TAT Forum
March 2022
Attend TAT's April Spiritual Retreat Weekend—What Does It Mean to Be Awake?
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Convictions & Concerns
TAT members share their personal convictions and/or concerns
Glimpses Beyond the Other Side of Paradox
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I'd recently written to my TAT friends in an on-line email group that I found it hard to differentiate between thoughts and feelings, and I said that in a few rounds of email exchanges. Then I heard it, I didn't see it. I heard it in my voice, where my emotions and aliveness have always been on show. I was clearly in denial about my feelings, I could hear them, my feelings, in my voice; I was in denial about the nervousness and emotion that I feel in my throat and assume carries in my voice; I was ignoring the reality of my experience and writing what my self-image wanted to express. I have been living in my head, in my thoughts, in my beliefs, in my assumptions. I talk a lot to myself. When I have something to share, then sounds, words and talking are a preferred medium to communicate in; there are lots of words happening here. A question often asked at TAT gatherings, especially of new visitors when they show up for the first time is, “Why are you here?" It is worth asking yourself that question even if it is not your first TAT retreat. Why are you here? For myself, my answer is, why I am here is to learn; I want to ask and be asked questions in what I know will be the attentive and supportive, challenging space of TAT friends, old and new, on a journey of re-discovery. When I first read the title for this weekend's retreat, “In the Quiet”, it resonated with me and split as “In” and “The Quiet” almost like the quiet was a place one could enter into, to be in it. Two memories also cropped up of experiences, one from 1990 and the other in a recent Zoom meeting where I had complained I did not know silence. I commented that I knew stillness, but I did not know silence, as whenever I sit in stillness, the quiet is there but there's always a sound in my head. The sound in my head has been with me since the early 2000s, when I was initiated into a light and sound meditation practice. I never got the light. But the sound came in one day whilst I was driving, and it has never left me; it's a constant companion, a friend. The associated experience was when Paul Rezendes remarked in response to my statement about never knowing silence, he just said actually you can never have the silence—the silence has you! That stopped me in my tracks. I pondered the meaning of that during the last six weeks, and it connected for me with the “Footprints in the Sand” poem. To illustrate that I need to read two pertinent verses....
Thanks to Rob Lloyd-Owen ... excerpted from a presentation he made at the April 2021 TAT virtual gathering. |
TAT Foundation News
It's all about "ladder work" – helping and being helped
Call To Action For TAT Forum Readers
You can help! A volunteer is producing shareable text-quote and video content of Richard Rose and TAT-adjacent teachers. We need your suggestions for short, provocative 1-3 sentence quotes or 1 minute or less video clips of people like Rose, Art Ticknor, Bob Fergeson, Tess Hughes, Bob Cergol, Bart Marshall, Shawn Nevins, Anima Pundeer, Norio Kushi, Paul Rezendes, Paul Constant, & other favorites. (See below for an example). Please send favorite inspiring/irritating quotes—from books you have by those authors, from the TAT Forum, or any other place—to . If you have favorite parts of longer videos (ex: from a talk at a past TAT meeting), please email a link to the video and a timestamp. Thank you!
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With the intention of increasing awareness of TAT's meetings, books, and Forum among younger serious seekers, the TAT Foundation is now on
Project: Beyond Mind, Beyond Death II
We've had 14 additional years of monthly TAT Forum issues since then. And we're getting ready to launch a project to solicit recommendations from all readers for a 2nd volume of BMBD from the seven years of monthly issues spanning January 2008 to December 2014. Our approach will be to have a brief, interactive survey each week for participants to rate the items in one issue of the Forum for inclusion in volume II. That will take about 20 months, during which time volunteer co-editors Abhay D. and Michael R. will arrange the selections into chapters and organize the book's contents. Within 2 years BMBD II should be available in paperback and e-book formats.
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TAT Press's
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Random rotation of |
February Virtual Gathering: Saturday, February 5, 2022
* April Gathering: Saturday and Sunday, April 8-10, 2022 *
June Gathering: Saturday and Sunday, June 11-12, 2022
August Gathering: Saturday and Sunday, August 20-21, 2022
November Gathering: Saturday and Sunday, November 12-13, 2022
See the April spiritual retreat page for details and registration.
