Gangaji – Freedom and Resolve

After sharing her essential teaching, Gangaji speaks to a common mistake: misidentifying ourselves as our thoughts, emotions, bodies and circumstances. Gangaji shares how our narrative of our life, whether it is relatively positive or negative, becomes a painful trap.

Following our investigation of the story of “me,” Gangaji brings us into an examination of how the story continues to be perpetuated. In recognizing the patterns of how we misidentify with our thoughts and emotions, we can end our personal suffering. In Part 1, we take a closer look at the fundamental desire to survive and what that means in our daily lives.

“You know how to get food. You know how to get shelter. You know how to get sex. You know how to get personal power. And you know that if your attention is fixated on that you can never get enough.”

In Part 2 of our examination of unnecessary suffering, we will dive into aspects of two particular survival drives, sex/procreation and personal power.

When we identify why we avoid or postpone true surrender, we see past the murky depths and recognize our real fears. In this module we inquire into what it is we are protecting? What we are defending? What we are trying to save?

“If you surrender to the truth that no phenomenon can touch, you are free.”

Surrender is usually associated with loss. In this module, Gangaji speaks to the freedom of surrender – when you are willing to be who you truly are.

The nature of phenomena is simply to come and go. In this module we examine our strategies surrounding gain and loss. What comes and goes? What doesn’t come and go? And finally, what does it take to be true to yourself?

In our final session, Gangaji returns to the first pages of Freedom and Resolve to explore our choices and free will. What will our lives be about? What do we really want, finally? Gangaji unabashedly invites you to be free, to be yourself without hesitation and doubt.

In this lively dialogue, Gangaji is joined by renowned spiritual teacher Miranda Macpherson to discuss their approaches to SURRENDER, the heart of the spiritual path and the challenges of living from spiritual depth in daily life. How do you engage the perennial invitation to “be still” in our fast-paced world? They will also share what it’s like to be female spiritual leaders in a field that, until very recently, has been dominated by the masculine perspective.

Miranda Macpherson is a contemporary spiritual teacher, counselor and author of the spiritual guidebook Boundless Love. Miranda has been teaching internationally since 1995 and is known for her depth of presence, clarity and refined capacity to guide people into direct experience of the sacred. Miranda is founder of the ground-breaking OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in London, and today, leads the Awakening Love and Wisdom sangha in Marin and Sonoma counties. She teaches retreats in the United States and in Europe, and is working on a new book, Tasting Grace. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is married to Bob Duchmann, a teacher of the Diamond Approach (A.H. Almass’ Ridwhan School).

These two beautifully tranquil meditations will not only calm your mind and nourish your soul, but they will offer powerful guidance into important inquiries on the nature of your true identity. You’ll come away more deeply in tune with the truth of who you are.

“The desire for truth, for God, for freedom will never be satisfied even by the most exquisite experiences or states of mind. This is the realization that most people avoid because it is so radical, because it means that the desire for freedom is not just a toy of the mind.”

Unlike other desires, the desire for true freedom is an invitation to turn the mind back into the very core of the desire itself, rather than projecting into the future. In these conversations, Gangaji makes it clear that once that choice is made it is possible to realize something more limitless than personal freedom: the direct experience of what is and always has been and always will be free.