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Peter
ParticipantThe valley spirt never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.The mystery, the Door of the Woman
is the root of earth and heaven.Forever this endures, forever.
and all its uses are easy â Tao Te ChingA Breath held in the Stillness
In the hush before the breath, where no wind stirs, no word is said,
the valley waits, void not empty, full of becoming.From silence, the question rises, a cry from morning earth.
No answer comes, only quiet spinning in stillness.The seeker kneels, aching for comfort, but finds only the hush.
Until the hush becomes the comfort, questions held, the ache resolves.Nothing is born here, yet all things arise.
Nothing dies here, yet all things return.Held in the stillness, the world turns without effort.
Held in the silence, the heart remembers its source.Forever this endures. Forever it flows.
And all its uses are easy.Peter
ParticipantHi Anita
Thank you for your beautiful question and for the affection woven into it.
Yes, you are included.
When I speak of warmth and openness, itâs not a distant gaze. Itâs the kind that softens when I read your words, that feels the gentle tug of affection when you share your heart. Itâs spacious, but not in a way that excludes the personal. Itâs spacious because it can hold the personal without clinging.
Iâve hesitated to use the word âloveâ because of its many layer, some tender, some tangled. But what I feel when I read your message is something like love. Not the kind that possesses or defines, but the kind that listens, smiles, and stays.
Youâre not missing the point of wisdom or non-duality. When you reach out to others with compassion your living it. When the living truth meets a face, a name, a smile, words on a screen… it doesnât dissolve them. It embraces them, gently, without grasping.
Peter
ParticipantHi Anita
On a side note, I judge wisdom traditions for not being clear and straightforward. If they were clear and straightforward, they wouldnât be so easy to misinterpret..
I don’t disagree, however the inner monk wants me to point out that one the teaching are realized they are straightforward. ‘We work for which no work is required’.
Wisdom traditions carry the challenge of using language to speak about what ultimately canât be named. They point beyond concepts toward direct experience. Thatâs tricky, because the moment we use words, we enter the realm of duality, this vs. that, subject vs. object.
From childhood, we learn to use words to survive and belong, a development rooted in the lower chakras (1â3), which focus on navigating the external world (includes religious training). Language is essential, but it replaces direct experience with symbols. Over time, we forget what we once knew before words: that life is a single, continuous unfolding, not a set of opposites.
In Jungian psychology, the final stage of individuation is to come to terms with the problem of opposites, the tension of duality. Jung emphasized the heart chakra as the heartâs way of knowing doesnât speak in definitions, but in images, stories, and felt experience. The heart holds paradox rather than resolving it allowing our judgments to loosen.
When wisdom traditions become institutions, they often forget that the path is not the destination. Hence those provocative sayings: âIf you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,â or âOne must lose God to find G_d.â Such teachings are reminders that clinging to the form of wisdom can obscure its living truth.
At their best, when we hold language lightly, wisdom traditions invite us into a different way of seeing one that canât be reduced to a formula. Thatâs why they often speak in metaphor, myth, and paradox: not to confuse, but to awaken us to the experience itself.
Beyond institutional constructs, these teachings donât actually ask for belief, they invite participation. Theyâre not doctrines to accept, but mirrors reflecting us back into direct awareness.
For fun: find the simplicity with the Ask that we “love God completely and to love your neighbor as yourself” and merge it to Buddhist teachings. Play with the word ‘God’ as a noun, and then as a symbol/verb and notice how everything changes.
Peter
ParticipantP.S. Iâd also argue that the moment a thought arises and gets translated into language, weâre already judging, measuring, dividing, labeling. So again, youâre right: itâs not possible not to judge. Thatâs why itâs so important to be conscious of what we think and say⊠and to keep training that puppy.
Peter
ParticipantHi Anita
âThereâs method to the madness when the wisdom traditions warn us not to judge. The truth is, weâre really not that great at it.â- maybe wisdom traditions would be wiser recommend less judging rather than no judging at all..?
