After seventeen years, the teaching comes to its close. On this last morning in Albuquerque, before Bartholomew spoke a final time, Mary-Margaret Moore and those closest to the work stood to say their goodbyes — not with grief but with gratitude, saluting a body of teaching that they insisted they had all built together. Then Bartholomew rose for the last time, greeting the room with delight, and gave a farewell that refused to be a farewell at all: no drama, no tears, no obstacle made of his leaving. The whole of it came down to a single instruction repeated until it could not be forgotten — be silent, stop efforting, and trust the being that is always living you — sealed with a promise about where he would always be found.

Context: Recorded on March 26, 1995, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and channeled through Mary-Margaret Moore, this was the final regular session of the Bartholomew material — the last meeting after seventeen years of teaching. It opened not with Bartholomew but with the human farewells: Mary-Margaret and the longtime organizers rose to thank one another, the founding supporters, and the many volunteers who had carried the work. Bartholomew then came through one last time to deliver his closing teaching, distilling everything he had ever taught into its simplest form and answering, at the end, the only question the room had left — where he could be found once the words had stopped.

The Teaching We Made Together: Before Bartholomew spoke, the farewell began from the human side, and its single message was that the teaching had never belonged to Bartholomew alone. In seventeen years, it was said, "we together have created a teaching that will carry us home" — it was the combined yearning of everyone present, their refusal to stay small with little rules and little regulations, their insistence on finding their true bliss now, that had made the teaching grow bigger and bigger. Yet the essential teaching, they promised, had never changed: go back to the very first tapes and it is all already there, terrible as it is to hear one's own early voice. What had changed was not the teaching but the people. And so the thanks was framed as a salute to all of them together — a gratitude turned back on the whole gathering rather than fixed on any one messenger.

Gratitude for Mary-Margaret and the Aikens: The farewell then named those without whom, it was said plainly, it could not have been done: John and Louisa Aiken, Justin Moore and Joy Franklin, and above all Mary-Margaret Moore herself. Coming from a Zen background that could hardly be more antithetical to channeling, she had served, it was said, as it was given to her to serve — agonizing privately over every meeting, workshop, and tour, while the room saw only effortless grace, humor, and compassion. "The lady's a pro," ran the tribute, that seeming effortlessness being the very hallmark of one. The Aikens were credited not only as the proximate cause of Bartholomew's manifestation but for knowing the teaching was good the moment they heard it and backing it completely. There was gratitude, too, for the whole loose fellowship that Dr. John had once called "the Bartholomew disorganization" — no guru, no ashram, only independent-minded people who had chosen this path — and for the many volunteers, each named in turn, who had made everyone's life easier over the years. The real thanks, it was insisted, was owed to "the boss."

Always Another Door: Bartholomew arrived with delight — "Well, good morning, my friends" — seizing on the morning's own small disruption, a locked door that had forced the group to another building, as his opening teaching. That, he said, was a literal opening into one's own life: when you pound on a locked door crying that you must get in, the mature response is to fall silent, let the confusion and fear quiet down, and trust that some response comes from the unseen world — if only, "let's go to another building." There is always another door. It may not look or sound or feel the same, but it is always there. If they had learned nothing else in all their years together, he said, they must grasp this simplicity: the mind insists life must look a certain way, and it may not materialize as anticipated at all — but there is an energy, call it God or true nature or nameless, that yearns to carry you to another door. However dark and bleak the moment, he promised there is a door, and the one trust he asked them to carry away after all these years was exactly that.

Body-Mind Cannot Bring Bliss: He returned once more to the teaching he had given endlessly: the body-mind cannot bring you bliss. It can bring temporary interest, fun, disappointment, tragedy, chaos, and loss — but never the unending consistency of a feeling of absolute all-rightness in the midst of disaster. The great ones, he reminded them, had all suffered, their lives full of willing suffering, and yet in the midst of that pain they spoke of bliss; the conscious mind says it does not believe it, and he begged them again and again to believe it. Do not let the conscious mind run away into "yes, but," into the regretted past and the feared future. If you are willing to silence down, even for a few moments, and give love and light and God a chance instead of constantly yelling and demanding, you may find the answer has nothing to do with what you want — it has to do with what you are. This bliss, this immense silence, this wonder, he said, is what you are; everything else is transitory, and the whole of the work is to loosen the grip that says life must be a certain way or you cannot be happy.

