The approach here is nothing more complicated than talking and being silent and still. But we can choose a backdrop for that which invites a spirit of primordial possibility. The temple of sky-like mind is just a made up name. But it signifies something: it involves an intention for freedom over comfort and quick-fix problem-solving. And it invokes the energy and lineage of the non-dual traditions: Advaita Vedanta, Zen, Mahamudra. So here we encounter your inner life - at least in part - walking paths carved out by Papaji and Ramana, Padmasambhava and Dogen. All the ancestors and current teachers who live the deep dive of exploring what's real.
The focus here is freedom. Nothing short of that. What that looks like depends on you. We might discover a freedom in stepping outside of thought. And discovering in that a Ground of our Being that is innately joyful, radiant, peaceful - suffused with the ambrosial energy of the Elemental world. From that Ground, the freedom of stillness and rest - being less confined to grinding mind. Less caught up in lack. Less of centering the self around strategies of acquisition and expansion.
Or you might explore knowing that your true body is the whole universe. That even the feeling of “not enough” itself can be suffused with a kind of self-complete lush fullness. You might notice that any tight-wound knot of emotion with all its story and screaming misery is also comprised of sublime silence and stillness - a great open sky between the molecules of the knot. And then in that same tight and not-tight place: the play of the universe: destroying, creating, dancing - thunder and lightning and all the dishes clattering out of the cupboards and smashing on the floor, windows breaking. Every fixed position and illusion at the mercy of this unrelenting aliveness.
Here’s the place to make an extraordinary choice: to open up to the inner/outer world beyond the known. It's here where your agenda and sense of self can take a smoke break. Even the best agendas like spiritual growth or healing can sit down and breathe. The opportunity here is letting go of control and the known. Accepting that what you thought was the ground might actually be stars a million miles above your head. Feeling crows and bluebirds soar past you - through you - landing on your shoulder, passing through your mind.
Freedom might be found in the opportunity that Spaciousness provides to take a step back and see the belief system which ego is running. To gain a real clarity about what inner tensions you may unconsciously be trying to resolve moment to moment. How ego may shaping your life to manage those tensions - just outside of conscious awareness. So that freedom comes to mean reclaiming a greater agency: standing at crossroads making decisions from clarity and purpose. Not reflexively choosing a direction from the vague belief it will help numb some ancient pain.
The invitation here is to meet...in and as a spaciousness uncontained by ordinary ways of thinking and understanding the world. Even sensing that spaciousness for an instant, we can begin to see all obstacles and problems from a radically different perspective. What is it to shake loose from a view of reality in which life seems to be happening to you? There's an opportunity here to discover the ways in which the energies of our inner world can be lost in time: fixated on the past, locked into reactions which are tangled in illusion and confusion. In Sky-like Mind, all those scattered reactions find their way back to the Present Moment where they can naturally transform...fragments redeemed into a spirit of wholeness.
Meetings in this space offer the support of simple background: a felt sense and knowing that is everything is ok - even when life is especially stormy. It doesn't so much matter whether that knowing is deeply rooted or simply glimpsed from time to time; the point is taking on life as an opportunity to ever more deeply live from and embody that awakeness."What does alignment to your true nature feel like in your body?"
If "God is everywhere" and "nothing is seperate", how does these truths reflect in your life?
"What do you take refuge in that knocks you out of alignment with the Divine?"
"How do you find spirit expressing itself through you in a way that impacts others?"
The great opportunity here is to come to a kind of rest. But in that rest, the chance to discover that "everything wakes up together". So... accepting life's invitation to give up the game of "wack a mole" with an endless series of problems. And exploring instead how everything "in here" and everything "out there" might be seen as shining with the same divine light. Divine radiance at the heart of every tension and tangle - no exceptions.
All calculation and strategy falling away. And becoming headless - letting a Heart bigger than our bodies take the lead. Pain happens - just as the rising and setting of the sun happens - and it becomes possible to sit together being incredibly with the pain. Way beyond a listening built of sympathy or pity or fixing. Freedom expresses itself in the ability to be incredibly intimate with the pain: no gap or arm's length distance. Discovering moment to moment how this spacious intimacy and timeless immediacy creates conditions for everything to transform.