Join us this coming Thursday, on October 28th at 5pm Pacific for a dynamic dialog with Sensei Diane Musho Hamilton.
Diane Hamilton is amazing in front of a room — a uniquely skilled, playful, free, and awake group facilitator. She is a Zen teacher in the “Big Mind” tradition, a skilled mediator, and she co-developed Integral Life Practice as a senior trainer with Terry and Ken Wilber at Integral Institute. She is also a specialist in “Shadow Work.”
In this dialog, Diane and Terry will directly engage the collective field of awareness that opens up between everyone gathered for the call. They will invite a dance with the emergent energies of that field, employing Diane’s instinct for speaking to the unspeakable shadow dimensions in an dynamic exploration of integral evolutionary spirituality.
Together, we will inquire into the implications of a new integral evolutionary wave of consciousness: How can we create a meta-sangha of teaching and learning together? How can we be co-venturers on the path? What are the shadows at play in our evolutionary ambition? In our aspiration to new kinds of cooperation? In our collective field of awareness? In our roles as teachers, students, and even co-venturers?
Diane Musho Hamilton is a fully ordained Zen priest and teacher. She has studied Buddhism since 1984, and was given dharma transmission by her Zen master, Genpo Roshi, in 2006. She works with the Big Mind process; a facilitation technique synthesized by Roshi to convey Eastern teachings to Western audiences.
Diane is well known as an innovator in facilitating group dialogues, especially conversations about culture, religion, race and gender relations. She was the first Director of the Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution for the Utah Judiciary, where she established the original mediation programs in the state court system. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Michael D. Zimmerman, a lawyer and Zen teacher.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Thursday, October 28th @ 5:00pm Pacific
Please Note: There will be a limited number of lines available on the live conference call, so we encourage you to listen online if possible. To make sure you can get through by phone, we encourage you to dial in early.
- To listen live by phone, dial: 216-258-0785, then, enter Access Code: 272072#
- To listen live online go to: http://AttendThisEvent.com/?eventid=15255921
- To download the audio after the teleseminar is complete, click here.
Join the Dialogue: About one hour into the dialogue, we’ll open up the lines and you’ll have the opportunity to interact with us directly over the phone or via instant message. Here’s what to do:
- To interact live by voice, dial into the conference line number and wait until we ask for a question from someone in your region, or
- Send us your question via instant message in the teleseminar window on your computer
- Send us your questions and comments before or during the live dialogue by posting them on our Beyond Awakening Community Facebook page
We look forward to your attendance!
Sincerely,
The Beyond Awakening Team
This interview was where I think Beyond Awakening really found its voice. I think Diane really forced Terry to reveal &/or understand why he was doing this series– which, as a listener, allowed me to better understand where he is coming from and what he is aiming to do. Loved it. Love this series.
I would just like to comment on an exchange that occurred between Diane Hamilton and one of the callers. The caller was a former WW II bomber pilot. Briefly I heard him say that he gave up the war mentality and was now a citizen of the world. He said this with great conviction, but something in his voice made me feel he was conflicted over this. And who wouldn’t be; most of us can only vaguely imagine his life experience in war. I think his underlying question of Diane was some like “what do I do with this,” meaning I think, the underlying conflict. It seems to me that Diane’s response was the perfect expression of integral philosophy which was to transform and include. I love this, as she immediately saw the arc of his thinking and feeling. Clearly he is transformed as a citizen of the world, and it was like he had permission to include who he had transformed from. This got me thinking that are shadows are formed by our lack of inclusion. Thanks to Diane for example and her teaching.
I must confess that i havent done much with zen since doing my major eighth grade english paper on it in the 60’s but i image a virtual facsimile is the experience of the Gospel of Thomas which cannot be understood by just the analytical mind. This is why all the great theologians and scholars have been so frustrated for the past 65 years with it.
Thomas was hidden in plain sight so that those carrying it around would not be forcibly circumcised by the jewish revolutionaries on the one hand or threatening to the roman empire and their henchman on the other. Anyone who believed in thomas was obviously very naive or insane and taken in by a garbled version of the nice god man story of the journey to jerusalem.
However thomas can be understood with the whole brain when one steps back from the words and sees their inter relationship to reveal their rorshack (sp?) images. However thomas is not just a rorshack test. it is a crossword puzzle going up, down, crossways, and interdimensionally. Like the great pyramid which encodes the dimensions of the earth, thomas encodes dimensions of the universe.
