“We are all just walking each other home.”
~ Ram Dass
“The next Buddha will be the sangha [community].”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“My advice is, never think of anyone as bigger than you are, and never think of anyone as smaller than you are. Always think of everyone as just the same as you.”
~ Dr. Brihaspati Dev Triguna
Click for ESSAYS by Jerry Freeman on various topics related to spirituality and contemplative mystical awakening.
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PLEASE NOTE: I am posting this material to make it accessible for any who may be interested.
During the last two or three years my condition has deteriorated severely and I have become significantly incapacitated by the myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome I had previously been able to manage fairly well during the last 30+ years.
A trusted friend wrote,
“You must put a donate button.” 
(Thank you.)
I am 72 years old and there is still much I would like to accomplish if I can recover some of my functional capacity. I am well networked with leading authorities on ME/CFS and have access to some of the newer treatment modalities that many people are reporting success with, but it’s a slow and uncertain process.
I wrote a friend: “I’m in near-total eclipse with this extreme energy deficiency from worsening ME/CFS. All ambition is gone, plans are set aside and I’m only able to function (or not) minute to minute.”
My sense is, all will be well in the end. I do get occasional glimpses of better functioning and they encourage me to keep pushing forward — perhaps there’s a breakthrough over the next horizon.
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IF I’M ABLE to complete the required additional writing, the essays will be included in the upcoming book:
The Enlightenment Puzzle: A Guide To Navigating
the Truths and Fallacies About Awakening
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MY 2013 INTERVIEW on Rick Archer’s podcast, Buddha At The Gas Pump has been seen by 19,000 viewers. Although my thinking has changed on some things since then, I listened to it again recently and was impressed by how well it still holds up.
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My tweaked TIN WHISTLES are available on EBAY and AMAZON.
IF I’M ABLE to do the work, I want to convert from the one-whistle-at-a-time, hand-tweaking, labor-intensive, inefficient production I’ve done for the past 20 years (on over 20,000 whistles) and change over to a high-resolution 3d printing additive manufacturing process.
That will allow me to:
• DESIGN WHISTLES WITHOUT LIMITATIONS to create models I have been planning for a long time but unable to produce using the old methods.
• MAKE THE WHISTLES MORE EFFICIENTLY and reliably. That will provide a better basis to support myself and it will make the workload more reasonable to be able to keep up with demand.
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MY 2018 BOOK,
Angels, Beggars and Castaway Things:
A Forager’s Journey Home
is available on AMAZON.
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THE ESSAYS:
“Why There Are No Perfect Teachers”
“Did You Get Your Angel Wings?”
“Eulogy Following A Spiritual Teacher’s Suicide”
“Regarding Ego, Illusion, Maya and Enlightenment”
“The Ultimate Truth About Thoughts”
“When ‘Sacred’ Scriptures Promote Unholy Agendas”
“Seers, Gurus, Pedestals and the (Neurodivergence) Spectrum”
“Brahman, Reductionism and the Fractal Character of Awakening”
“A Question About ‘Purity of the Teaching’ and the Selection of Meditation Mantras”
“A Personal Message About Brahman, the Universe and You”
“Jerry’s Letter to Vernon Katz October 14, 1993”
“Excerpts from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Victory Day message of October 24, 1993”
NOTE: My October 14, 1993 letter to Vernon Katz and MMY’s October 24, 1993 Victory Day message are connected. If you are interested in the subject matter, I suggest you read both of them together.
PEOPLE ARE OFTEN BEWILDERED by a persistent cycling of expansion and contraction, boundlessness and then boundaries again, “zooming in and zooming out.” Despite a mythology about enlightenment that leads people to expect the cycling to end, it does not end and the cycling goes on forever.
This “Four Stages of the Gap” graphic depicts the dynamic character of awakening. Awakening / enlightenment is not a static end state, but an ever-pulsing, endlessly evolving, always ongoing, eternally emerging FLOW.
It is not a defect or an error to be corrected or awakened from. The cycle of contraction and expansion is the simple, spontaneous, natural and organic breathing-in and breathing-out of existence / life / consciousness / being as it flows from shore to shore across the limitless scope of its own incomprehensible vastness.
It is emptiness dancing; it is Shiva Nataraj.
It is the endless churning of the primordial ocean of consciousness (Samudra Manthan, the “ocean of milk”).
“Another Day at the Office”
In the language of Vedanta: “Brahman devours everything” “Brahman, the eater of everything” “Brahman is the charioteer” “Brahman accepts everything and rejects nothing” “Brahman includes everything and excludes nothing”
The “Four Stages of the Gap” graphic above describes exactly HOW “Brahman devours everything.” In each cycle of contraction and expansion, the vastness metabolizes another “bite” of the universe and awakening flows one stroke further along in the never-ending stream.
“Row, row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
See my essay, “Regarding Mind and Brahman” above, for more about the lucid dream within awakening.