The "Inner Teacher"

Our buddha nature has an active aspect, which is our “inner teacher.” From the very moment we became obscured, this “inner teacher” has worked tirelessly for us, tirelessly trying to bring us back to the radiance and spaciousness of our true being.
Not for one second, my master Jamyang Khyentse said, has the inner teacher given up on us. In its infinite compassion, one with the infinite compassion of all the buddhas and all the enlightened beings, it has been ceaselessly working for our evolution—not only in this life but in all our past lives—using all kinds of skillful means and all types of situations to teach and awaken us and to guide us back to the truth.

- Sogyal Rinpoche


Bob Audlee

Labyrinth Workshop - Tuesday, November 10 at 7 pm.

A Labyrinth Workshop will take place in the Parish House of Old Ship Church, First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church, 107 Main Street in Hingham, on Tuesday, November 10 at 7 pm. Arrival and welcome from 6:45pm.

Labyrinth walking has been practiced in a great variety of cultures and religions for many thousands of years. This form of meditative walk, is known to clear the mind and to bring up personal insights.

In this 2 hours workshop you will discover :

• prehistorical labyrinths and their metaphorical meanings
• fascinating symbols of medieval Christian floor labyrinths, such as ours
• different strategies to walk any labyrinth
• guidance to prepare yourself for a deeply meaningful meditative walk.

We will start with an illustrated lecture presentation, proceed to the labyrinth floor for your silent candle lit walking meditation, then silent writing about your experience, followed by voluntary circle sharing and exploring how to possibly integrate your new found insight into your life.


Liliane Verdier has been presenting this well received workshop to the public and special interest groups, such as a Bible Study Class and a Men’s Spiritual Quest Groups since 2000. 20% of the $15 admission fee will go to support Old Ship.

No pre-registration. Please put the date on your calendar and post. Thank you.

For more information contact Liliane at 781-749-9581 or Lilianevhing@aol.com

Bob Audlee

Exercise, Week beginning Mon, Oct 26, 2009

This week, take some time to consider what your life purpose is. Not the ultimate, join-with-God, but the specific: what are you focusing on now. Look at those tendencies, aversions, and desires that have been with you since you were very young. What do they imply about what you are doing here this time?


Bob Audlee

thinking...

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

-William James


Bob Audlee

10 Rules for Being Human

By Cherie Carter-Scott (website)

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.


2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."


3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."


4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.


5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.


6. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."


7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.


8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.


9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.


10. You will forget all this.

As Edgar Cayce put it, “You grow to heaven, you don't go to heaven.” More at EdgarCayce.org.

Exercise, Week beginning Mon, Oct 19, 2009

This week, keep an eye out for a glimpse of ego. At some point, you will find yourself complaining, or justifying your actions, or worrying about some outcome, or being ashamed, or proud, or...


When you do, stop. Just step back gently in your mind, and have a look, without judgement:

What is going on? What is the mechanism? Are you arguing with someone in particular? Are you being judged by someone in particular? Are you trying to fit yourself into some particular shape?


Is the intended result that 'you feel good'? - or that you avoid 'feeling bad'?
What, exactly, is the feeling that you are trying to achieve or avoid?


Just look and see. Write it down, Patty. Like taking apart a pocket watch... How does it work?

It is To Dream

Day’s echoes fade,
But still I lie, unable
To drift away.

When finally I awaken near dawn,
With images fresh
From another world,
I resent it;

Why does it pull me so?
Is that other world better than this?

This strange World of Day, so little changing,
Hard as rock in it’s demands
and expectations.

Again I’m asked,
To wash clothes,
Pay bills,
Make money,

And follow rules,
Not of my own making.

Or are they?

In night-time’s world I sometimes know,
That it is I who builds it:
The curtain parts.

Day-time’s world has thicker curtains,
Yet –
At times it is given me to see:

I ask to serve, and
There you are,
Needful of a lift.

And a few loose phrases,
That I heard this morning,
Bouncing in my head:
Now come unbidden
From my own mouth.

Witness I am,
Or so I’d thought.
As first I struggled to know;

But now I wonder if,
The Reason I am drawn
To this World of Day,
Is any different from the Night’s:

-- It is To Dream
That I Am Compelled.


--------------------------

Alan Montgomery
September, 2006

Photos from Saturday's reincarnation conference in Lexington, MA

We had a great time this past Saturday! About 120 people attended the talk by Dr. Charles Thomas Cayce entitled “Is Reincarnation Unnecessary?”