Comments or questions? Please email
.
*
The following video recordings of presentations from a previous April TAT meeting are available on YouTube:
Richard Rose spent his life searching for the Truth, finding it, and teaching others to find their Way. Although not well known to the public, he touched the lives of thousands of spiritual seekers through his books and lectures and through personal contacts with local study groups that continue to work with his teachings today. Meet Richard Rose is a 34-minute audio recording of an audiovisual presentation by Michael Whitely at the August 2017 TAT meeting that explores the arc of Richard Rose's life as seeker, finder, family man, and teacher.
Downloadable/rental versions of the Mister Rose video and of April TAT talks
Remembering Your True Desire (details).
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See TAT's Facebook page. |
TAT's YouTube ChannelHave you seen the TAT Foundation's YouTube channel? Subscribe now for spiritual inspiration (and irritation)! Volunteers have been updating the channel with hours of new content! They've also curated some great playlists of talks by Richard Rose, teacher talks from recent & not so recent TAT meetings, episodes of the Journals of Spiritual Discovery podcast, and other great TAT related videos from around the internet. Featuring: Richard Rose, Bob Cergol, Shawn Nevins, Bob Fergeson, Mike Conners, Anima Pundeer, Norio Kushi, Bart Marshall, Paul Rezendes, Tess Hughes, Art Ticknor, Howdie Mickoski, Shawn Pethel and other speakers. This month's video is an interview of Paul Rezendes, titled "What Is the Source of Our Suffering?":
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Local Group News
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:
Our group is now meeting every other Sunday at 6pm eastern time. The topic of our most recent meeting: In almost all spiritual traditions, reaching the final "goal" means eliminating the "I", the "Sense of Self", or the "Ego". And to do so, for most people it means generally weakening this "I" gradually till it disappears.
~ For meeting info: facebook.com/groups/429437321740752.
Update from the Central Ohio Non-Duality Group:
The Columbus, Ohio self-inquiry group, now known as the Central Ohio Non-Duality Group, has continued to meet virtually on Tuesday evenings at 6:30PM during the Coronavirus pandemic. Please email one of the people's names below if you wish to get a link to the meeting. Meeting format involves discussion of topics of interest to seekers and often bridges from the concerns, questions and interests of the core members in attendance into the topic which we intend to discuss. We look forward to the easing of restrictions to the point where we feel comfortable meeting again in person.
~ 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.
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.
Currently we have two men's email groups. They (the weekly exchanges, not the participants :-) 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:
The Alachua County library reopened its meeting rooms on July 5th, and we were the first group to meet after the reopening.
We decided to change our meeting day from Sunday to Saturday, at the same time as previously (2 to 4 PM). Our first meeting was on July 10th, and subsequent meetings are scheduled for alternate Saturdays with an occasional extra week between meetings due to holidays or the TAT meeting schedule and our group's associated retreats.
~ Email
or
for more information.
TAT Press publishes three of Art's books: Solid Ground of Being: A Personal Story of the Impersonal, Beyond Relativity: Transcending the Split Between Knower & Known and Sense of Self: The Source of All Existential Suffering?
Update from Galway, Ireland:
Tess Hughes is starting a women's group on Wednesday evenings, 7pm Dublin time, using Zoom. It will begin mid September. Sessions last 90-120 minutes usually.
Anyone who's interested in joining can
contact
.
TAT Press publishes Tess's easy to read, profound This Above All, the story of her journey of Self-Discovery.
Update from the GMT Support Group for Seekers:
We meet every Sunday gmt 17.30, 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
Update from the Greensburg, PA self-inquiry group:
I am meeting every Saturday morning with three of my former Greensburg SIG group participants who are into non-dualist paths, such as Adyashanti and Mooji. There is also another participant, a professional psychologist who is interested in eastern philosphy and who wasn't in my SIG group but makes a great addition to our proceedings. These fellows are sincere seekers. We spend our time discussing our respective paths and comparing notes. Our new venue is a place called the White Rabbit Cafe in Greensburg. I'm hoping that the lull here has ended and that we're ready to be more dynamic again.
~ Contact
if interested in local self-inquiry meetings.
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.
