Nonduality video w/T. Freke, G. Weber, L. Cairnes

This YouTube video features Tim Freke, Gary Weber, Lisa Cairnes, w/Jeff Warren as moderator. Each holds a unique perspective on nondual awareness. I relate strongly to Tim Freke’s experience of knowing a detached, expansive universal love AND a deepening of experience/intensity on the personal level. Like Freke, I seem to shift back and forth between the two. I think both are useful and equally fascinating, and also appreciate his parenting views.

I increasingly experience what Lisa describes as a disconnection from storylines, but doubt I’ll achieve her level of detachment. What she experiences is parallel to Gary Weber’s freedom from thoughts, but distinctly different.

Enjoy and don’t be shy about sharing thoughts.

Just watched it. I had never heard of Tim Freke or Lisa Cairnes before. She and Gary Weber came across as a couple of space cadets, just watching them onscreen, although he was a lot more lucid than she was. Tim and Brad looked more like normal human beings. In any case, I ended up not really relating to Tim's point of view because he was so vague about everything. I see the others as consistent and in that sense understandable. If I were a beginner just looking on, though, I wouldn't want to go there.

Gary made sense to me when he said that it would be difficult for someone having an awakening at the "wrong" time, not ready for it. That sounds like me immediately following stream entry. I don't know how anyone can be prepared for it, though. Even Gary said it wasn't what he had imagined.

Thanks for posting this. It was interesting to watch.

A really intriguing interview - Jeff really had his work cut out for him! I watched Lisa on BATGAP and she was alot more intelligable there. I think she has a Zen background followed by Advaita kind of stuff. She is uncompromising in being her experience and for that I have a lot of respect for her - not real fun for folks not there yet though. I also wonder why she agreed to an interview if she clearly saw no point in the whole premise of an interview. Very interesting though and I found her points quite instructive ( I wonder how Jeff would have handled the Buddha ) Although he had a completely different style, Tim is clearly very extroverted, talked alot but like Laurel, I was not really any wiser after it. Gary looked like he had been pulled of a construction job and needed to get back I hope that he has a broader story with his students - he has used the same points/examples almost verbatum every medium I have seen him in (Book, Video, Interviews etc). Having said all that (and feeling overly critical now) I think it was a great way to tease out different perspectives on awakening on a number of levels conscious and otherwise. It does highlight the point that the state of being awake seems as diverse as the 'dream world' we currently exist in and that a key challenge for more awakened folk is learning how to live and be of benefit to all as they move in and out of the 2 states. Big topic that could be explored more I think - by people far more experienced in such matters than I.

Rod wrote: I also wonder why she agreed to an interview if she clearly saw no point in the whole premise of an interview.

That's one of the big criticisms mounted of the Neo-Advaita people - if there is nothing to be done and all seeking is counter-productive, why teach at all?

I spoke with Jeff about this today. He said Vince Horn watched the interview and commented that he sees Gary and Lisa as having gone up the mountain and each is now slowly exploring a remote side path. They have yet to come back down and integrate data gleaned from a return. Tim, on the other hand, zipped up and back rather quickly on a main route. Give him time, and his thinking will be more like the others, Vince suggested.

I haven't had the time to watch this yet, though I intend to, but I love this comment on youtube: "Tim Freke reminds me that I'm not nearly as enlightened as I like to think I am, because he irritates the living shit out of me."

One thing I'll say, and it's that the combination of the three of them is a riot. Jeff has my sympathies.

Tim seems like a really "big-gesture" guy, the extrovert (even extreme extrovert) of the group. And being paired up with a couple of much more inward folks seemed to impel him to ramp it up further, as if SOMEONE had to bring some energy to the discussion.

I don't agree with Vince that the other two represent something more "in-depth" or advanced, though. Or that that's where anyone else is inevitably going.

nadav wrote: I haven't had the time to watch this yet, though I intend to, but I love this comment on youtube: "Tim Freke reminds me that I'm not nearly as enlightened as I like to think I am, because he irritates the living shit out of me."

