I watched that video a couple of years ago. You also mentioned Tony several times, so I read The Work of This Moment and The Silent Question… I highly recommend the latter. Thanks for leading me to her.
And thank you in turn for the book recommendations. My interest was piqued by Toni Packer's precision in the video Joan's posted here. I had a quick look at The Silent Question and jumped (as is my wont) straight into the chapter titled 'Despair'. Wow. Such delicate and exact balance between poles (of abstract/particular, feeling/thinking, small/large scales etc).
I keep promising myself not to look up and read more on these themes, but the video you posted was too compelling. Sometimes though I think just the Xìnxīn Míng and/or I Am That should be enough for a lifetime. In the past I've sometimes rolled my eyes (in friendly fashion) at people I knew who got onto the endless self-help book-buying train, which seemed to mainly help authors and publishers. I wonder sometimes if I'm doing similarly in a slightly different sphere. It sometimes feels a little procrastinatory. Judging from your book list/review page (which is great, by the way), you've read a lot over the years. Have you ever thought about when it's time to take a hiatus? Or written about it perchance? I'd be interested in your reflections if so.
I'd say it's about developing a sensitivity to where something like the urge to read a spiritual book is coming from. Are we feeling something we don't want to feel, and so we're reaching for a book the same way we might reach for a cigarette, a drug, or an extra piece of cake?
If so, it might be a healthier addiction than any of those, and it might even serve us well, and then we might notice when we're clinging to it, endlessly reading the menu instead of daring to actually eat the meal, or flying to a new place and then endlessly studying the maps and the travel brochures instead of actually stepping outside into that new place. And when we notice that, maybe we put down the map and step outside. Doesn't mean we can never pick up the map again.
Remember, I'm 76 years old, and I first read some of these books when I was a teenager. And as an author, some have been sent to me by fellow authors for an endorsement, so I read them. Some I've read out of curiosity because of what I've heard about them. Some were handed to me along the way by a friend. Some I found on the bookshelves some place. Reading from diverse spiritual perspectives has been helpful, because each seems to illuminate a different aspect of this living reality.
I still sometimes pull an old favorite off my bookshelves and dip in, or buy a new book because it's someone whose work I love or whatever. I love books, and I love words, and I enjoy reading. It's like eating a nourishing meal or indulging in a great piece of chocolate cake. I enjoy it.
And then, sometimes I can feel I'm reaching for a book in an addictive way, from a place of avoidance and discomfort. And when that happens, sometimes I indulge in the avoidance and sometimes I stop and feel the discomfort. I haven't found anyone here in control of which possibly wins out, and I don't find myself judging one of these moves wrong and the other right.
All the books I've truly loved point to the living actuality here and now, and eventually, we put down the books and taste the living actuality directly. That's the point after all. Which doesn't mean we can never pick up a book again. Reading is one of the many ways this living actuality shows up.
Excellent reflections, thank you. I completely relate to the noticing of an addictive reach, but going through with it anyway. I did it with the Toni Packer book yesterday - it displaced livelihood-related stuff I just didn't want to face. But on reflection, it's not such a bad thing. The livelihood stuff is here again today, and I know about Toni Packer now so can go back to her when appropriate.
I really notice how different my reading pace is between the two modes (not that there are truly 2 discrete ones). When the words bring me back to myself, it can take me an hour to get through a page as I'm so frequently directed back into life. At other times there's a pressure to keep reading: surely there's something just for me on the next page, around the next corner!
I’m not familiar with Toni, but reading that she was in her 60s during this interview sparked a deep curiosity in me to learn more about her final days. There’s something symphonic in discovering a revered soul and envisioning the arc of their lifetime. It’s both melancholy and beautiful to witness the pure efforts of a human seeking to understand life, only to gracefully let it all go when Death comes knocking. I understand she endured years of pain before entering hospice care. Reflecting on all the Masters who have left this earth—Watts, Osho, Ram Dass, Carl Sagan—and even my own father, who took his last breath just months ago, fills me with a poignant mix of sadness and reverence.
