Our 6-month journey comes to a close.
It has been wonderful to adventure with you. Whether you made the calls live or wrote to the prompts on your own, I appreciated having you in this circle.
As the year comes to an end I find my own sense of trust, peace, and willingness expanded. I was just starting to come out of my well of grief from my mom's passing, when I decided to host this writing circle. It has served to re-tether me in a good way.
Our writing topic: gifts received and given this year (through a series of questions). Bring your writing tools!
Let's light the house!
Adela
Writing Process
Here's the writing process we used on the call . . .
There will be three questions. You’ll write to each for 3 minutes. We’ll share at the end
1. What were you gifted? Click in and dip into this past year… the moments when just in time help arrived, when you found a truer version of yourself, when your heart overflowed from so much goodness, your unexpected wins, a surprising serendipity. What were you gifted?
2. What did you gift? What did you gift from the fullness of your being? Think of the spaces where your heart overflowed, where you were fully engaged. What flowed from your abundance? What book/poem/program did you create, what talent did you share more wholeheartedly, what support did you surprise someone with? What did you gift?
3. What’s next? What can you see on the horizon, what is one step away from where you are now?
What insights have arisen as a consequence of exploring these questions? Jot that down too.
Resources
This is the practice of observing that I recommended on the call. It's been shared by Krishnamurti for decades. In under 10 minutes, he explains all you ever need for this adventure. Wow. There's a transcript below.
Transcript (with time stamps):
0:04
To observe is the most important thing in life. Not tell the observation how to observe. But to learn the art of observing. Without any distortion without any motive without any purpose just to observe. In that there is tremendous beauty. Because then there is no distortion. You see things clearly as they are.
0:42
But if you make an abstraction of it into an idea, and then through that idea observe, then it's a distortion. We are merely freely without any distorting factor entering into our observation observing consciousness.
1:12
So consciousness begins to reveal its own totality. There is nothing hidden because the content - which is our hurt our greed our envy our happiness our beliefs our ideologies - all that is the mix of consciousness. The past traditions the present scientific or factual traditions and so on so and so on. All that is our consciousness
to observe it without any movement of thought.
2:08
Thought has put all the content of our consciousness thought has built. When thought comes and says this is right this is wrong this should be that you are still within the field of consciousness. You're not going beyond it.
2:27
So one has to understand very clearly the place of thought. Thought has its own place in the field of knowledge technology and all the rest of it. But thought has no place whatsoever in the psychological structure of man. When it does then confusion begins. Then contradiction then all the struggles. The images about you and another all the rest of it follows.
3:08
The meaning of art means to put everything in its right place. Not the painter not the sculptor or the pirate but in our daily life. To put everything in its right place that is art.
3:41
Can you observe your consciousness and does it reveal its content not not bit by bit but the totality of its movement? Then only is it possible to go beyond it. Not through analysis which we talked about. Because analysis implies the analyzer and they analyzed the problem of time in division. And when you analyze each analysis must be totally complete. If there is not complete analysis then the imperfection of that analysis is carried over to the next analysis.
So imperfection grows more and more and more. You don't like practice on the piano and practicing the wrong note all the time. So that is our inquiry.
5:04
Can you observe without any movement of the eye? Because the eye has effect on the brain. You can observe it for yourself. When you keep your eyeballs completely still observation becomes very clear. Because the brain is quietened. You can experiment with this. This is not a trick.
5:51
For something further it's like going to a guru and learning few tricks. This is a lovely story i must tell you about it a young man goes to a guru a teacher and says please tell me what truth is. I've searched everywhere nobody seems to able to tell me and have come to you. Please tell me what truth is.
6:26
And the guru says stay with me be with me. So the disciple stays with him for about 15 years watching him. At the end of 15 years he says good lord i have learnt nothing. And so goes to the guru and says i'm so sorry you have taught me nothing. I haven't found truth. I'm going to leave you and go to that guru the other one.
7:00
After five years he comes back. He says at last i've learned. The guru says what have you learned? You see that river i can walk across it without a boat without anything. I can walk right on the water. The guru says you can do that what for two pence if you take that little boat. I think you should bear that story in mind when you approach any gurus.
7:50
So can you observe without any movement of thought interfering with your observation. It is only possible when the observer realizes that which he is observing are one. The observer is the observed. Anger is not different from me. I am anger I am jealousy. There is no division between the observer and the observed. That is the basic reality one must capture.
8:38
Observe without the observer just to observe. Then you will see the whole of consciousness. The whole of it begins to reveal itself without your making an effort.
9:02
Which means in that total observation there is the emptying of going beyond all the things that thought has put together which is our consciousness. The reality which thought has made is not true. It's a reality of thought.
