Sedona Method Retreat Days 4 and 5

Written on June 26, 2008 by Tom Stine / 4 Comments »


This retreat has been amazing. While the Sedona Method in general seems more like a personal growth, self-help course with some spirituality tossed in, the “advanced” retreat is completely focused on what Hale refers to as “the realization of what you are” but in other spiritual circles would be called awakening. Personally, I love the term awakening, as it captures the flavor of the experiential side of things. It feels as if one is awakening from a dream. The dream of a separate self called “me.”

Let me share with you a few gems from the past 2 days:

  • If there is no separate individual, then there is no one who can or has done anything. No doer. Just bodies in motion. Therefore, I’ve never done anything, and no one else has ever done anything.
  • As you look within at various aspects of what you are, you discover that quite often you arrive at “I don’t know.” This not knowing IS what you are.
  • The ultimate knowingness is not knowing.
  • Lester Levenson, the creator of the Sedona Method, used to say, “Miracles are the world’s shortcut.” And Hale added to that, “And so what? It isn’t about miracles.”
  • I realized that as much as I’ve wanted to know the structure of the world, the underlying principles that govern it, the rules for how it works, I never will. It is all a great mystery. I don’t know. And what a relief!
  • Manifestation is all the rage in the spiritual world thanks to the Secret. But here are some questions to ask: if my thoughts create my experience, did I choose which thoughts to think? Did I create the “good” thoughts? Or did the thoughts just arise spontaneously in my mind? Did I think about what I wanted and then make it happen, or did I simply have a thought about what was going to happen anyway and merely watched it play out?
  • One of the “problems” with most methods is that people are always trying to change things. People especially want to get rid of their feelings. But what does someone who has realized the truth do when they are sad? They cry. What do they do when they are joyous? They laugh. There is no need to do anything with our feelings. Just feel them.

That’s all for today. I hope you all are doing well. I’m having a wonderful time. I’m mellow and tired. Until next time. Namaste.


Creative Commons License credit: sheldonschwartz
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There Is Nothing Better - Lao Tzu

Written on May 15, 2008 by Tom Stine / 7 Comments »


There is nothing better than to know that you don’t know.

Not knowing, yet thinking you know—

This is sickness.

Only when you are sick of being sick

Can you be cured.

The sage’s not being sick

Is because he is sick of sickness.

Therefore he is not sick.



© Takuin Minamoto. Used with permission.
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Guru Quotes

All of our thoughts are conditioned. We all are thinking exactly along the lines we are conditioned to think. Programmed like a computer. Anybody who thinks they are actually choosing of their own free will the line of thinking that they have is completely deluded by their thinking.


Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.

In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?

We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife changes or your husband changes, what does that do to you? You’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep as before. You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take medicine. You keep insisting, “I feel good because the world is right.” Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. That’s what all the mystics are saying.