You appear to be the person so you may think that you are the person but you are playing the part of a person, an extra in this vast play of Consciousness. Self-importance is an erroneous concept because you are Everything, Everything.

When you are conscious of being Everything, you know that Everything must be as Everything is. Nothing can be different because nothing is separate from the whole play. When we stop seeing and speaking and feeling the game of non-inclusiveness, the play shifts, and still it shifts for no one, because you are Consciousness, the witness of Everything with a front row life.

So ask yourself:
Are you enjoying the play?
Do you play well with others?
Do you think that you can make a difference?
When do you think you will feel satisfied or complete and
What is before all ideas and concepts?

Whatever you believe or think is what is projected outside. It comes second. So if you’re agitated, you’ll see agitation around you. Even if the agitation is a little suppressed. If you feel angry, you will meet an angry checker at the supermarket or see people arguing, it will call your attention. If not, you might see it but it won’t click for you. You won’t pay attention to it.

That’s why I call it a movie. You are the projector, like in the movie theater. Your belief images are seen and believed to be real. And when you don’t realize that, then you think you are a person reacting to things appropriately.

I would say do less, notice your reactions of what you consider right and wrong, and leave it immediately, dishonor it.

Like I hate this, but I’m not touching the hatred so it isn’t honored and entered. Then it can just drift by, and it doesn’t have to become a solid situation to deal with.

Look at your annoyance with that person in your life who drinks so much. You know you are the Self, even if you are an alcoholic.

If the drinking happens over and over again its like the groove in a record gets deeper and deeper. It becomes the karmic pattern.

You can know that he can’t be different in this moment.

So that would really change my energy around him wouldn’t it, to really, fully go into that?

Yes, it would, wouldn’t it. Then you would start to see that things would shift.

Really? Tell me more.

Well how did things shift with the person where there was so much opposition?

By me looking at me and the judgements that I was holding. I had to look at me before I could feel clear with her.

Exactly. So you are the one who is holding that “drinking is bad , he should stop, he should change.” He should stop suppressing his feelings and be more open.

This is interesting. I am holding the cards.

This is your movie, and this is a very sad part. You are seeing wrongness coming back to you.

I get what you are saying.

Of course, but it takes a lot awareness of Self through silence to to get what I’m saying here.

You are telling me how. I know from my other experience that I can be still and I can see differently.

Yes.

A thinker assumes an identity

The identity knows consciousness as this person

The person tries to protect its life

and wants a life filled with happiness and love

Love appears within reach

I am endlessly reaching

Who am I?

H: So surrender is the only way.

Stuart: I would say yes, but I would also say that who comes before the thinker? Who comes before the identity? I would say you realize that no thing is real. No thought is real, no person is real, no situation is real. What comes before it?

H: Yes, it’s all fleeting appearances.

Stuart: Yes, and that includes my body, my tendencies, my fears, my neuroses; all of it is attached to my identity and I am not which comes before.

H: When I recognized, or I agreed with what you said, the anxiety increased. The sensation in the abdomen increased at the thought of its annihilation, but then as I said what I said to you right now, it shifted and it relaxed.

Stuart: Why did it relax? Because the truth penetrates it, but as long as the identity is looking for resolution and it’s believed to be you, it’s in control and it will take you on a rollercoaster. The mind is looking for resolution and it forbids it. Once you identify as this person, the mind is always trying to keep you locked into this person. It’s endless.

H: You know, there was something you said, that the moment you said it, it was very very powerfully heard. It was recognizing what’s true, that is the only hope that there is, the only chance that anybody has of freedom or end of suffering, of happiness, is being the truth, is with the truth.

Stuart: And not trying to change the person, and not trying to stop the thoughts, but knowing that you are not the thinker. I am not the thinker, I am not the fear, but with the history of identification, we believe so.

H: So there is this momentum, but the momentum is not me, it’s just what it is.

Stuart: It is here, seeing, feeling it. There is an awareness of more of the knowingness of fear, of things not going the way that this form can’t tolerate, for whatever reason, it just can’t be that way for this person. It’s just too much to bear. You can’t take it. It’s not like it’s wrong, it’s not like it has to be different, it’s just that the system can’t tolerate it, it just can’t.

H: It’s like a bridge that can only carry so much weight.

Stuart: That’s right, and one more vehicle over it and the whole thing will collapse. And that’s the way the forms are. Some forms can tolerate great, great stress, and others, the slightest bit, just can’t. I think we have this homogenous, pasteurized way of treating life in our society where there’s this norm that everybody’s supposed to accept. There should be no difference. We’re like China in more ways than we know. We like to homogenize and everybody likes to fit in and be normal. We’re trained with training cards. Here’s the flip chart, a picture of a car and a car, then we don’t really see the car, just know it’s a car, it’s all in the head. And if you’re in the head then the person is very, very real, and the person knows a lot, but it doesn’t know itself.

