A universal assembly for true discernment
Please read quotes 813-816 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Suffering has made you dull, unable to see its enormity. Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next to long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you need no other guide.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Please read quotes 809-812 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Questioner: How does one reach the Supreme State?
Maharaj: By renouncing all lesser desires. As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Please read quotes 805-808 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is a portion of the last quote:
The greatest Guru is your inner Self. Truly, he is the supreme teacher. He alone can take you to your goal and he alone meets you at the end of the road. Confide in him and you need no outer Guru.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Regina Dawn Akers reads the conversation from the December 22, 1980 in Consciousness and the Absolute.
Click the link below to read the minutes from this meeting.
(To learn more about the Member Board of Trustees, click here.)
The first two hours of the Fall Retreat will be broadcast live in the Awakening Together Sanctuary including an interview with Brian Tom O’Connor, the author of a book called Awareness Games: Playing with Your Mind to Create Joy.
During the first 2 days of the Self-Awareness retreat, Regina will lead participants in Self-Awareness practices including games from Brian’s book. We decided to interview Brian in the Sanctuary and play some games with everyone! So …
If you are attending the retreat, you will receive a free copy of Brian’s book at the retreat. If you will join us in the Sanctuary on October 20 for awareness games, consider purchasing a copy of Brian’s book. (Purchasing a book isn’t required; it’s just a fun book.)
Awareness Games are ways to play with your mind to point it towards the infinite well of happiness and joy that lies within each of us. They are fun ways to sidestep all the ways the mind sorts the outside world, and instead, points it within to look for the background to all experience, happiness itself.
Awareness Games have one purpose: to turn the mind around from outer focus to inner focus, and through inner focus to find that obscure little secret passageway to expanded focus. The delightful surprise is that the obscure little secret passageway was hiding in plain sight all along.
Why games?
Because finding the well of joy within is not something with correct answers, set rules, reproducible steps. Everyone is different, so everyone must experiment (that is, play around) and stumble upon what works for each person. The best way to do this is with an attitude of lightness, playfulness, ease, innocent curiosity.
Because you don’t have to believe anything to play a game. If I try to teach you something, your mind runs it through the truth-checker. Is it true? Is it not true? Is it a crock? With a game, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what you find out for yourself while you’re playing around. You don’t have to believe in any metaphysical, theological, philosophical, religious, spiritual, or even scientific concept. You just have to try it.
Because correctness and seriousness hinder the search. In some senses, even searching hinders the search! How can you search for something that is already here—that you already have? And yet just sitting around watching TV may not do the trick either. So play with your awareness like a toy—bounce it, squeeze it, smell it, shake it, become immersed in it. You may discover you are it. But don’t take my word for it—play with it yourself.
Also because Brian likes to have fun. (And so does Regina!)
Brian Tom O’Connor is an actor, theatre director, cabaret performer, and formerly depressed guy who stumbled onto the source of joy and happiness in the background of all experience. He is not an enlightened person, which, in fact, is a good thing, because if someone as imperfect and flawed as he is can find it, so can you.
So try the games and make up your own. Experiment. See what works for you. It’s all about your direct experience. Play with pure awareness and discover the background of all experience, where happiness is hiding in plain sight.
Please read quotes 802-804 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Merely to trust is not enough. You must also desire. Without desire for freedom of what use is the confidence that you can acquire freedom? Desire and confidence must go together. The stronger your desire, the easier comes the help.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
A Sustaining Subscriber is someone who makes a regular monthly donation to help support the Retreat House and receives one of two Gratitude Gifts in return:
Gratitude Gift #1 – This option may best suit La Veta locals: Unlimited day use of the Retreat House, including all 1-day mini-retreats & one meal with guests per month. This gift does not include participation in longer retreats.
Gratitude Gift #2 – This option may best suit those who do not live nearby: 15% discount on lodging at the Retreat House.
To become a Sustaining Subscriber: Select your gratitude gift and a monthly donation amount ($50, $75 or $100) from the list below, and then click Subscribe.
Note: When you click Subscribe, you will leave the Awakening Together website and go to PayPal. Data collected by PayPal is governed by the PayPal Privacy Policy.
Please read quotes 798-801 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Whatever name you give it: will, or steady purpose, or one-pointedness of the mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty. When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. You are totally dedicated, call it will, or love, or plain honesty.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Whenever you suffer with a grievance, fear, anger, indecision, the sense of unworthiness or any other type of upset, Awakening Together’s primary recommendation is that you go within to seek clarity and guidance. We also recommend going within through journaling. This recommendation is consistent with The Foundation for the Holy Spirit’s purpose, which is “to help individuals become Self-reliant with inner spiritual wisdom.” (Awakening Together is a means of achieving that purpose.)
However, sometimes a person is not able to get beyond a particular block alone, and he/she needs someone to talk to. If that’s the case, who is the best person to talk to?
According to Awakening Together’s Sacraments of Grace policy, which is consistent with state laws regarding counseling and emotional or mental therapy, the only members authorized to provide spiritual counseling for other members is an Awakening Together Ordained Minister.
This is what our policy says about spiritual counseling:
The Awakening Together standards and expectations regarding spiritual counseling are as follows:
1. Awakening Together ministers are authorized to provide spiritual counseling, but Awakening Together ministers are not marital counselors, family or troubled teen counselors, addiction counselors, psychological or clinical therapists or financial advisors and are not permitted to administer those types of counseling.
2. As a spiritual counselor/mentor, the Awakening Together minister acts as a temporary external form of spiritual wisdom for one who is having difficulty recognizing inner spiritual wisdom due to current mental and/or emotional obstacles.
3. The primary goal of the Awakening Together minister as a spiritual counselor/mentor is to help the individual become Self-reliant with inner spiritual wisdom. The two primary means for achieving this goal are:
4. “Being an Awakening Together Minister”, which is a course in the Minister Preparation Program (MPP), details Awakening Together’s standards and expectations regarding spiritual counseling. Awakening Together ministers are required to follow the spiritual counseling criteria set forth in that course.
If you need to talk to someone for spiritual help, please select an Ordained Minister from our list of ministers on the website.
Note: A Licensed Minister is not ordained, has not completed the curriculum on spiritual counseling and is not authorized by our policy to provide spiritual counseling.
If you need help selecting a minister to talk with, contact us.
If you missed the Weekly Gathering about gossip, watch it on YouTube.
