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 You are invited to participate in a two year course in philosophic life, facilitated by Avery.
SCHEDULE of SEMINARS:
1. Way of Philosophy: Jan –May 2010
2. Consciousness as a Human: May-Aug 2010
3. You Create Your World: Sept -Dec 2010
4. Our Place in the Cosmos : Jan –May 2011
5. Reality and Realization: May-Aug 2011
6. Philosophic Life: Sept -Dec 2011
The course will have five components:
1. Seminars
2. Booklets and books to read
3. Edited audio recording of each weekend
4. Online readings and discussion
5. Group and individual meditation
This course creates a safe and loving space for shared experiences and discussions which inspire us to continue our journey to awaken our deeper intelligence. With this foundation you can live your life more fully, and continue on your own unique journey toward awakening.
In six weekend seminars, spread over two years, we will learn basic concepts useful for viewing our experience, practice inquiry and meditation, and gain inspiration for our quest.
At the end of each seminar you will get a booklet with readings for study and reflection in the next four months, contents of which form the basis for the following seminar. These booklets will include excerpts from The Wisdom of the Overself and The Notebooks of Paul Brunton; I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj; transcripts of classes with Anthony Damiani; and others. Readings from the following books will also be recommended: Standing in Your Own Way; Living Wisdom by Anthony Damiani; Perspectives and The Quest of the Overself by Paul Brunton, and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Within one month after each seminar you will get an edited audio recording of the previous weekend you can listen to as review.
Between sessions there will be online readings, as well as a discussion forum including participants in the USA and Sweden who are taking a parallel course. [Once a month on Sunday afternoon we offer a group meditation.] You will also make a commitment to your own regular meditations. We encourage you to keep a journal.
SEMINAR DETAILS
1. WAY OF PHILOSOPHY
In our first seminar we lay out the basis for the journey toward awakening. We start where we are, and also assume that the infinite is present here and now. We discuss the goal of spiritual philosophy, and introduce essential practices which will continue throughout the course. We examine the basics for practice: earnestness, openness, detachment, right thinking and longing for truth leading to stillness and insight. We discuss spiritual philosophy in terms of the rhythms of our journey-- the complementary nature of long and short path, love and wisdom. We look at the three-fold path of freedom, truth and love.“The central point of the quest is opening the ego’s inner heart to the Overself.” Paul Brunton
CLICK HERE FOR READINGS
2. CONSCIOUSNESS APPEARING AS A HUMAN
All of us say I, it is the most personal word, yet we don’t know what it stands for. When you don’t know what you are you go about making an image self, identifying with it, clinging to it, defending it and seeking fulfillment outside. In seeking to unmask the false self we inquire into its nature, and confront the many perspectives of ego-I-person. In seeking the self we also need to trace consciousness through understanding and experience. We learn how to look deeply into the mind by which we know the world. This seminar begins our inquiry into the nature of the Self. “On the short path we learn to take advantage of the Overself’s ever present offer of grace.” Paul Brunton
3. YOU CREATE YOUR WORLD
This seminar takes us on further steps to ultimate truth, by questioning our beliefs in a separate, outside material world of things. We begin with the question: “what do we really know of an external world.” We find that “what we know depends on how we know.” And so we ask “how can we know the mind by which we know the world.” Knowing has a whole spectrum from habitual to reason to intuition to insight. We learn to think deeply, as well as putting thinking aside in stillness. Discussion, shared experience and meditation help shift our view of the world “inside out.” This new perspective can profoundly open our lives—if we allow it to. “Thought has imprisoned us, thought can release us… rightly thinking yourself immortal you become immortal.” Paul Brunton
4. OUR PLACE IN THE COSMOS
In this seminar we explore the deeper meaning of our relation to the world as a school for the soul--a particle of the infinite comes to this universal intelligence/energy of the World-Idea to get educated. Every moment we are transforming and being transformed, and every moment, whatever we experience is arising from the background of vast awareness, space and intelligence. Both karma and grace will draw out the potential in each of us, ripen us, align us, and bring us to awakening. We learn ways of dissolving obstacles to remembering and recognizing the divine presence.“You are becoming Wisdom” Anthony Damiani
5. ULTIMATE REALITY AND REALIZATION
In this weekend we explore the meaning of ultimate reality and realization. We take inspiration from the lives of those great beings who have awakened and realized their non personal nature. In the context of these sages, we look into phases of insight and enlightenment. We paint a big metaphysical picture of the ultimate paradoxical of reality as both passive and active, and how we participate in it. “Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences,and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream,and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.” Rumi
6. PHILOSOPHIC LIFE:
The concluding seminar will be a culmination of our previous work, and its contents will be guided by questions and experiences of the participants. “Wisdom says: I am nothing, Love says: I am everything, between these we live.” Nisargadatta Maharaj |