Serious Students of Personal Freedom, Clarity and Creativity

A study group for adults that want to keep growing personally and professionally. It is suitable for those who have already done a bit of work on themselves but and are now wondering what their true human potential might be. It is not complex but does require seriousness, attention and some clarity of purpose.

Although sincerity, reading, and personal contemplation will add much to what the student obtains -it is not all seriousness nor particularily *book focused*.

The leader is a nationally known teacher who lives locally. Key source materials come from cognitive neuroscience, Taoism (Tao de Ching) Buddhism, Sufism, Zen, mindfulness meditation , psychology, depth shamanism, and various modern sources: mind scientists, mystics, (especially J. Krishnamurt and the Dalai Lama-- perhaps Ken Wilber, Tolle, Ruiz, Castaneda, Pema Chodren and others.

Beginners are welcome also.

Below are illustrative excerpts of reading resource material - to give an idea of the subject matter and level of discussion, questions, and interaction.Note: this excerpt uses the word "emptiness" differently than it is traditionally used in Buddhism- here it is used as a word with nuances such as "loneliness")
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"You need an innocent mind, a fresh mind, a mind which is not cluttered up with the known. An innocent mind is a mind which functions in the unknown, and dying to the known is the door to the unknown. The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure the timeless, the eternal, that immensity which has no beginning and no end. But our minds are bound to the yardstick of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and with that yardstick we try to inquire into the unknown, to measure that which is not measurable. And, when we try to measure something which is not measurable, we only get caught in words.

So, it is only a mind that has listened to and understood the challenge of death - it is only such a mind that can die to its own miseries and therefore be in a state of innocency. And, from that state of innocency, there is a totally different action altogether. Such action is always in the present; it is the active present....Only the mind that lives completely in the silence of the active present is open to receive the unknowable, and it is only such a mind that can bring about a new world because only such a mind is in a state of creation".

Collected Works, Vol. XI - 368

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"I think most of us are aware - perhaps only rarely since most of us are so terribly occupied and active - but I think we are aware, sometimes, that the mind is empty. And, being aware, we are afraid of that emptiness. We have never inquired into that state of emptiness, we have never gone into it deeply, profoundly; we are afraid, and so we wander away from it. We have given it a name, we say it is 'empty,' it is 'terrible,' it is 'painful'; and that very giving it a name has already created a reaction in the mind, a fear, an avoidance, a running away.
Now, can the mind stop running away, and not give it a name, not give it the significance of a word such as empty about which we have memories of pleasure and pain? Can we look at it, can the mind be aware of that emptiness without naming it, without running away from it, without judging it, but just be with it? Because, then, that is the mind. Then there is not an observer looking at it; there is no censor who condemns it; there is only that state of emptiness with which we are all really quite familiar but which we are all avoiding, trying to fill it with activity, with worship, with prayer, with knowledge, with every form of illusion and excitement. But when all the excitement, illusion, fear, running away stops, and you are no longer giving it a name and thereby condemning it, is the observer different then from the thing which is observed? Surely, by giving it a name, by condemning it, the mind has created a censor, an observer, outside of itself. But when the mind does
not give it a term, a name, condemn it, judge it, then there is no observer, only a state of that thing we have called emptiness".

J. Krishnamurti Collected Works, Vol. IX - 23

Initial recommended reading (if you are so inclined): J. Krishnamurti THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM