Audio: Toni Packer 1995

The following talks by Toni Packer are available on audio tape only.

February 1995 Retreat

Day 1	Listening. Openness of being, without effort, without the closure of authority. Authority: craving it, creating it, hating it. What is said here is something to be considered, questioned, wondered about, taken further. Undivided wholeness. Being with tiredness.
Day 2	How do we hear? Is our listening conditioned, prejudiced? Do we hear talks in terms of opposites and injunctions about how we should behave? Is there a practice here? Identity and identification: what gets hurt or flattered? What am I when I don't know? Seeing is the change: involvement in storyline is not the same thing as seeing that a story is running. Thoughts and feelings are not separate.
Day 3	Awareness of thoughts as thoughts. One stream of consciousness. Being with whatever is revealed without force. Sitting quietly is a different way of being than trying to figure things out. Not knowing what will happen next. When nothing is held onto, everything is revealed.
Day 4	How can I take this quiet openness home from retreat? Is stopping and listening tied to being at a retreat center? What gets in the way of quiet and open seeing? Is there something beyond the conditioned reflex system of "me"? What are we maintaining and defending? Do we have free choice? Simply being here.
Day 5	The meaning of meeting together in groups. Images, defenses, wanting others to be different than they are. Can we meet together in shared listening without taking things personally? Is it possible to take someone precisely as they are?
Day 6	What is truth? One consciousness manifesting in different expressions. What matters is open seeing, not the content of what is seen. Can everything we say be open to being proven false?

April 1995 Retreat

Day 1	A new kind of listening. The truth of this moment as a direct revelation.
Day 2	What to do about thought? Is there a practice? Being quietly present in the midst of what's there with an open mind and heart. What does it mean to be quiet in the midst of chaos?
Day 3	Should one have goals? Inflating and deflating images. Fear of being no one.
Day 4	What is questioning? The pressure to produce answers. Questioning as open wondering without knowing. Effort and effortlessness. Trust in the work of this moment.
Day 5	Trust or faith. Boredom. he art of being with whatever the body manifests without running away from it. What are we running from? The possibility of being with that seeming lack.
Day 6	The difference between real quiet and an imaginary state. Altered states, hypnotic states, suggestability and imagination. Are we trying to produce and maintain some state?

May 1995 Retreat in the Netherlands (in English)

Day 1	No description available.
Day 2	No description available.
Day 3	No description available.
Day 4	No description available.

June 1995 Retreat

Day 1	A new kind of listening, looking and being.
Day 2	Guilt. Is there a doer of good & bad deeds? The urge to do something about what is seen in oneself.
Day 3	Thoughts and attachment. A chaotic mind and the desire to make order.
Day 4	Why is the present moment so important? Why not the past or the future? Psychological time. Questioning the necessity or all identity and identification. Receiving criticism.
Day 7	The mind of wanting. This knot of me-ness.
Day 8	Right livelihood. The relationship between sitting in retreat and daily life. Conflict with others.
Day 9	Is there a Springwater vocabulary? Arrogance. Fear of dying. Is there a soul? Love and compassion.

July 1995 Retreat

Day 1	A new listening. Walking alone, without authority. A relationship of respect. Where do thoughts come from?
Day 2	Sadness. Experiencing without concepts or resistance. The connection between thinking and feeling. What to do about all the sorrow in the world. Not knowing what to do. No control. The power of stories.
Day 3	How to meditate. Our problem-solving compulsion. Unforced listening; everything happening on its own.
Day 4	What am I without thoughts and images? The danger of images. Becoming aware of images as they arise, and of goals and ideas about what we should do. Questioning the "I" that is behind all this. Descending from concepts into what is really happening.
Day 5	What is this "I"?
Day 6	Can pure listening affect the chain of hurt and retaliation? Is hurt and vengeance inevitable? The restlessness of trying. What is the meeting point of so-called relative and absolute realities?

August 1995 Retreat

Day 1	The openness of unprotected listening. Authority. Our relationship with Toni. What are we this moment without our personalities or histories?
Day 2	Is just being in the here & now enough? What does comparison do when it arises? Victimization and humiliation. Identifying oneself as a victim.
Day 3	Awareness. Despair over thinking. Awareness is a different body from thinking. What is significant, the objects we see or the seeing itself? Remaining with the seeing.
Day 4	What does it mean to be with fear or anger? The work of this moment is not to get rid of things or overcome them, but to illuminate, to see.
Day 7	What is meditation? How simple can awareness be? Do practices re-create the "me"? Time. When we get into the mode of suffering, what is happening? Addiction to storyline. The continuous challenge of being alive, every moment of upset an opportunity.
Day 8	s Toni the central attraction here? Dependency on Toni. What is the essence of presence? Not knowing.
Day 9	Awareness without demands, injunctions, or judgments. Not knowing what we are.

September 1995 Retreat

Day 1	Listening freshly with the whole body. How knowledge distorts listening. Communicating with care. Questioning what we are.
Day 2	Hearing without labeling. The inner demand for authority. A relationship of mutual respect.
Day 3	Being present without a focal point. What is really going on, without words and thoughts about it? The human bodymind revealing itself.
Day 4	Emotion. What do we mean by emotion? Guilt. Coming in touch with what is not conditioned.
Day 5	Seeing thought and image. Identification with the story of one's life. Not going with the momentum of reaction. The thought that "something is missing". Desire for fulfillment.
Day 6	Commitment. Can one come upon what is happening without the burden of commitment? Silence, quietude reveals what is going on. What is the basis of moral or ethical behavior in this work of being here moment to moment?

November 1995 Retreat

Day 1	How simple can perception be? Does expectation affect listening? Authority - images of each other. What are we in relationship to each other?
Day 2	Awareness without concentration. Does sitting quietly have to entail doing battle with what one regards as disturbances and distractions that intrude against one's will? Letting everything unfold in awareness.
Day 3	Pain and anger. What is pain? Listening spaciously, not knowing. Watching the storyline that keeps anger going. We're all what we are this moment due to infinite causes.
Day 4	The deeply felt need to be somebody, to be affirmed by others, and the hurt when it doesn't happen. The best time to look is when we're hurt. What has been punctured? What are we? Are we the mental productions, the imagery to which there is such attachment? Alive space without a me-center, live silent space.
Day 5	How to be with ourselves and each other in the face of deep feelings of insufficiency. Respect. Being here one moment at a time, not losing touch with the ground of now-ness. Deep-seated fear of being wrong. Listening to criticism without defending, attacking, rationalizing, or going with the story of "my innocence". Holding still and looking openly. Addiction to flattery, being liked, positive feedback. Preferences. Impatience - wanting quick results. This work is one's whole life.
Day 6	Being here now; dying to the story. Doing this work outside of retreat. Are we afraid of the story coming to an end? If one is interested in reincarnation or rebirth, why not watch it now? Is it possible to witness the rebirth of "myself" right now?