To get notices of new posts, you can subscribe by RSS feed or by
email.
See the 2020/11/28 post:
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.
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. The link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3098361863?pwd=anY5OFlMT0pNMld6VXJDb0Z2SjY0UT09. For those joining by phone, the number is +1 929 205 6099 US (New York), with Meeting ID: 309 836 1863, and Passcode: 895478. More details, as well as our weekly discussion topics, are available on our MeetUp page (link above) and via email at
.
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Update from the recently listed Online Video Confrontation Group:
The Monday Night Online Confrontation Group is going strong with a core group of participants and room for a few more. Now meeting at 7:30 pm EST (previously at 7 pm), using the online video conference platform from Zoom. The goal of the group is to practice confrontation/group self-inquiry.
~ If you're interested, email
or
.
Isaac and AJ interviewed Art Ticknor on their Plant Cunning Podcast series, where they "invite herbalists, ethnobotanists, farmers, mages, fungi experts, community organizers and all kinds of other interesting people to the microphone to share their wisdom and experiences with us": Self Realization with Art Ticknor.
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Update from the
Update from the Portland, OR self-inquiry group:
A small group of us meet most Sundays at a coffee shop. The format for our meetings is to give each person 20 minutes or so to talk about whatever is coming up for them in their practice and to answer questions from the others.
~ Email
for more information.
Update from the Raleigh, NC Triangle Inquiry Group:
The group is starting up again after a hiatus, now with Zoom online meetings.
~ Email
for details.
Update for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area TAT Center:
Bob Fergeson spent a year as resident teacher before returning to Colorado in March.
Mark Wintgens continues as our chief-seeker in residence and invaluable caretaker. He is looking forward to hosting retreats and meetings for local group members as well as all TAT seekers. And TAT is looking forward to the possibility of hosting the August 2021 TAT meeting at the Center.
~ Email
for information about the TAT Center.
Update from the Richmond Self Inquiry Group:
There isn't a Richmond self inquiry group at the moment…it never really got off the ground. I'm considering a few different approaches for round three, but it'll be at least a few months away before that takes form.
~ Email
for information about future meetings and events.
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/.
Members-Only Area
A password-protected section of the website is available for TAT members. The area contains information on product discounts for members as well as a substantial amount of helpful and historical information, including audio recordings, Newsletter archives, Retrospect archives, policies, conference proceedings, business meeting notes, photographs, and suggestions for ways to help.
TAT's August 2019 Workshop was titled Beyond Mindfulness: Meditation and the Path Within and included three guest speakers who each led separate workshops. The following audio recordings are now available in the members-only website area:
- "Mindfulness. Is it just another spiritual buzzword?" with Bob Cergol,
- "The Path of Direct Sensory Perception" with Bob Harwood, and
- "The Art of Mindfulness is the Passion for Truth" with Paul Rezendes.
TAT's June 2019 Spiritual Retreat Weekend was titled Between You and the Infinite. The following audio recordings are now available in the members-only website area:
- "Coming Home (aka The End of Seeking)" by Don Oakley, and
- "What's in the Way?" by Eshwar Segobind.
TAT's April 2019 Spiritual Retreat Weekend was titled Once in a Lifetime is Now. The following audio recordings are now available in the members-only website area:
- "Recognizing the Human Dilemma" by Norio Kushi,
- "Strategies for Self-Realization" by Bart Marshall,
- Untitled session by Paul Hedderman, and
- "A Session in the Now" by Paul Rezendes.
TAT's August 2018 Workshop was titled Beyond Imagination and included three guest speakers who each led separate workshops. The following audio recordings are now available in the members-only website area:
- "Nurturing What We Are" with Jenny Clarke,
- "The Art of Seeing" with Norio Kushi, and
- "Seeing Through Imaginary Traps" with Shawn Pethel.
Please us if you have questions. (Look here for info on TAT membership.)
