Venture Fourth Weekly Work
Week Eighteen Feb 9, 2010

Dear Venture Fourthers,

Please read all the way through as this email contains some important information about meeting schedule and upcoming reading and practice. But feel free to jump to the end of page two where that material starts.

I returned home from Brazil on Saturday afternoon. Many of you have read my journals. It summary, I can only say it was a magical trip, as all of these trips seem to be, but more so this year because the 12 people who accompanied me all had deep practice and inspired me and each other with their hard work and growth.

You may know I was forbidden to read at all for the week following the first surgery there, and then a "40 days from surgery, only light reading" period, which ends this weekend. I'm "jumping the gun" a bit and yesterday began re-reading all your journals in preparation for our meetings later this week and early next week. I look forward to speaking with each of you personally. I had read through them all once as they came in, but skimming lightly, or in some cases where you gave permission, had someone read them to me.

Many of you have said my journals inspired you; well, yours inspire me too. You have been working hard and learning so much!

Looking back, the highlight of learning for me on this trip was the reminder to faith and love. There at the Casa, deaf, I look around me at the miraculous healing I see, pray to hear and, this year I did not experience more hearing. Then mind jumps to, "What about me? Am I unworthy in some way? Am I doing something wrong." These are old stories but they come up. It really is perfect; they come up so they can be investigated and released until the conditions that invite them are healed.

At the end of the second week, after the surgery review, I spoke to an Entity who has so often said, "You will hear; be patient." I asked him, "What can I do to support healing?" He smiled and said, "Love supports healing." He handed me a flower he was holding and continued, "Here is my love." That's a powerful rely to someone who is caught in the story, "What am I doing wrong?"

During those same weeks, I received the book contract I had hoped for, which seemed to drop in my lap the first week there just after I asked again for their help to find a publisher. I'm delighted with this publisher, North Atlantic Books in Berkeley, CA. They publish many excellent spiritual books and seem very committed to doing a great job with this one, and very positive about the book. It will be released in the spring of 2011.

Now mind jumped to the work ahead; the book is written, editing under way, but part of this publishing is getting out there and giving book talks. It was one thing to write it; now I felt like the doctoral candidate who will need to defend her dissertation. I know anything said must come from a clear and egoless place. The whole offering of the book must come from that place. Actually all my teaching must come from that place, and largely, it does. I know that. And that place IS accessible; I know that too. But fear and doubt come! I work with them skillfully; yes. But they still do arise. Can I take the steps ahead without too much ego? There is such strong intention not to create new karma and not to do harm.

So, much of the trip was about remembering love and the power of love. It was about regarding those old demons of unworthiness and fear one last time (did I say "last time?" No, they will reappear again, but less fearsome each time) and remembering the heart of Aaron's teaching. There are only two emotions, fear and love, and fear is an illusion, like the shadow that disappears when the sun is bright. Rest in the Light. Darkness is real, in a relative sense, but it need not scare me because the Light is always there.

On my last day I went through the line to say goodbye. I asked the Entity to help me do my work with the book and teaching with humility, wisdom and love, expressing in that request for help my small doubts about my ability to do this. He gave me the tenderest smile, the kind of smile a parent gives his child, took my hand, handed me two beautiful roses, and simply said, "I love you very much." Why do we doubt that we are loved and loveable? Why do we doubt that we are worthy, and that we can do what we seek to do?

It fits together perfectly. I see that I also need to have this deepened faith in my wholeness, to truly know that wholeness, for the hearing to further emerge. I need to have greater compassion for the human who does still carry the conditions wherein fear and doubt arise, and not give weight to those stories. It's all about non-duality. Right there with fear is that which is unafraid. Right there with doubt is the one who knows. Where do we place our attention? Meanwhile, my vision is improved, my shoulders far less painful (I won't say pain-free, but with a full range of motion and little pain) and my heart is very open.

I'm writing this in more detail because this is where we are all heading now in Venture Fourth. The March intensive will focus on deep experiential knowing of non-duality. We'll be doing Pure Awareness practice together. We'll be watching the simultaneity of the relative and absolute. I want us to move beyond any concept and into the direct experience of Awareness, no longer "my" awareness, just Awareness. Who is the "my" in there? It is "my" consciousness, because with consciousness we are speaking about the conditioned realm, the realm of the aggregates that arise and pass away. But Awareness is different. It comes into focus and diminishes, but it is of the Unconditioned and IS, not subjected to the laws of conditioned objects.

In the intensive we'll do a lot of meditation, more than we have the last two intensives. Aaron and I will speak, of course, and we'll have discussions, but the heart of the intensive will be practice.

In preparation, you have been reading Flight of the Garuda. Some of you say you "get it" and some don't. Don't worry about that. Let the mind beyond the everyday mind just soak up this material and not try to figure it out. So please continue to read "Garuda."

Please return to the Geshe Tenzin Wangyal reading in the DSC web site. Read this carefully and many times, again without trying to figure it out. Read a little bit with each sitting. Just let it soak in. Work with the practice he describes, through to "Clear light is union."

Please read also the series of four talks on the DSC/ archives/ Aaron/ class series/ 2007/

• Insight Meditation Class, Fall 2007, Consciousness and Its Objects, Class 1: September 18, 2007
  
  
• Insight Meditation Class, Fall 2007, Consciousness and Its Objects, Class 2: October 2, 2007
  
  
• Insight Meditation Class, Fall 2007, Consciousness and Its Objects, Class 3:October 16, 2007
  
  
• Insight Meditation Class, Fall 2007, Consciousness and Its Objects, Class 4: October 30, 2007
  
  

And also the four classes on the same topic in 2006:

• Class 1: September 19, 2006
  
  
• Class 2: October 3, 2006
  
  
• Class 3: October 17, 2006
  
  
• Class 4: October 31, 2006
  
  

You do not need to study this material; just read through these 8 talks so it is all familiar.

Begin a deeper reflection on Aaron's frequent teaching such as "That which is aware of anger is not angry," or "That which is aware of fear is not afraid." Do this often as various consciousnesses arise. Here is anger, fear, shame or doubt. The everyday mind notes that this state has arisen. Can you simultaneously see the spaciousness that is empty of anger, fear, shame or doubt? The state doesn't cease, but takes on a different texture when seen through the eyes of Awareness. You are not trying to make anything cease, just to watch it as you rest in spaciousness. This is like our 'looking through the fingers' exercise. The fingers exist and continue to move, but the vast space is also there and never goes away.

Achan Chah talks a lot about "the one who knows," in Thai, "Poo roo" (spelling?). What is this "one who knows" and how does this level of Awareness (Tibetan, "rigpa") relate to the everyday mind? I want you to investigate this deeply until you can experience the simultaneity to which I refer.

All of these assignments weave together. They will be the basis for our work in March.

So this above is the focus for your meditation. Meanwhile, please also continue the weekly work:

Feb 7 - mindfulness

Feb. 14 - wisdom

I would like you to work with concentration and mindfulness together, and also together with sila and wisdom, to better understand how the three legs of dhamma –sila, panna and samadhi – support each other. Work to know each and how each relates to the others.

Feb 21 - looking at the entirety of the 8 fold path

Feb 28: Part 3, and especially chapter 27, "Identifying your spiritual curriculum"

Between now and the next intensive please read Putting on the Mind of Christ, parts 3 and 4, pages 117 through 214. Reflect on these levels of consciousness. Most of you have already read this. We'll discuss the Dark Night and Non-Dual consciousness at the Intensive. I know there are questions.

March 7 – begin the new stage, working each week with one of 4 to 6 qualities of your choice. We'll delay this phase and start it after the Intensive. For now, just use your time for the other work.