Stillness Within Year end Meetup featured the movie: Being Here – A Beginner’s Guide to Non-Duality

A dozen of us gathered for a year-end meetup, enjoying the film – Being Here – A Beginner’s Guide to Non-Duality.  As a follow up from film-makers’ production of “Who’s Driving the Dream Bus“, Being Here was released in fall of 2017, capturing an ambling drive through the UK countryside as filmmakers re-visit a few local characters who describe their own sense of what non-duality means (and, what it doesn’t mean)! The interviewer posed questions that many have asked:  Is there some knowable reason to pursue a non-dual type of knowing? Does it mean something? Is there a way one can get there?

The answers always seemed to circle back to a few key messages:

  • there isn’t any ‘one’ who can get this ‘truth’… it’s beyond any kind of mental concept;
  • it isn’t actually elusive – it’s right here to be felt within every moment of existence (it is existence after the filtres we tend to see through have fallen away);
  • there aren’t notable benefits to the individual to acquiring this type of knowledge – what Tony Parsons calls “The Open Secret“… (the ‘me’ frequently hopes for some gain or reward yet finding the absence of a ‘me’ within spacious awareness is the ultimate discovery)

The group also watched a Jetz TV interview with Mooji, followed by a guided meditation exploring facets of our own awareness. We also enjoyed some wonderful discussion and sharing of people’s inquiry journeys.

Krishnamurti once suggested that “From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.” This seems to speak to letting go of expectation and striving, relaxing into the current moment.  In my own experience, when ‘efforting’ and striving fall away, one can find something beautiful and mysterious in it’s wake!

Thanks so much for hosting us – people were very grateful for the gathering!