Thursday Night Zoom

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JIM PETERSON

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Dec 31, 2025, 1:13:44 PM12/31/25
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
I meant to get in touch with you sooner, but I got distracted by life.  Better late than too late.  Tomorrow is January 1, a day of celebration and holiday.  Friends of mine have expressed a desire to come to my house tomorrow and watch football on my big screen tv.  As an old geezer who lives alone, it's hard for me to turn down opportunities to be socially engaged with friends when the opportunity arises.  So I've decided to party with my friends tomorrow and to put our next gathering off until Thursday, Jan. 8.  I'm spending a lot of time in spiritual inquiry and exploration, and I think I'll have something for us to discuss at our next gathering.  Not that we really need something specific.  Just gathering tends to awaken us to our own questions, to the pleasures and challenges and amazing gifts of engaging with each other.  I hope you've all had a great Christmas and that the new year offers the potential for fresh insights and adventures of all kinds, especially if they emerge from the mundane everyday life.
 
Sheri and I wish you all the best until we meet again next week.
 
Jim and Sheri

Jeffrey Angelson

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Dec 31, 2025, 1:37:56 PM12/31/25
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Happy New Year Everyone!!

Jeff Angelson


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Dan Kilpatrick

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Dec 31, 2025, 2:58:29 PM12/31/25
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Jim, while I don't participate in the Thursday meetings, your explanation grabbed me. Here's to socializing and life intervening, always unexpectedly!

Best wishes to you and all in the year ahead and beyond. 

-Dan

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Paul Rezendes

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Jan 1, 2026, 11:03:26 AMJan 1
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Happy new year everyone.

Paul
















Jeffrey Angelson

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Jan 1, 2026, 1:22:13 PMJan 1
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Happy New Year 🎈 

Jeff Angelson


JIM PETERSON

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Jan 7, 2026, 8:09:59 PMJan 7
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
So shall we resume our conversations?  I think it's "important," so I will be there tomorrow night to keep it going.  For me, there is such a thing as "spiritual contagion," and I feel that we are spreading the possibility of insight, understanding, realization with our conversations.  This contagion is among ourselves but it also transmits to those outside of our group to whom we speak about these things.  What I mean by "spiritual" might not be exactly the same as what you mean, but I feel it's close enough to resonate with others.  So much is coming into my field of inquiry and deepening my spiritual life that I am overwhelmed.  I can't articulate all of it at this point.  I hope the openness fostered by this group and others is facilitating and deepening the unfolding of your own "process."  I once said in this group that what matters is how we treat the next person we meet, and I'll stand by that.  And yet it can't be a prescription.  Kindness, generosity, compassion are more thoroughly becoming us.  There is no "I" acquiring these qualities.  We can see this distinction through self-observation, in my opinion.  I want to mention one more thing, and then I'll pose a question.  I've been looking into what Richard Rose called "betweenness."  It has other names in other spiritual systems.  I am speaking about my understanding of this, which may not conform exactly to what has been said by others.  To live or operate between is to be a bridge, a conduit.  Without these bridges there can be no connection.  Yes, I know everything is already one; nevertheless, these bridges are vital in my opinion.  That may be an example of betweenness.  Another example: Many of us say that the Absolute is totally impersonal.  Others of us say that the Absolute is the most personal of all.  How do we bridge these two understandings?  To be the bridge is to have access to both the impersonal presence of the Absolute and the personal presence as well.  My statements are only expressions of how I am currently seeing.  They are not meant to be the "Truth" for you.  I know you know that, but it's good to keep that clear.  We talk about the intimacy of lovers.  But it's nothing compared to the intimacy of THIS.  What could be more personal than that?  My question is, how do you experience the Absolute?  Or, do you feel that the Absolute cannot be experienced?  Or is this a non-question for you, having no importance whatsoever?  Okay, that's three questions sort of rolled into one.  Thanks for tolerating my longish rambling comments.  I look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening after our longish break.
 