Amazon and eBay
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As an Amazon Associate TAT earns from qualifying purchases made through links on our website. TAT has registered with the eBay Giving Works program. You can list an item there and select TAT to receive a portion of your sale. Or if you use the link and donate 100% of the proceeds to TAT, you won't pay any seller fees when an item sells and eBay will transfer all the funds to TAT for you. Check out our Giving Works page on eBay. Click on the "For sellers" link on the left side of that page for details. |
Your Contributions to TAT News
TAT founder Richard Rose believed that working with others accelerates our retreat from untruth. He also felt that such efforts were most effective when applied with discernment, meaning working with others on the rungs of the ladder closest to our own. The TAT News section is for TAT members to communicate about work they've been doing with or for other members and friends. Please your "ladder work" news.
Humor
"One thing you must be able to do in the midst
of any experience is laugh. And experience
should show you that it isn't real, that it's a
movie. Life doesn't take you seriously, so why
take it seriously." ~ Richard Rose, Carillon
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Experience Playfulness
"Here is list of 10 ideas to experience childlike playfulness—the preciousness of fantasy and imagination—as adults. Find the ones that appeal to you and try them! Even if they do not make you laugh up front, assuming there is resonance they will/should loosen you up and prepare yourself for laughter":
1. Ask lots of questions with a big smile on your face. * ~ Thanks to www.laughteronlineuniversity.com.
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Uptown
~ Thanks to Dan Piraro. See more of his work at Bizarro.com.
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Outside the Box
* ~ Thanks to dj_InfinityThe1™
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We enjoy presenting humor here from TAT members and friends. Please
your written or graphic creations. Exact sources are necessary for other submissions, since we need to make sure they're either in the public domain or that we have permission to use them.
Inspiration & Irritation
Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction
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"New evidence continues to suggest that Einstein was right, death is an illusion. "Our classical way of thinking is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence. But a long list of experiments shows just the opposite. We think life is just the activity of carbon and an admixture of molecules: we live awhile and then rot into the ground. "We believe in death because we've been taught we die. Also, of course, because we associate ourselves with our body and we know bodies die. End of story. But biocentrism, a new theory of everything, tells us death may not be the terminal event we think. Amazingly, if you add life and consciousness to the equation, you can explain some of the biggest puzzles of science. For instance, it becomes clear why space and time—and even the properties of matter itself—depend on the observer. It also becomes clear why the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be exquisitely fine-tuned for the existence of life. "Until we recognize the universe in our heads, attempts to understand reality will remain a road to nowhere...."
~ From a PsychologyToday.com/ article by Robert Lanza M.D. |
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KNOW THYSELF
NOTHING TO EXCESS
CERTAINTY BRINGS INSANITY
Thanks to Wikipedia for the maxims (which, of course, weren't in English), and to Wikimedia Commons for the image.
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Life is strange with its twists and turns
Success is failure turned inside out
For all the sad words of tongue or pen,
Thanks to Brett S., who commented: "A poem I’ve seen titled both as “keep going” and “don’t quit” (which I think get at the same thing) and which sometimes includes the last couplet and sometimes not ... and is most often attributed to 19th century poet John Greenleaf Whittier but in at least one place to Edgar Guest.
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Somnambulism is a barrier through weakness rather than strength in the subject-object field. While the sleep-walker is more accessible to induction, he is also more likely to flow into Universal Consciousness without retaining self-consciousness—less than the highest destiny of man. The "way" for somnambulists involves strengthening the capacity for self-determination and self-directed thought, in effect strengthening their individuality. A third barrier is sensual desire—sensuality being the opposite of spirituality in Wolff's view. The reason is that desire directed toward sense objects carries consciousness away from where the "universal key" is to be found. Going toward ponderable objects, Wolff tells us, is going toward essential nothingness or illusion. The fourth barrier to Recognition is that of false predication—assigning properties of the subject to the object, and vice versa. We predicate self-existence to the objects of consciousness. Things or objects thus come to be taken as primary, and then the question arises as to how a self-conscious Self ever arose. In truth, the most primary fact of all is the Self that thinks and senses. Its presence is the one immediate reality than can neither be proved by logic nor found by experience—for it is the foundation of both. So the real problem is how does the external universe come into existence. False predication superimposes a second, illusory universe on the original.
