RiverGanga Foundation
Thank you for your simple but powerful pointer...

Hi John,

Thank you for your simple but powerful pointer to just look at myself. I have been doing it whenever it occurs to me for about a year now. By the way, I suggested that you call an upcoming book, "Here's The Thing." I heard you mention that in a podcast and of course ego roared up and congratulated myself and wished that many people knew it was me and how brilliant I am. Also ego gratifying was that I pleased The Great John Sherman. Obviously a residue of that remains if I feel the need to remind you that I am of importance.

Anyway, I thought I would share something I'm doing for Lent that seems to be helping. I don't think it occurs to me often enough to just look at myself despite your repeated pointer that you can't do it wrong. So beginning Ash Wednesday and hopefully for the next 40 days I have set up many reminders to help. Next to the television which I watch way too much of is a picture of Ramana. Whenever I see it his smile I instinctively begin to look at myself and then what it is that is looking at myself. At work I have a card in my pocket which says "look at yourself." I don't have to look at it but whenever I sense it in my pocket I also instinctively look at myself. It's the last thing I think of before I drop off and notice that pretty soon upon awakening I look at myself.

Thank you, John

T.

February 19, 2010
Gilroy, California

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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.

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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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