Sweet to see you again in your old SF person, lol - ah, the wonders of aging… the good part having survived the 50s suburban housewives, our 60s blooming as flower children & the crash of ‘68, 70s back to work (for me including 1st venture into west Africa after refuge with old Kalu Rinpoche, then Islam, officially hanging with Sam’s goofy Sufis & working in DC for McGovern during the Carter Admin & coming home to birth my son), the excess of the 80s - raising a child & a herd of Lipizzans, saving a mountain… advertising & management, into the yoga of sound… 90s traveling the world again, General Plan for my natal cowtown of Brisbane on SF Bay… Oughts of 2000 & traching again - becoming grandmother etc — at 75 years life is still wonderous & here we have our Dumbocrats giving us Trump again - highlighting the elephant in the room of America’s racism, sexism, consumerism, colonialism etc and once more, a chance to change from the inside and create something other than a clinging to an advertised fantasy of a “great” 1950s “post war” America that wasn’t actually so great if you lived through it… My 8th grade teacher asked me (the light-headed one vs my twin sis) to summarize WWII - and I said, “ - it was a war to see who would be the ruling fascist power of the world and we won”
What a profoundly beautiful dialogue/interaction. So deeply rooted in stillness. Deeply touched by the sensitivity of the listening, the depth of the listening, the penetrating intensity of the inquiry, the intelligence and precision of the communication, and the kindness and love that infused it.
In addition to saying thank you for the great video, I just want to point to the following sentences from your Lion's Roar article and say, "This!"
"No matter what state dawns at this moment, can there be just that? Not a movement away, an escape into something that will provide what this state does not provide, or doesn’t seem to provide: energy, zest, inspiration, joy, happiness, whatever. Just completely, unconditionally listening to what’s here now, is that possible?"
Joan, you wrote a letter right after the election, I accidentally deleted, but have you taken it down? I wanted to reread, it opened my mind a bit. I can’t find it, is it still in print online somewhere? Thank you for reminding us…💕
I did take it down. I posted something on my FB pages called "THE ARTICLE THAT DISAPPEARED" that will probably say what it said. Here it is:
I shared an article from The Free Press called "I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week I Voted for Trump," by Evan Barker, a young woman who worked for Obama, Bernie and Hillary, but who grew increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the Democrat Party. Unfortunately, it turned out the article was behind a paywall, and people couldn't access it. So I took it down.
I shared it mainly to show how the left has lost touch with many working-class people, and how many intelligent, well-informed, good-hearted, progressively-minded people ended up voting for Trump.
I'm a lifelong progressive who has felt increasingly politically homeless in the last decade. I voted for Kamala, with a lot of reluctance and ambivalence, and found myself happy when Trump won, something I couldn't have imagined before. And I know other intelligent, well-informed, well-educated, smart, caring people who felt the same way.
Yes, I see many problems with Trump that concern me greatly. But the left also concerns me greatly: the emphasis on identity politics rather than class (dividing rather than uniting), the BLM approach to racism (including defunding or abolishing the police), some of what I see as extremes in the trans movement such as medically transitioning children and biological males in women's sports, a lot of the DEI madness, cancel culture and censoring free speech, promoting war in Ukraine rather than a negotiated settlement, aligning with Liz and Dick Cheney, etc. When you question any of these things, you get called a racist, a TERF, a transphobic bigot, a white supremacist, or simply a stupid and disgusting fool. I find people on the left are often very self-righteous, arrogant, and unwilling to listen to anything that questions what they think.
My hope is that this election will bring forth some honest soul-searching and a much needed course correction on the left, but we shall see.
I really don't want to engage in political debate here. I go back and forth about whether I should stay entirely in the nondual spiritual lane which is my primary focus, or whether I should venture occasionally into the political, where there is inevitably conflict. And every time I venture into politics, I regret it.