Jim and Sheri
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Jan 14, 2026, 8:02:14 PMJan 14
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
Sheri is still on the road this week, so we will have to make do one more week without her.  So, as always, I've been considering what we may want to talk about this week.  Again, not that we need any topic ahead of time to gather and engage with each other.  But sometimes a nudge of some kind triggers some good explorations.  This last Saturday I attended another Zoom meeting similar to ours, and Steven Harrison was there.  He's the author of "Doing Nothing" and quite a few other books.  He's also a businessman and world traveler.  In this meeting, he pointed us to the actual moment we were experiencing.  Someone then asked "How do we find that?"  And then others started answering the question.  When Steven spoke again, just one more time, he asked, "Why do we need to add all of these concepts to it?"  And then he had nothing to say for the rest of the meeting as we proceeded to add more and more concepts.  Even his revealing to us that we were lost in conceptualizing didn't keep us from piling on more.  Now, this is just my interpretation of the meeting, and to be fair by the end some people had circled back to the point that Steven was making.  So if I were to pose a question or two, I might ask "Why do we prefer so strongly the conceptual answers to the visceral experience?"  Another way to ask the question is "Why is this, right here and now, not enough?"  Another way to ask it might be, "Does our infatuation with lack extend to the reality that is so present to us right now?"  Feeble attempts, but maybe they will jar something loose.  I look forward to talking with you tomorrow night.
 
Jim and Sheri
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Jan 20, 2026, 6:24:00 PMJan 20
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Hey Zoomsters, 

Though I've been away I've read the introduction blurbs Jim has written for the last two meetings. It sounded to me as though there was really rich material for exploration. I therefore wanted to open the floor up to any further insights, revelations or thoughts that may have popped up since either of those two meetings.
Let's face it! It's hard to follow in Jim's steps so I'm just gonna put his shoes on for a bit! 
If the previous has been exhausted, or doesn't kick things off, something has been front and center for me recently which might be interesting to take a deeper look at. Love. It comes up now and then but I'm not sure we've ever had it as a focal point. Below are three quotes from Sri Nisargardatta Maharaj where he describes his perspective, or perhaps experience, of love.
“Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.”
“The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.”
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”
How do you experience love? Or, what is love to you? What role, if any, does love play in awakening/self realization? 

I'm excited to see you all again! 

Sheri and Jim
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Jan 28, 2026, 5:15:40 PMJan 28
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
Let us gather again tomorrow evening at 7 ET if we are all willing and able.  Because of our meetings, I have become sensitive to "issues" or questions that are arising not only in our meetings but also in the other Zoom meetings I attend and the Diehards online discussion group also.  Something that arose for me multiple times this week has to do with what we call "clinging."  As a confirmed clinger myself, I want to assure you that my words are not meant to make any claim for myself, nor are they meant to be any sort of criticism of anyone else.  I do feel, however, that clinging may be an excellent point of inquiry and exploration since it is often described as an obstruction to realization or awakening.  It seems to me that clinging is at least an unconscious habit of mind and body, and it may even be a congenital function.  In my inquiries this week, I found that the mind/body will cling to literally anything to preserve its sense of a separate, independent self.  Here, self manifests as a need for security, control, certainty.  It is an escape from the psychological/emotional "freefall" that has been coming up in our discussions lately, the freefall that sometimes describes awakening.  In one of the zoom meetings on Saturday, I decided to conduct a self-inquiry experiment with myself.  I thought I would see if I could "see" into my motivations for speaking up in that meeting.  As the meeting began, I realized the only way I could do that would be to not speak.  Sure enough, throughout the really excellent and fun meeting, I had the urge to speak, to be a part of the discussion, to say something penetrating and clever.  This impulse rose up in the body/mind like any emotion.  It could be seen wordlessly as "energy" moving in me.  Like a thought, it rose up and soon fell away.  This system was simply reacting to the environment through its layers of conditioning and habit.  I felt no interest in trying to change it or inhibit it, and I noticed that it traveled its own course in a matter of seconds.  It was also interesting to me to notice that this impulse is a form of clinging.  I was clinging to the image of myself as the one who speaks from wisdom and intelligence.  The discussion, in my mind, couldn't proceed intelligently without my input.  Ha!  It was a great discussion without me.  Perhaps even better; who knows? This was a fascinating study of this particular impulse, this form of clinging.  For me at least, it is a beautiful thing to see the movement of conditioning within me without any judgment or need to interfere.  It was THIS doing its thing.  But interestingly, the impulse weakened and I was happy not to speak.  And I wouldn't have spoken if Paul hadn't asked me near the very end if I had anything to say.  At that point, I described my experiment to the group.  And now I've described it to you.  Some questions: Is there any "benefit" to this form of inquiry related to the old exhortation to "know thyself"?  Through not-doing, are you able to see more clearly what you are unconsciously often doing?  Can we witness our minds annexing our spirituality as yet another form of clinging or selfing?  Is clinging, or anything else, really an obstacle to the discovery of "what is" or THIS?  Maybe other good questions will arise.  Thank you for your patience with my lengthy intro.  I look forward to seeing you tomorrow night.
 
