January 2023 / More
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TAT Foundation News
It's all about "ladder work" – helping and being helped
(This is a complete listing of local groups. See the main page section for just the groups with recently updated information.)
New listing for Aiken, SC:
Looking to start a self-inquiry group ... finding like-minded people to talk about Richard Rose and his teachings either online or in-person in a home setting ... to question what it means to find our true selves.
~ Email
.
Update for the Amsterdam, NL Self-Inquiry Group:
The group is not holding meetings currently, but email
for information.
Update from the Central New Jersey Self Inquiry:
The Central Jersey Self Inquiry Group welcomes serious participants. We are a small group and meet every other Sunday from 6pm to 7pm eastern time on zoom.
One weakness of our group is that it has happened that we don’t have enough rsvp’s in order to meet. Strengths of our group are that inquiry topics are native to our own interests and that we rotate leadership of each meeting. Another strength is that we invite guests occasionally to keep our meetings fresh and productive. Here are some recent topics:
- What is your response to uncertainty?
- After reading a short piece on Between-ness: Does Between-ness speak to your intuition? Have you applied it/can you apply it?
Members of the NYC and Central Jersey Inquiry Groups worked together to hold a one-day retreat recently. Retreat was held in person at the Heart of Art studio in Mercerville NJ; in total 8 people participated.
Activities included: what brought you here; guided meditation followed by a series of writing exercises and discussion; group meditation; inquiry based on Liberation Unleashed recording.
Members felt the retreat to be valuable, and discussed possibly meeting in NYC in the near term.
~ For meeting info: facebook.com/groups/429437321740752.
Questions?
for more details.
Update from the Central Ohio Non-Duality Group:
The Central Ohio Non-Duality Group has continued to meet virtually during the pandemic with a group of core members. As a result, the participants now dial in beyond Central Ohio from CA, TX, MD, NC and OH. We will continue to meet virtually on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 to 8:30 PM and welcome new participants. The meetings feature confrontation sessions that are a serious effort to engage in self-inquiry with the help of friends on the path. New participants can begin by first observing the process, if they wish, to understand the purpose and nature of such efforts by like-minded seekers. The Central Ohio Non-Duality Group recently posted the meeting link to its local Meet-Up site inviting new participants. If interest is shown for in-person meetings by participants in the Central Ohio area, in-person meetings will be re-started on a second evening.
~ For further information, contact
,
, or
.
We're also on Facebook.
Update from the
Dublin, Ireland self-inquiry group:
We meet every second Wednesday on Zoom. We are working using two different approaches. The first is the standard confrontation approach of people giving an update on what was coming for them in the previous period, in terms of their path. The second is the distribution of a piece in advance for reflection. We will continue in this vein for the time being, using either a general update or a piece for reflection shared in advance.
~ Contact
for more information.
We also meet online using Google Meet at least every second Sunday. The format so far is participants will talk solo for about 5 to 10 minutes on their reactions to the meeting's given topic and then respond to questions from the others present.
Information is given in the "What we are about" section of the Sunday group's Meetup main page about becoming a member, etc.
The online format is good to accommodate seekers who live far apart, but the hope would be every once in a while to have in-person events. Live meetings can provide new insights that may not occur in virtual meetings and could be either via a TAT retreat or an organised event within the group.
~ Contact
for more information.
Our group has started to do in-person meetings. As the first meeting has gone well, the consensus is to hold them monthly or bimonthly. Currently, the venue is “The Cahir House Hotel” in Cahir, Tipperary, from 8 am to 4 or 5 pm on a chosen Saturday, and folks can hang out longer if they wish. Meetings have scheduled topics provided by the participants in advance of the meeting. There is a group rapport session during the day for an hour, which got good feedback last time. And finally, we try to stick to a theme for the day in the same style as the TAT retreats. For more information, contact Patrick or Colm.
Update from the email self-inquiry groups:
The Women's Online Confrontation (WOC) group consists of weekly reports where participants can include:
> What is on your mind?
> Any projects that you want to be held accountable for?
> Responses to a selected excerpt (in the previous report).
> Comments/responses/questions for other participants.
A philosophical/spiritual excerpt with two or three questions is included in each report.
Based on what we share, participants ask questions to help get clarity about our thinking.
The intention is to help each other see our underlying beliefs about who we are.
One rule we try to adhere to is not to give advice or solve problems.
The number of participants, to make it work efficiently, is between 4 and 7 including the leader.
We continue to have two men's email groups active. Since the beginning of the year, four participants have left and one other participant has returned.
