This past Sunday’s Beyond Awakening featured my recent conversation with scholar/mystic Andrew Harvey entitled “The Ways of Passion and Illumination.”
Over the past year I have been engaged in a series of “sacred conversations” with Andrew which have led to our deciding to teach together March 4-8 in Berkeley California. There’s a wildness and a joy in our connection as two passionate mystics and activists who feel called to convene a sacred, ceremonial ritual at this time and in this space.
This latest sacred conversation is an exploration of what is organically emerging for us both including the true nature of Love; the (mostly) not talked about spiritual controversy between the ecstatic mystery teachings vs. the “cooler” nondual approaches; and the extraordinary new model of teaching that is emerging that will inspire our March teaching event.
You’ll probably be drawn to have a moment of solitude after listening to this audio, in order to integrate the intensity, the passion, and the insights you may have had. I invite you to be in that solitude with the self-compassion necessary to truly connect with the sense of possibility that opens up in sacred conversation; and the willingness to see innovation and creativity in that space and to choose it for yourself. That is the ultimate meaning, the destiny of both the illuminated mind and the passionate heart.
I’ll share some excerpts of our conversation below. But I invite you to listen in to the full audio.
On the primacy of love:
The task of a whole lifetime is to grow in our capacity to love. Love is not just something to say “yes” to, and to affirm. It’s the sternest master that asks everything of us and that you never fulfill completely. On our deathbeds we ask…did I love enough? This apprenticeship is never going to end. I will die still learning to love better. But oddly this makes me feel incredibly loved.
-Terry
You can’t begin this love affair with the Love that is creating everything and think that you’re going to remain in control of anything, or even know who you are by the end of the love affair. It is going to change everything, every single moment of your life.
-Andrew
On the risk of spiritual bypassing by the “cooler” nondual approaches:
A great deal of the way in which they’ve constructed the path is as an avoidance of it. At the core is the denigration of the sacred feminine. That’s why the path that they are on, wise though it is, is so potentially dissociative and disembodied; and so not concerned with the burning agony of injustice in the real world, so turned away from the screams of the poor and the broken animals and burning habitats and polluted seas. It is time in the name of the divine mother that we reclaim the…sacred passion of the awakened heart.
-Andrew
On teaching together:
There is deep, sacred work to be done with one another. It is this passionate meeting of hearts in the subjective domain in which we come alive as illumination and come alive as loving passion. That becomes the sacred marriage out of which we become activists and that is what we want to share with people. That’s why we decided to teach together.
-Terry
Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s song “Love Itself”:
Radical freedom and awakening has tended to be the basis, it seems to me, for a profound and culture-wide spiritual bypass of love. And that’s why we’re advocating so strongly for love even though on another level we simply open the door and “let love itself be gone.” Both are true .…
–Terry
The more I live, the more I worship the heart of the Buddha and the heart of the Christ together. I try and attune my evolving heart to the depths in both so that a marriage beyond anything I can control can take place within me of ultimate detachment to ultimate care.
–Andrew
Announcement
This Sunday, January 25th at 10am Pacific please join me for another conversation with the renowned mystic, scholar, poet, and activist Andrew Harvey entitled “The Ways of Passion and Illumination.”
Andrew and I have always been able to converse frankly and passionately and catalytically. And yet over the last year our practice of “sacred conversation” has begun to venture more and more boldly, wildly, and fruitfully into edgy unknown territory. We’ve been ecstatically “riding the wave” of what is organically emerging in the moment, allowing it to guide us. This is why we decided to start recording these conversations, and even to soon begin to teach together.
This latest recording is in part an exploration of the true nature of Love. I shared with Andrew my belief that the task of our lifetime is to grow in our capacity to love. Love is the sternest master and asks everything of us. This apprenticeship is never going to end, but paradoxically this makes me feel incredibly loved. Andrew resonated with this idea and added that we can’t begin this love affair with the Love that is creating everything and think that we’re going to remain in control or even know who we are by the end of the love affair. An essential surrender is what is being asked, which can be terrifying to the ego.
We also discussed the (mostly) not talked about spiritual controversy between the ecstatic mystery teachings of intense spiritual feeling, passion, emotion and arousal vs. the “cooler” nondual and mindfulness approaches. Unhealthy expressions of the cooler practices can be disembodied, operating out of a kind of transcendent arrogance. While the “hotter” expressions out of balance can spill over into florid emotionalism. We both agreed that a tremendous opportunity exists in recognizing that these schools are “not two.” In fact, this reconciliation could be the key to addressing our world in crisis—compassion and agency united in sacred activism.
We spoke about our own practices and our latest insights, and what is becoming available in our teaching. It’s no longer about the traditional exchange of wisdom or knowledge between teacher and student. A whole new model is emerging. We’ll be feeling into this new model at the March events that we’ll be co-leading. Andrew captured our vision for this gathering beautifully, reflecting that the teaching that is needed at this moment is not about sharing information; it’s about living the experience together to inspire each other. Profoundly liberating transformation is not merely subjective; it is enacted in relationship, and ceremonially “made real” in community. You can find out more about our early March events in Northern California here.
I feel blessed to be having these conversations with Andrew and to be teaching together. There’s a wildness and a joy in our human connection as two passionate mystics and activists who feel called to convene a sacred, ceremonial ritual at this time and in this space.
I hope you’ll listen in. You can follow along with Andrew’s gorgeous recitation of the Rumi poem below my signature, which he says exemplifies the prime power of love as the way of illumination and knowing.
To our evolution,
Terry
Love does not live in science and learning,
Or in any careful order of pages and letters.
Whatever people chatter about is not the way of lovers.
The branches of love are in pre-eternity
And its roots in the post eternal.
This is a tree that does not exist on any support
Of heaven or earth.
We have dethroned reason
And imprisoned desire.
For the majesty of divine love cannot live
With such fools and their habits.
So long as you hunger after anything
What you long for will be an idol.
When love decides to love you back
You will not longer exist.
Old sailors totter on planks of fear and hope
But when planks and sailor have vanished
What remains but drowning?
Shams-i-Tabrīzī you are sea and pearl
The mystery of your being is the secret of the Creator.
My soul, the first time I saw you
My soul heard wonders from your soul
And when my heart drank water from your fountain
It drowned in you
And the river swept me away.
- Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
Tr. Andrew Harvey
Andrew Harvey is an author, speaker and founder/director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability.
He was born in south India in 1952 where he lived until he was nine years old. At the age of 21, at Oxford University he became the youngest person ever to be awarded a fellowship to All Soul’s College, England’s highest academic honor. He became disillusioned with life there and returned to his native India, where a series of mystical experiences initiated his spiritual journey.
Over the next thirty years he plunged into different mystical traditions to learn their secrets and practices, including deep extended study and practice of Hinduism, and Tibetan Buddhist practice. He collaborated with Sogyal Rinpoche in writing the classic Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. He did deep study of Rumi and Sufi mysticism, and produced what are in my opinion some of the most magnificent and luminous translations of Rumi’s poetry.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Sunday, January 25th at 10:00am Pacific; 11:00am Mountain; 12:00pm Central; 1:00pm Eastern
*Find Your Local Time
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.
ACCESS INSTRUCTIONS
- To listen live by phone, dial: 425-440-5100 (alternate #: 501-707-0312)
- Then, enter Access Code: 272072#
- To listen live online go to: TO BE ANNOUNCED
- To download the audio after the teleseminar is complete go to the Beyond Awakening Audio Page
Sincerely,
The Beyond Awakening Team