Jim and Sheri
 
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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jan 28, 2026, 5:55:04 PMJan 28
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Jim
I didn’t know you were clinging. I always thought you were a Klingon. ( Startrek Referencr)

Jeff Angelson


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JIM PETERSON

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Feb 4, 2026, 7:34:46 PMFeb 4
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Hey Zoomsters, 

We will meet again! 
Currently, though there is much inquiry and pointing happening, none of it has inspired a lead in for our discussion tonight. 
So! The floor is open for silence, for inquiry, for pointing, for revealing.....for Being. 

See you then! 

Sheri and Jim
 
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Feb 11, 2026, 7:31:18 PMFeb 11
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
I have two suggestions for our discussion tomorrow night coming from the dynamic duo of Bob H. and Jason (man of many names).  The first is a link to a short Youtube "reel" about Alan Watts and how his drinking problem was a deliberate act of awakened freedom.  I hope I interpreted that correctly.  The link is below.  The second is attached as a Word doc from Bob.  It is selections from a dialogue on the ST website about the distinction between the body/mind and the "person."  That will be clarified when you read the document.  I think these two interestingly relate and just may lead us to some inquiry.  I look forward to discussing all of this with you tomorrow evening.
 
Jim and Sheri
 
 
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From Bob Harwood 2 11 26.docx

JIM PETERSON

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Feb 18, 2026, 1:16:51 PMFeb 18
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Hi Zoomsters!
It's Thursday!  
Actually, it's not. Not yet. I am writing this on Tuesday evening. 
I can't seem to help myself in soliciting your attention regarding the Women's Olympic hockey gold medal round happening tomorrow - Wednesday. Though the game has not yet happened, it doesn't really need to as everyone invested already knows the outcome. 
With that said, congratulations to both teams and all the US olympic hockey fans!!! 😢

Back to regular programming. 

Angelo Dilullo. Here is a 5 minutes clip of him in Satsang answering a question regarding non-doing, restlessness and investigation of thought. 
Let's see if we can keep our focus on what is happening in the immediate experience as opposed to following thoughts, regurgitating beliefs and sharing opinions. 
Where in immediate experience is resistance arising?
Where in immediate experience is grasping arising? 
Where in immediate experience is 'me' arising?  Is that in thought? Is that in feeling? 
How are the subject/object poles being set up? 
Also, if it jives with the flow, I'd like to try a sense gate experiment. 