And, why would not “secret sayings” be encoded? Ha-ha! It just takes a pinch of faith in the ancients, hope in the divine throwing us a lifeline, and charity towards the crafter to appreciate that he knew precisely what he was doing.
In fact thomas was part of a conversation. my sense was it was published in Syria after the stunning and successful challenge of the synoptic gospels Thomas, itself, was so successful in response that John was consciously crafted to counteract Thomas. The gospel of philip was then, the last and glorious hurrah in attempting to convert the romans after John came out. The Odes of Solomon was another similar Syrian product but by those in a time and place which had given up on the romans.
Like the four quantum forces of the universe, thomas has four hardware conventions that i ken.
1) the context convention means that if you want to understand any particular saying, then go to the next one–except for L 114 which–although I accept it as a saying of Jesus it was a later addition. every saying consists of a natural question that arises out of it which is answered by the next saying–which raises another one.
L1 speaks of immortality being in your own hands.
L2 explains it by discussing the higher self
L3 the higher self is accessed by the holy spirit, the mother
L4 Be like a baby nursing her breast
L5 apply it to the world by loving whats in your face
etc.
2) The numbers convention means that numbers have meaning–many of them, anyway.
a) L6 speaks of what to do during the 6 day hebrew work week
b) L 7 speaks of how to interprete scripture on the sabbath
c) L 8 is on growth and multiplication
d) L 9 is on endings (the last single digit)
e) L 10 is on structure
f) L 11 is on the disciples who ‘get it’ (12 minus Jesus)
g) L 12 is on the wider church
h) L 13 is on jesus self revelation ( one plus 12)
Also check out L 1, L 11, and L 111, then L 2 and L 22 and see if you see any similarities.
3) The doublet convention refers to a small number of sayings which are duplicates with only a few major word changes. These cover key topics the crafter wants to point our attention to. The rule is the latter saying informs the former.
L 56 say the world is a corpse. L 80 says it is a body. The difference is that a body can be alive. What is it alive with?..The Holy Spirit.
L 48 says if two can make peace they can move mountains. L 106 says if two make peace “you” will move mountains–if your lower self and higher self make peace you can exit the time stream and see mountains rise and fall.
enough said.
4) The jubilee convention refers to the 50 year renewal of social systems (forgiveness of debt) in the O.T. and the structure of the pentecontad calendar in use by the Babylonians–and Therapeutae in Egypt–which had 50 day months with 15 extra days at the end of the year. Thomas uses the number 49 to mean not the end of a cycle but ‘the completion of the discussion topic’. There are 15 three-saying discussions and 33 two saying discussions.
Cycle 1 (L 1, 50, and 99) is a discourse on the Father
Cycle 2 (L 2, 51, and 100) is a discourse on the Son-Higher Self
Cycle 3 (L 3, 52, 101) is a discourse on the Holy Spirit–Mother
Cycle 4 discusses our spiritual approach utilizing nursing, feeding, and circumcision imageries in contraposition to cultic identification.
Cycle 5 discusses how to apply this cosciousness to specific spiritual and material objectives
etc……..
Cycle 9 discusses endings and outcomes and is itself the end ‘proof’ of the convention with its multiple and redundant numeric, noetic, oppositional, and verbal ‘signatures’ of the Jubilee convention.
There are also software conventions that are descriptive of the elephants in the room. You don’t make rules for elephants. They make their own rules. One is the higher self. One is the Holy Spirit-mother. One is a constellation revolving around a demi-urge, the archons, and their supporters.
Thomas (and Jesus) and the imagery comes out of the Therapeutae–Samaritan–Sethite context but utilized to express that we are all expressions of the light of the father through the higher self in the mother.
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John
I really enjoyed feeling the great dilemna of our full humanity that arose in me while listening to this discussion. The sensation was confusing but powerful. In relation to the comments about acting from our incompleteness and necessarily creating karma, I wonder whether there is a significant energetic difference between such acting, without thought for the shadow we may create, and taking action with perhaps painful awareness that we will in fact create karma. The distinction feels very similar to this one: maintaining faith in the face of genuine, honest doubt as opposed to acting on blind faith. Any thoughts?