Meeting together in a field in England was not so easy for many of us this year… but happily Gareth made audio recordings of the teachings and has prepared them for us to share. Here is the link to find them on Simplybeing.co.uk
I sent the email below to the little group I facilitate, then thought to widen the connection
Hi, Maybe you’re not coming on the retreat this year but there is a connection we share…wherever we are…on retreat, at work, at home and the words below from the book ‘Being Right Here’ …which the retreat organiser just sent round are words you could give… well, how much time would you feel is right to give… to contemplate their profundity? Especially given how much time we spend contemplating the non-sense aspect of the world! Your own mini-retreat with contemplation and meditation, at some point during this period, could be a possibility…?
Compassion without wisdom is limited partial biased, but if arising from wisdom it is inclusive and effort-free We all have this as our potential to manifest and these words below point to how that might be realised
Hope you enjoy them, the easing they invite and the summer-time xx wendy
Verse 34. from Being Right Here the book by James Low. A Dzogchen treasure text of Nuden Dorje. The mirror of clear meaning.
” Maintain emptiness and compassion without distraction. Always free of effort and struggle, contemplate the flow of awareness” The key thing is to be kind to yourself. The barriers we have to entering into presence are already hard enough. If we try to become great heroes and push our way through we will make the resistance even greater. Tenderness and love are always important. Being tender towards ourselves, being very finely attuned to what is going on. We are simply being present to whatever occurs, here and now.If somebody comes to us and tells us they have done terrible things and they are really upset by it, we are touched by that and we want to help them. All the stupid or bad things that we feel that we have done, the things that we feel ashamed about, we have only ever done them out of confusion or pain, out of ignorance. The path to integration is not through punishment but through tenderly accepting ourselves as we are, so we can come close to ourselves. And if we come close to ourselves then the most subtle breach of subject and object as two entities is gradually collapsed. And through the moment of loving ourselves very deeply and profoundly, which is at the heart of true meditation, we make this primary integration into our true nature.If we take up this tender attention it will take us into the depths of meditative evenness, which means the state in which the mind is not disturbed by anything that arises. And that will naturally integrate into our daily lives, where we find ourselves in the world with other people. If we can be relaxed, open and at ease in these two states, that is said to be awake. The natural condition is not against you, other people are not against you in your nature, primarily we against ourselves. When we get on the same side as ourselves, the world turns around and we start to feel this flow of energy flowing through us. And we start to awaken to the fact that we are nothing but this non dual integrated manifestation of presence.”
