An evening with Joe and Guin Miller at their home (31 December 1987)

Joe Miller was an authentic American mystic who taught in many ways, the most famous being the Thursday morning walks through Golden Gate Park. Joe never charged for anything. On the contrary, he treated everyone to ice cream at the Ocean Safeway near the beach. Working together with his wife, Guin Miller, from the 1960s to the 1990s, they inspired thousands of people throughout the world. With their music, walks in the park, evenings at the SFTS and their deeply compassionate, one-on-one friendship, they touched many lives and offered a powerful example of the unconditional love and simple awareness that operates at the heart of all the world's great mystical traditions.

Visit: http://www.sftslodge.org/category/miller-archive for more information about Joe Miller teachings. 

Book about Joe Miller Teachings:

The Power of Now has been widely recognized as one of the most influential spiritual books of our time. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it has been translated into over 30 languages. The book has helped countless people around the globe awaken to the spiritual dimension in their lives, find inner peace, increased joy and more harmonious relationships

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger.

Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?"
"Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember."
"Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger.
"No," said the beggar. "What's the point? There's nothing in there."
"Have a look inside," insisted the stranger.
The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.

I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.

"But I am not a beggar," I can hear you say.

Part 1 of 21

Once we come back to our Self, then whatever is created is happening not so much from a perspective of “What do I want?” but from a pure intention. Not an individual intention, not a collective intention, but the intention, the primal intention. It’s not an intention with a choice or a chooser. It’s a primary creative energy that comes from the source.

When we really have returned to the source, creation is no longer distorting itself through our wants or desires. That’s when we’re seeing, “What is? That’s what I want. What is actually happening? That’s what I desire.” And I’m no longer interested in creating anything, because I realize that everything, as it is, is what I always wanted it to be. It was always my intention; I just didn’t know it. I didn’t really want to manifest my individual intention, I wanted to come into the purity of intention itself.

This realization doesn’t obliterate duality; it liberates duality. When we come into the ultimate Truth, then our thoughts, feelings, and actions come from this self-realization. At that point, there’s no sense in choosing or not choosing. There’s just the watching. When the Truth is conscious instead of unconscious, it can come through and manifest purely—without any desire to do so.

You created me to remind you of this. We all create exactly what we need. When we are not conscious enough, when our self-concept is not big enough to allow us to have the wisdom that we are, to let in the divinity that we are, to let in the Buddha nature that we are, then we’ll project it somewhere else. Maybe we’ll create a guy called Adya. Then we’ll go into a relationship, and through that relationship we’ll start to realize, “That’s who I am—Adya’s not really Adya and I’m not really me.”

Then it just gets clearer and clearer, until our realization and our self-concept have gotten full enough and complete enough that we don’t need to create a relationship of apparent two-ness to remind us of what we already know. But even when we see that, we’ll keep doing it for the fun of it.
It’s a circular process. I love this Truth so much—and by this I mean Self-love in the biggest sense—that I create you, and through you asking questions, which is really me asking questions, I get to tell myself the answers. I get to display who I am and what I know to myself. But it’s actually one being: I’m not stuck being Adya. You’re not stuck being you. We are stuck being It.

And we realize it doesn’t matter which side we’re on. We’re either looking for our Self with the help of creating a so-called somebody else, or we’re just in the joy of revealing our Self to our Self over and over. The more we realize it’s all one, the more we realize, “You know, we’re really having fun.”

Filmed in 1979 by Peter Brook. A classic spiritual movie of G.I. Gurdjieff struggles beginning with his childhood until his discovery of The Fourth Way, an ancient spiritual tradition that used sacred movements as meditation. The story in this film is based on Gudjieff's book with the same title, which is the second book of his trilogy: "All and Everything".

Part 1 of 11

Talks 1 (Part 1 of 8)

I would like to know why you are all here. I really mean it. With what intention, with what purpose, with what kind of imaginary or superstitious concepts that one has?

And perhaps, if I may be so bold as to suggest it, you might have come with those ideas, with those formulas. And I am afraid you will be disappointed because - I hope you can hear, all right?

I hope you all can hear - one has talked all over the world for a long time, seventy years, that's a long time, and one has naturally built up all kinds of fanciful, superstitious imaginary reputations, and those reputations, those images that one has created are really meaningless because what we are talking about is totally different from a lecture. A lecture is meant to inform, to instruct, to guide and so on. This is not a lecture.

Part 1 of 10

All that we have invented, the symbols in the church, the rituals, they are all put there by thought. Thought has invented these things. Invented the savior. Invented the temples in India and the contents of the temples. Thougts has invented all these things called sacred. You cannot deny that. So thought in itself is not sacred. And when thought invents God, God is not sacred.

So what is sacred?

That can only be understood or happen when there is complete freedom, from fear, from sorrow, and when there is this sense of love and compassion with its own intelligence. Then, when the mind is utterly still, that which is sacred can take place.

A dialogue with Prof. Huston Smith, 1968 Claremont, California

Session 1: Part 1 of 9

Session 2: Part 1 of 7

What Brings Freedom From Fear -- and I assure you the freedom is complete -- is to be aware of fear without the word, without trying to deny or escape from fear, without wanting to be in some other state. If with complete attention you are aware of the fact that there is fear, then you will find that the observer and the observed are one, there is no division between them. There is no observer who says, "I am afraid"; there is only fear without the word which indicates that state. The mind is no longer escaping, no longer seeking to get rid of fear, no longer trying to find the cause, and therefore it is no longer a slave words. There is only a movement of learning which is the outcome of innocence, and an innocent mind has no fear.