Category Archives: LuciaLorne

Lucia & Lorne

LuciaLorn Retreats

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I have occasionally written about retreats with Lorn & Lucia Hoff. I’ve been attending them for over a dozen years. Since just before I started this blog, actually. Watching and speaking to people going through stage changes there has heavily informed my writing. They normally held them at a rural lodge where I had my first BATGAP interview. I’ve been low key about them partly because the retreats are limited to about 2 dozen people and typically have a waiting list well in advance. People travel from all over the world to an island off the coast of western Canada. … Continue Reading… →

Roles of a Teacher

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Teacher by Valerie Everett

By role of a teacher here, I mean the role they play in our spiritual journey rather than how they may position or present themselves as a teacher. A true teaching emphasizes practical application and direct experience, with the understanding to support that. If it’s just philosophy, it may only make the mind stronger. Understanding should be to serve the path, not be the path. (Yes, Gyani‘s have an emphasis on understanding, but direct experience is still the core path. Otherwise, it’s just mind.) For someone to have the role of a spiritual teacher for us, there is what I … Continue Reading… →

Transcending – The Means

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bubble diagram

Regular readers know I frequently mention effortless meditation. This is because of the key role it plays in culturing the ground for enlightenment. Over time, I’ve come to see its value more and more deeply. Yet there’s a key point about practices to make. Enlightenment isn’t caused by anything we do. It arises from the grace of the Divine. The purpose of spiritual practices is not to get enlightened but to prepare the ground. Then when grace arises, the shift is more likely to be smooth and supported. If the ground is not ready, grace will come as a profound … Continue Reading… →

Truth

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glacier national park

I can define truth as facts yet facts are items of information or data. How we see that data depends on the perceiver. Similarly, truth can be defined as a proposition or idea that is accepted as true. We might call this shared truth. But again, this is relative to the perceivers. We once considered it true that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around us. In a deeper sense, and the way I use the word here, truth is a “transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality.” But even there, what we recognize as truth is relative to … Continue Reading… →

The Body Is

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Another recent quote from Lorne Hoff: “The body is just the process of experience. We’re the experiencer.” Understanding this quote requires some background in the nature of consciousness. Deep within and infusing all is pure Divinity. Pure Divinity is unexpressed yet its inherent qualities lead to expression. Alertness is stirred by aliveness to become consciousness which flows. Consciousness curves back on itself and becomes self aware. Self-aware consciousness is one but has 3 aspects: the observer, the observed or object of experience (itself), and the process of experience. The distinction between observer and observed creates a subtle space into which … Continue Reading… →

The Awakening Intellect

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On a recent retreat, Lorne Hoff spoke of the role of the intellect in awakening. I thought the point valuable to share. When we first wake up, there is often an unknowing. We step into a place we’ve never been in many lifetimes. It is Self that wakes up to itself, well beyond the mind and any concepts we may have about it. We shift from experiencing ourselves as an egoic me to infinite and eternal being. It is like nothing changes and everything changes, both. It feels perfectly ordinary and normal. We can be surprised how simple the shift … Continue Reading… →

Perspective and Perception

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I talk a lot here about stages of development in consciousness aka stages of enlightenment. This is to offer context for the various experiences and teachings out there and help us gain a better understanding of the path. But sometimes, it’s useful to hear it all said a different way. On a recent retreat, Lorne Hoff spoke of Purusha and Prakriti. These are terms used by the Indian philosophy of Samkhya, a dualistic outlook that enumerates how the world comes into being. In Samkhya, Purusha is the cosmic spirit and Prakriti is nature. Together, they are the origin of the … Continue Reading… →

An Avatar of the People

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On a recent retreat with Lorne and Lucia, we discussed the embodiment of divinity. They observed that nobody alive today fully embodies Divinity. If they did, we’d be in a different age. Lucia mentioned Kalki (an avatar) as a collective. That triggered an understanding here. To explain, you may recall an article from 2014 called The Second Stage where I was observing a new stage of development in consciousness or the collective. The first stage is when a law of nature that had long been dormant is awakened by a human capable of living it. They can embody that law … Continue Reading… →

Lorne Webcasts

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A few weeks ago, Lorne Hoff shifted to using YouTube for the Sunday evening webcast. Among other advantages, the webcast is available for 12 24 hours if you’re not able to watch during. While live is the most potent, if you’re in Europe or work evenings, it gives you an option. Be sure to bookmark the viewing page when you first visit. Now you get an emailed link to the latest broadcast when you subscribe. When the calls first became more widely available in 2007, we were using a somewhat flaky Skype daisy-chain. It was easiest to listen in groups … Continue Reading… →

Melting the Body

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I spoke recently about liberating the person. This is a stage well after we have liberated the soul and woken up to our universal nature. As we grow into our universal nature, there is an unfolding embodiment, a descent of the divine into form. How effective that is depends on how able we are to support it. What that means varies some by person. We gradually come to see the body as cosmic. As that becomes progressively embodied and the physiology gradually adapts to sustaining that presence, we find a refinement even of the surface physical form. The inner purity … Continue Reading… →

Pure Devotion

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On a recent retreat, Lorne Hoff spoke on pure devotion. This isn’t the devotion of earlier stages of development in the awakening heart. Rather there is continuous devotion when all of creation has become recognized as surrendering to source. After God Realization, we may have united with the divine. What then is there to be devoted to? As Lorne put it, we step into pure devotion, devotion to devotion itself. I’ve spoken before about how, once Brahman is established, there are no longer stages in consciousness. We have gone beyond even that. What then remains is the progressive refinement and … Continue Reading… →