The video is approximately 5 minutes long. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9N8z-qI7Xs
 
With Metta, 
Sheri and Jim
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Feb 25, 2026, 11:29:36 PMFeb 25
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
I haven't been inspired this week so far to send you something particular for us to consider in our discussion.  Until tonight when I was listening to some music on youtube and this line from a great Fleetwood Mac song (written by Stevie Nix) came rushing into my ears and heart: "...when the rain washes you clean, you'll know..."  I wonder if this line means anything to you.  Or maybe I should ask it as a question.  Does this line from the song resonate with you in some way?  If so, can you describe that?  Maybe this will trigger something tomorrow night for our discussion.  If not, that's okay; we'll find our way through as always.  See you then.
 
Jim and Sheri
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Mar 3, 2026, 6:38:33 PM (12 days ago) Mar 3
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Hi Zoomsters! 
 
I hope you are all having a great week! 
 
Below is a dialogue from the I Am That book. There are just over 100 dialogues in that book so A LOT of material we could look at from the perspective of Sri Nisargardatta Maharaj. 
In the end, I just opened the book and took the first one. I am hopeful it will start us off! If not, bring anything that is on your mind! 
 
See you Thursday!
 
53. Desires Fulfilled, Breed More Desires
 
Questioner: I must confess I came today in a rebellious mood. I got a raw deal at the airlines office. When faced with such situations everything seems doubtful, everything seems useless.
 
Maharaj: This is a very useful mood. Doubting all, refusing all, unwilling to learn through another. It is the fruit of your long sadhana. After all one does not study for ever.
 
Q: Enough of it. It took me nowhere.
 
M: Don't say 'nowhere'. It took you where you are -- now.
 
Q: It is again the child and its tantrums. I have not moved an inch from where I was.
 
M: You began as a child and you will end as a child. Whatever you have acquired in the meantime you must lose and start at the beginning.
 
Q: But the child kicks. When it is unhappy or denied anything it kicks.
 
M: Let it kick. Just look at the kicking. And if you are too afraid of the society to kick convincingly look at that too. I know it is a painful business. But there is no remedy -- except one -- the search for remedies must cease.
 
If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them. Externalisation is the first step to liberation. Step away and look. The physical events will go on happening, but by themselves they have no importance. It is the mind alone that matters. Whatever happens, you cannot kick and scream in an airline office or in a Bank. Society does not allow it. If you do not like their ways, or are not prepared to endure them, don't fly or carry money. Walk, and if you cannot walk, don't travel. If you deal with society you must accept its ways, for its ways are your ways. Your needs and demands have created them. Your desires are so complex and contradictory -- no wonder the society you create is also complex and contradictory.
 
Q: I do see and admit that the outer chaos is merely a reflection of my own inner disharmony. But what is the remedy?
 
M: Don't seek remedies.
 
Q: Sometimes one is in a 'state of grace' and life is happy and harmonious. But such a state does not last! The mood changes and all goes wrong.
 
M: If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. It is your restlessness that causes chaos.
 
Q: For full three hours that I spent in the airline office I was practising patience and forbearance. It did not speed up matters.
 
M: At least it did not slow them down, as your kicking would have surely done! You want immediate results! We do not dispense magic here. Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself. Follow my advice implicitly and you will not be disappointed. I cannot solve your problem by mere words. You have to act on what I told you and persevere. It is not the right advice that liberates, but the action based on it. Just like a doctor, after giving the patient an injection, tells him: 'Now, keep quiet. Do nothing more, just keep quiet,' I am telling you: you have got your 'injection', now keep quiet, just keep quiet. You have nothing else to do. My Guru did the same. He would tell me something and then said: 'Now keep quiet. Don't go on ruminating all the time. Stop. Be silent'.
 
Q: I can keep quiet for an hour in the morning. But the day is long and many things happen that throw me out of balance. It is easy to say 'be silent', but to be silent when all is screaming in me and round me -- please tell me how it is done.
 
M: All that needs doing can be done in peace and silence. There is no need to get upset.
 
Q: It is all theory which does not fit the facts. I am returning to Europe with nothing to do there. My life is completely empty.
 
