Audio: Toni Packer 2004

The following talks by Toni Packer are available on CD.

February 2004 Retreat

Day 1	How do you know you're here? Awareness is a purgative. Practicing "What am I?" - starting from scratch. Not going for any answer that comes, the answer is not what I am. No need to think about breathing: breathing is not a thought.
Day 2	Has there been a total transformation in Toni's life? Tolle's "pain body." Krishnamurti's "mutation of the brain cells." Unconditioned functioning feels like a different circuit, energy pathway. Who's angry? "I am." Who is this "I"? Keep questioning until the last question can't be answered verbally.
Day 3	No, I didn't initiate group meetings for "transformation." To me the important thing is getting through all the false understanding. Going slowly, seeing the whole picture of what you want to say. Understanding how/why reactions come about. Don't have to analyze or go far back, though everything has roots in the infinite past.
Day 5	Awareness is one point - like one point in a wheel touches the whole of the road. Krishnamurti's, "see the false as false, truth as truth, and the truth in the false." Fear of drowning in silence, we know ourselves through the noise we make. To look needs silence. Silence isn't scary, it's the means to connect with everything. Not just connection: it's the ground.
Day 6	The vast field of influences traceable behind one "intention." Truth has unexpected ways of opening up in front of our eyes - un-pre-meditated. Sitting can familiarize us, though, with what hinders. "Decide" is too vague an expression.

July 2004 Retreat

Day 1	Right attending. Freedom from defensiveness. Looking as if into a mirror at what someone reflects about me. It's the hardest thing in the world, for this doer, to do nothing. Being without knowing: the relief that we don't have to know. No need to think about breathing: breathing is not a thought.
Day 2	Actual changes have less to do with intention than with awareness. When things show themselves, there's a greater database from which to act. Intend not to think - try it! "For every action an equal and opposite reaction." Effortlessness: not daydreaming, but allowing energy to gather as it will in listening.
Day 3	What does one come here for? To find out more about this "me," how it hems in life on all sides? Is my core raison d'etre me - my albums of images? To distrust what the brain says about others.
Day 5	Is it unhelpful to say, "even stuckness is just what is?" Can you convey to us who are stuck where you're coming from, not the words? Where all is okay, no preference, no me. Wanting doesn't submit to willpower, which is just more wanting. What it submit to is subtle, quiet listening, which has a slowing down in its wake. Detect if a story feeds crabbiness. Trust the detection, that nothing need be done.
Day 6	Is it judgmental to talk about unethical teachers? The religious insight which sees both the relativity and the function of society's rules. Inattention equals self-absorption; attention equals no self-absorption. South Africa's wonderful new way: truth and reconciliation.

August 2004 Retreat

Day 1	To throw out, or recycle, old experiences, and listen freshly. Welcoming all that visits the mind, while recognizing what has impeded listening. Discovering how personally we take a talk. How much freer we could be, bypassing the sticky filter of "me." Hearing one's own voice as it sounds to another. Usually we expect to be heard for our intentions, which is very abstract.
Day 2	How does the "me" come to be? The mini-series of me - endless sequels. Stories differ, but effects are universal. Bringing awareness to anger. Athletes "in the zone." When self-concern recedes, a field of infinite potential.
Day 3	What is "intuition," unfragmented apprehension? Be sensitive to the pain a person is in. If it comes from a deep, heartfelt space, it can help to be told "all is okay". When a condition is cast into a story, it endures much longer. Trees and grasses which don't think, just grow and sprout and die. Go to the fear and discover it is not what you thought.
Day 5	Revelation in awaring how the face is held. When you see a photo, awareness can intelligently avoid memory attachment. In a wonderful way, intelligence and kindness are wrapped in the awareness. Attachment, near-addiction, to the pleasure and pain of past times. "I see it but it doesn't go away." Maybe you don't fully want it to? Ask "what is boredom?" Make something interesting of a moment of boredom.
Day 6	Sickness and medicine cure each other. Where is the self? Basic fear of being left in the cold, unlovable, rejected. What other than pain will cause us to fall silent in the face of it? I remember when I first let pain and fear touch me, amazed it didn't cost my life. To see with present eyes the dream of the past.

November 2004 Retreat

Day 1	Starting from not knowing who or what we are. Finding what's actually here by stopping the usual internal dialogue. Memory becomes less important as listening deepens. The brain remembering for revenge, keeping score of who does what to whom.
Day 2	How does one deal with the actuality of loss and disability? Observe thoughts, and the emotions triggered. Not to control these, but awaring what's going on. Toni's grief process around Kyle's death. With the wisdom of awareness one can turn away from the causes of suffering.
Day 3	Toni reads Mary Oliver's poem "Why I Wake Early." Viewing the villainous compassionately. A moment of wondering interrupts the chain of conditioning. The red meat of revenge. Seeing is vaster than the facts, what's seen.
Day 5	Discussion of three mind-states. Me-oriented thought. Witnessing (insight running alongside the "me" storyline). Selfless awareness - open awaring, without clinging. Sustained with no sustainer. Ramana Maharshi's early awakening years as illustration of egoless state. Detailed exploration of "questioning without knowing."
Day 5	Discussion of three mind-states. Me-oriented thought. Witnessing (insight running alongside the "me" storyline). Selfless awareness - open awaring, without clinging. Sustained with no sustainer. Ramana Maharshi's early awakening years as illustration of egoless state. Detailed exploration of "questioning without knowing."
Day 6	Getting beyond the concept of "right action." The pushed button - entanglement in emotions. Why is it a "problem" in the first place? Is there pleasure in imaginary or actual contention?

Sunday Programs and Other Talks

Feb. 15	To learn not to expect abiding harmony. Permanent balance and well-being are not in the nature of this universe. Something unaffected, unchanging, "light and dark alternate with each other." Seeing how expectation closes, tenses, narrows an otherwise open and flexible body.
Aug. 22	Pre-occupation with work vs. personal time. "The twenty-four hours of the day are all my time." Total presence annihilates time, washes away thoughts. Selfishness and altruism: appearances can be deceiving.
Oct. 31	Listening to the whirring mind without condemning or rationalizing. The actuality of sitting quietly is not what one expects. Intelligence and action born of not-knowing, not steered by self-interest. A place in the wholeness of being for self-interest, proportionate to its importance. A buffer zone established in the body through meditation, not penetrable by hurt. Awaring the total human condition in ourselves and others, not individual little faults.