Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
Nirmala offers Satsang in gratitude for the love and grace that flow
through his teachers, and as a celebration of the possibility, in
every moment, of recognizing the Truth of who we are. Nirmala
offers a unique vision and a gentle, compassionate approach,
which adds to this rich tradition of inquiry into the Truth of being.
Nirmala, I've got to tell you that your writings deeply resonated
with me. I think you're an amazing writer, and not just your
writings but the way you've organized yourself to share the
teachings, the commerce, the way you conduct it, if you will. I love
everything about the way you're doing your thing.
NIRMALA: Great. It's definitely been a slow evolution over the
last dozen years or so. So it's nice to hear that you're appreciating
it so much.
TRIP: Well one of the things that particularly strikes me about
your teaching is the nuance that you bring to subjects that are
often portrayed in black and white terms, for example, your take
on entitlement. You say on your website, "One school says one
must be completely dissolved as an ego to be enlightened and
another that everyone is already enlightened". But you have this
useful middle of the road perspective; can you share that with us?
NIRMALA: Yes, it's just really pointing to that the core of
enlightenment is awareness itself, is this awake present that we all
experience. But obviously even within a single person there's a
huge range of degree to which we experience that, how fully, how
completely, how much of that awareness, that presence is flowing,
is happening. And so again the essence of it is awakeness, and yet
we experience it either in a very constricted, limited, identified,
way, or we at other times experience an opening up of awareness,
and a softening, a filling in of the sense of self, of that sense of
being. And that goes all the way to a place where what we would
call ego is completely dissolved. But there's every place in
between, every possibility in between. It seems that awareness
itself is here to try it out every which way.
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