John Sherman Podcast

Interview with John Sherman - March 30, 2011

Complete recording of an interview with John Sherman. John was interviewed by Kapila Christoph Heinen (Nevada City, California) on March 30, 2011.

 

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File size: 16.04 Mb
Length: 1 h 7 min.

Open House Meeting - April 6, 2011

"As long as life is here, it is endlessly engaging and endlessly unfolding in its own way. And once the cause of the trouble finally goes, and the ruckus that attends its leaving begins to settle down, one of the things that stands out very clearly is that one becomes unexpectedly capable of being more skillful at managing and navigating the wonder of one's own life." John Sherman

Complete recording of an Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on April 6, 2011.

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Length: 57 min
File size: 13.67 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - March 12, 2011

"This looking is the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. It can seem really hard when you're trying to accomplish it, but the fact is that the trying to accomplish it is the accomplishment of it." John Sherman

Complete recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on March 12, 2011.

 

 

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Length: 1 hr 21 min
File size: 19.42 MB

Open House Meeting - March 16, 2011

Complete recording of an Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on March 16, 2011.

 

 

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Length: 50 min
File size: 11.97 MB

Open House Meeting - February 23, 2011

"The fear of life has created within us a need to stay alienated from our life. The fear of life is especially alive in the resistance to being in a body. As time is spent in the effort to look at yourself, the fear of life fades away." John Sherman

Complete recording of an Online Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on February 23, 2011.

 

 

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Length: 50 min
File size: 11.99 MB

Open House Meeting - February 16, 2011

Complete recording of an Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on February 16, 2011.

 

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Length: 1 hr 11 min
File size: 17.02 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - February 12, 2011

"The fear of life is the sense that life is wrong, and that sense actually can be snuffed out. It can be snuffed out by this simple effort, this heartfelt determination to see if it is not possible for you to bring the beam of your attention in direct contact with the reality of your nature." John Sherman

Complete recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, CA on February 12, 2011.

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Length: 1 hr 43 min
File size: 24.75 MB

Open House Meeting - February 9, 2011

Complete, live recording of an Online Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on February 9, 2011.

 

Length: 53 min
File size: 12.75 MB

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A Worldwide Meeting - December 18, 2010

"That's life: endlessly moving, endlessly unpredictable, endlessly chaotic, endlessly rewarding, endlessly rich, endlessly, wondrously, magnificently beautiful. Terribly beautiful. That's what we're here for. We're here to live this storm of wild wonder that is the unfolding of phenomena within our minds, within our consciousness. And when the fear of it goes, then our reception of it is wondrous beyond belief." John Sherman

Complete recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on December 18, 2010.

 

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Length: 1 hr 53 min
File size: 27.6 MB

 

Open House Meeting - December 22, 2010

Complete recording of an Online Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on December 22, 2010.

 

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Length: 53 min
File size: 12.61 MB

Open House Meeting - December 8, 2010

"We just completed a five-day retreat here in Ojai that was actually tremendously helpful to me. This retreat had a fundamental impact on my ability to communicate to people what it is that I want to communicate, free from any reference to the domain of spiritual aspiration and attainment." John Sherman

Complete recording of an Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on December 8, 2010.

 

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Length: 60 min.
File size: 14.39 MB

John Sherman: Fearlessness and Compassion

Live recording of "Fearlessness and Compassion, True Service to Humanity", a talk by John Sherman at Moorpark College in Moorpark, California on February 25, 2010.

 

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Length: 2 hr 08 min
File size: 30.79 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - November 6, 2010

The looking is a cure for the disease that makes life seems ruined. It's not an escape from life. Look. Be patient. The fever will break. The disease will pass.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on November 6, 2010.

 

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Length: 1 hr 44 min
File size: 24.94 MB

 

A Worldwide Meeting - October 9, 2010

The main thing I want to say, and the central reason that I come to these meetings and speak to people, is to suggest that we all try just this one simple act, without regard to what we have done before, or what we hope to accomplish in the future, or what we think about things, or what we understand about things, or what we don't understand about things. This act is so simple and so obviously and self-evidently harmless that it would be very difficult for anybody who hears what I am actually suggesting to resist trying to do it themselves -- without regard to anything else they know, or think, or believe, or understand, or fail to understand, or want or don't want.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on October 9, 2010.