~ Excerpted from Greatest Western Teachers of Modern Times: What Do They Recommend?, which also includes Merrell-Wolff's view on conditions that favor Recognition. The photo comes from The Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship website. |
The flip side of factors that favor Recognition [Franklin Merrell-Wolff used this term synonymously with Awakening, Realization, and so on] are the barriers to such, and Wolff itemized four. The first he termed egoism, the sense that "I am I and none other." He said this led to pride, conceit, jealousy, inferiority and superiority complexes, and thus to all friction between individuals and groups. The shell of this microcosm has to be cracked or melted so that individual consciousness can merge with Universal Consciousness. The strong intellectuality and powerful will or desire that tend to build a strong egoism are helpful from a standpoint of bringing greater power to the project of finding answers but make it difficult to escape the microcosmic egg.
Please
your thoughts on the above items.
Reader Commentary
Encouraging interactive readership among TAT members and friends
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A reader wrote that what would make the Forum more interesting would be: Hearing from people who are searching – and have questions instead of those providing endless advice and "answers." What challenges they are facing. What their doubts and questions are. How they perceive their path is going. What they are doing in their lives. Where they think they will end up. Etc. etc. Can you help make the Forum more interesting? |
The Reader Commentary question for the March TAT Forum, thanks to Bonnie Y., is:
What does love mean to you?
Responses follow.
From Tess Hughes:
Here’s what I got from the Internet on this topic.
Love Is:
Arranged by Franklin C. Baer.
Love is a serious mental disease. – Plato
Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses. – Thomas Robert Dewar
Love is a great beautifier. – Louisa May Alcott
Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. – Sappho
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. – Voltaire
Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life. – Truman Capote
Love is a conflict between reflexes and reflections. – Mangnu Hirschfield
Love is a friendship set to music. – E. Joseph Cossman
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. – Mother Teresa
Love is all you need. – Paul McCartney
Love is a better teacher than duty. – Albert Einstein
Love is a tyrant sparing none. – Pierre Corneille
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other. – Euripide
https://www.quotesandsayings.com/general/love-is/
I agree with the Beatles, All you need is Love.
CS Lewis has an interesting analysis of this huge topic: https://www.cslewis.com/four-types-of-love/.
*
TAT Press publishes Tess's This Above All: A Journey of Self-Discovery.
From Gus R:
To me, there doesn't seem to be any love that is deep or shallow. That refers to whether I am deep or shallow, unrelated to love.
It seems that no one has love, and that it flows freely, only a question of acceptance or refusal. I cannot understand why it is ever refused, but it is, especially in my case. Love is free and flows like water and fills voids. The trick to love is to be open and to be filled, or remain hollow for the rest of one's lifetime.
Love is like life. We say we are alive, not dead, but we cannot define what that quality 'life' is. Likewise with love, but maybe in some way I cannot understand, they are the same. We marvel at saints, religious leaders and great people who demonstrate great love and with it, accomplishment. So there seems to be some magic or energy with love with which only one 'in' love would be blessed. There seems something to the abandonment of obstacles that would block love, perhaps competing obsessions, desires or fears. Scrutiny that doubts love is a big one. It doesn't seem one chooses to love, one is overtaken, as if to some extent, love chooses whom it occupies. Obstacles just collapse.
I wonder that if I set aside all my obsessions, preoccupations and desires, and let love fill my life—if it may—where would that life take me? That would seem to be the deepest thing I could possibly do, but also, a complete contradiction of me doing something in order to get love to do something for me. Or would that necessarily be the hand of love at work?
From Mario P:
In recent years, sometimes an exchange will happen with someone that I call love. There is a dropping of judgment of both self and other, a dropping of pretending to be what I am not and all scheming, an openness to share and talk deeply and simply without fear or plan or ulterior motive. A gentle and true compassion for both self and other, an outpouring of goodness, a stepping over previous barriers to communication. And, for a moment, life is perfect. Depending on the depth of it, I will later smile and be grateful for minutes, hours, or even many days. In a way, being in such a state always or at least often might be what I’m looking for. What else would anyone need or want?
