Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
help so many others. But I'm just curious. Before you became the
celibate monk, was there a time in your life where you were a
numb skull like me, where you were a little chippy, or you didn't
really, get it, or you're confused, or whatever, and then, I don't
know, can you reflect on that life journey, was there a time when
things weren't so sublime?
PETER FENNER: Yes, I could but I just notice how like when you
describe yourself like that, like you just did, that maybe that's not
necessary, because that's so easy for us to put ourselves in a box
and think, wow, I don't have what's needed, I don't have the
history. So it's important to realize that no history is needed to be
here in the purest and most ultimate way possible. We don't have
to have traveled a path, we don't have to have suffered X amount,
we don't have to have followed certain teachings, because we're
just talking about being in our natural state in this moment, free of
concerns about the past and the future.
TRIP: Well thank you for that, but if I want to really lay myself
down on the couch, this is what I'll say, and maybe you can… my
own self perception is perhaps negatively conditioned by an idea
that because I don't abide in unconditioned awareness with nearly
the consistently that you do, that this somehow then creates a
hierarchical relationship in my mind between power relative
peace.
PETER FENNER: Yes, but this is not like a competition or to get
more out of it. Because you can't rest here, we can't be here, we're
thinking in it about those terms. It's just a slow process of
reconditioning our minds so that we can rest here more frequently
that we can make the journey back here when we feel that we've
lost it, even though that we haven't, we feel that that's happening,
then we can make the journey back here more easily, less effort,
more automatically. So it's just a slow process of cultivation over
the years. So in five years' time, wow, I do have more access, this
is really wonderful, the river of life has broadened for me. And I
do spend more time in my natural state just resting as awareness,
and interacting with others from this state. And then 10 years, we
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