So I'm not going to be responding to comments on this. I'm posting it just to let you know why I shared that article and why I took it down. I hope we can all get out of our information silos and listen openly to diverse points of view. END OF FB POST
PS to my previous reply: In the substack note I deleted, I may also have said that I found Tim Walz a bad choice for VP, both as a personality and as someone who represented some of the most controversial aspects of the woke left (medically transitioning children and BLM riots), while Shapiro might have been able to deliver Pennsylvania. I think I also noted that Kamala was between a rock and a hard place in that she had to be offering a new direction while simultaneously being the sitting VP; she had to defend a president in obvious cognitive decline and the cover-up of that, in which she had to keep participating; and she had to please both the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian wings of her party. I think she made a huge mistake embracing Liz and Dick Cheney, and by trying to win by fear mongering, demonizing Trump and shaming people. That approach turned many people off—it certainly turned me off. I hope her defeat will be a wakeup call to the Democrat Party and the left, but I'm not optimistic.
i loved the video. thank you for sharing it. and i loved the article too. i’ve bookmarked it so i can revisit. i will seek out Toni’s books as well. 🙏🏻
Thank you for your response. Your note illuminated my woke box, maybe tore it open a bit, enough that I can breathe better, and look around at my beliefs, my conditioning, which I am so sure are the “right” ones to have. (I had to look up “identity politics” I didn’t know there was a name for this trend.). Love to you, your words, Priya
I love these interactions between Toni and you. I listen to them often.
There is a calmness in this together exploration between two people.
Pauses are allowed, organically laughter comes up, softness and gentle investigation.
Although the topic is totally contrary to the way we live, and puts everything we base our lives on in discussion. It is a great model for our times. Question: Where does the word AWARING come from? Did Toni coin it?
I'm pretty sure she picked it up from Sunyata, from a book called "Sunyata: The Life and Sayings of a Rare-born Mystic" that we both read back when I was living at Springwater. But my memory can be unreliable, and she might have coined it. I've never heard anyone else use it except me and Toni (and I think Sunyata).
Thanks for sharing Joan.
Bless your memories of Toni 🙏
A long cool drink of water in a week of thirst
I watched that video a couple of years ago. You also mentioned Tony several times, so I read The Work of This Moment and The Silent Question… I highly recommend the latter. Thanks for leading me to her.
And thank you in turn for the book recommendations. My interest was piqued by Toni Packer's precision in the video Joan's posted here. I had a quick look at The Silent Question and jumped (as is my wont) straight into the chapter titled 'Despair'. Wow. Such delicate and exact balance between poles (of abstract/particular, feeling/thinking, small/large scales etc).
The Wonder of Presence and The Light of Discovery are also great books by her.
I keep promising myself not to look up and read more on these themes, but the video you posted was too compelling. Sometimes though I think just the Xìnxīn Míng and/or I Am That should be enough for a lifetime. In the past I've sometimes rolled my eyes (in friendly fashion) at people I knew who got onto the endless self-help book-buying train, which seemed to mainly help authors and publishers. I wonder sometimes if I'm doing similarly in a slightly different sphere. It sometimes feels a little procrastinatory. Judging from your book list/review page (which is great, by the way), you've read a lot over the years. Have you ever thought about when it's time to take a hiatus? Or written about it perchance? I'd be interested in your reflections if so.
I'd say it's about developing a sensitivity to where something like the urge to read a spiritual book is coming from. Are we feeling something we don't want to feel, and so we're reaching for a book the same way we might reach for a cigarette, a drug, or an extra piece of cake?
If so, it might be a healthier addiction than any of those, and it might even serve us well, and then we might notice when we're clinging to it, endlessly reading the menu instead of daring to actually eat the meal, or flying to a new place and then endlessly studying the maps and the travel brochures instead of actually stepping outside into that new place. And when we notice that, maybe we put down the map and step outside. Doesn't mean we can never pick up the map again.
Remember, I'm 76 years old, and I first read some of these books when I was a teenager. And as an author, some have been sent to me by fellow authors for an endorsement, so I read them. Some I've read out of curiosity because of what I've heard about them. Some were handed to me along the way by a friend. Some I found on the bookshelves some place. Reading from diverse spiritual perspectives has been helpful, because each seems to illuminate a different aspect of this living reality.
