Letter from the Field: The Best Description of Seeking that I’ve Ever Heard

Hi Fred

It was good to talk with you last week. The ramifications of the session are still settling in. No instant transformation, but very revealing nonetheless.

Thoughts have been less ‘sticky’ and the usually troublesome ones, at the moment, seem to just drift by. The ‘box top Fred’ pointer has been particularly helpful. Yes, there are David-like characteristics that arise but really there is no overall controlling entity called David.

The most revealing moment was at the end of the visualisation exercise in the second half of the session when you asked  David to open his eyes and report on what he saw. As long as I didn’t think about it things were as they were. As soon as David tried to comment on the oneness thought came in and wanted to say “but it doesn’t feel any different. It doesn’t feel like oneness”. What does David know about oneness though? He can only have a concept about how he thinks it should feel. As you pointed out, seekers don’t want this oneness, they want the ‘other’ oneness!

That reminds me of the time when part of my seeking took the form of searching for a better hi-fi system. There was a cartoon in one of the hi-fi magazines of a man in a hi-fi shop saying to the man behind the counter, “I want something that sounds better than the real thing.” [My emphasis–F]  I feel that spiritual seeking can be like that; what is is completely missed because something ‘better’ is desired/imagined.

A few general points; your humour and down to earth approach make you very easy to talk to. You are prepared to talk about things that some non-dual teachers won’t. I think you fully appreciate the dilemma for the seeker and are prepared to discus this without resorting to the non-dual rebuttal of “who wants to know?” or “there is no one/nothing to do”, which can be frustrating for some seekers and can make non-duality appear ‘hermetically sealed’.

How does it work with the follow up clarity sessions? I’m not thinking of it at the moment, things are still settling. But if I was to book a set of 3 sessions what sort of interval would you recommend between the sessions? A week? A month?

Anyway, Fred, it was great. Hope to hear from you.

Kind regards

David