The weekly reports function like slow-motion self-inquiry confrontation meetings, which has its pros and cons. We alternate by asking each other questions one week then answering them the following week. Participants provide brief updates of highlights from the previous week and optional updates on progress toward objectives that they use the reports for accountability on.
Both the women's and the men's email groups welcome serious participants.
~ Contact
or
for more information.
TAT Press publishes Anima's and Art's book: Always Right Behind You: Parables & Poems of Love & Completion.
Update from the Gainesville, FL self-inquiry group:
We continue to meet at the Alachua County main library on Saturdays from 2 to 4 PM. We typically schedule meetings for alternate Saturdays with an occasional extra week between meetings due to holidays or the TAT meeting schedule and our group's associated retreats.
We talk with newcomers about the objective of the group as a forum to stimulate the progress of self-inquirers and we ask them what their most heartfelt life-objective is, and then we usually listenen to each volunteer who want to talk and then be questioned about what they've said.
~ Email
or
for more information.
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Update from the GMT Support Group for Seekers:
We meet every Sunday gmt 18.30, live on Google Meet. Rapport and confrontation, talk and exchange.
Someone mostly brings a theme, like a text, poem or whatever to set the mood. Then 10 minutes of silent rapport after which everyone gets their turn on the "hot seat" for 10-15 minutes—the group listens to what the person has to say about the theme then asks friendly questions—depending on how many participants we are. The questioning is aimed at providing material for self-inquiry. There have been sessions in which we just chatted, but that is more the exception.
~ Contact
*
The GMT support group group held a
weekend intensive retreat in West Sussex, UK on Friday-Sunday, Nov. 12–13.
On the weekend of 12-14th November a small number of people gathered for an in-person spiritual retreat in West Sussex
U.K. The aim was to foster a spirit of friendship and provide a face to face retreat for TAT interested European folks with the
theme of ‘Make Your Whole Life a Prayer’.
Tess Hughes joined us via Zoom and Peter O. made a moving talk about his life and spiritual path. Freddie L. offered a very
powerful guided meditation, we conducted Harding experiments, rapport, and it was a great opportunity for discussion and a
deepening of friendship. We hope to run another similar retreat sometime next year.
See "A Seeker-Organized Weekend Intensive Retreat" for feedback from participants including a poem by one of them.
~ E-mail
for more details.
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An update from the self-inquiry group in Houston, TX:
The backyard patio meetings are now moved to Zoom meetings, which take place at 4 pm on Saturdays. There are 3 active and inspired participants right now. Topics vary from Mr. Rose's writings to "What is on your mind?"
~ Contact
for more information.
"Ignoramuses Anonymous" blog
Ignoramuses Anonymous is for seekers to explore questions together…a fellowship of seekers for whom ignorance of the absolute truth had become a major problem. It started as a blog for Pittsburgh PSI meeting members back in 2009. Welcoming discussion on the path.
Ig Anon looks inactive again. The idea is to have a kind of seeker’s blog to process our thinking out loud and hopefully also help seekers new to group work see what we’re thinking about and if it resonates. My feeling is shorter posts in a range of 100-300 words are easier to put together and probably to read than recent 1000-word posts; however, there are no rules about it.
See this post from a
Four-day isolation retreat at TAT Center, with photos and YouTube clips.
Update from the Lynchburg, VA self-inquiry group:
We have been meeting on Thursday evenings from 7pm—8:30pm, online, via zoom. Norio Kushi, Paul Rezendes, and Bob Harwood are consistent guests. We've also had some other interesting characters show up from time to time. Topics come from readings or questions brought up by our members. These are sent out, along with the zoom invitation each week. Recently we posted some "considerations" for joining our group:
** Try to frame your comments as questions to Norio, Paul, or Bob. Draw these questions from you own experience rather than generalities. Maintain attention and discussion on the question rather than philosophical musings.
** Question other participants, in the spirit of group-assisted self inquiry, but without attempting to lead them to any particular conclusion or bring attention to yourself.
**Allow for and attend to the silence and the space that is always present. When you aren't speaking, see that as your role—to hold that space.
**Question, in yourself, the use of personal story-telling and quoting others—though sometimes both are helpful and appropriate.
**Consider the way in which you are listening. Does it have a quality of acquisitiveness or openness?
**Continue to question your own intention for coming to this meeting and let that guide any comments/questions/discussion.
~ Please contact
or
if you're interested in being on the email list.
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Update from the New York City self-inquiry group:
The New York City Self-Inquiry group meets by Zoom every Monday from 6-8 PM EST.
