Join Jacquelyn Eckert this Sunday evening at 8:00 PM Eastern time for this fun discussion group. Our movie this month is “Hateship, Loveship” with Kristen Wiig.  Here is the IMDB link to the movie.

 Hateship, Loveship

Movies are modern day parables. Watching movies with your inner guide can inform rather than just entertain you. This Spirit Led Movie Watchers Discussion Group will facilitate the participants’ ability to identify spiritual themes in everyday movies and to use movies as a way of uncovering unconscious beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in.

Please join us Sunday at 10:15 AM ET in the Awakening Together Sanctuary for our Weekly Gathering. with Reverend Jacquelyn Eckert. Jacquelyn is a Founding Member of Awakening Together.  She is among the first Ministers ordained through the Awakening Together Minister Preparation Program. Jacquelyn grew up reading Edgar Cayce, Ruth Montgomery and Emmet Fox, began studying A Course in Miracles in the early 1980’s, and has continued to pursue an ultimate understanding of the Self through numerous non-dual teachings.

Like everyone, John spent most of his life unconsciously searching for the one perfect path out of the wilderness of human life; the one perfect idea, the one perfect thing to think, to understand, to want, to have, to believe, to become that would bring him salvation and satisfaction. The course of John’s search was extreme compared to most, but the result was the same: nothing worked, nothing ever does.

Late in 1975, when he was 33 years old, John discovered the perfect idea of perfect Social Justice, and set out to become the perfect Communist revolutionary. He joined with a small group of anarcho-communist radicals, and embarked upon four years of bank robberies, property bombings, gunfights with the police, two escapes from federal prisons and two years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List; all done in the name of supporting the struggles of the American worker for justice. In the end it came to nothing.

In January of 1976, he was shot and captured during a bank robbery; in March, he escaped.

In 1978, after two years on the run, robbing banks and organizing property bombings, John was captured by the FBI, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In March of 1979, he escaped again from the federal prison where he was serving his sentence. In April of 1981, after two years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, he was finally captured for the last time and returned to prison.

In June of 1994, in the fifteenth year of his imprisonment, the American spiritual teacher Gangaji came to the prison where John was serving his sentence. John found himself face to face with her and, in that meeting, discovered himself to be eternally and unconditionally free. He spent more than a year in the fully open awareness of spiritual awakening, which collapsed suddenly, leaving him bereft.

John spent the rest of his time in prison trying to find something that he could do that would bring him back to the state of indifference and apathy that he had enjoyed prior to meeting Gangaji and being taken by the false promise of freedom. This effort unexpectedly brought him to true freedom by means of an extremely simple act of attention.

Three and a half years later, in 1998, he was released on parole. Upon his release, John moved to Boulder, Colorado.

Join us this Saturday evening from 8 – 10 PM EST for a special presentation – The Headless Way with Daniel Shai

Over the past [sixty] years a truly contemporary and Western way of ‘seeing into one’s Nature’ or ‘Enlightenment’ has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort. Instead of these, it uses a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot – to the space I occupy, to what’s given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it’s like being 1st-person singular, present tense. (From The Headless Way, a leaflet by Douglas Harding.)
Douglas found direct, immediate and utterly simple ways of Seeing Who We Really Are, as he was searching for a way to share his awakening with others. He called his way The Headless Way.

After his death, his way lives on through his wife and friends, and all the people who have been deeply touched by him. Richard Lang, who knew Douglas since he was 17, has since kept on publishing Douglas’ work and sharing Headless Seeing around the world, through workshops, retreats and speaking annually at such events as The Science & Non-Duality Conference in California.

Daniel Shai

A great help as the world goes through its awakening, is having all the messages of the great sages become de-mystified and experienced first-hand. Picking up and elaborating on the breakthrough first presented to the world by Douglas Harding decades ago, Daniel Shai powerfully introduces us to our True Self.

Daniel discovered he had great passion to share this remarkable Way with the world. After meeting Richard and other headless friends he set off on a world-tour offering workshops and talks worldwide about non-duality and The Headless Way, beginning in Israel, through Europe and now the USA, as well as giving one-on-one sessions to anyone interested.

The impact of Daniel’s workshops is very powerful and is capable of producing a significant shift in the participant’s view of life thereafter. Now they know Who’s experiencing life, and it is certainly a different and more expansive and free space to live from. This immediate shift is due to the revolutionary tools introduced by Douglas, combined with Daniel’s direct, clear and light approach, inviting us to see what is true and let go of what is untrue. Douglas simply told it as it is. That has made him into a great light unto the world.

Daniel had his awakening while sitting in his living room in Israel: he felt a lot of pressure on the top of his head. Placing his attention on the sensation he realized that in his actual experience there was indeed sensation but no head. Instead of a head there was an absence out of which there was pure looking. In that moment, everything in the room became the same: his body, the living room table, the floor, the couch – it was all the same and it all seemed to be silently laughing. Laughing at what? At that there never were two! Everything was present, except himself as a separate being. There was no experience of effort or wanting, and a great joy emerged in which he felt everything as himself, one with everything while simultaneously untouched by anything. It was an experience of pure light.

