfully complemented by the participation of a very large number of psychologists and counselors who have decades of expertise in a wide range of therapeutic approaches. About 2/3 of the people in the Training are graduates of Radiant Mind. The blend of experience, and depth and breadth of expertise is quite unique.
We are using a structure in the Training that is based on demonstrations of nondual transmission to the larger group and in smaller breakout groups, demonstrations and explanations of the Radiant Mind form of nondual work supported by a reference manual, regular conference calls, coaching calls and field work. The field work happens in between the three full group workshops. This is where the people in the Training explore new structures for delivering nondual transmission, refine the work they are presently doing, experiment with integrating nonduality into new domains, or begin doing something they have never done before!
The field work that people are engaged with is coming into place right now. The range of courses, workshops, small and large events, that people are envisioning, designing and beginning, is wonderfully diverse and varied. Several people are loosening the structures that have defined their teaching and discovering how to work “on the spot” with whatever is arising, others are creating bridges from the nondual into areas such as end-of-life, social activism, and explicitly building nondualism into intimate relationships. Others in the Training are experientializing the teaching of nondual texts, exploring how to introduce people to nondualism through natural meditation. The new events that are being created include informal evening meetings, weekend workshops and longitudinal programs. Many people are “out there” doing things that they wouldn’t have imagined 4 months ago.
I think we are all learning that far more is possible than we’d imagined. We’re seeing a level of interest by so many people, in internal sources of fulfillment, and an availability to rest in awareness itself, that was impossible even just one or two years ago.
Boulder Radiant Mind Reflections
Report by Sonja Logtenberg
 On February 21, Rik and I arrived at the Starhouse, a retreat center in the foothills of Boulder, for the first workshop of the 9 month Radiant Mind Course. We stepped into a sunlit room, warmed even more by the smiling faces of the people inside—first-time students and mentors of the course, Peter and Marie, and a few auditors from the upcoming NDTT course. The building, a large circular room, was supported by grand wooden pillars and had windows that framed the forest and hills of the property. After saying a few hellos and helping with the sound system, I took a seat, and settled into the space.
Questions and laughter arose naturally out of the silence and I witnessed our collective desire to understand dissolve and reappear - again and again. At one point, in an elated moment of pride, I decided I had figured "it" out. A grin spread across my face. The more we talk and try to dissect and understand what nondual awareness is, the further we move from it. I attempted to share my grand accomplishment with Peter - "I think I get it!". He misunderstood, gestured to the PA system, and assuming that I had figured out the microphone troubles, he nodded and smiled. Perfectly deflated, but not deterred, my grin returned and I settled back into my seat.
The Radiant Mind Mentor Stream
Report by Shayla Wright
 This year in our Radiant Mind course in Boulder, we have 11 people, from all over North America, who are training to be mentors. Each one engages with one or two mentees at a time, who are participants in the Radiant Mind course. Someone asked me recently, “Why do you call it the mentor stream?” I told them that in the Radiant Mind work, we often relate to each other as streams of consciousness, instead of solid, separate individuals. In traditional Buddhist teachings, one who decides to follow the Noble Eightfold Path has “entered the stream” of enlightenment, and is often described as a “stream-enterer.” So our mentors-in-training are people who have entered the stream together, where they are offering themselves to this possibility of sharing unconditioned awareness with another human being.
What keeps revealing itself so beautifully is the difference between doing it and just thinking about it. Before entering into the actual stream, some of the mentors were wondering about how it would happen, and what would support them. In one of our first supervision calls, a mentor reported, with great surprise and delight, that he was actually able to facilitate in his client a movement from pain and contraction into awareness and ease. This kind of report happens on all of the calls. When we enter this stream of mentoring, something happens to our individual consciousness—we can do things, make way for possibilities, that our conditioned mind has no idea about. On one level, there are many skills we can learn about how to engage in this process. On another level, holding on to those skills in any way is simply a protective device. We are simply building confidence in awareness itself, knowing that if we let go of needing to know, needing to attain, needing to be someone or no-one, everything we need is right here, and the process happens by itself.
Friends of Radiant Mind -Washington, DC
 RM Mentor, Jeff Munn shares his experience of creating a "Friends of Radiant Mind Group" in Washington DC:
I was introduced to Radiant Mind through Peter’s book, which I read in the fall of 2007. I have been a meditator and explorer in this area for many years, but Peter’s work resonated with me in a way that I had not felt before. There was something there that was drawing me to explore it, and with that impulse, I found myself signing up for the Boulder 2008 Radiant Mind course.
I could not have put together this group without my good friend Susan. Susan and I often find ourselves talking about spiritual topics, or having discussions about how to be in the world and how to manage often stressful professional lives in Washington, DC. I introduced Susan to Peter’s book as the Boulder course was winding down, and we found ourselves talking about starting a discussion group in Washington for others who might be feeling the same challenges that we were. We reached out to friends who we thought might be interested—Susan has organized and led other groups and knew exactly what to do.
Our first meeting was in November of 2008 and we have been meeting monthly since. We just started having conference calls as well, because there was a desire to open this space together more frequently. We have about 10 who participate on some level, and a core group of about six who are generally at a given meeting or call.
I was a bit uncertain about starting a group, first because I did not feel qualified to "teach" anything, and second because even now, most of the people in the group have not read Peter’s Radiant Mind book or worked with him. But the group somehow has come together anyway, and Peter has been very supportive along the way. If there is an essence of this work, it is in paradoxically creating (or allowing) a space in which there is no structure. Our minds fight this, but there is great peace in the letting go, in the allowing of whatever is happening, in seeing that in this very moment, there is nothing we need to do or know.
This is what is happening in our group. With each meeting, the sense of needing to know something (and that there is in fact anything that we can know) eases. We share whatever comes up, whether in speech or silence. And we are working together to create additional opportunities to share and refine our experience.
I’d encourage others who are interested to start groups as well. The energy of a group seems to more easily enable entering into a state of unconditioned awareness, even for those who are otherwise unfamilar with it. And our group work seems to enhance what we each do as individuals, whether that includes Radiant Mind or not.
|
|