You can use this link.
Our format is inspired by Art Ticknor's self-inquiry retreats, giving equal time for each person to answer a spiritual, philosophical, or personal "question of the week." By asking questions, we practice being sincere and reminding one another about the great mysteries of life.
More details, as well as our weekly discussion topics, are available on our MeetUp page (first link above) and via email at
.
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- Jan. 8: John Kent Thesis Chapter 17: Revelation "All the information presented up to this point about the recommended manner of search would be incomplete without some exposition on the moon towards which this finger points. Yet, unlike in a standard research paper, the results of the "experiment in philosophy" described herein cannot be presented as proven–with words and figures. As has been stated, Rose is offering the most thorough and direct road map he knew how to create, but it is up to each individual to seek according to its guidance and find for oneself whatever form of validation may await at the end of the road." - Feb. ??: John Kent Thesis Chapter 18: Personal Accounts of Transpersonal Experiences |
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- Wed, Jan 4: Shawn Nevins will host. - Sun, Jan 8: John Kent's Dissertation, Ch 17: Richard Rose's "Revelation" (can be downloaded here: https://www.searchwithin.org/johnkent/Chapter_17.html). Dan G. hosts, monthly 3:15pm EST. Link to join the meeting. - Wed, Jan 11: Topic TBD. - Sun, Jan 15: Joint Dublin, Ireland Confrontation Meeting 2-4pm EST. - Wed, Jan 18: Lenny S. will host. - Wed, Jan 25: \Brett S. will host. |
Update from the Raleigh, NC Triangle Inquiry Group:
We're a small group that these days meets every first and third Tuesday of the month via Zoom. We usually have four to eight participants and new members are welcome. Except for a brief hiatus, we've been meeting regularly since the late 1990's. Our main focus is on looking at beliefs that can get us stuck in habitual ways of thinking which can limit the possibility of seeing the true nature of things. Although I act as a sort of MC in our meetings, there's no teacher or group leader and we all try to help each other in the search for the Real.
~ Email
for more details.
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Update from the San Francisco Bay area self-inquiry group:
See the Shawn Nevins interview by Iain McNay of Conscious.tv, kicking off the publication of Shawn's book Subtraction: The Simple Math of Enlightenment.
~ Email
for information about upcoming meetings and events.
TAT Press publishes Shawn's Images of Essence: The Standing Now, which features his poems with photos by Bob Fergeson, The Celibate Seeker: An Exploration of Celibacy as a Modern Spiritual Practice, Subtraction: The Simple Math of Enlightenment, and Hydroglyphics: Reflections on the Sacred, which features his poems with photos by Phaedra Greenwood.
Update from the Washington DC Area Self-Inquiry Discussion Group:
[This group was previously listed as the Rockville, MD self-inquiry group.] We've been meeting monthly at Rockville, MD Memorial Library. While the library is closed for public health reasons, we're participating more in a weekly online book club. Forum readers are welcome to participate.
~ For more information, please email
or see the website http://firstknowthyself.org/virtual/.
Downloadable/rental versions of the Mister Rose video and of April TAT talks Remembering Your True Desire:
"You don't know anything until you know Everything...."
Mister Rose is an intimate look at a West Virginia native many people called a Zen Master because of the depth of his wisdom and the spiritual system he conveyed to his students. Profound and profane, Richard Rose was not the kind of man most people picture when they think of mystics or spiritual teachers. Yet, he was the truest of teachers, one who had "been there," one who had the cataclysmic experience of spiritual enlightenment.
Filmed in the spring of 1991, the extraordinary documentary follows Mr. Rose from a radio interview, to a university lecture and back to his farm, as he talks about his experience, his philosophy and the details of his life.
Whether you find him charming or offensive, fatherly or fearsome, you will not forget him, and never again will you think about yourself, reality, or life after death in quite the same way.
3+ hours total. Rent or buy at tatfoundation.vhx.tv/.
2012 April TAT Meeting – Remembering Your True Desire
Includes all the speakers from the April 2012 TAT meeting: Art Ticknor, Bob Fergeson, Shawn Nevins and Heather Saunders.
1) Remembering Your True Desire ... and Acting on It, by Art Ticknor
Spiritual action is like diving for the Pearl beyond Price. What do you do when you don't know what to do or how to do it? An informal discussion centered around the question: "What prevents effective spiritual action?"
2) Swimming in the Inner Ocean: Trips to the Beach, by Bob Fergeson
A discussion of the varied ways we can use in order to hear the voice of our inner ocean, the heart of our true desires.
