Living the Non-Dual Understanding
Living the Non-dual Understanding
Online Retreat with Burt Harding
February 26 – 28, 2021
Burt Harding from Vancouver has become an annual presenter at the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada in recent years. On this occasion, his three-day retreat was entitled “Living the Non-Dual Understanding” and was attended by 16 people, including Burt, his assistant Suzy and two KECC staff. Each session was ninety minutes in length and included a talk by Burt as well as time for questions from the participants and responses from Burt. Suzy was very helpful in encouraging Burt to expand upon his ideas and in asking relevant and useful questions about the material.
Burt began on Friday by sharing an “out-of-body” experience he had in 2007, when he felt a total of fear and a powerful presence of love. He added a couple of additional profound happenings that provided deep insights. He then spoke in more detail of the reality of who or what we really are – awareness – and of the need to examine and face the illusions of thought that tell us we are separate beings who are destined to die. Suffering is the result of believing we are separate entities and the resulting fear of our emptiness and impermanence. Fear is not wrong, he said, but is, on the contrary, a teacher pointing to love, our essential nature.
On the second day, Burt spoke of “the four unknown facts of reality” about which he wrote a book some time ago.
1/ Our true nature is an unbounded, perfect energy that contains all the wisdom of the ages. It came to Burt to call it “Emptiness”, but it is the opposite of a void.
2/ For humans our greatest fear is of emptiness, but when we go into it the fear dissolves and the apparent emptiness turns into love.
3/ All problems are healed by forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves and others brings us ever closer to our true nature as love.
4/ A key is to trust the “I Am” or Beingness and not to believe our thoughts which tell us there is something wrong or lacking. Discomfort arises when we identify with the personality. We can see it’s causes, say “Thank you” to it, and it will release.
Burt went into further aspects of the four facts on Saturday and then delved further into the subject of forgiveness on Sunday, when he spoke of the practicalities of forgiving ourselves and others and the need to do so with all the little judgements that arise in our daily lives. He related his points to some quotes by Krishnamurti about love and the quiet mind. Participants were able to ask questions and make comments when a desire arose to grasp Burt’s sometimes challenging ideas fully. It seemed that most were very satisfied with the retreat experience and grateful for the opportunity to engage in such a learning process.