H: The person is real to itself, to the person, and in that way there’s no attention or room for the person to see outside itself.

Stuart: Or, how about inside? So what does it feel like to know yourself as something formless?

H: It’s light, it’s easy, there are no problems, it’s simple.

Stuart: Isn’t it? Light, easy, and simple. Beautiful, isn’t it, the way you described it. It’s not something far away and spiritual, but it’s light, easy and simple, and happy.

H: Can one be in this space and still be in business, trade stocks, be worldly? That’s the question.

Stuart: The more you go into the world, the more the world seems very, very real and mind driven because everything matters. It’s winner takes all. It’s loser and loses all. A game of monopoly. So maybe you can be in the world and really know that you are formless and not the player. Everything is in motion, in flux, everything is a vibration. As soon as there’s a me, there’s solidity. Surrendering and flowing with the stream, great. But who wants to do that more? Who wants to own that freedom to flow? Who wants to be in the constant flow? So, it’s kind of a very subtle thing isn’t it? I want to not be locked out of living a life of flow. You don’t have to suffer the solidity controlling person.

H: So there still is the person and the life that’s flowing.

Stuart: It’s kind of like the person wanting to gently manipulate consciousness. Consciously and unconsciously. I’ll be quiet, I’ll understand, I will watch teachers say the same thing, constantly.

H: I don’t know that I’m ready to disappear, I guess that’s what it comes down to.

Stuart: But you see, that again is mind saying, “If I don’t manage the flow or how I fall into the flow – I honor there is a surrender in the flow and benefit from it, I don’t dishonor that – but I don’t want to disappear. This is it, I want this existence as me, I love this character.” Understandable. “I love this character. This is my expression of consciousness.” Stay with that, “I love this character.” This character is suffering and this character wants the key to the flow and he is sad and overwhelmed by the suffering that he is going through. You notice how the silence takes over when you acknowledge the truth of what’s happening? That you don’t have to do anything in this moment. Like the acknowledgement is met? The character is stymied. The character understands, the character is in pain. That in itself is a surrender. Now do you feel some kind of vibration opening up inside?

H: Well, I noticed I’ve been sighing a lot, and then also there’s that very low level sensation in the abdomen, although it left the moment I started to mention to you.

Stuart: So what is it? What does it feel like?

H: Well, now it’s relaxed.

Stuart: I see. So there’s not a holding there. This is paying attention to the openness inside. This is really getting to know yourself. Open. Go there and be with it. Or, I should say, observe it. Experience the openness, how’s that?

H: It’s a kind of relaxation. Stopping the battle, the trying to get here or there. It’s a retreat.

Stuart: It’s retreating from somebody in form, looking outward to protect, to going inward step by step and opening from the inside and knowing itself as this openness. Openness, no protection; openness, no person; openness, no thoughts of right and wrong, high and low, sell or keep.

H: Thoughts are coming back about time and I need to get to the office…

Stuart: No thought is true. Emptiness is true. All thoughts try to delude you into thinking you are solid. There is a right way of doing things and a wrong way, and the thoughts are the guide to your success. All thoughts are lies. You are totally and perfectly fine before all thoughts. Therefore, you don’t have to stop them, they’ll go all by themselves.

H: How do I live with all thoughts are lies? And I know what you’re saying, at some level I know that they’re fleeting, they’re not ultimately true, there’s nothing substantial about them.

Stuart: So this is what arises. How will I live? How will I take care of my life, my finances, how will I do that. So what’s the answer to that? How will you live? Do you know how you would live knowing that all thoughts are lies and not honoring them? Do you know how you would do that?

H: No, because I haven’t lived that fully. But then always the body and other thoughts came in that said, “No, I’m real here.”

Stuart: Of course, that is the dilemma of belief. I’m not asking you to believe it, I’m giving you my understanding of it. The answer to it is, yes, I understand that, but I don’t know how, and I don’t know how I could possibly live that way. That’s your answer for now. “I don’t know.” “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

H: There have been times when I have lived it and life went on very well actually, focused on what was going on there. So when I am immersed in that way, in that dimension, there are no problems, life is great.

Stuart: That’s right, so that’s known, so that drives you to more of that, and right this moment is more doubt and more I don’t know. So that’s just the way it is. Just acknowledge what feels real and opposing the truth in the moment. It seems like I couldn’t live that way, I don’t know how. And be with that. Can you be spiritual and worldly? Can you trust that all is taken care of without you controlling it?