The short answer, for each and every one of us, was a resounding “Yes.&rdquo Each of us has the opportunity to complete the work we came to do by the choices we make. Dr. Cayce provided seven key elements shared by the 18 people his grandfather Edgar Cayce told that this could be their last lifetime on the Earth, if they so chose. As with all the information Cayce provided, the keys are straightforward enough — forgiveness, kindness, gentleness, joyfulness, meditation and the like. But the will to do so is up to the individual.

To learn about other spiritual events we offer, check out our greater Boston A.R.E. website calendar at www.are-northeast.org/boston/cayce-calendar.html. Events are open to all. Hope to see you there next time!

A method is only a means

Remember: A method is only a means, not the meditation itself. It is through practicing the method skillfully that you reach the perfection of that pure state of total presence, which is the real meditation.

There is a revealing Tibetan saying: “Gompa ma yin, kompa yin,” which means literally: “ Meditation is not; getting used to is.”

It means that meditation is nothing other than getting used to the practice of meditation. As it is said: “Meditation is not striving, but naturally becoming assimilated into it.” As you continue to practice the method, then meditation slowly arises. Meditation is not something that you can “do”; it is something that has to happen spontaneously, only when you have perfected the practice.

Join us on Facebook

We’re on Facebook! Be a part of the Greater Boston A.R.E. community, no matter where you are. You can friend us (or become a fan, I forget which) in two ways: by a link or by keyword search. For the direct link, go here: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126683747575&ref=ts (if you haven’t already, you’ll need to sign up for a Facebook account). To find us by keyword search, from within Facebook search for Edgar Cayce A.R.E. Greater Boston.

P.S. Our official web site is at www.are-northeast.org/boston, where you can find all local events, study group information, and more.

November Retreat: Surfing the Waves of Change

Wisdom House (map)
229 East Litchfield Rd.
Litchfield, CT 06759
Friday, Nov. 6 – Sunday, Nov. 8
$100, including meals and lodging

The practical, profound teachings of Judith Pennington, integrating science and spirituality, have awakened thousands of people to an inner certainty of higher awareness. An internationally published journalist, author, speaker, singer, and coast-to-coast teacher of meditation and consciousness expansion, she is known for her warmth, sensitivity, inclusiveness, and clear communication. Ms. Pennington is a popular A.R.E. speaker from Virginia Beach. You may have heard her speak and play guitar at a previous all-day A.R.E. conference in Lexington, MA.

Please sign up early! This will help us with planning.

(Registration prices: ONLY $100 for weekend, including delicious meals (was $170); $50 for Saturday-only, with lunch (was $70); Saturday dinner $16. Event takes place at Wisdom House in Connecticut. Register by contacting Win Howie at cayce-northeast [at] comcast.net or 1-781-878-3828. Leave a message and your phone number and your call will be returned. Mail check made out to “A.R.E. of CT, Inc.” to A.R.E.-Northeast Region, 9 Bramble Circle, Rockland, MA 02370.)

Local Boston-area events calendar at www.are-northeast.org/boston/cayce-calendar.html.

Group meeting update: our next book

Well, we recently finished our “Search for God, Book II,” and “Experiments in a Search for God,” and then enjoyed the first half of a DVD called “Reincarnation” by John van Auken, a popular A.R.E. speaker. We’ll watch the last half on Monday (10/12). Then it’s time to begin our new book, which was unanimously, and quickly, selected by attendees at our recent meeting (miracle of miracles! Hee hee!). So... on Monday, October 19... 2009... we will be starting... our new book... (this part is called suspense building)... something different but very much in the be-here-now zone... a book... called... (drum roll)... “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose” by Eckhart Tolle!

New and used copies can be bought on Amazon (or elsewhere). Here’s a link: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)
You don’t need a book to attend meetings. See the column at right, under “About Us,” for meeting location.

Hope to see you soon! And remember: just Breathe.

"The Buddha Play," a one-man off-Broadway show this Sunday at the Cambridge Y

"The Buddha Play: The Life of the Buddha in His Own Words"
A one-man show by Evan Brenner (Website)
Sunday, October 4, 2009
7:00 - 9:00pm
Cambridge YMCA theatre
820 Massachusetts Avenue

This dramatic portrayal of the Buddha’s life and journey as gleaned from the earliest sutras, performed by the author as a special benefit for the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC website) endowment fund. Recently, this play went off-Broadway, so this is a very special performance, and something you don’t often encounter happening at your local Y!

