Mutuality: Awareness in Words
Something that stays constant for me is awareness. Whatever is happening inside of me in some response or reaction to pleasure or pain, I am aware of it in a full sense. It hasn’t always been this way. For most of my life, awareness was filtered through thinking and confusion. I often didn’t know what…
Awakening (to Our Senses)
A talk from an online sitting, January, 2019 Winter time is, in Chinese medicine terms, a period of maximum Yin. Yin is coldness, darkness, stillness, quietness, transformation and potential. It contrasts with Yang – fire, light, action, noise, movement. This is reflected in how nature and our bodies respond in winter (well – in the…
Grasping the Means of Our Own Realization
A talk from and on line sitting, March 3rd “Grasping the means of our own realization” is an important part of the Trillium approach to awakening. It means that we are encouraged – and supported – to find our own unique route to awakening, rather than following a standardized path. I love this aspect of…
Paradox and the Core Wound
A talk from an online sitting, March 2018 One definition of a paradox is that it is something which seems contradictory, unbelievable or absurd but that may be true in fact, particularly when looked at from a different level. One thing I’ve always loved about the Trillium Awakening is the fact that it takes the…
Daring and Perseverance
A talk from an online sitting, January 2018 Daring and Perseverance is one of the “Four Alchemical Ingredients” described in the Trillium awakening orientation course. The other three are Transmission, Greenlighting and Radical Embrace. I started exploring this in the dark days of mid December, when tiredness and the cold, wet weather left me wanting…
Radical Embrace and being in the ‘here and now’
A talk from an online sitting, November 2017 “The paradox of the here and now” was the title of a talk I gave recently with a colleague who works in the field of experiential learning. The paradox referred to was this. To be truly present to our immediate experience, we have to move aside, a…
Occupy This: Reflections on Embodiment
This sacred vessel of our Being, this flesh and bones and heart and mind, is the grace through which we can touch, and be touched by, life. What does it take to land inside ourselves fully, to truly incarnate our messy, fleshy, tender selves? In the Trillium path, we begin by radically embracing our experience,…
Our Personal Trillium Lineage: Teaching You Can Trust
The summer after my father died, between jobs and unsure what I could, should, or would make of myself, I attended a recruitment meeting for management positions with United Parcel Service. What I learned that day was, at least in 1984, that everyone who worked for UPS in any capacity started their careers unloading the…
Exploration: Consciousness / Absolute
An Exploration: Resting as That, you are Infinity. Consciousness and The Absolute, Atman and Brahman, Anatman and Sunyata. Recognizing The Self that is Consciousness (Atman) Student: What is the formless light of consciousness? Krishna: You are, your own subjective nature is. S: Okay, what is that then? K: Only you can discover that. It is…
Van’s Conscious Awareness Guided Exercise, 9/17/15
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This audio recording is of an improvised guided exercise (with some explanation) that Van offered his small group one afternoon at the Northeast Deep Dive Retreat, to assist one of the students with clarifying Consciousness.
Transmission and Resting in the Wholeness of Radiant Divine Being
Spiritual transmission is an invitation to rest in the wholeness of Radiant Divine Being. Transmission is (human) being to (human) being communion in the One Being, the One Divine Self, that we already are. I would recommend thinking of spiritual transmission as more of a resonant field, rather than as an energy beam sent from…
Van’s Flute Improvisation, 2019 Teacher Retreat
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Van shared this beautiful flute piece at the at the end of the first night of the teacher retreat, Wednesday, August 14, 2019. Enjoy its transporting beauty.
Mini-essay: “The Paradox of Ultimate Whole Being”
Whole Being equals Ultimate Being or the Ultimate Divine Self. Ultimate Whole Being is paradoxically simultaneously both unmanifested and manifested, transcendental and mundane, spirit and matter, divine and human, the formless and the form, the Emptiness and the Fullness, etc. Ultimate Being is the ineffable all-inclusive Totality. Therefore, Ultimate Being is indescribable and can’t be…
Tantra: A Teaching for Tough Times
No matter what your political bent, most of us can agree that we are going through some tough times. Ideology can’t fix global warming, drought, rising seas, poverty, alienation, isolation, or a bevy of other social ills that cause many of us pain. What it does do, all too well, is create riffs between ourselves…
Teacher vs Student Responsibilities
Teacher’s responsibilities help students see their own wisdom – be careful to no over-identify with being “the source of wisdom” affirm the student’s own authority, and support the student’s unique process and path Offer insights and perspectives, but recognize it’s up to the student to decide if they are useful or valid. the TA model…
Guru Dynamics – Good vs Bad
One of the key elements at the heart of “guru dynamics” is that of projection. Psychological projection can be seen as an egoic defense mechanism in which we resist and deny our unconscious qualities or impulses – positive or negative – and instead attribute them to others. Projection happens in everyday encounters, but gets amplified…
Sacred Unraveling
In this video I talk about how to engage the auspicious process of falling out of the illusion of control in support of embodied awakening. Definition from the Trillium Awakening glossary: Unraveling of Fixing and Seeking Strategies (i.e. Rot): The will to try new formulas for perfection and avoidance of suffering are dissolving, leaving one…
Where Are We Now with Mutuality?
Edited Transcription of a presentation by Fax Gilbert followed by a Discussion of Trillium Teachers at our Teacher Retreat, June 14, 2017 Fax: In light of the events leading up to and surrounding the grievance process a few years ago, I began to wonder whether a) my understanding of mutuality was very incomplete, or b) mutuality itself…