N-lightenment

Something in you already knows.

You Are Always OK

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No matter what is happening in your life, you are always fundamentally okay. Your True Nature is one of great peace, contentment, unconditional love, and complete freedom from all suffering. Nothing that happens in this life can take that away from you or change it in any way. It is only your conditioned thoughts that hide the direct experience of this from you. May this video help you remember.

Infinite Wisdom of your True Nature

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Discover the Infinite Wisdom of Your True Nature

In this video of a Wednesday night Satsang, we explore the infinite wisdom that is our True Nature. I love answering people’s questions, as you may know, but we all have access to unlimited wisdom by simply returning to the silence and stillness of our True Nature. In this Satsang and guided meditation, I help you return to your True Nature where all questions can be answered.
This video is from Facebook Live, where I just began offering Satsang. You can attend now on Facebook Live, the Zoom meeting room or at the Sedona Zendo. A wealth of options. Hope to see you here.

Radiant Light and Love

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Radiant Light and Love

A Spiritual Biography of the True Self

I experienced this Radiant Light and Love as a young child often when I was alone. By age twelve the noise of the world and my thoughts had drowned It out. At twenty-two years, It returned full force and completely overcame the noise of the world, thought and all self-identity. What I had thought I was dissolved completely in this Light and Love. The experience was pure heaven, absolute peace, bliss and unconditional love.

It was then that I first realized the great power of this Radiant Light and Love to heal people. Many people were healed in those ten days before thoughts of a separate self were re-established. This profound experience and the seeming loss of it after only ten days was the beginning of a dedicated spiritual search that lasted over thirty years.

In my early fifties, a Near Death experience from a bad surgery and several other profound awakenings initiated the return of this Radiant Light and Love in a more complete and permanent way. I found myself remaining in silence for long periods of up to a year at a time completely immersed in this Presence of God, for this is what I called It. It was then that this Light began healing people again. Since that time, It has continued to increase for the past twenty years.

Now a transmission is often felt by people around me, as this is what It does. I realize this Light and Love as my True Self and the True Self of all existence. All that is not This is but a dream of thought. Most people are not aware of It, nor are they able to see It. It is not a light of photons that can be seen with human eyes. I can’t honestly say how I can. Most people are distracted from realizing It by thoughts and thought-based perceptions of the world and a separate self. Yet, in Truth, beneath all this illusion and appearance shines this Radiant Light and Love. It is always here. Nothing that exists could exist without It.

Please understand that words cannot possibly describe an experience that is completely beyond words and thoughts, as all reality is. The only understanding is found in the direct experience beyond words and thoughts. And this is always available to you.

If you are open to it, this can be experienced in Satsang. I hold Satsang online every Saturday from noon to 2:30 PM Pacific Time and both online and at the Zendo in Sedona from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM Arizona Time each Monday.

Directions to the Sedona Zendo of the Awakened Heart in Sedona, Arizona and how to attend online can be found here: Living Awake Satsang and Satsang – Living in Truth

Peter Cutler is a Zen Monk, artist and spiritual teacher living in Sedona, Arizona.

The painting “When Two or More” can be seen at the online Zen Brush Gallery:

When Two or More

Zen Brush Gallery

A Mountain Monk

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A Mountain Monk
When I say I am a monk, people often ask me what kind of monk. Am I a Buddhist monk? A Zen monk? Am I affiliated with a certain monastery or lineage?
 
I suppose I should say I am a mountain monk. I learn from the mountains. The mountains are my teachers and my lineage. I have a Zen lineage also that goes back thousands of years all the way to Shakyamuni Buddha. But my main lineage is these mountains and it is far older.
 
I don’t only learn from these mountains. I learn from everything. The sun, the stars, the wind, the birds, the coyotes, the mountain lion, snakes, spiders and ants are all my noble teachers. I learn from people too. People like Buddha, Dogen, Ramana Maharshi, Thich Nhat Hanh and Mooji understand mountain wisdom too and so I learn from them.
 
And I learn from other people as well. From the media and conversations, I learn to trust my mind and opinions. I learn that some things are good and some bad. I learn pride, arrogance, disappointment, anger, judgment and fear. I learn suffering. And I learn confusion because most people do not understand mountain wisdom. And if I spend too much time listening to their thoughts and opinions or my own, I don’t either.
 
So mostly I just listen to the mountains. The mountains teach me silence and stillness. They teach a timeless wisdom affected by neither birth nor death. Do not imagine that mountains cannot speak. They are always speaking. Do not imagine that mountains are limited to this planet or that they were not here before this planet. Do not imagine that these mountains have any limitations at all. Do not imagine that there is a hair’s breadth of separation between you and these mountains, because that is not what mountains teach.
 
When you understand the wisdom of mountains, you may learn to speak the language of mountains. People being people, not many will understand you. They are still listening to their thoughts. But some will.