Tonight I led a WIE salon at the William Penn House on Capitol Hill in DC. It went well, not as high as when Robert H. leads them, but there's something about coming together in WIE's context that almost automatically brings people into a higher state from the start. We read Andrew Cohen's dialogue with Ken Wilber that spoke about people being in a higher state just because they showed up on retreat with Andrew, and this salon was kind of a mini version of that. There was a trust between us from the very beginning and the evening continued from there. The attendance was about 13 people, but we were expecting a smaller turnout for this time of year and had a smaller venue, it had a good feel.

I feel we're really meeting a need in the contemporary soul with these events, people want to come together and meet in a higher truth beyond the sensitive self. That's actually what happened to a degree. We were exploring impersonal territory with a sense of seriousness and care that was significant.

I was in India last year at this time, I absolutely loved it and I want to go back again, despite transportation conditions like what you see below.

So I was thinking about my trip as I was walking through the Georgetown shops in Washington, DC this December, especially when I smelled the incense that brought everything right back to me. It was coming from a store nearby, so naturally I went in. They sold all sorts of garments and jewelry from India, run by three Indian people: a young woman, a young man and an old man. I spoke with the old man about my time in India and he proceeded to give a lecture on how to live the spiritual life. His advice was compelling, things like, "You can't take any of this with you, your job, your clothes, your wife or kids, your salary, none of it. All you can take is your meditation... so meditate. You can't take a good night's sleep with you, get up early and meditate. The movies and drink you consume at night stir up your consciousness and affect it all day the next day, so skip them, get up early and meditate, then work hard during the day." I asked him what time he gets up and he held up 3 fingers. I guess that meant 3 a.m.

What inspired me about it was his one-pointedness about enlightenment, which in this case I guess he equates with always being awake to the field or experience of meditation. But that he was calling for the renunciation of the world, right there in the middle of Georgetown, was awesome. I didn't speak too much about my ideas of embracing the world from the position of freedom that he was pointing to because I wanted to just listen... and I was about to be late for a rehearsal. :-)

This is one of my favorite songs, called Universe Communion--I love S.D.'s voice and musical style. My favorite part about this song is his pointing to a different way of knowing. I'm intrigued by the many faces that can have, including meditation, intuition, sensing energy in a room or relationship. "Scientific?" you ask. In a way... there are three steps (gleaned from Wilber):
1) perform the experiment or task as it is taught or described
2) be aware of the results
3) speak with others who have done the same thing to compare notes and learn from each other.

That is the scientific method as it pertains to any domain, whether in the physical realm or that of consciousness.

as part of his Evolutionary Enlightenment course, Jeff Carreira asked us to imagine what it's like to change our perspective from being a raisin in a muffin to being the whole muffin, even though it looks like we're just a raisin. By that he means, we usually feel like we're something other than the universe, that evolution and life is out there and we might be enveloped by it or are a part of it, but that we are not the thing itself. Switching the perspective so that one sees oneself first and foremost as the universe, as evolution itself is quite a dramatic thing, that's a big change of scenery. It's like the raisin identifying itself as the muffin.

Here's something else I was thinking about. We are composed of trillions of atoms. We ingest trillions more every day, through breathing, eating and drinking. Yet, do we know what it's like to be  an atom? What does it feel like or look like to actually be an atom. You would think we would have access to that kind of information, given that we're composed entirely of the things. So what's it like to be an atom? What about an electron? What is the life of your electrons like?