The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #345 - 14DEC19

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This week on The Mystical Positivist, hosts Stuart Goodnick and Rob Schmidt feature a recording of a talk that they gave at Many Rivers Books & Tea on Thursday December 12th, along with some additional remarks recorded in the studio after the talk. Entitled “Pimples on the Butt of the Absolute: Awareness and Awarenessing”, the pre-talk publicity described it this way: “In the contemporary spiritual scene, "awareness" can be as much a buzz word as "mindfulness." Awareness derives from the concept of being watchful or vigilant. Thus, to beware-to be wary of-something implies guarding against the arrival of a potential danger. From this root, awareness has developed into the common idea of a mental status where one observes the inner and/or outer realms, without any necessary object of awareness implied. But there is an unexamined assumption underlying this idea, which is that it is feasible to maintain a kind of vigilance as a more or less unitary, ongoing state. In this talk, we examine this assumption. Can a "state of vigilance" or "awareness" ever be more than a string of unique moments that we retrospectively link together in the mind? When we watch a sunset, are we not "awarenessing" the rising and passing of discrete perceptions, emotional responses, bodily sensations, and thoughts? Is it possible to relax the flow of awarenessing such that serial fixation upon each unique pimple on the butt of the Absolute gives way to something more like an appreciation of the contours of the overarching butt that graces the Absolute?”

Rob Schmidt, Ph.D., and Stuart Goodnick co-direct Tayu Meditation Center, owner and operator of Many Rivers Books & Tea. They studied intensively with Tayu founder Robert Daniel Ennis, and are working to complete a book of his teachings this upcoming year called, Living Life As A Work Of Art: The Spiritual Work of Robert Daniel Ennis.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at: