The Torn Page

Student Question:  What do you think the significance is of the world being able to observe the death of societies in different places versus in times when there wasn’t technology and people in different countries and continents who were unaware on this physical level of what was happening in other places?

Student Question:  What is the Unconscious?

Student Question:  You mentioned that often a lot of people’s unconscious urges manifest themselves in close relationships and families and what not.  It makes me think of a friend that I guess I would say is caught up in his egoic existence and around a lot of family issues and a lot of family pressure to do certain things and to be a certain way.  Now just for the background this individual was raised with Buddhist beliefs so he has some leanings that way but still is totally immersed in the egoic existence right now.  Now my question is, to what extent can a friend help someone like that out of the spiral and the problems he is in.  Are there really ways to help someone who is not ready to make that move?

Student Question:  What is the connection between the soul and awareness?

Student Question:  I was thinking about the violence that has occurred just most recently in England and we have studied the archetype of the apocalypse.  Is this a manifestation of that?  We talked about archetypes having their own energy and drawing people into it to act in a certain way. Is that what is occurring?

Student Question:  Could you give me some tips on overcoming fear while in meditation, or I guess more along the lines of reaching deeper states of meditative experience?

Excerpt: “So the good news is that we don’t have to wait until we leave the body to attain liberation, we can do it here and now….So it is important to recognize that what we mean by the self and by self inquiry, is not seeking an image or a concept of the self; not seeking an object of any kind…but leaving behind all levels of objectification and conceptualization....And what we discover when the mind has been completely stilled and emptied of thought and emptied of the continuing flow of images and the flow of memories or the flow of emotions.  When you have attained the witness state in which there is simply purified silent awareness….And so there is within each of you that core of being that is deathless and birthless and that cannot be given a form…”  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 4, 2011.

Student Question:  During the retreat you taught about the five obstacles which the Bhagavad Gita speaks of but specifically regarding the fifth one, Ahankar.   One translation of that is self- centeredness.  What recommendations could you give to towards healing this obstacle?

Student Question:  We were just now in the study group studying the “MILAGRO” theory and I was wondering about the “MIL” and what we were studying at the retreat about how Prakriti and Purusha get together or would you say this is the stage of the MIL, or am I confused or can you talk about it?

In this one, I would reword the question a little: “Student Question:  You talked earlier about disidentifying, with I guess anything ultimately, and just going into the silence as the answer to disidentifying.  I am frequently finding myself wanting to convince the unconscious fragments instead of going into the silence.  I feel like I end up avoiding that or ignoring it.  How can I get past that?”