I still sometimes pull an old favorite off my bookshelves and dip in, or buy a new book because it's someone whose work I love or whatever. I love books, and I love words, and I enjoy reading. It's like eating a nourishing meal or indulging in a great piece of chocolate cake. I enjoy it.
And then, sometimes I can feel I'm reaching for a book in an addictive way, from a place of avoidance and discomfort. And when that happens, sometimes I indulge in the avoidance and sometimes I stop and feel the discomfort. I haven't found anyone here in control of which possibly wins out, and I don't find myself judging one of these moves wrong and the other right.
All the books I've truly loved point to the living actuality here and now, and eventually, we put down the books and taste the living actuality directly. That's the point after all. Which doesn't mean we can never pick up a book again. Reading is one of the many ways this living actuality shows up.
Excellent reflections, thank you. I completely relate to the noticing of an addictive reach, but going through with it anyway. I did it with the Toni Packer book yesterday - it displaced livelihood-related stuff I just didn't want to face. But on reflection, it's not such a bad thing. The livelihood stuff is here again today, and I know about Toni Packer now so can go back to her when appropriate.
I really notice how different my reading pace is between the two modes (not that there are truly 2 discrete ones). When the words bring me back to myself, it can take me an hour to get through a page as I'm so frequently directed back into life. At other times there's a pressure to keep reading: surely there's something just for me on the next page, around the next corner!
Insightful coversation. Thank you for sharing.
I’m not familiar with Toni, but reading that she was in her 60s during this interview sparked a deep curiosity in me to learn more about her final days. There’s something symphonic in discovering a revered soul and envisioning the arc of their lifetime. It’s both melancholy and beautiful to witness the pure efforts of a human seeking to understand life, only to gracefully let it all go when Death comes knocking. I understand she endured years of pain before entering hospice care. Reflecting on all the Masters who have left this earth—Watts, Osho, Ram Dass, Carl Sagan—and even my own father, who took his last breath just months ago, fills me with a poignant mix of sadness and reverence.
Thanks,Joan. Not a day goes by that I am not grateful for having had Toni as a teacher. She was brilliant and devastatingly awake.
Sweet to see you again in your old SF person, lol - ah, the wonders of aging… the good part having survived the 50s suburban housewives, our 60s blooming as flower children & the crash of ‘68, 70s back to work (for me including 1st venture into west Africa after refuge with old Kalu Rinpoche, then Islam, officially hanging with Sam’s goofy Sufis & working in DC for McGovern during the Carter Admin & coming home to birth my son), the excess of the 80s - raising a child & a herd of Lipizzans, saving a mountain… advertising & management, into the yoga of sound… 90s traveling the world again, General Plan for my natal cowtown of Brisbane on SF Bay… Oughts of 2000 & traching again - becoming grandmother etc — at 75 years life is still wonderous & here we have our Dumbocrats giving us Trump again - highlighting the elephant in the room of America’s racism, sexism, consumerism, colonialism etc and once more, a chance to change from the inside and create something other than a clinging to an advertised fantasy of a “great” 1950s “post war” America that wasn’t actually so great if you lived through it… My 8th grade teacher asked me (the light-headed one vs my twin sis) to summarize WWII - and I said, “ - it was a war to see who would be the ruling fascist power of the world and we won”
Thank you!
What a profoundly beautiful dialogue/interaction. So deeply rooted in stillness. Deeply touched by the sensitivity of the listening, the depth of the listening, the penetrating intensity of the inquiry, the intelligence and precision of the communication, and the kindness and love that infused it.
Deeply touched and moved by this. Thank you 🙏
In addition to saying thank you for the great video, I just want to point to the following sentences from your Lion's Roar article and say, "This!"
"No matter what state dawns at this moment, can there be just that? Not a movement away, an escape into something that will provide what this state does not provide, or doesn’t seem to provide: energy, zest, inspiration, joy, happiness, whatever. Just completely, unconditionally listening to what’s here now, is that possible?"