3) A Wider and Wilder Vision, by Shawn Nevins
Notes on assumptions, beliefs, and perspectives that bind and free us.
4) Make Your Whole Life a Prayer, by Heather Saunders
An intriguing look into a feeling-oriented approach to life.
5+ hours total. Rent or buy at tatfoundation.vhx.tv/.
Return to the main page of the January 2023 TAT Forum.
Inspiration & Irritation
Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction
The Plate
It's not that I wasn't aware of the uniqueness of "my plate", the plate I eat pretty much all of my meals off, but I developed a more acute awareness, or should I say appreciation of it, when one day a lunch guest, having inquired about its origins wondered if it had been in use during the famine. She was referring to the notorious Irish Famine of the 1850’s.
It's old you see, very old for a plate in daily use. That is its main distinguishing feature. It's a bit faded, unevenly, from what I guess was a whiter base in its youth. It has the typical blue pattern colour we are familiar with on old delft ware. There is a simple repetitive border and the pattern in the centre is definitely of the lower quality. It’s not precise, maybe a bit ambiguous. There are no markings on the back. And it has acquired a few scratches and chips over time.
It came from my great-grandmothers house and she died in 1935. I'm guessing it must be around one hundred years old, give or take a few decades.
It's not a valuable antique.
Nor would it make for an exciting wall decoration. But, it is a perfect plate in every way and despite its great age it has no problem with the dishwasher or microwave.
It spent a few years living at the bottom of the stack dinner plates in my mothers kitchen and a few more in a box under a bed in my house, but for the most part it's been a workaday plate.
As my guest coaxed out of me details of the story of my plate I remembered an exercise that Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk, used to lead his retreatants in, by way of a mindfulness or consciousness raising exercise. It’s best done while eating a meal. I’ll call it the tracing back exercise.
It went something like this:
Pick an item on your plate, say salad greens and trace its story back as far as you can go and acknowledge every step and person and circumstance that was involved in its journey.
For example: I got it from the fridge. My mother put it in the fridge having bought it in the local food market. It had been put on the vegetable stand in the shop by the person who stacks shelves, and who had brought it from the shop warehouse. It had been brought to the shop warehouse by the delivery service which transfers produce from the local farms to food shops. It had brought to the farm export area by the farmer. The farmer had inherited the farm from his father who had inherited it from his father going back as far as memory allowed. The area having at one time been uninhabited had been settled by migrants from a far off place and been tilled and made into farming land. God only knows who the people from the far off place were but they had had to exist and be on the move for this area to have become the fertile farming area that it now is and that allows for me to have salad on my plate. By now speculation has long since taken over from fact.
Now do the same with every other item of food on your plate. Then go on to the dishes, and cutlery and the table and chair and the room you are in, the building in which this room exists, the place, town, the country and so on.
Mind boggling, isn’t it?
It took all of creation to create this moment. No step or bit could have been different or the outcome would not be as it actually is.
And, we haven’t looked at the most significant aspect of it all, yourself. What it took to have oneself in this place at this moment, eating this very precise meal.
The mind cannot cope with such pondering and stocktaking. It just shuts down. It goes into consternation and just decides to not think about it, or have a breakdown. Reality is an unsolvable problem from the perspective of the problem solving mind.
But, not looking at it does not change the nature of reality.
After this mealtime reverie, I looked carefully at the pattern on my plate. It looks to me like two monks, Asian style from bygone times, one standing, one sitting, by a river bank, under a tree in the shade of a temple.
Am I thinking them or are they thinking me?
Return to the main page of the January 2023 TAT Forum.
Reader Commentary
Encouraging interactive readership among TAT members and friends
The Reader Commentary question for the January TAT Forum:
What does the term “enlightenment” mean to you?
Responses follow.
The complete response from Chris L:
It’s occurred to me recently (as a sort of factual lost cause) that no matter what situation or circumstance I may find myself in, however seemingly prosperous or unfortunate (because life has taught that I never really know how to discern which is which ultimately), satisfaction is somehow always a new problem’s length out of reach. Some new apparent need to gain or remove something to make things better or right always presents itself as an obstacle.
So how do I treat this stark observation? The problem is there’s always a problem ... with the added problem that I don’t know what ultimately constitutes a benefit or detriment as life plays out.
It's usually here that I remember the most basic of 12-step suggestions, which is to pray for guidance ... most notably personal for me is the 11th step that reads as follows:
“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” ... or in other words, “HELP ... for I am ignorant and helpless.”
