David Bruneau's blog

   I just completed a seven day Enlightenment Intensive with Murray Kennedy near Vancouver.  It was a powerful experience.  Before each of his retreats Murray has been emailing some pertinent quotes from a variety of teachers, one of which is by Trungpa Rinpoche to the effect that treading the spiritual path involves one insult after another.  It could be questioned of course whether there is a path at all and anyone to tread it but there seems to be a deep truth in what Trungpa was pointing to, which was born out by several experiences during the intensive.  I Read more »

  Recently I had to go to Kamloops to give evidence in a lawsuit.  The legal proceedings in the courtroom were fairly uneventful and boring except that somehow I did after a while start to find it interesting to watch other witnesses being examined and even felt some excitement about putting in my own two cents worth.  Being cross-examined aggressively by the "opposing" lawyers was definitely a little nerve-racking but didn't seem like a very big deal really.  I did notice a kind of intensified energy flow after it was over but nothing particularl Read more »

  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 »

  Recently Meghan and I made a trip south for two weeks and soon arrived in Death Valley.  I'd had no real expectations about the place but we were surprised again and again by the beauty and unusual qualities of the landscapes there - which neither of us had experienced before.  After being there a few days and before leaving the park and heading further south to Joshua Tree we decided to make a last excursion to a viewpoint called Dante's Peak.  The weather had been erratic, with some cloud and rain throughout the day.  As we drove up a long hill to the lo 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.  The thinking mind resists the void and contracts in fear 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.  Awareness could only truly be known by being it, 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 id 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 ex 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 »