RiverGanga Foundation
I want to express my heartfelt thanks...

Dear Carla and John,

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to you both for all that you are doing to share this teaching.

I love and appreciate you both very much.

John, your insights were so helpful to me when we spoke last night. Particularly, the clarification with regards to my not needing to actively "identify" with my Beingness... that I already do, and that it is really just a natural and spontaneous "disidentifying" with the story of me that occurs effortlessly as I continue to inquire.   I kept thinking I had to deliberately and actively *identify* with my beingness, but that's just the mind trying to do something again.   The mind is truly of little use in this practice except for perhaps asking the question that points the way towards the direct experience of what's always here.

Since our call, I've been in just the most amazing space — still, silent, free... and just so completely *ordinary*! Feeling I am, I am, I am...  and seeing, truly, that there is NOTHING that I need to do about ANY PART of the story.   That it is truly JUST A STORY! And that it does not affect me, positively or negatively one iota.   This is such a huge relief, I cannot begin to tell you.   Even if this "still, silent and free" turns to agitated, noisy and bound, it is still okay.   Nothing changes. Nothing. I am.

I have been working on so many aspects of the story up until now and am now seeing how silly it is. None of it does anything for me... nor does it hurt me.   It can only, perhaps, change the story, which has nothing to do with who I am.   It is, utterly and completely, besides the point.

There truly are no problems.

Driving home from the cabin I spent the past week alone in, I found myself riveted in the moment, feeling bliss and shouting "I am!" and laughing my butt off at how many millions of years it took me to discover this!   It really is hilarious!   And, at the same time recognizing, this bliss comes and goes, too, and that's fine.   I do not come and go.   I am here.   LOL!

So, I'll keep taking my medicine, keep tasting this "Ahh... yes.   I am here," as often as I think to, which seems to be a lot nowadays.   Working on the computer, it's not as often, but when I take time off like I did this past week, I was able to inquire almost all day long and there is nothing better to me.

This is so yummy.   Tasting my being is the sweetest.   I am all that I have ever looked for and I am so happy to be as I am.

I love you both very much and have so much gratitude for what you are sharing.

Something else that came up for me as I was driving back was the spontaneous utterance, "Dang! He's nailed it! John is so spot-on with the simplicity of this!" I really don't think there's much room for improving the simplicity and clarity with which you are sharing Ramana's great gift.

I am indebted to you and in deep, deep gratitude for your sharing This, the greatest of gifts.

Love,

****

 

Totowa, New Jersey    July 21, 2007

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    Worldwide Online Meeting

    Saturday, September 11 at 4 pm PDT (UTC/GMT -7)

    People all over the world gather together with John for a couple of hours. John is available to listen to your questions, and to help you sort out any difficulties you might experience in your own practice of looking at yourself.

    This is very much like a call-in radio show. If you simply want to listen to the meetings, all you need to do is to install the software and have speakers attached to your computer. If you wish to speak with John, then you will need a headset with microphone. You can also use earbuds and a microphone.

    All our events are always free of charge. Spontaneous donations for the support of our work are always welcome and gratefully accepted.

    All are welcome, with no regard for religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.

     

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    A Worldwide Meeting - July 10, 2010

    My role in this adventure of trying to bring the simplicity of this work to every human being is not to concoct teachings, ways of looking at things, instructions and practices that are my creation, and then pass them on to you for you to receive gratefully, and try to make sense of. My role here is actually to distill and articulate the product of an ongoing conversation among all of us, over a period of more than ten years now, about the discovery that bringing an end to misery in a human life is actually not only possible but easy and simple, and can be done by anyone. It requires nothing at all to accomplish this except the determination to do one simple, solitary, radical act, and that is to turn the beam of your attention onto the feeling of being you. That's it. In the end, and against all odds and all expectation, this repeated act will bring sanity into your life. It will eliminate the underlying sense that life is treacherous and not to be trusted, and that something desperately needs to be done about it.

    Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on July 10, 2010.

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    Our Work

    First, last, and always, my advice is only to look at the feeling of being you, without the mediation of understanding, the need to resolve paradox, or the requirement that this looking lead to any conclusion. Simply make every effort just to look, and persist in that effort as often as you can. In this effort, understanding is irrelevant, belief is irrelevant, even duration is irrelevant — the briefest look, repeated over time, does all the work.

    A Message from John Sherman, videotaped in Ojai, California on May 15, 2009.

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    Our work is to bring the practice of looking at oneself to all who are interested.

    The only problem anywhere to be found is the false belief that you are at the mercy of your life, and the only solution is the truth, which is everywhere and always present and self-evident. Ridding oneself of the false is as easy as repeatedly tasting the truth of being here, unmovingly, unchangingly here. This repeated looking directly at oneself is the infallible method of the vichara.

    Although our meetings are free of charge, they are certainly not free of cost. The money needed for this work must come entirely from the generosity and compassion of those who, like us, have seen for themselves the immense worth of spreading this good news to all humanity.

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