Natural freedom. Retreat, Badow, 2009

When we say we live in a state of absence, it doesn’t mean that we have lost something, but that we are absent from being present in what is here.

James Low

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Badow, Poland, April 2009
Transcribed by Joanna Janiszewska-Rain
Edited by James Low

Extracts

…I would imagine that for all of us, in the course of our lives, many doors have appeared in front of us, many new opportunities and new possibilities, but because of doubts and confusions, and feelings of anxiety, we didn’t go through these doors. It’s very helpful to reflect on that and see how our identification with a thought has the power to determine our operational identity.
In this way, the impermanent thought, in claiming to define a situation as finite and permanent, obscures the sole permanent situation, which is the unchanging openness of our awareness….
…Each of us has to decide whether to continue to build our identity on limited concepts, or to open to the teachings and explore directly who we are. Limiting concepts can be comforting in their familiarity yet they diminish our availability to the ceaseless hospitality of our own unborn nature.
Observe how many small worlds you have already invested your time and energy in. Recollect how they vanish. Your true friend and ally is not far away. In fact, if you stop being so busy, and stop looking so hard you will find it already here…