I mean, what I read comes across as Thou Shall Not Judge! The hyena in me cannot not judge for long, can yours?
Youâre right wisdom traditions, especially when codified, are often interpreted as saying âDo not judge.â But I think thatâs a misreading. Look closer, and itâs less âThou shalt not judgeâ and more âJudge with care.â as Jesus warns, âJudge not, lest ye be judged,â and then goes on to teach how to judge with humility and self-awareness. That lands in a similar space to what youâre pointing toward.
For me, this aligns with the call to love our neighbors as ourselves. Through the lens of nonduality, everything is connected. So when we judge our neighbors, weâre also judging and revealing ourselves.
As for the hyena: if weâre speaking in Freudian terms, that sounds like the Id. But the Id doesnât judge, it wants, it craves. Itâs the Ego that judges, and the Superego that moralizes. The hyena doesnât weigh morality; it just pounces.
Personally, I donât see my Id as a hyena. I think of it more like a Labrador Retriever â enthusiastic, loyal, and occasionally getting itself into trouble. But judgment? Thatâs the job of the inner monk, not the inner puppy. And the puppy? It can be house trained đ
Peter
ParticipantHi Anita
âSo, we humans cannot not judge at allâbut we can soften our judgment. Personally, I do need to judge less often, way less. I am opening to this.â
Thereâs method to the madness when the wisdom traditions warn us not to judge. The truth is, weâre really not that great at it. đ
Jamesâs seed points past measurement, labeling, or even thought itself. That kind of presence is possible, which you may have touched, even if just for a moment, through meditation or contemplation. I feel its a gift, not something we grasp or will, but something we receive.
In Joseph Campbellâs view, the heart chakra represents a turning point in the journey of awareness. Itâs living from a consciousness that is fully engaged with life, yet no longer ruled by fear or grasping. So I agree with Jung that living from the heart chakra is a consciousness we all should strive towards for a balanced, healthy sense of self.
If the root chakra is the will to survive, the sacral chakra the will to pleasure, and the solar plexus the will to power, then the heart chakra is the will to love, not as sentiment, but as spacious presence. Itâs the place where the ego begins to loosen and the soul begins to speak. Itâs where duality begins to dissolve, not by force, but through love.
Living from the heart doesnât mean escaping life, it means embracing it with open hands. Itâs where we notice our judgments and soften them. Where we remain engaged, but no longer entangled. Itâs the beginning of the return to presence. And just maybe the seed James planted takes root.
Peter
ParticipantIts not always noticed but language has a huge role when it comes to duality and often creates much of our suffering. The “fall” into ego consciousness can’t be separated from language leaving me to wonder if language is the egoâs or âLifeâ way of trying to explain and know itself.
Language is powerful, but it relies on duality, it needs opposites to make meaning. We say âlightâ because we know âdark.â We say âmeâ because we know âyou.â In this way, language itself is born from the awakened awareness of separation and complicated things further. The moment we speak, have a thought, we divide and exit any pure non-dual state.
Think of the experience of AUM, surrounded by silence, the sound of Life itself, rising and returning to stillness. The rhythm of being. The breath of creation.
Contemplative traditions honor silence because silence remembers what came before words. It touches the unity that existed before we began to name and divide. God and silence⊠interconnected?
Last night I watched a show about a priest who left the Church after a tragedy. He had prayed and pleaded, but Godâs response was silence. He judged silence as absence, as a non-response.
Today I wonder if the Priest understood… That perhaps silence was the only place God could still be found, not to give answers, but to offer a return to the whole… Beyond the noise of certainty. Beyond the language of explanation.
Maybe silence isnât what remains after tragedy, itâs what holds it and us?Peter
ParticipantIn Buddhism, the rise of the chakras can be seen as a journey of unfolding awareness. The lower chakras are rooted in survival and identity, much like the hyenas who act from instinct. But as awareness rises, so does the capacity to witness, to hold paradox, to rest in silence. The higher chakras invite us into spaciousness, into the possibility of seeing without dividing, knowing without naming.