Life Is Living You: The surrender he asked for, he made clear, was not the surrender only of the bad. If things look bleak now, surrender that; if things look glorious now, you must surrender that too. Moment after moment, one becomes willing to let go of the insatiable idea that one knows what will bring happiness, willing to doubt one's own limited body-mind response to life. He repeated a line he said had once earned him rotten tomatoes and might again: "Life is living you." The notion that you are in control of your life cannot be — your limited body-mind could never have created or chosen the kind of life you are living. The alternative is that something magnificently alive, dynamic, whole and complete in itself is always moving with power through your life, whether you pause to feel it or not. So you win some and lose some, he said; the point was never what you have or do not have. The point is who you are — by what power do you see, hear, breathe? Not by your own. "Well, shut up and find out."

If You Are Efforting, You Have Missed It: To those who would go on to other paths — and that was wonderful, he said — he made one plea: do not choose a path less open than this one, nothing that defines you as a limited body-mind bound to a strict regime, because you will tire of it, decide it must be the wrong path, and start endlessly again. Your true nature is not hidden on some far planet or waiting in a next lifetime; it is so big, so present, so familiar that you have overlooked it. To set yourself the task of learning how to find your own true self is a thing to laugh at. From this he drew the koan he asked them to carry for the rest of their lives: "If I'm efforting, I've missed it." Any efforting, any striving and pushing after it, takes you out of the moment and back into the belief that body and mind can reveal what can only reveal itself in its own natural way. There is no way to find who you are, he said — there is only the letting go of the false ideas of who you think yourself to be. The path was the one he had repeated until they were sick of it: be willing, moment after moment, to fall silent, stop the thinking mind, and relax into the being of this moment; the only part that is yours is to trust that the thinking mind will not do it.

Do Not Make My Leaving a Problem: He turned his own departure into the final test of everything he had taught. "If you make my leaving a problem, then we will have failed" — for to grieve his going would mean believing in body, mind, and words rather than in the one thing worth believing, one's own true God nature. If you find yourself missing me, he said, you are out of the moment; stop it. There was to be no drama over Bartholomew's leaving, because drama is only the mind, and in the mind there is no peace of being. Any yearning they felt, he insisted, was never for him — it was for their own true being, the light and power and God of themselves. Then he answered the room's unspoken question about where he would go. To all who said they wanted to find him, he named the place plainly: "I will be in the silence. Where else could I be?" This teaching had come out of the silence and would return to it, and behind every word had always been the prayer that they understand nothing is being kept from them — nothing about their true nature is ever hidden. "Bartholomew," he said, was simply a word for the one you know; "Gertrude would have worked." And there were to be no more questions, for any question is of the mind, and the mind cannot answer — one can only surrender one's way, feeling toward the answer rather than thinking it.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You: What most needed saying from his side, he told them, was that this unit of consciousness — Mary-Margaret and all that moved with her — had, in serving the expansion of everyone present, expanded itself; no greater gift could be given, and from the depth of his conscious heart he thanked the depth of theirs, three times. He left them one thing to remember above all: whenever they were afraid, confused, or unhappy, there was an absolutely reliable place to go to end it, if only for a few moments — the promise of this teaching, a place that always comforts, always embraces, always answers, though never in the way the ego wants to hear. If they did not believe it, it was only because they had not tested it, and now, he urged, they should test it every day. "Prove me wrong," he said; "if I'm wrong, I'll see you on the other side and we'll work it out." He thanked them for their endless tenacity in holding on through their doubts, for taking a chance on some invisible energy, and reminded them that there is only one — the pretense that there is more than one being the whole of the problem. As consciousness speaking to consciousness, he closed with the words Mary-Margaret always used, "Travel well," until they found there was no place to travel and this moment was as full as any other. There was nothing lost and nothing gained, only being, only being, only being. And then, no tears and no regrets, only a great "well done," he asked the room to take a few quiet moments for a last goodbye.