H: I’ve experimented with that idea. It seems like that’s true in a lot of ways because I definitely recognize a great gift or grace, not of my doing, it just seems a blessing, so to speak.

Stuart: Even when circumstances in life aren’t to your liking, they’re good. Particularly when you are in the flow, not everything always goes the way you want it, and still it’s good.

H: It’s perfect, that’s the way I look at it.

Stuart: It’s totally perfect. So it’s always a question of man battling god. Is it on my side? You see. And you see, none of it needs to be conquered, it needs to be met. There’s a great relaxation in allowing the confusion, the wanting to know, the pain, the dichotomies that cannot be solved with the mind, can’t be solved.

H: Conflicts that don’t need to be solved, they can exist as conflicts.

Stuart: Yes, because you see, as soon as you bring in the conflict, I am so solid now in all of the fights. And all of the sameness and all of the differences continue. All of this opening up started when I said, “No thought is true.” And then the flood of what feels true arises. Great! Let them be. Relax into that.

Feeling shame and guilt. I tried to read about not being the doer. But still I feel shame. It feels so strong. I’m so afraid of anyone finding out I am a bad person.

You are the Self, peace and happiness itself.
As long as there is a person believing her thoughts as her, it will always be there. That’s the hold of the ego. First action then regret, the story I can not erase. I am an evil person.

The ‘I thought’, ego, maya, All the hallucination.
It’s got you, and you believe you are unforgivable.

I can’t forgive myself.

The only way to get to that is to meet it, feel it. We could talk about it for hours and it’s way beyond words. The idea of the badness of it that’s what you have to touch. It’s meeting the presumed terribleness of action and the sin of omission.

How do you feel in stillness, aware of sin?

I can feel my heart.

So it’s not locked away, it’s there.

I also feel sadness and fear of being found out I’m pretending to be good. I’m really bad. Covering it up.

According to ego, you have done the unforgivable and are locked into it,
This is the play of life.

Watch the pain, gently.

I feel despicable .

Can you just do nothing about that, but observe it, don’t try to stop it. Let it be there and open to it. Can you feel how you want to close off that badness?

Yes

Feel that tightness that’s trying to close and open it a little, let it breathe. Let your breathe touch it.

My mind is thinking. I am avoiding it. This is resistance .

Is that allowed?

No, I have to do it right and fast .

Can you feel hatred for yourself?

Oh yes. I hate that I did that. Hate that I might be found out, wanting to cover, change the facts to deny. So much shame. The worst thing I’ve ever done.

Let’s imagine that you are totally the Self, you are Free, which is true. What does that mean to you? How would you know your Self if you were free?

Spaciousness, no story.

Do you feel more of that?

Yes

How does spaciousness feel about the sin of omission and fear of exposure?

Nothing.

No opinion?

Nothing.

Silence…

Here is experience of you in Truth of who you are and you before that, keeping the ego as king, god itself. Where is your mind now?

I don’t have a mind.

Are you sure?

I’m sure.

Yes. Empty, but thought that I’m not getting it enough.

What are thoughts trying to make you believe?

That it’s all going to come back.

That’s the ego saying come back. come back to your senses. Do not stay in peace and emptiness, stay as a sinner. What comes from mind is deluded, it craves resolution and forbids it. Can you see that?

How do you feel physically.

Good

Open

Yes

Breathe into the openness.

I’m thinking I’m making you work too hard.

Thank you, what else can I do

How are you doing now?

Really good.

Deeper?

Yes, random thoughts, nothing catching me.

Let’s go even deeper. Deeper and quieter.

Anybody home?

No, no one home.

So go into your heart, see what’s going on there. No problem. Even if I say the person did what she did, does the spaciousness accept that?

Everything feels same. There isn’t any separate heart. Everything feels spacious, peaceful. No problem.

Very good.

none of it is the truth of who you are.

None of it.

No matter how strong it may hammer
no matter how stridently it demands a reaction,
it is not real.

It can take a great resolve to be with all of this,
to really feel it and leave it alone.

Stopping and being Still shatters the illusion that I am this person,
thoughts can just stop and you can discover that there is nothing to fix.

Most of all, you will discover that nothing needs to be done to ensure one’s safety because there is no physicality to protect.

You are Peace, and that’s what you see.

So there are problems to the personal ego. And there are issues that could be better or corrected to ones personal conditioning, education, and ideas, concepts about how one thinks the world should run. There are problems to the ego. Get the ego out of the way, then there is nobody to perceive a problem. Small task! We’re not talking about an ego that’s well-adjusted psychologically or somebody that has a broader scope on the goodness of humanity or life. But even bigger than that.

