[meditation bell]
Jon Bernie:  You know, I was thinking, um,
maybe we should rename this "The Monday Night Laboratory."
You could all be mad scientists.
You know, experimenting.
And continually making new discoveries.
Ironically we want to
know, because we think that's going to make us happy.
But...
happiness is really the realm of not-knowing.
When something is known, it's already a concept -- it becomes a concept.
It becomes a thought.
Or a belief, or something like that. A conclusion.
So how can we live, how can we be here
without interfering with reality?
Actually, rather, how can we be here so that we're
intimate with reality.
So that the so-called barrier of me and my experience
dissolves.
That's what we refer to as awakening.
When the separation of me and my experience dissolves. At least for a moment.
Then there's a moment of brightness, or love, or
connection, or peace.
Insight.
There are infinite numbers of ways to describe
awakening to this reality right now.
Every person who discovers it has their own unique poetry, usually.
So it's not about fitting your experience or your
perception to someone else's poetry.
But really finding it yourself.
And not saying, "Oh, was it like Bozo the Clown's awakening?"
You know, the guy with the squeaky nose and big feet?
He looks happy.
No, it's just allowing all layers to just
unwind and unravel and
melt away.
So we just
bring ourselves here into this
loving laboratory
and add a dash of compassion and
maybe a few gallons of patience, and see what happens.
And then turn on flame of attention.
So we kind of simmer here, in Presence, in awareness.
It's like a fertile ground that
brings forth life.
I was thinking about a book that I read in college
called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas Kuhn.
I don't know if you read it but, I think he was a professor at Stanford if I remember correctly.
And he coined the word "paradigm" I believe.
It became popular after that book.
And what was so interesting for me
and still is actually
and I think useful for us, is that
basically all the great scientific
discoveries
were made by people who could
who didn't have a preconceived--
who didn't believe the current
paradigm.
They weren't programmed into the current
paradigm.
They weren't in the mass trance of belief.
But because of that they could actually see
the anomaly in the paradigm.  That which was,
"Wait a minute! This doesn't fit!"
And then made a discovery.
The greatest discoveries [were by] people who could see the anomaly
That's another way -- a fancy way -- of saying
question your beliefs.
Question what you think is
enlightenment,
what you think is freedom -- if you have
concepts about those things.
You probably don't have any do you? [laughter]
You haven't read anything about it have you?
Good.
We want to reverse the
cycle of indoctrination
and actually become
discoverers.
We wanna see the anomaly in our
own paradigm, so we can break through.
Because that's what awakening is:
when the paradigm cracks.
