And finally… we met with Jeff to talk. Here’s the zoom video
Zoom meeting.
Held: Thursday October 27th at 6:00pm US mountain time
The Series
Below is a refresher of his three attunements:
Edited transcript of Spiritual Dialogue
Jeff: Dialogue plays a very important role in spiritual inquiry. At one level it is an exchange of ideas. There are different levels of dialogue that that need to take place.
There’s the kind of dialogue that one has with someone who has more experience than they do. This has a learning value. You know, if you’ve encountered someone and you recognize that they have some inner spiritual attainment that you feel very drawn to. You can learn an enormous amount by speaking to that person and finding out how they’re relating to their experience that might be different than the way you tend to relate to yours.
And so that’s one level of dialogue that can be very valuable.
The other thing that happens in dialogue is also compelling. I believe in traditional spiritual circles it’s called transmission. The idea is that that someone who has more access to higher perspectives transmits that in a in a way that’s beyond the words spoken.
Sometimes, I think, the words are just the vehicle that holds our attention but the energetic transmission of that perspective is arguably the more important.
Now, more recently, neuroscience has come up with this idea of mirror neurons, which I think is an interesting way to think about spiritual transmission. What they say is if I’m seeing something that you’re not seeing, and I describe it to you, and while I’m describing it, I’m looking at the thing I’m describing, there are neurons in your system that will start to orient themselves in accordance to mine. And so you’ll start to see what I’m seeing through some kind of osmosis. I think that’s a very powerful way to think about what spiritual transmission might be.
Whatever it is, the effect that many people report is that when they speak with someone who has some degree of attainment that they start to see something that they weren’t seeing before. It doesn’t have to do with understanding the words. It doesn’t have to do with learning something.
It has to do with being brought into a view.
Ultimately, in terms of spiritual dialogue, the ultimate value is the capacity to be brought into a higher view.
You know, if you learn something, if you gain information, that’s wonderful, but it’s really not that valuable. What’s valuable is being brought into a higher view. And you want to be brought into a higher view over and over again until it becomes a natural home for you.
So one way you do that is by speaking with people who have more experience than you do. People you recognize as having more attainment.
In another way, when serious interested parties who may be more equivalent in their experience and attainment come together with a passionate desire to evolve we can ratchet each other up through the power of shared perspectives and dialogue and meld into a kind of unity of vision that takes us higher.
So by coming together, whether that’s two or three, or four or five or ten or twelve or more, but we come together. The intensity of our interaction and the dialogue that we have together will actually rise. It’s like we’re all floating in an ocean and by engaging. The level of the ocean is going up and we’re all going up with it.
To me those are the two most profound ways in which dialogue has spiritual value. I’m a big believer in spiritual dialogue.
Zareen: I know that one of the things I experienced at Andrew Cohen retreats was that he would bring people together to have dialogue. And my experience was that people simply needed to be given permission to talk about things more important than just the everyday mundane soon. As soon as the permission to engage was released, it was just amazing what we could do with each other.
Jeff: It’s completely amazing. And the other aspect of dialogue that’s very, very important is that we are social creatures. What that means is our ability to hold truths is partially collective, it’s partially shared.
So the the analogy I like to use is if you were outside and you saw an alien up in a tree, and you talked to the person next to you and said, “Oh my God, look at that!:
And they say, “I don’t see anything.”
But, you turn to the next person, “Look at that!”
And they say, “Oh, I don’t see anything.”
I always like to wonder how many people would have to say they didn’t see it before you would stop saying you saw it.
And then. How many more people would have to say they didn’t see it before you stopped seeing it yourself? Right? Before you are conditioned by the collective.
That’s why I think throughout history spiritual gatherings have been so important, because we need to create a field that is mutually reinforcing. Because otherwise it’s just us against the dominant paradigm.
Besides those rare few beings, Ramana Maharshi, and Eckhart Tolle’s, most people aren’t going to hold that higher view in the face of a whole culture telling you it is wrong.
So we need to come together to bolster up the strength of our conviction.
Jeff Carreira on Effort vs. No Effort.
There are many spiritual orientations which talk about no effort. They say that liberation is your nature. Your true self is what you always already are. The only thing that’s in the way is the effort you are making to get there. Because you keep convining yourself that you are not there by making an effort to get there.
The problem is that you can take that and turn it into a justification that just about anything can be the truth of who I am.
But there is an attainment that needs to be achieved before you are able to hold that. There is still effort to be made.
The way I think about effort vs. no effort is that we are both a universal source, always, and we are also already an individual.
A no effort school is speaking directly to the source. They are saying that you don’t need to do anything to be the source because you are the source. As long as the goal is to recognize who you are, that’s all you need.
But if your goals and needs are about how to live as an individual in the world, then the messy bag that is the individual might have work to do in order to be able to hold the higher truth.
So the schools that are talking about effort tend to be speaking to the individual. They are saying, “You need to make effort.” You need to be able to clean this up. You need to be able to focus your attention.
I think the paradox of effort and no-effort is a direct result of the fact that we are one, and only one. We are the one without a second, and no effort is required. And, also, we are an indivudual in this lifetime. If we care about how we manifest in this world then some effort may be required.
I think, in the end, what it means to be free has to do with no longer caring whether you need to make effort or not. So if there is an attachment to either not making effort, or an attachment to making effort there’s not freedom.
The Path of Love
What about the path of love? Because, I guess, that’s actually a path of doing. That’s a path of effort in one way, and then in another way it’s not.
I guess what I would say in terms of the path of love is it really builds right on to what I was just saying. It’s the path of surrender to the divine. Because, as I see it, the goal is for me to be in continuous worship of that which I love. Right? And the way that I’m in continual worship of that which I love is by being a vehicle for her.
So what the divine wants to pass through me, whether I understand it or not, whether it’s personally what I want or not, is not the point. The point is: I want to show my love for divinity. Express my gratitude for being by being available to her in whatever form she wants.
Ultimately, I was on a Jñāna path. It was a path of wisdom. It was a path of penetrating insight. It was a path of seeing through the facades of the separate self to one of wholeness. But more than that, I was on a Bhakti path. I got into this because I was in love with my teacher. I was in love with the path. I was in love with god. And it was the love that was the energy that kept me going through some very very difficult times. I just kept doing it because I was doing it for what I loved.
I don’t think you can progress very far on the path unless you’re driven by love.
It’s hard for me to imagine that intellectual curiosity would hold enough power to keep you persistently on the path. Ultimately, it’s the love.
Ramana Maharshi and the Advaita tradition always talked about how, in the end, the Jñāna path and the Bhakti path (which is the wisdom path and the love path) they need to become one. Because the Bhakti needs to realize that they are that which they’re in love with, and the Jñāna needs to fall in love with the true self. And so one path may be your doorway in, versus the other, but in the end there’s a merging and they need to become one.
So, thinking that they’re separate at all is just not useful
They’re separate at one level but to me the way to think about it is: having a preference between them is useless. In manifestation things manifest, this moment this way, that moment the other way. But We’re available.
I always say the ultimate stance is availability. I’m available. I’m available to make effort. I’m available to not make effort. I’m available for the path of wisdom. I’m available for the path of love.
Every moment will dictate how my availability manifests, but I’m available.