Many years ago, during a Cosmic Consciousness or Unity experience, I experienced an even deeper level of love. This Love felt total since it came as a result of seeing everything and everyone as myself. I literally saw the person who irritated me the most in the world a few hours before as being utterly and unimprovably perfect. Every hair on her head, every word and move and smell was… alive and perfect to the extent that I could not stop marvelling. As a result of this experience, even though it passed, I always know that, as Jesus would say, the “beam” is in my eye whenever I see fault with others. And so I strain to look and see…
From Paul Rezendes:
Love to me is Openness, an Openness that doesn't want anything to be other than what it is. This Openness embraces everything that comes into it without judgment, without an authoritarian principle of how things should and shouldn't be. This Openness has no bias and is at peace with anything that comes into it. It embraces what comes into it, so that it is not separate from whatever it is being. In other words, it is being all that appears in Consciousness. This Openness is undivided, timeless Consciousness. This is where learning happens. This Openness changes what appears in it. What appears in Openness is subject to change. In Openness we see the creative process at work, and understand how the universe has come into being. Here we understand the meaning of Wei Wu Wei, Action Without An Actor.
From Sreechand B:
For me love is experiencing without the feeling of separation.
From L. Schwartz:
My conceptual (Matrix) based thoughts:
Along the Ray of Creation every state of Being has a corresponding Love.
Love is a/the force that opposes duality (it could be said that the absence of Love is what enables duality)... the "highest" level of Love (Unconditional-True-Love) is selfless (headless)... with no emotional components.
(i believe when we subtract all self what remains is Self.)
I do not equate Love with "feeling nice/good about" (which i believe are Ego-based distortions of Love).
Side notes: Love expressed by/in/with/from the densest materials is called Gravity.
Roots attracted to moisture... leaves attracted to sunlight... the stone rolling down the hill... rescuing an animal... growing a plant... painting a picture... etc... Love at play.
From Rupert C:
I remember a wise person saying to me once that love is a choice—that you choose to love another. I expect even that demands a degree of consciousness of which few are capable. In the end, I’m not sure that choice is not just another illusion which helps invest in the idea of a separate self, and self will. Christ said ‘love thy enemy’—of course, that seems impossible before one starts to see that the instrument is not the agent, and begins to understand that despite all seeming evidence to the contrary, the agent is working in our best interests, that one can even begin to appreciate the experience of love. Love is not of this world—that’s impossible—although it is the truth and, as such, can be shone into this world—another word for that might be grace. I suspect that for seekers, who have any genuine understanding of this, love is ladder work, the act of putting out a hand to help someone who is starting to wake up to the truth. There’s compassion in that too since, for most of us, ‘grace’ is confused for ‘suffering’ for a long, hard time.
From Art Ticknor:
Small-l love is what we're identified with, that which makes us important in our own eyes, the loss of which would diminish us. Small-l love sometimes occurs when we fall in love with someone or something other than ourselves & our ego-self is momentarily out of the spotlight.
Capital-l Love is a term for our true identity, but an arbitrary term based on our relative preference for a positive connotation. Our essential identity is absolute being, which is beyond/before positive or negative characteristics.
Our life could be described as Love becoming love becoming Love.
From Ben B:
I feel that the word love, much like the word god, is overused and could have multiple meanings or inferences. It may be easier to write of what love is not.
It seems that in the modern Western world, in English speaking cultures at least, love is mostly used in conjunction with what really is attachment; that clingy pining codependence of romantic love. The contract of romantic love seems to be ‘I love you but don’t do anything that hurts me, otherwise I’ll hate you.’ I don’t think that’s love.
A truer expression of love might be that which is felt for one’s children, of unconditional love. It has to be felt rather than written. It’s a selfless love.
To write of a love definition may be folly but here is an attempt....
Love may be the falling away of the sense of individuality
A moment of indivisibility
Love is perhaps what’s left when ‘I’ disappear.
From Eric C:
Love to me, means connection.
Most commonly, there is identification with and belief in thoughts, and with that state of “being in the head,” I notice “thoughts about others,” “thoughts about love,” etc.; however, often there's only a dim awareness of the feelings which are happening. The bias is commonly toward thought, with less conscious connection to feeling.
As I reflect more deeply on this month’s question, love signifies a deeper feeling-connection to other people, to nature/animals, and to aspects of myself such as the inner child.
From Jane C. from Co. Wicklow, Ireland:
Love is giving up unnecessary suffering.
It is being able to be with discomfort, disappointment, disillusionment, and feeling ok.
Love is planting summer bulbs on my hands and knees on a cold bright morning.