Here I note that Jung, Buddha, and shamanism suggest that the heart center as a place to engage with life for most people. The place most of us are currently engaged at.
The rise of the chakras is a journey from survival and identity to spaciousness and unity. Each chakra a change in a relationship of âconsciousnessâ. The seed James has been planting points to the seventh chakra. The seventh chakra, at the crown, is the point where the self dissolves into the whole, where duality dissolves.
Joseph Campbell uses the metaphor of the moth who doesnât just admire the flame, but merges with it, “dies” to it. This is the image of the seventh chakra: the merging of the subjective and the objective, the end of the illusion that they were ever separate. Itâs not annihilation, itâs union. The flame doesnât destroy the moth; it completes it.
At this level, there is no longer duality, no âmeâ and âyou,â âinsideâ and âoutside.â There is only the dance of being, the silent knowing that all things arise from the same source and return to it. Language falls away here, not because itâs wrong, but because itâs no longer needed. What remains is presence, pure, unmeasured, whole.
Peter
ParticipantHi Anita
I’ll try to answer the question simply. (you should see my initial response as I tried to sort though my thoughts which I may share after) đ
Imagine youâre a child playing with building blocks. At first, thereâs just the blocks and the joy of playing. But then, you start sorting them: red blocks here, blue blocks there. You say, âThis one is mine,â and âThat one is not.â, “This one I like”, This one I don’t” Thatâs the moment the mind begins to divide into âmeâ and ânot me,â âgoodâ and âbad,â âusâ and âthem.â
Or imagine youâre a child standing in front of a mirror. At first you donât know the difference between you and your reflection. You just see movement, light, presence. But as you grow, you learn to say âmeâ and ânot me.â Thatâs the beginning of separation, of seeing yourself as one thing, and everything else as something else.
Hyenas, like you said, act from instinct. They havenât âfallenâ into consciousness. They flow with life as it is, responding from instinct protecting their space and chase away others. Thatâs nature doing its job. Life being Life. But humans have something extra: we can watch our thoughts. We can notice when weâre sorting the blocks too tightly, or when weâre afraid of a block just because itâs different.
Humans have a special kind of awareness. We think we name, we measure. We say âthis is right,â âthat is wrong,â âyou are different from me.â This kind of thinking, what some call ego-consciousness is duality which helps us build language, culture, and meaning. But it also creates division and suffering. It can make us feel separate, alone, or afraid.
Non-duality doesnât mean pretending everything is the same. It means remembering that before we started dividing the world into pieces, we were part of something whole. Itâs like looking at a forest and seeing not just trees, but the life that connects them all and we are part of that All.
Mystics and contemplatives say that silence helps us remember this wholeness. Not because our thoughts our words are bad, but because silence touches what came before words, the deep unity beneath all our naming. In that light compassion naturally arisen.
So what do we do with this? We donât need to undo nature or stop thinking. But we can soften our judgments. We can live with more presence. We can see others not as ânot me,â but as part of the same light, the same life.
At the deepest level, thereâs no âmeâ and âyou,â no âinsideâ and âoutside.â Just the dance of being.
Peter
ParticipantThe story of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is traditionally seen as the origin of sin where disobedience ruptured humanityâs innocence. But mystics read it differently. They see it not as a moral failure, but as the birth of duality: the moment consciousness split into opposites, good and evil, right and wrong, self and other.
In this view, the âfallâ wasnât into sin, but into ego. Into the mindâs habit of dividing and naming, of grasping and judging. It was the loss of unity with the divine, replaced by the illusion of separation. Sadly, in my opinion, the traditional view holds the most sway and maybe why law is so often mistaken for love, discipline for devotion and righteousness for relationship. But that may be unkind…
Peter
ParticipantHi Tee,
I sense weâre landing in the same space, even if weâre using different language to get there. That said, when I read your statement -âGetting rid of all thought is not the goal. Getting rid of wrong thoughtâŠâ the word âwrongâ stood out. For me, it introduces a kind of tension, a grasping that clings, rather than the spaciousness that invites a more fluid relationship with thought.As you noted, in Zen the goal isnât to eliminate thought, though it also warns against categorizing thought as ârightâ or âwrongâ in a moralistic or dualistic way. Itâs the very act of labeling, of dividing, that often deepens suffering. Not because the thought itself is inherently problematic, but because of how we hold or reject it.