Ajahn Brahm:

In my fourth Rains Retreat I was pulling out all the stops. Word had come to Thailand that Chithurst House had been bought, a Sangha was being established in England and they needed more bhikkhus. This would be a great time to become enlightened. I was in a very quiet monastery. My meditation practice was in high gear. All the omens were favorable. Then it happened!

Walking on my meditation path one evening, my mind already calm from many hours of sitting, I suddenly understood the cause of all problems and my heart immediately felt the joy of release. All around seemed brilliant. Bliss filled my whole being. Energy and clarity were there in abundance. Though it was late at night I sat in meditation perfectly mindful, perfectly still. Then I lay down to rest, sleeping oh-so-lightly for just a few hours. I rose at 3 a. m. and was first in the grass Meeting Hall for the morning meditation. I sat through until dawn as if without effort and without the slightest drowsiness. That was it! It was immeasurable joy being enlightened. Pity it didn't last long.

The monastery where this happened was very poor and the food was very coarse. It was the sort of North-Eastern Thai monastery where you were happy to eat just one meal a day - facing such an ordeal twice in one day being beyond the pale! The morning after my experience of 'release', though, the fare was more reasonable. Along with the staple 'rotten-fish curry', which is actually made from stewing small fish which have been kept most unhygienically until they go 'off, there was a saucepan of pork curry. That day even the Thai abbot visibly reacted at the sight of the reeking fish stew and took a whopping big helping from the pot of pork curry. I didn't mind; I was second in line and there was plenty left for me. However, the pot of pork never reached me. Instead, the abbot poured what was left of the pork curry into the mess of rotten fish stew and stirred it all up saying that it all gets mixed up in the stomach anyway. I was incensed! Of all the hypocrites! he really thought that, then why didn't he mix the curries before he took out his share? I peered angrily into the saucepan he handed me - rotten smelly pieces of rubbery fish swimming alongside my delicious pork- my one lucky meal ruined. Oooh, that abbot, was I mad at him! Was I angry!

Then a thought struck me with a depressing thud, or rather a sickening squelch - maybe I wasn't enlightened at all. Enlightened beings aren't supposed to get angry. Arahants don't care if they eat putrid fish or delicious pork. I had to admit I was angry – therefore I had to own up that I wasn't enlightened. What a letdown. Utterly depressed, I scooped a ladle of rotten fish cum pork into my bowl. I was too disappointed to notice the taste of what I ate that day.

Thanks for posting this, Colleayn. I've been reading the comments here over the last few day, but just now watched it. Some thoughts off the top...

Very much identified with Tim's shifting back and forth of perspectives, also with "what do you tell your kids?"

Gary seemed very much the same as I've seen/heard him before. I can intellectually connect with him, but the emotional connection is harder to establish.

I get a wonderful sense of vulnerability listening to Lisa, and can also identify with how she described the dropping of story lines, it's all stories, one story can be just as true as another. Of the three, I seemed to get the strongest connection to her.

"Trees are way cool." -Gary Weber

OK, I found Lisa pretty much insufferable. Yes, storylines have no absolute reality, and this can't be described, but you're on a panel at a freaking conference. For me, the recognition that "one story can be just as true as another," as Andy put it, makes it fun to tell them and challenge them, etc.

Interesting how all three were pretty much stuck in the same role throughout the whole thing. Lisa with her forgetful unknowingness and nervous-seeming laughter, Tim with his grandiloquent (hey, I'm using a new word in this ephemeral, arbitrary narrative!) *this* and *THAT* spiel, and Gary with his dry scientific matter of fact style telling the same stories. Not demeaning the depths of their realization, just what I got from the presentation.

Personality seems to carry over through awakening? At least among people I've come into contact with it doesn't seem to change ones basic tendencies to be intellectual or ditzy, goofy or serious, silly or somber, artsy or square, etc.

What everyone else said.

Some very stylized ways of sitting in chairs.