M: If you just try to keep quiet, all will come -- the work, the strength for work, the right motive. Must you know everything beforehand? Don't be anxious about your future -- be quiet now and all will fall in place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never come. Don't tell me you cannot control your nature. You need not control it. Throw it overboard. Have no nature to fight, or to submit to. No experience will hurt you, provided you don't make it into a habit. Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realise this as absolutely true, is liberation.
 
Q: If I am the seed of my universe, then a rotten seed I am! By the fruit the seed is known.
 
M: What is wrong with your world that you swear at it?
 
Q: It is full of pain.
 
M: Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. Change your scale of values and all will change. Pleasure and pain are mere disturbances of the senses; treat them equally and there will be only bliss. And the world is, what you make it; by all means make it happy. Only contentment can make you happy -- desires fulfilled breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state -- a precondition to the state of fullness. Don't distrust its apparent sterility and emptiness. Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that breeds misery. Freedom from desires is bliss.
 
Q: There are things we need.
 
M: What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation.
 
Q: I have been barren for the last two years, desolate and empty and often was I praying for death to come.
 
M: Well, with your coming here events have started rolling. Let things happen as they happen -- they will sort themselves out nicely in the end. You need not strain towards the future -- the future will come to you on its own. For some time longer you will remain sleep-walking, as you do now, bereft of meaning and assurance; but this period will end and you will find your work both fruitful and easy. There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable for it means the soul had cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment -- when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid, the state may be distressing; but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the instruction: whatever you come across -- go beyond.
 
Q: The Buddhas rule: to remember what needs to be remembered. But I find it so difficult to remember the right thing at the right moment. With me forgetting seems to be the rule!
 
M: It is not easy to remember when every situation brings up a storm of desires and fears. Craving born of memory is also the destroyer of memory.
 
Q: How am I to fight desire? There is nothing stronger.
 
M: The waters of life are thundering over the rocks of objects -- desirable or hateful. Remove the rocks by insight and detachment and the same waters will flow deep and silent and swift, in greater volume and with greater power. Don't be theoretical about it, give time to thought and consideration; if you desire to be free, neglect not the nearest step to freedom. It is like climbing a mountain: not a step can be missed. One step less -- and the summit is not reached.
 
 
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JIM PETERSON

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Mar 12, 2026, 1:01:52 AM (4 days ago) Mar 12
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Hey Zoomsters,
 
I'm back from my travels of last week.  I hope y'all had a good meeting last Thursday.  On my way to Baltimore (I was driving), I had a run-in with the law, and since returning I've had to take care of that, you know, get my ducks in a row.  Thus, I'm just now thinking about something for us to discuss.
 
My roommate at the conference was a long-time friend, and when we're together we often get into philosophical discussions.  This time was no exception.  He was pressing me on my "beliefs," and when I told him it isn't about beliefs for me, but direct experience, he became really puzzled.  I used thought as an example.  For me, it's not thinking about thinking, it's the awareness of thinking as it's happening.  To expand that idea, I said it's about the awareness of whatever is happening.  It's even about the awareness of awareness, which is essential (to me).  I know that last point is questionable for some.  In this awareness, this direct encountering what is happening, all separation disappears. The seer and the seen dissolve and there is just this being here, this "what is."  The so-called "self" is not an issue.  Well, this blew my friend's mind.  He said, "I'm completely outside of what you're describing."  His words struck a chord in me.  He's a very smart person, smarter than I am.  What we are pointing to isn't about intelligence, it seems.  Or maybe it is.  Can one think oneself to what is being pointed to?  Is it all a trick or an illusion of the mind?  I want to answer that, but I'll save it for the meeting.  Also, I don't feel that I'm inside of something that others are outside of.  I don't feel any specialness, and certainly no superiority, in this.  When I was a Christian decades ago, I felt I had something that other's didn't have—salvation—and that made me feel special.  But what I'm pointing to doesn't offer that consolation.  The third mountain is the same as the first mountain.  Back to ordinary life.  
 