The current iteration of this for me is a compact version stolen from Bart, “God guide my step, show me the Truth.”
So what is Enlightenment? I’m getting to that.
The abridged version of what happened taking this step or prayer to heart is that I realized I had no idea what a “spiritual awakening” was (which is what is supposed to happen in step 12). Everyone had a different interpretation. So I directed that prayer in the direction of finding out the true definition of awakening and figuring out just what it is we are trying to do.
That reliance on guidance Higher than my little ideas seems to have pulled me away from that system and led to you all ... something I consider to be at the very least a sign and catalyst propelling me onward. A place where a new question was posed: “Who or What am I?” A place where those who claim to have realized the answer to this question seem unanimous in their conclusions and in the proclamation that this is the question that will solve the never ending satisfaction dilemma. This question has gained more and more intrigue and gravitas in the last 2 years.
It has also occurred to me that the suggestion of “backing away from untruth” is something I’ve been doing unconsciously (at least in terms of attaining an ultimate goal) my whole life. Once the question of really finding out what “spiritual awakening” meant manifested itself, it’s obvious that massive momentum was gained on my “path” ... or that I had even been on one. I said that to Dave Weimer once and he said, “It’s like you’ve been throwing away pages your whole life, now you can start throwing away whole books”.
Been through a lot of books now.
With the recent insight on the lost cause of real satisfaction, I remembered something I heard Hedderman say off the cuff once, referencing enlightenment ... He said, “They should just call it ‘enough.’”
Enough sounds nice. My experience has always been, “ENOUGH ALREADY!"
Here’s a quote from a recent reading by Katagiri Roshi.
“The opportunity to experience real silence occurs when we have been driven into a corner and simply cannot move an inch.”
I don’t know what enlightenment is, but I hope it’s rest.
Return to the main page of the January 2023 TAT Forum.
The complete response from JK:
I can only write about awakening from the place of a seeker presenting an intellectual understanding of what I think it means and from moments of intuitive knowing which have aided shifts in perception, causing a loosening and dismantling of the idea of what I perceive that I am.
In the pursuit of who I am or what can it mean to just be and abide in one’s true nature, the questioning of my conditioning and how I operate as a person through the five senses in the world had to be looked at closely. A process of challenging all beliefs held about my separation from others, source energy, the universe, god was examined. How this operating separate self-adopted, a false sense of being, driven and dictated by a set of learned behaviors, beliefs, agendas, desires, fears, misidentifications that seem to serve an insatiable hunger and thirst while all the while re-enforcing a sense of lack, binding one in an ever-perpetuating loop of suffering causing afflictions and behavioral defenses to preserve the sense of self. When investigated one realizes that, apart from the habits and patterning, this personalized sense of identify cannot be real, except as a façade a mere smoke screen.
When enlightenment occurs this identification as a separate self, the false personhood falls away and that which is ever present and without limits can reside in the isness of all that is appearing to happen in each moment just as it is. The person once filled with desire and fear which prompted the seeker to see through a different lens highlights the vicious cycle and how one is crippled by their own resistance, arising from both fear and desire re-enforcing a constant state of lack. Now astute to the colluding in the running of the illusory programmed ideas of what it has created life to be, is built on falsehood, the process of the watcher without agendas begins to operate. The sensations, the feelings, the thoughts that once created stickiness, contradictions, stories, and the suffering attached to those no longer holds one hostage to the same degree. In the state of being enlightened, the arising sensations, feelings, thoughts which appear in the now, hold no entanglement no disillusionment of any personalized identity other than that they are arising through the organism as happenings in a moment with no personal interference, meaning or layers added.
I have heard that the personality remains and that its expression can become even stronger, likes and dislikes remain as preferences but with no added agenda. Once enlightened, I image the heart center completely opens, one can now live from the place of the heart no longer dominated by the mind/body and become a conduit for the expression of unconditional love, joy, peace in the residing energetic flow of life-force not confined to an idea of a body with boundaries and restrictions of a dictating monkey mind. Creating a free and uninterrupted moment by moment happening led by universal intelligence, adopting total acceptance and surrender to the unknown in the ever-unfolding present without limits. Allowing life to be an un-interrupted happening of all that just is as is. In essence enlightenment is freedom from a contracted false sense of a personalized personhood, which falls away and all that remains when touched by this divine grace is a nature flow of energy interacting as is with life being guided by a higher divine intelligence in the natural order of things without interference of mind/body control and identification, just boundaryless and free.
Return to the main page of the January 2023 TAT Forum.
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Beyond Mind, Beyond Death
