This Course Includes:

• Course Introduction that provides guidelines for maximizing your experience.
• Four 2-hour recorded sessions of broadcasts from the live online course “Taking the One Seat” (2017). Sessions include talks followed by dialogues with original course participants. (Video stream and audio download.)
• Session notes to help you remember and integrate the teachings from each session.
• Three weekly exercises to help you apply the teachings during the weeks between sessions. (Video stream and audio download.)
• A PDF of all Q&A. A 70-page printable PDF that includes all the Session Notes as well as written Q&A between Adyashanti and the original course participants.
• Audio MP3s of all the content that you can download to your computer or device* so you can revisit the teachings indefinitely.

Course materials are accessible for 90 days from date of purchase. All audio and written materials are downloadable during this period.

*Downloading instructions for Apple mobile devices.

Recorded November 2017 in San Jose, California.
© 2017-2019 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.

Taking the One Seat
Spiritual Autonomy and the Soul's Discovery of Meaning 

Deep spiritual experience is characterized by an apparent, and at times baffling, paradox. While realization reveals the unity and non-separation of all existence, we simultaneously experience ourselves as individuals leading particular human lives. Ultimately the experience of reality lies at the dynamic confluence of the universal One and the human one, the experience of no separate self and what I call spiritual autonomy.

Spiritual autonomy, or what might be described as the soul (if understood more as a function than as a thing), is not a given. The spiritual autonomy that the soul affords is generally hard won and comes at the expense of many deeply ingrained ideas and beliefs about what life is and how it works. It must be nurtured and developed in the grist of daily living, which is to say that it must be lived, not simply realized. Spiritual autonomy is an invitation to step up to our incarnation, to say yes to it, and to realize our own potential, both for ourselves and for the sake of all beings.

But before the soul can be realized and lived, it must be brought to the surface of consciousness, nurtured, and chosen to be one's own. Only then does it begin to reveal a deeper sense of meaning and direction in one's life. While the Ground of being may be completely beyond both meaning and purpose, the individual expression of that Ground is given direction and oriented to the world through the prism of meaning. By bringing to light how the Ground of being functions through the individual, we discover a degree of spiritual autonomy that allows and challenges us to what in Zen is called taking the one seat. Taking the one seat is to fully occupy this very life—our individual life and all of life—as the ultimate ground of being. To do so is the expression of enlightenment itself.

I hope that you will feel called to join me in these talks, Q&A, practice videos, and more, as we take this deep dive into what it means to discover and develop spiritual autonomy.

~ Adyashanti

Topics Include:

• Defining Soul and Soul Values
• Translating Soul Values into Your Humanness
• Spiritual Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Occupying Your Life
• The Discovery of Meaning
• Widening the View of Purpose
• Meaning and Purpose as Orientation
• The Two Sides of Oneness
• Enlightened Relativity
• Embracing the Paradox of Enlightenment
• Embodiment as a Voyage of Discovery
• Operating from Your Light
• How Values Dictate Modes of Being
• Whole Enlightenment: Embodying the Absolute and the Relative

"While the Ground of being may be completely beyond both meaning and purpose, the individual expression of that Ground is given direction and oriented to the world through the prism of meaning. By bringing to light how the Ground of being functions through the individual, we discover a degree of spiritual autonomy that allows and challenges us to what in Zen is called 'taking the one seat.'"

"The absolute Ground of our being is unconditioned. Meaning and purpose are not relevant from this perspective. Yet simultaneously in the relative, human experience, meaning has importance; it gives us an orientation in life and a pathway through which our absolute nature can manifest itself."

"By translating our deepest experience of being into time and space, we develop spiritual autonomy—an independence of spirit capable of manifesting the enlightened condition in daily living for the highest possible good."

"We usually think of purpose in a narrow way. We think that if we find the one right thing, our life will have meaning. Actually, the opposite is true. What if you orient your values in everything that you do?" 

"Spiritual autonomy requires you to orient around the depth of your being, not by imposing nice ideals, but by recognizing that your soul values are innate. Recognize them from the inside and let them occupy the space of your being."

"In enlightened relativity, one sees the truth of both the absolute and the relative. There is meaning and there is no meaning simultaneously."

"The focus of this course is primarily on the ever-evolving capacity to embody the enlightened condition both in yourself and in your daily life. It is the practice of Buddhas embodying and expressing their Buddhahood, not to achieve some imaginary goal, but because it is an instinct within the heart of being."

"Our values determine our mode of being in the world, always."

"We are on a voyage of discovery with no endpoint. Rather, it is an endless exploration of how to be in the world for the benefit of ourselves and all beings." 

"Unless we have the capacity to experience our own being and aliveness, we’re really missing the chance to take a full seat in our lives. We then become just our name, gender, and occupation, which are mere ideas."