I hesitate to send this, for several reasons, but I think I'll let it stand.  Maybe it will lead us into something.  Can we think our way to realization?  I look forward to seeing all of you later tonight.  Much later.
 
Jim and Sheri
 
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Jeffrey Angelson

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Mar 12, 2026, 4:49:04 AM (3 days ago) Mar 12
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Jim 

This is something I posted on Diehards. I was trying to write about an experience going to the park. It’s about direct experience. The way things are different but the same. The third Mountain.  

Here it is. 

Back at the Park

Yesterday morning I woke with a quiet pull to go to a park I used to visit often. Years ago I went there almost every day when I was going through a difficult period in my life. Somehow the park had a way of dissolving whatever was troubling me, though at the time I never quite understood why.

I had spent many days there sitting for hours by the lake and then walking the open fields and trails.

It had been a couple of years since I’d been back.

When I arrived, I sat by the lake and simply watched and listened. Not focusing on the breath the way meditation is often taught — just resting attention in the stillness that seemed to hold everything.

After a while something subtle shifted.

At first it felt as though I was sitting there observing the park — the wind moving through the trees, the geese on the water, the distant calls of birds. But gradually it felt less like I was watching these things and more like everything was appearing within the same quiet space.

The sounds weren’t disturbing the silence.

They were part of it.

It was as though stillness was the envelope of everything, and everything — the breeze, the water touching the shore, the birds moving across the sky — was happening inside it.

Within that stillness there was also silence, and from that silence the sounds of the park would appear — a bird calling, wind moving through the branches, the quiet movement of water — and then fade again.

It felt as though everything was emerging from that stillness and returning to it.

Yet the stillness itself never seemed to change.

At one point I noticed the geese drifting quietly across the lake. They never looked toward me, yet I had the sense they were aware of my presence. We were simply sharing the same space.

Thoughts would arise from time to time, as they always do. But something about them felt different now. They seemed no more intrusive than the geese on the water. They were simply there.

I realized I didn’t have to follow them. I could acknowledge them the way I acknowledged the geese — knowing they were present, but letting my attention rest elsewhere.

Occasionally I would quietly say to myself, not now, and the thought would pass. What surprised me was noticing that I actually had a say in it. Thoughts could appear, but they didn’t have to continue.

At first I thought I should return my attention to the stillness the way one returns to the breath in meditation. But then something simpler became clear.

There wasn’t stillness here and thoughts over there.

The thoughts themselves were appearing within the same quiet.

In a strange way, they weren’t interrupting the stillness at all.

They were part of it.

What struck me most was how much I was noticing that I had never seen before. I had walked those same paths for years, yet the patterns of light on the water, the movement of branches, the small sounds of life everywhere seemed newly vivid.

Nothing about the park had changed.

The lake was the same.
The trees were the same.
The geese were the same.

What had changed was simply that there was less thought standing between what was happening and the experience of it.

And when that quieted, the world seemed to come forward on its own.

In that quiet, the usual sense of separation softened. It no longer felt like there was a “me” here observing “nature” out there. The trees, the water, the birds, the sounds — and the awareness in which they appeared — were not really separate things.

Nature wasn’t just something to look at.

It was the seamless movement of one living field appearing as many forms.

When I finally stood up and began walking the familiar trails, the stillness didn’t end. It moved with me. The park, the path beneath my feet, the sunlight through the trees, the distant sounds of birds — it all felt like one unfolding scene.

For a moment it was almost like being inside a movie, except there was no distance from it.

I wasn’t watching the scene.

I was part of it.

Later that night, just before sleep, another image came to me. What I had experienced felt like only a small opening into something much larger — as though my perception had been looking through a narrow aperture.

If that aperture could widen, it would feel less like sitting in a park and more like sitting in the universe itself.

When I left the park, I stopped at a couple of stores to pick up a few things. I noticed my conversations with the woman packing groceries and the woman at the cleaners felt unusually easy and natural — just simple human moments, nothing special, yet somehow very complete.

It was a good day.


Jeff Angelson


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