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Length: 1 hr 57 min
File size: 28.22 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - September 11, 2010

For almost 11 years now, I have been trying to speak clearly and directly about what I see, and about the fact that I have stumbled upon a method whereby anybody, with a very simple act of inward looking, can free themselves of the fundamental problem that leads to a sense that life is out to get me, that I am trapped here, that I don't know what I am doing, that I am worthless, etc. Because these arisings are all thoughts, it is natural to conclude that the problem in being human has to do with the way we think about things, the way we look at things, our relationship with things, our understanding of things, our moral sensibility, our righteousness, and a whole range of thoughts that have to do with the way our psychology operates and the way the mind expresses itself in our individual, innate conscious lives. And for that reason, we spend most of the time that is given over to working on solving the problem of being human resorting to psychological, religious, spiritual, metaphysical or philosophical means hoping to reform our minds and rid ourselves of such things as resistance, antagonism, aggression, hatred of others, and so forth, that we have been led to believe are the source of the problem, that nature of our wrongfulness. Or we have tried to find ways that we can embrace, and see clearly the deep understanding of non-dual reality that we have also been led to believe will set us free, will make us happy and at home in our lives. Or, when nothing else has worked, perhaps we have turned to religion for solace and consolation. And, truth is, all that we have done in the effort to find spiritual, religious and philosophical solutions to what seems to be the intractable problem of being human has done us very little good.

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Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on September 11, 2010.

Length: 2 hr 08 min
File size: 29.22 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - July 10, 2010

My role in this adventure of trying to bring the simplicity of this work to every human being is not to concoct teachings, ways of looking at things, instructions and practices that are my creation, and then pass them on to you for you to receive gratefully, and try to make sense of. My role here is actually to distill and articulate the product of an ongoing conversation among all of us, over a period of more than ten years now, about the discovery that bringing an end to misery in a human life is actually not only possible but easy and simple, and can be done by anyone. It requires nothing at all to accomplish this except the determination to do one simple, solitary, radical act, and that is to turn the beam of your attention onto the feeling of being you. That's it. In the end, and against all odds and all expectation, this repeated act will bring sanity into your life. It will eliminate the underlying sense that life is treacherous and not to be trusted, and that something desperately needs to be done about it.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on July 10, 2010.

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Length: 2 hr 43 sec
File size: 28.97 MB

A Wordlwide Meeting - June 12, 2010

The action of looking at oneself has no immediate effect on the content of the life. But in the end it has an decisive effect on the disease which causes us to feel that the content of our life is fundamentally important to our existence.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on June 12, 2010.

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Length: 2 hr 3 min
File size: 29.46 MB

Open House Meeting - June 16, 2010

Over time, this practice takes away the idea that the presence of distracting, energetic and negative experiences is of any consequence at all. It takes away from you the relationship that finds it desperately important to do something about these things. But this happens naturally over time, and it is not something that can be accelerated.

Complete, live recording of an Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on June 16, 2010.

Recordings of Open House Meetings are not usually made available to the public, since these meetings are offered as a safe, intimate space where people can feel free to speak their mind without being concerned that the recording will be publicly available. The conversations in this meeting seem so useful that we decided to make the recording available here -- with permission from the participants.

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Length: 35 min
File size: 8.52 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - May 8, 2010

In everything I say, I have only one goal: I want to find something that will be useful and might help you see what it is that I am trying to get you to do when I say "look at yourself."

Complete recording of A Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on May 8, 2010.

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Length: 1 h 50 min
File size: 26.31 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - April 10, 2010

The act of looking at oneself is not a therapeutic measure. It does not necessarily have a positive effect in the moment. In truth, once you actually begin this adventure, it is not uncommon for negative experiences to seem more vivid than ever, and for things to seem even worse, even though all the while you have the clear sense that everything is actually moving in the right direction.

Complete recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on April 10, 2010.

