Liberation is the end of bondage. The world we have constructed around ourselves, with all its hopes, fears, attachments, and certainties, has become so familiar that we mistake it for life itself. We have spent our lives learning how to navigate this world, how to protect what matters to us, how to become someone who can finally be at peace within it. And almost everything we do proceeds from the assumption that this is the world we must continue living in.

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But what if the whole arrangement can be relinquished?

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The question reaches much further than our spiritual beliefs. It reaches the things we love, the relationships through which we know ourselves, and everything we have come to depend upon for a sense of who we are. We can recognize the necessity of letting go while continuing to negotiate what must remain untouched. Even surrender becomes something we approach with conditions, wanting assurances about what will be left of us when it is done.

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There is no way to settle these questions through understanding alone. At some point, the inquiry must reach the life that is being lived, including the one who believes he is conducting the inquiry.

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Much of my writing has been devoted to exposing the confusion between awakening and liberation. How the self can survive its own supposed disappearance, claim the recognition as an achievement, and build an entire spiritual life around what it believes it has discovered.

I've spent enough time showing why the door is not the destination. This work is about what lies beyond the door.

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There comes a time when another teaching is no longer what we need. We have heard enough to know that something is possible, and perhaps enough to spend the rest of our lives talking about it. But there is a world of difference between being fascinated by liberation and giving ourselves to its pursuit. The latter asks for something that cannot be satisfied by another afternoon of understanding.

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I want to bring people into this inquiry who are willing to give it a real place in their lives.

 

People who can come with their questions, their longing, their uncertainty, and discover what happens when we begin to know one another beyond the ideas that brought us together.

 

There is a great deal we can discover in the company of others, especially when we are no longer obliged to keep presenting the version of ourselves we have learned to live with.

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We can laugh together, be ridiculous, enjoy one another's company, and let a conversation wander wherever it wants to go. There can be tenderness, affection, disagreement, and moments when nothing needs to be said at all. I have no desire to gather people who spend every moment examining themselves in the name of liberation. There is a whole life to be lived together, and I want us to be free enough to enjoy it.

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Come and See

 

You are welcome to begin with the writing. And if something here calls to you, come closer.

The Vault offers continuing inquiry through live meetings, writing, and conversation. Private Inquiry allows us to work together individually or with a small group of people who already know one another.

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There is no need to know where this will take you before you begin. Come with the life you have, and we'll see what becomes possible.