Iâm reminded of the Genesis story where the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is often interpreted as granting divine clarity about what is good or evil. But âknowledge ofâ is not the same as âknowing what is.â That subtle difference matters (or should more then it tends to). In reaching for that knowledge, we stepped into separation, mistaking the capacity to judge for the wisdom to know. One is a burden; the other, a mystery that unfolds in relationship, in presence, in humility.
For me, and as you suggest, the invitation isnât to get rid of thought, especially as a act of will, but to hold thoughts lightly creating flow and space for the ‘unknown’ to arise…
Peter
ParticipantHi James
I feel the essence of what you’re pointing to: when thoughts are no longer clung to, they lose their grip on identity and simply become part of the body’s functioning, like breath or heartbeat. In that spaciousness, what remains is not a thing, but a presence. A stillness.
Your question âIf there is no attachment to thoughts, what remains?â feels like a koan which invites not an answer, but a direct seeing. Here I feel maybe where the rhythm of breath comes in. Iâve been exploring a gentler approach, where instead of a dramatic psychological death, thereâs an invitation to dance, a soft surrender woven into each inhale and exhale – Life, Death woven within the Eternal. In that rhythm, silence returns. And in that silence, the unknown becomes accessible.
The challenge with any realization is that the moment realization of a unknown arises, the space shifts. Weâre no longer in the unknown, no longer without thought, weâve named it, grasped it, and the rhythm continues. Itâs like the tide: knowing, unknowing, knowing again. Not a final death, but a continual “dying” to what we think we know.
Itâs hard to explain, but maybe itâs not meant to be explained. Maybe itâs meant to be lived?
I note that in Buddhism, the path to full enlightenment nirvana is often framed as a monastic pursuit and I wonder if this isnât a point of departure in the discussion?
The Buddha offered distinct teachings for laypeople, emphasizing ethical living, mindfulness, and a gradual awakening of the heart. While liberation remains the ultimate aim, the path for householders, those whose lives unfold within the messiness of daily engagement often centers on integration rather than transcendence. The invitation is not to bypass life, but to meet it skillfully, with presence and compassion.
Peter
ParticipantBeautifully said Thomas and as always Tee a great break down though I might gently push back on the idea that âthe answer should always be hope, love, focusing on the positive.â In my experience, such an approach often turns back on itself, creating the very suffering we seek to release or allow to die.
The act of dying James speaks of I think points to something different: allowing space in our narratives to remain empty. Not rushing to fill the gap with positivity or certainty, but letting go of the compulsion to replace one story with another. Sometimes, the most compassionate move for ourselves is to leave room for silence, for unknowing because that space can become the doorway to freedom from the known, and to the joy of simply being.
In that light I agree with James though I might soften the intensity.
My observation and experience is that the âdeathâ James speaks of isnât a one-time event or a distant threshold, itâs a reality available in each breath. To die inwardly is to release the illusion of permanence and step into the eternal present, where life is not something to possess or defend but something to participate in. In that sense, death becomes renewal, a doorway to freedom from the known, as Krishnamurti says, and to the joy of simply being. And in that timeless stillness is where Campbellâs words echo: âThat which you are was never born and will never die.â
At first, Krishnamurtiâs call to âdie nowâ and Campbellâs assurance that âyou were never born and will never dieâ might sound like opposites. But they speak to different layers of reality. Krishnamurti addresses the psychological self, the bundle of desires, fears, hopes and stories we cling to. That must die for freedom to emerge. Campbell points to the essential being beneath those layers, the ground of existence that is timeless. That never dies because it was never born. So, the paradox resolves: what dies is the illusion, not the essence. And in letting go of the illusion, we awaken to the eternal present Campbell describes.