Love is not the same as attachment.
To flare up, stomp around, be consumed with anger at my intimate other, and later come back and feel my love for her.
Love is a cup of coffee in the stillness of the morning.
Jesus is love when ‘he heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds’. Psalm 147:3
Love is having compassion for the self-loathing.
Love is curling up with my beloved.
Love is singing in full throated song.
Mira, 15th century Indian poet, writes:
‘Don’t forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across the universe’.
Love is what I feel for my spiritual teacher / mentor even when she is putting it up to me.
Love is for the Irish rugby players when they beat the All Blacks.
Love is for my beautiful cat when he’s fast asleep.
Love is living with low level anxiety and making friends with it.
Love is the mistle thrush singing in the birch tree.
Love is taking my friend with dementia for a walk in the sunshine.
Love is feeling joy for no reason or any reason.
From Rob-In Leeds:
... One of the most loving things ever said to me was said by a son who said "I don't judge you, so please do not judge me". I have tried to uphold his request for the last 20 years since he first said it.
In a poem "Why Aren't We All Screaming Drunks?" by Hafiz are these lines:
Any thought that you are better or less
Than another man
Quickly
Breaks the wine
Glass.
The bottom line if I were pushed to a single choice: Love is not judging another, and realising there but for the grace of God go I!
From Lynn A:
My initial reaction upon reading this question was to just ignore it and move on. Love has always been a tricky topic for me and I wasn’t inclined to tackle it at that particular moment.
But it kept poking at me over the course of a few days, the sentence continuing to insert itself into my thoughts. Giving in to the prompting, I decided to give it some consideration.
Deep breath, relaxing mind and body, eyes softly closing. Waiting. What images will appear from the depths of my psyche? Hearts and flowers? Weathered hands cradling a baby bird? No.
There was nothing. All I saw was a field of white. A blank page. But not a page. And not really white either. My mind’s eye presented me with a field of shimmery white, faintly iridescent, like a white opal. And it wasn’t flat, or still. It seemed to extend out from my view, going on endlessly and seeming to pulsate in an extremely fine vibration. A great big endless wiggling nothing. What does this mean? I was expecting visualizations on the theme of love. This is no help. It’s a great big nothing. Oh, I get it. Nothing… No Thing. Sigh.
Ok, so let’s tackle this from the level of the analytical mind, I thought. I spend way too much of my time in there anyway, so there must be something to dig up. I recalled making a mind-map about it once. The word “love” in the middle, surrounded by all the nice words associated with love, and my insight that all the feelings and behaviors associated with the nice words were various manifestations of “love.” But that still didn’t really give me a clear and concise meaning for “love,” which is what I was shooting for.
Sages and psychologists agree that the opposite of Love is not Hate, but is actually Fear. Maybe I should think about “love” in terms of what is “not-love.” Chip away at everything that is “not-love” until all that is left is love. But wait a minute now, isn’t that just exactly what all of us here exploring TAT are actually working at doing? So … subtracting everything that is not love, leaving only love, means that LOVE IS THE ANSWER.
This is how my mind works. It’s dangerous to go in there without a lot of time to work my way through the maze and out again.
I could always fall back on the Greek approach of Eros, Philia, and Agape. And the Bible uses the word Charity for love. So what does this all boil down to? What does love mean?
I don’t know. It’s not a noun and it’s not a verb. It’s more than an emotion, more than a point of view. It can be seen everywhere you look. You can experience glorious moments of it.
But you just can’t define it. If I had to choose just one word, on threat of death, to define what love means to me… I would choose “caring.”
From Pam C:
Bernadette Roberts has thoughts on love, and for many years I have thought of it this way myself:
Love of neighbor has nothing to do with sentiment or emotion, be this emotion for or against the other. Love consists in wanting what is good for the other and NOT wanting what is bad for them. Love is very different from like. We can love others but not like them. Like is ‘affective’ but love is of the will—the will being deeper than the affective and the one that really matters.
Mistaking the affective (or feeling) for love (which IS the will) is the grand mistake of all time. So let us not be mistaken in the true nature of love. To love our enemies is to wish them good, and what is their highest good but God? How we feel about others is inconsequential compared to this deeper good will toward them. Good will does not harm, and when it acts, it acts only for the highest good of the other.