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Length: 1 h 32 min
File size: 22.18 MB

A Meeting with John Sherman - March 28, 2010

I would like you to check and see if there is an opinion working within you to the effect that what I am suggesting and what I speak about is another version of some other teaching. Another version of advaita vedanta, or non-duality, or any of that stuff. I'd really like you to check and see whether that relationship to what I am saying is alive within you, because if it is alive within you, I would suggest that before you go any further, you really look at that.

Opening talk at an Open Meeting with John Sherman in Santa Monica, California on March 28, 2010.

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Length: 21 min
File size: 20 MB

Read the transcription of this recording.

A Meeting with John Sherman - March 13, 2010

I just want you to look at you. I don't even want you to see you, because you already see yourself all the time. If you will use your own natural intelligence trying to get the taste, the feel of the person-ness of you, you will succeed. If you will do this simple action, without any need to understand it, you will succeed. In the end, the sense that there is something about you and your life that needs fixing, transforming or transcending will vanish.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on March 13, 2010.

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Length: 1 h 46 min
File size: 101.7 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - February 13, 2010

Self-reliance is not easy. Self-reliance is full of mistakes, stumbling blocks, false trails and premature conclusions. Self-reliance isn't pretty. Self-reliance is hard, it is not easy. It is easy to abandon self-reliance and try to find answers in other people's understandings and experiences. That's easy. Trying to manifest experiences that we have come to believe to be what we need to be in order to be free and happy and satisfied and fulfilled, that's easy. But it is not self-reliance.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on February 13, 2010.

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Length: 1 h 14 min
File size: 72 MB

Open House Meeting - February 10, 2010

What I speak about as "fear" is a much smaller thing than you would think and it does not even need to be called "fear." It is a sense of endangerment that arises with the appearance of self-consciousness. It is extremely subtle and it fixes the point of view from which we relate to the unfolding of the life -- until that point of view is eradicated. What eradicates it is the inquiry, the noticing of oneself.

Complete, live recording of an Open House Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on February 10, 2010.

Recordings of Open House Meetings are not usually made available to the public, since these meetings are offered as a safe, intimate space where people can feel free to speak their mind without being concerned that the recording will be publicly available. The conversations in this meeting seem so useful that we decided to make the recording available here -- with permission from the participants.

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Length: 48 min
File size: 68 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - January 16, 2010

In the beginning, that which moves someone to do the vichara is the same desire to be rid of fear and dissatisfaction and be happy with life that drives everything else we do. What makes vichara different from all our other ineffective efforts to find happiness is that it really works.

Complete recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on January 16, 2010.

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Length: 1 h 27 min
File size: 83.53 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - December 19, 2009

The point of this work is to rid you of the wrong idea that you are at stake in your life. The only thing that has any consequence in this effort is to bring your conscious attention in direct contact with the reality of you.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on December 19, 2009.

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Length: 1 h 32 min
File size: 87.75 MB

Worldwide Meeting - November 28, 2009

All that you have to do to rid yourself of the sense that there is something wrong with your life and that you need to do something to fix it is to look at yourself.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on November 28, 2009.

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Length: 1 h 50 min
File size: 53.06 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - October 31, 2009

For the most part, what we get from spiritual teachings are descriptions meant to evoke in us what it feels like to be free from the existential fear and anxiety that plagues all human beings... I am not a teacher, and I am not here to teach anything. I am simply bearing witness to the fact that the actual nature of life as a human being is happiness and fearlessness.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on October 31, 2009.

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Length: 1 h 50 min
File size: 26.51 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - October 17, 2009

We are deeply attached to the idea that the teachings of the wise ones of the past are perfect expressions of absolute truth, uncontaminated by the natural limitations of human understanding and communication. Our unconscious allegiance to this idea is very strong. But this is a simple misunderstanding, and is easily cleared up.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on October 17, 2009.

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Length: 1 h 55 min
File size: 27.73 MB

A Worldwide Meeting - October 10, 2009

We spend our lives desperately searching outwardly for something to do that will make us happy. We put our heart and soul into these activities. Vichara is driven by that same energy.

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on October 10, 2009.

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Length: 1 h 48 min
File size: 26 MB