Perhaps the truth lives in the tension between these voices. To die psychologically is not to annihilate life but to awaken to its depth. And when we see that eternity is woven into the present, death becomes less a demand and more a rhythm, a letting go that happens moment by moment, breath by breath. In that rhythm, even the scent of roses changes, because there is no âyouâ smelling them, only life itself, playing, breathing, being.
Peter
ParticipantHi Anita
it takes courage to revisit situations that didnât go the way we hoped. I might challenge your use of labeling language of bad and good and offer a reframing: one moment doesnât define who you are. Youâre not a âbadâ or âgoodâ person, youâre a human being who made a mistake and is learning from it.Seen through that lens, you sidestep common thinking traps like labeling, all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, and emotional reasoning. And you give yourself a little more space.
Peter
ParticipantHi Everyone
âWhen you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die.â – Campbell
âIf you think youâve nailed down the self, youâve missed the joke. The self is the dance, not the dancer.â â Watts
Both Campbell and Watts point to the same insight through different lenses. Campbell reminds us that eternity is not a distant realm or something that begins after death, it is a dimension of the present moment, a quality of being that reveals our essence as timeless: never truly born, never truly dying.
Watts, with his playful metaphysics, frames life as a cosmic game of hide-and-seek, where the universe forgets this truth in order to rediscover it through us. Forgetting means identifying with the separate self, bound by time and mortality; remembering is awakening to the dance, the realization that the self is not the dancer but the dance itself. In this way, both voices invite us to see that eternity, which is timeless and not a measurement, is here and now, and the game is not about escape but rediscovery.
For fun I thought Iâd have Campbell and Watts join the dialog
Setting: A dimly lit circular room with mirrored walls. Four chairs face each other. A candle flickers at the center. The air hums with quiet tension and curiosity.
CHARACTERS:
Ariadne â poetic, intuitive, speaks in metaphors and fluid language
Theo â analytical, precise, favors definitions and logical clarity
Campbell â mythic, calm, speaks in archetypes and timeless truths
Watts â playful, irreverent, dances with paradox and cosmic humorAriadne: The self is a shimmer, a ripple in the stream. Try to grasp it, and it slips through your fingers. We are illusions dreaming of permanence.
Theo: Illusion implies something false. If we are to speak meaningfully, we must define what we mean by âself.â Is it consciousness? Memory? Identity?
Watts: Oh, definitions! Lovely toys. But donât mistake the menu for the meal. The self is a role in the cosmic play. Youâre not a noun, youâre a verb. You are the universe experiencing itself.
Theo: Thatâs poetic, but dangerously vague. If everything is everything, then nothing is anything. We need boundaries to think, to speak, to be.
Campbell: Boundaries are the bones of myth. But the truth lies beyond them. That which you are was never born and will never die. The heroâs journey begins with identity and ends in transcendence.
Ariadne: So, the game is to forget and then remember. To lose the self in the labyrinth and find it again in the center.
Watts: Exactly! And the punchline is there was never a labyrinth. Just the dance. Just the music. You took the game seriously, and thatâs the joke.
Theo: So, all this⊠these realizations, these awakenings⊠theyâre just… games?
Campbell: Yes. But sacred games. The myths we live by are not lies; they are metaphors pointing to truths too vast for logic.
Watts: And the best part? You donât have to win. You just have to play.Together, Campbell and Watts whisper: âEternity is not later. Itâs now.â – âYou are the universe pretending to be a person.â – let us hold these words lightly.
Living isnât about slaying dragons or finding treasure. Itâs about waking up to the fact that you were never separate from the treasure to begin with. That the game was always rigged in favor of joy, if only we stop trying to win and start playing.
Today, I wonder what if. What if I try to live as if I were never born and will never die. What if… I dance. I play. I remember.
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