David Bruneau's blog

Recently my daughter and I were talking about our current -or close to current - experiences and, as often happens with our conversations, we sank into a profound inquiry into the deeper truths of our experience, the underlying mechanisms of thought, consciousness, and motivation that were shaping it. This type of inquiry is so powerful and helpful in clarifying experience, bringing insight into the workings of the mind, and opening up the awareness of our true nature. It cuts through any confusion or lack of clarity around the experience being examined. Read more »

In another dyad recently I entered a contemplation on emptiness and formlessness. An image arose which seemed to describe my situation in life these days. I am sitting on the edge of a cliff looking out at a vast emptiness, nothingness, or void. Everything that used to give meaning to my life has been falling away and this nothingness is what remains. There is a sense that I am still here in some way, separate from this void. Sometimes there is more openness to the emptiness, sometimes less. Read more »

 The other night in a dyad process there was spontaneously a clear sense of not believing what thoughts were saying, a shift "backwards" into the Awareness within which the thoughts were arising. What I am was very obviously not what thought was creating but much more the Awareness and Presence, the undefinable Mystery. As I contemplated this Awareness it became clear that it could only be "known" by objectifying it and creating a subject - object duality, which is not true knowing. Read more »

The other day while sitting with some feelings I came a across a kind of entity living in my gut or solar plexus area, a sort of "inner child" personality, not unfamiliar.  This entity wanted to survive, to live, to be sustained and supported in getting what it feels it needs or wants to maintain its life:  mainly acknowledgement, attention, appreciation, and love.  The sense of self or "me" apparently takes different locations and identities within my body-mind, and when the process of deconstruction begins and proceeds all these identities are Read more »

Contemplating love and relationship the other night in a dyad exercise I saw a tendency to look for security and connection in the "wrong" place.  The mind wants to plug into a source of love, safety, security, comfort, well-being, and so on.  Thought looks to outside sources, to another;  it creates an umbilical cord with another person or with objects, ideas, etc.  These outside sources are never dependable and the result is frustration, disappointment, hopelessness, anger, and alienation.  It's not that what the mind is seeking doesn't exist&nbs Read more »

On this journey of self discovery there comes a point - which comes again and again - where the conventional activities of the thinking mind (the movements of thought and emotion) have been looked into, seen, and understood to a significant degree with the result that they have much less power to shape experience.  The issue that can - and regularly does - arise at these points is "What remains?"  There comes a sense of the meaninglessness of the ways in which thought constructs a life, a self, a sense of stability, consistency, continuity, and all the pleasurable or jud Read more »

The event of being diagnosed with a possible physical "problem" became the material for some inquiry into my true nature.  Why should the body continue?  Am I the body?  Am I the "I" thought that wants to survive, to continue?  Why should this "I" thought continue?  What is the problem with the dissolving away of the physical form or of the thought-created entity that says "I"? Read more »

One way of understanding the process of life - or one dimension of its expression - is as a coming into being of forms - physical, energetic, and thought forms - and the eventual falling away or dissolving of these forms.  The more the dissolution is allowed when it is happening the more joy and bliss are experienced.  The more the dying of forms is resisted, the more suffering is experienced. Read more »

The other evening, while contemplating the question "What Am I?" (in the dyad format employed in Enlightenment Intensive retreats), it became clear that there has been a recent shift in my way of experiencing, a shift which continues to unfold.  It is a kind of reversal of figure and ground, a shift in the gestalt of how life is experienced.  There is a seeing that any experience of knowing or conceptualizing is just arising out of "emptiness", or the Unknown, and that it is an expression of the Emptiness or Formless.  The Mystery is the source a Read more »

  During the night there was suddenly a deeper seeing, a seeing through the idea of the "I", a penetrating look which revealed more clearly than ever before the illusory nature of the I thought, the belief that there is a "doer", an entity called "I" which is real and substantial.  The seeing went on for some time, exposing moment to moment the assumption that the thought "I" actually refers to something distinct and definite, something with form. Read more »