Leading up to this awakening were several satoris or as he calls them – headless moments. They began when he was first introduced to Osho’s books, then J. Krishnamurti, and kept happening on his spiritual journey, which included studying and practicing Gurdjieff’s teachings, staying at a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, visiting teachers such as Ramesh Balsekar and working with several other such awake teachers.

Before his spiritual journey, as a teenager, Daniel was very depressed. He was struggling with the question of identity. He saw a frightening world in which no one knew who they were, what they are doing and why, yet they all seemed to go on with the show, pretty much on automatic, afraid to stop and ask the real questions. He hadn’t encountered or even heard of spirituality until nearing his twenties, when a friend had dragged him to a session with a woman who was a channeler and numerologist. At the end of the session she recommended an Osho book to him: Beyond the Frontiers of the Mind. He was familiar with philosophy and psychology, since he delved into them to try and solve his depression. It didn’t help. But right as he began reading the aforementioned book he felt a powerful connection that went beyond words and philosophy: an awakening to his own Being had been set in motion.

After his awakening experience, Daniel recalled that somewhere on his spiritual journey he came across videos of a man who said he had no head. He barely remembered the name Douglas Harding but managed to find it online. You can guess how ecstatic he was reading about this man who had the same realization as himself decades ago. The first time he came across Harding he was utterly unimpressed. It was a shot youtube clip of Harding sharing one of his experiments. He was not ready for that simplicity, and was hoping for a more earth-rattling experience that would match his idea of enlightenment at that time, and therefore overlooked the obvious pointed out by Douglas. Daniel does, however, believe that many people today are ready for immediate and simple pointing, and his experience with his workshops seems to prove that true.

After the workshops, people are not left on their own. There are headless groups online and offline which they can join and share Seeing with, as well as discuss the experience of living from Who We Really Are in this world. Also, Daniel, Richard and others are available and accessible and enjoy connecting with headless friends all over the world and supporting them on their path. There is no hierarchy in The Headless Way as there are no levels to Seeing.

Join us for a three week miniseries with Bruce Rawles

Bruce Rawles has sought the rhyme and reason of life’s mysteries, both seen and unseen, from an early age. His “networker” mother continues to delve into metaphysical and esoteric realms sharing her love of “inner spaces”, and his pragmatic father, sharing his love of the outdoors, provided an opportunity to appreciate the natural world. Within this context, Bruce’s life continues to be a quest for the synthesis of “heart” and “head” approaches, the integration of alternative and mainstream paradigms; and the reconciliation of the sacred with commonplace. During 2007, continuing research into the connections between ancient Hermetic wisdom distilled in the Kybalion book (7 Naturals Laws) and modern quantum physics, Bruce realized that these 7 principles could easily be symbolized by 7 Universal geometric archetypes, each of which individually and collectively encode the non-dualistic perennial philosophy in a holographic matrix. These symbols were skillfully given color and animation by Mika Feinberg, author of the LightSOURCE series of screensavers, and together Mika and Bruce collaborated on a screensaver/eBooklet that features these 7 symbols called The Geometry Code, which is also the name of Bruce’s forthcoming second book. Inspiration for this second book has been strongly infused with insights from the work of Dr. Leonard Laskow, as well as Gary Renard‘s books (Disappearance of the Universe and Your Immortal Reality) which lead to an enthusiastic renewal of interest in the profound wisdom of A Course In Miracles and related books such as Take Me To Truth by Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira and more recently the prolific and inspired work of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick. The concepts of Quantum Forgiveness and using the implications of modern physics (pointing to the illusory nature of space, time and dualistic thought systems) to anchor a sustainable practice of metaphysics leading to complete unlearning of fear is now the key “why” of ongoing work, complementing the “how” and “what” mechanics of the tools provided by geometric symbols as training aids.

April 17: Not No: Turning up the volume on our Inner Kindness Teacher’s Gentle Mindfulness

April 24: The 3 R’s of Forgiveness: Reveal, Release and Replace

May 1: Discernment: GIST and the Double Shield of Oblivion

Bruce’s Website ACIM Blog

Topic: What We Love Is What We Do With our Time

Description: Are we looking for an experience, or are we looking for truth for the sake of truth, wherever it may lead us? Each day is a precious gift,  a gold coin that we can choose to spend on what we value, on what we love.  Looking at how we actually spend our time gives us a true accounting of what we love.  The greatest happiness can be found in living a life of truth, of love.

 Minister: Rev. Jay McCormick

Music by: Lyn Johnson

 Reading by: Deloris Mabins-Adenekan

Reading From the Book: “The Listening Attention” by Bob Furgeson – section entitled “What Do You Love?”

There is a new discussion group starting in the Sanctuary this Wednesday, April 6 at 6pm ET/3pm Pacific. It is the “I Am That” discussion group, which will discuss conversations between Nisargadatta Maharaj and various questioners. This group is being led by three new Awakening Together ministers, Bart Craig, Deloris Mabins and Jane Polley-Bass. If you don’t have the book, “I Am That,” you can get it as a free pdf by going to the Awakening Together website. Go to the Inspiration menu, Free Ebooks. “I Am That” is the third ebook on that page. Again, please join us for the new Nisargadatta “I Am That” group starting this Wednesday at 6pm ET.

Read I Am That