Tickets: $40. Advance tickets available at brownpapertickets.com/event/73386, by calling 1-800-838-3006, or by stopping by the CIMC office at 331 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139. Please note: Pre-registration is encouraged for this event.

PROGRAM: The life of the Buddha in his own words — the evolution of his thought, his triumphs, and the rarely portrayed tragedy at the end of his life.

The man we know as the Buddha lived in Northern India around 500 BC and introduced the teaching known as Buddhism. Approximately 300 years after his death, an extensive oral history of the movement was written down, carried and copied throughout Asia, and this canon became the taproot of the entire Buddhist tradition. Framed in a most unusual and personal context, The Buddha Play brings to the stage these authentic texts to enact the extraordinary life of the man, start to finish.

The Buddha considered his own life a model for all our spiritual struggles saying, "He who knows me, knows the Dharma." It's no dry tale — The Buddha's life stands among the great archetypal adventure stories.

The performance is 90 minutes with a ten minute intermission.

Witness

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,

when I forget or refuse to go

down to the shore or a few yards

up the road, on a clear day,

to reconfirm

that witnessing presence.

Denise Levertov

anti-gravitational vital force

When the anti-gravitational vital force that has an ascending flow is directly understood there follow powers of levitation, and passage over water, mud, thorny bush, etc., without coming into contact with them.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,
III. 39.

Every morning I walk

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

- Mary Oliver

What need have I for such a great evil spirit?

When we have really grasped the law of karma in all its stark power and complex reverberations over many, many lifetimes, and seen just how our self-grasping and self-cherishing, life after life, have woven us repeatedly into a net of ignorance that seems only to be ensnaring us more and more tightly; when we have really understood the dangerous and doomed nature of the self-grasping mind’s enterprise; when we have really pursued its operations into their most subtle hiding places; when we have really understood just how our whole ordinary mind and actions are defined, narrowed and darkened by it, how almost impossible it makes it for us to uncover the heart of unconditional love, and how it has blocked in us all sources of real love and real compassion, then there comes a moment when we understand, with extreme and poignant clarity, what Shantideva said:

If all the harms
Fears and sufferings in the world
Arise from self-grasping,
What need have I for such a great evil spirit?

And then a resolution is born in us to destroy that evil spirit, our greatest enemy. With that evil spirit dead, the cause of all our suffering will be removed, and our true nature, in all its spaciousness and dynamic generosity, will shine out.

- Sogyal Rinpoche

We are as the flute

We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee;
we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee.

We are as pieces of chess engaged in victory and defeat:
our victory and defeat is from thee, O thou whose qualities are comely!

Who are we, O Thou soul of our souls,
that we should remain in being beside thee?

We and our existences are really non-existence;
thou art the absolute Being which manifests the perishable.

We all are lions, but lions on a banner:
because of the wind they are rushing onward from moment to moment.

Their onward rush is visible, and the wind is unseen:
may that which is unseen not fail from us!

Our wind whereby we are moved and our being are of thy gift;
our whole existence is from thy bringing into being.

- Rumi

Carl Jung’s Secret Book

Carl Jung was a giant in the dawn of the age of psychoanalysis. A student of Freud who broke with Freud. Champion of the individual spiritual quest as doorway to the universal.

In midlife, he looked for his own soul and found nothing. Dug deeper, for years, late at night, recording wild visions: gods and demons, winged snakes and crocodiles. Found his soul’s footing, but feared he’d be called insane.

Jung said his “red book,” in which he recorded his visions, was the base of everything else he did. But it was locked away for years in a Swiss vault.

Now it’s out.

http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/09/carl-jungs-secret-book

Earth Festival - Cumberland, RI, SUNDAY Sept 27

Spirit in Nature Pathways and Drums for One & All

Earth Festival

at the

New Dawn Earth Center

Sunday, September 27, 2009

75 Wrentham Road

NewDawnMap

Cumberland, RI

1-6PM

(Rain or Shine)

• Silent Path Meditation Walk 1:10 to 2:00
  

with drum and bell

• Welcoming & Drum Circle 2:45 hosted by David Curry

• Engaging activities for all 3:30 to 4:45

• Potluck 5:00

RVSP ASAP to: newdawn@mercyne.org

Or call 401-333-1341

http://spiritinnaturepathways2009.shutterfly.com/

Pls. check out www.350.org