Bless you for highlighting this passage. I needed to hear it today.😊
Joan, you wrote a letter right after the election, I accidentally deleted, but have you taken it down? I wanted to reread, it opened my mind a bit. I can’t find it, is it still in print online somewhere? Thank you for reminding us…💕
I did take it down. I posted something on my FB pages called "THE ARTICLE THAT DISAPPEARED" that will probably say what it said. Here it is:
I shared an article from The Free Press called "I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week I Voted for Trump," by Evan Barker, a young woman who worked for Obama, Bernie and Hillary, but who grew increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the Democrat Party. Unfortunately, it turned out the article was behind a paywall, and people couldn't access it. So I took it down.
I shared it mainly to show how the left has lost touch with many working-class people, and how many intelligent, well-informed, good-hearted, progressively-minded people ended up voting for Trump.
I'm a lifelong progressive who has felt increasingly politically homeless in the last decade. I voted for Kamala, with a lot of reluctance and ambivalence, and found myself happy when Trump won, something I couldn't have imagined before. And I know other intelligent, well-informed, well-educated, smart, caring people who felt the same way.
Yes, I see many problems with Trump that concern me greatly. But the left also concerns me greatly: the emphasis on identity politics rather than class (dividing rather than uniting), the BLM approach to racism (including defunding or abolishing the police), some of what I see as extremes in the trans movement such as medically transitioning children and biological males in women's sports, a lot of the DEI madness, cancel culture and censoring free speech, promoting war in Ukraine rather than a negotiated settlement, aligning with Liz and Dick Cheney, etc. When you question any of these things, you get called a racist, a TERF, a transphobic bigot, a white supremacist, or simply a stupid and disgusting fool. I find people on the left are often very self-righteous, arrogant, and unwilling to listen to anything that questions what they think.
My hope is that this election will bring forth some honest soul-searching and a much needed course correction on the left, but we shall see.
I really don't want to engage in political debate here. I go back and forth about whether I should stay entirely in the nondual spiritual lane which is my primary focus, or whether I should venture occasionally into the political, where there is inevitably conflict. And every time I venture into politics, I regret it.
So I'm not going to be responding to comments on this. I'm posting it just to let you know why I shared that article and why I took it down. I hope we can all get out of our information silos and listen openly to diverse points of view. END OF FB POST
PS to my previous reply: In the substack note I deleted, I may also have said that I found Tim Walz a bad choice for VP, both as a personality and as someone who represented some of the most controversial aspects of the woke left (medically transitioning children and BLM riots), while Shapiro might have been able to deliver Pennsylvania. I think I also noted that Kamala was between a rock and a hard place in that she had to be offering a new direction while simultaneously being the sitting VP; she had to defend a president in obvious cognitive decline and the cover-up of that, in which she had to keep participating; and she had to please both the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian wings of her party. I think she made a huge mistake embracing Liz and Dick Cheney, and by trying to win by fear mongering, demonizing Trump and shaming people. That approach turned many people off—it certainly turned me off. I hope her defeat will be a wakeup call to the Democrat Party and the left, but I'm not optimistic.
Thank you for introducing me to Toni Packer. I watched a video and can see her presence and great experience.
i loved the video. thank you for sharing it. and i loved the article too. i’ve bookmarked it so i can revisit. i will seek out Toni’s books as well. 🙏🏻
Thank you for your response. Your note illuminated my woke box, maybe tore it open a bit, enough that I can breathe better, and look around at my beliefs, my conditioning, which I am so sure are the “right” ones to have. (I had to look up “identity politics” I didn’t know there was a name for this trend.). Love to you, your words, Priya
I love these interactions between Toni and you. I listen to them often.
There is a calmness in this together exploration between two people.
Pauses are allowed, organically laughter comes up, softness and gentle investigation.
Although the topic is totally contrary to the way we live, and puts everything we base our lives on in discussion. It is a great model for our times. Question: Where does the word AWARING come from? Did Toni coin it?
I'm pretty sure she picked it up from Sunyata, from a book called "Sunyata: The Life and Sayings of a Rare-born Mystic" that we both read back when I was living at Springwater. But my memory can be unreliable, and she might have coined it. I've never heard anyone else use it except me and Toni (and I think Sunyata).