A long as I can continue to hold anyone in mind no matter how I feel about them on a personal level, as long as I can truly wish them their highest good, wish them well, I have considered that love. On the other hand, if there is stingy feeling, a withholding, then I know that I must ask for help to let that go. Only then is there a space and I feel that not only is there room for love, but that I am also unbound by the stingyness.
I hope you don't mind the quote, but truly it has informed my whole view of love and my practice of it.
From Chris B-2:
Love doesn’t seem to mean much or be of much value without the doing of it—it’s a doing as much as a feeling. It’s actively given and received and shared. It’s being seen and known deeply. It’s being valued and appreciated. It’s caring, soothing, safety, and comfort. It’s tender but also strong and reliable. It’s supportive of exploration and growth. It’s patient and accepting. It’s expressing delight for who they are and sharing in that joy.
From Alex A:
Love means to be Awake to everything that is arising.
From Mark C:
I will refer to Thomas Merton's quote: "The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit into our image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Society seems to think of love as a feeling that you have for your family or for a significant other, but the above quote exemplifies what my thoughts are on what love means, which is a radical acceptance or recognition of what is. Things are neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong, but just happening. Love is seeing the world through divine eyes, rather than the self-referential perspective taught to us from childhood, and discerning that everything under the sun is an integral part of the experience.
From Michael R:
Most of my adult and adolescent life has been spent, consciously or unconsciously, seeking the answer to two questions - what is True, and what is Love. While these may end up showing to be the same question, with the same answer, until that’s known I’ll speak to them separately and here focus on Love.
Over the years “love” has been so many things to me - care, acceptance, commitment, affection, desire, attachment, heartbreak and joy. Perhaps more than anything else love has meant connection, union.
What I’ve learned is that connection is based in identity - we connect through shared values, similar ways of thinking, feeling the same thing in the same moment, and perhaps more than anything else we connect when we (at the deepest place of our current identity) feel seen and acknowledged. All of these things may come and go, change, and find themselves vulnerable to impermanence.
Call me a romantic but I don’t consider love to be fleeting, changing, or vulnerable to impermanence - not at its core. What this means is that I’m not sure that love is about connection anymore, or if it is - it’s a different kind of connection, the kind that happens in the absence of self rather than the affirmation of self.
The times in my life where my very being has been a space for someone or something to be exactly who or what they are with nothing from me but sincere care for their wellbeing - these are the moments when I’ve felt that I knew what love was. I don’t think love is created, I think it just is, and it becomes blocked by everything we typically refer to as the movements of self/ego - judgment, resistance, pride, selfishness, etc. Love, from what I can see, is selflessness.
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If you were going to implement Harding's recommendation, what would you simplify first? Please your responses by the 25th of March and indicate your preferred identification (the default is your first name and the initial letter of your last name).
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Founder's Wisdom
Richard Rose (1917-2005) established the TAT Foundation
in 1973 to encourage people to work together on what
he considered to be the "grand project" of spiritual work.
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Whenever you are travelling in what I call the desert without any railroad tracks—you have no trail to go by—you have to have some beacon light, something to guide you. Logic will not do it; your faith alone will not do it; but intuition will. It will take you through the abstract realms. Any system that pretends to take you into becoming has to have some mechanism for facilitating your skill in becoming—the necessary skill—and that skill involves intuition. You can't argue it out logically, this is the whole thing. So once you hear it—it amounts to the business of closing doors. The human mind is like this room, and if they're pounding on a piano next door, or the sirens are singing outside that window, you're going to be distracted, and your computer's not going to work—because all this stuff is continually going to be injecting itself into your problem. So the secret of course is closing doors. * From a talk given at Ohio State University in 1974 titled "Laws, Yardsticks, Exaltations." |
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Definition of Terms
Index of many of the key terms and principles in Rose's work, with brief definitions, from Richard Rose's Psychology of the Observer: The Path to Reality Through the Self by John Kent. |
Jacob's Ladder © 2001 Richard Rose. See this transcript of a talk on the topic by Rose.
Homing Ground Update… A spot on earth where people can do retreats and hold
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