9th Fetter
The Flow Curriculum

Restlessness vs. Stillness

The 9th Fetter pairs with the 3rd Fetter, and is what we call “The Flow Fetter”.

It is the fetter you will often return to, no matter in which other fetter you find yourself spending the most time. The 9th fetter is more of a reality check than anything.

What we’ll call “Reality”, for lack of a better word, always unfolds naturally in the present moment, without any need for striving or expectations. 

This comes with a deep realisation that there has never been any starting point. They could only have been mental fabrications.

By tuning into the current state of Being, and making contact with sensory experiences, Flow will happen from a space where decisions are based on a present need for rest, nourishment, exercise, and meditation.

If there seems to be any perceived obstruction arising, the issue does not lie in the unfolding of the moment, but in the identification with an expectation.

There is a present awareness of what feels right in any moment, without the pressure of internal or external expectations or preferences.

Can you simply be present in the moment, without constantly chasing improvement, or seeking external validation? 

Can you fully embrace and accept yourself as you are, without the need for constant self-improvement? 

Can you create space for any perceived obstruction, and just be with any activated identification?

9th Fetter

Exercise:

Sit with your eyes open, and notice the flow of everything.

One inhalation is followed by a pause before the exhalation.

Eyes see whatever is before them, and the mind creates stories about what is seen.

Everything around you is in a natural flow, and so are all the elements that you have once taken to be “you”.

There is no need to let that “I” experience be a stick in the wheel, with all of its identifications and assumptions.

Can you drop out of it all? Unpin?

And just notice the flow in everything.

Do you see that you do not even need to allow flow to happen?

It already is.

Enjoy.

Full playlist for the Flow Curriculum

Explore the 10th Fetter.

See Through The Self Delusion Course

We are so happy that there is now a full course for you to see through the identification of the self!

This course is like a practical handbook of all of the different angles that you need to be aware of when you are investigating identification in your direct experience. We hope that it will be equally useful to people who are absolute beginners on this awakening path, as it will be to seasoned seekers who believe they have seen through the sense of self and are currently working with the higher fetters. We believe that everyone will find things in the course that will help them to deepen their insights regardless of whichever stage of awakening they feel they are in.

Take your time with this course! It is quite comprehensive. Through it we will be discussing many aspects of awakening, some of which tend to be overlooked by those on the path. We stress the importance of integrating awakening into our daily lives, so we spend a lot of time helping to bridge the gap between the spiritual world and the relative mundane one in which we all live.

In this course we will go into detail about meditation practices, discerning thought from “reality”, how to approach long-held trauma, how to investigate and manage our fear of death, practices to stimulate deep non-dual insights, and how to avoid many different pitfalls and egoic traps that you might encounter on the awakening path.

For those who are familiar with our The Awakening Curriculum and Unfettered Mindfulness YouTube channels, you might have already seen many of these videos. But they have been assembled in a practical sequence that allows progressive insights and practice, and they have been expanded with 50,000 words of written summaries, extrapolations, further inquiry and meditation practices, and more. It’s effectively like having a whole book integrated into the video material. Even if you have already watched the videos, we hope that these written lessons will help to deepen and expand your understanding of the material, and provide you new directions to take your practice.

To get the most out of this course, we recommend watching each video in sequence, and taking lots of time to actively do every inquiry at least once. It can help to do the same inquiry multiple times before moving on. It’s always recommended to rewatch lessons, if not immediately, then come back to them weeks or months later to see if you now hear something that you missed the first time, or that now makes sense to you in a way that you couldn’t access previously.

It should be emphasized, you might accumulate a lot of new concepts from this course, but that will be of comparatively little benefit next to the insights that you glean from putting everything you hear into practice.

You are likely here, doing this course, in order to experience some sort of transformation of experience. But concepts have limited ability to do this. At least not in terms of creating long-term transformation.

For that, you need to have an experiential understanding of what we are pointing to. So relax, settle in, take a deep breath, and allow the experience to unfold all on its own.

No one knows what will happen on the other side of any practice. So remain curious, open, and remember to have fun.

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