By Laurence Freeman

Laurence Freeman explains the human hunger for wholeness as something deeper and broader than our personal healing. Relating it to the Genesis story, he says we have a collective sense of losing a primal wholeness and innocence as we awake to the sense of individual identity. With this, comes a sense of shame and guilt, and a search for restoration, for freedom from the bonds that control us. 

These talks show how meditation is a spiritual path that helps us achieve this re-integration. In the simple ‘saying of the word’, we evolve beyond the ego with its complexity and possessiveness to the universality of the spirit where everything is inter-related, whole, and where all is one. 

These talks were given at a weeklong silent retreat at Monte Oliveto, Italy, in September 2006