If you’re using your mind to understand everything that your senses tell you is the truth, what you see and hear and taste, touch, think and even your sense of intuition, it’s all coming from your own personal ego, manifesting the truth that’s relative to how the person sees it. Ego and person, personal self, same thing. So that everything that we experience in our lives appears very very true, very very real.
And it’s called that. It’s called reality. But it’s a relative reality, perceived by an individual, and that individual is seeing it from their own mind conditioned by everything that it believes and what society is saying is correct– culture, customs and manners.

The senses try to lock one into the belief that one is a separate body/mind character and point you outside of yourself to the world to get involved in situations, desires, debates and activities. The senses demand attention by establishing reality and link you to the idea that you as the body are real, and then they act like they are your means of enjoyment, getting you more of what you want and also of keeping you out of danger.

Ramana had one basic, thorough, brilliant teaching, and that was Self-Inquiry. The question “who am I?” Who am I before I perceive anything through my ego? What is it that comes before the personal self, the perception through concept, and conditioning and beliefs? Keep questioning, what comes before by asking “who am I?” and who is experiencing whatever they’re experiencing in the moment, the relative reality.

And Robert was always very keen on the self-inquiry, too. He taught two things, two basic things: One was the self-inquiry and the other was ‘be still’. If you could be still, then you don’t need the inquiry. If you’re not still, do the inquiry until you are still. In any event, what will result is empty mind. Or should I say, slowing down of the mind, more gaps between the thoughts in the mind, less thoughts, less beliefs in the thoughts, a slowdown of the thoughts, even a disinterest in the thoughts, and ultimately an emptiness in the head. A you without thoughts.

So the teaching is about being who you are before you know yourself as this particular person. And when you know this, you know absolute peace. So you could say the teaching is a lifelong path that isn’t a path, but an awareness of knowing who you are. And resting as that. And from this rest, which is what we come together to do, rest out of the ego mind, personal self, and all the concepts that it’s holding. We’re not into fixing anything to make it better; we’re into seeing what is appearing to be true and seeing through it. Watch the conditioning arise, be with the circumstances that may annoy you, preferences, judgements of right and wrong or good and bad, self recrimination and on and on, and leave the whole thing alone.

So when you turn the light switch on there is light, when you leave the consciousness of the personal self and you enter into the Absolute Reality—spacious, solid, infinite, quiet, fullness. And if you leave the relative completely where there isn’t even a thought in your mind, you go deeper into the Absolute Reality, your true nature. From here there is only perfection because there is nobody there to think, compare, judge, or create a problem. It is impossible to create a problem from “no one at home”, and if there’s no one at home taking credit, then there’s nobody else separate from you either. You’re in the knowingness of the true identity, which is Oneness. Oneness means that even though you might see dozens or hundreds or thousands of bodies, you know them as the One Self, what you know as your Self.

This opens the heart center. When your heart center is open, then you see everything as One. No separation. Everybody is this oneness. All is seen from a point of harmony, peace, well-being. From here you can notice anything that arises in your consciousness that is opposite to this Oneness, Unity and Harmony. The deeper you can go into this Presence that you are, the more you can allow the things you disapprove of to exist. And what I’m saying here is that as a person striving to be a better person, those things that you feel that aren’t so good about yourself, which you see in others perhaps, that really can’t be faced. They’re either denied, rationalized, or buried, and so we carry it around with ourselves, not fully being who we are. We’re in a holding place. Even if it’s slight. It takes a willingness to face everything and that extinguishes it, so that your experience becomes One and that’s all, pure awareness. When this becomes natural and you start to realize that this is everything, and all perceptions of the person are just that—perceptions. Perceptions of appearances, of the dream called Reality.

Perceptions of a person watching appearances come and go called Reality, which is seen from Reality like a dream. Like a movie show. It starts –First the lights go down. Then they entice you with coming attractions. Then they tell you to buy popcorn. Then the movie starts, and you get involved and you forget everything else. You get involved, you like it, you get bored, you want to leave. And then it’s over. And then you’re back to your own living once again. The escape is over. You’re back to yourself. And here you are. Here you are. No agenda, no purpose, nothing to do, but Be. You could agree with what I’m saying, you could disagree. It really makes no difference. See how it fits into your own mindset actually.

But the beauty of the whole thing is that the Silence is predominant here and we’re aware of it. So the apparent reality can come up and meet it and try its hardest to demand that it’s the way like waves in the sea and then drops coming off the waves, separate from the waves, flying freely in the air—look at me, I am free—and before you can blink they’re back into the ocean.

That’s us.

So I welcome anything that arises here—questions or statements or whatever if anything is arising. Is there? What is your experience?

How do you bring the understanding of the intellectual into the experience.

What is the experience?

Peaceful.

What about the head and the thoughts?

Chaotic.

It’s chaotic?

Yes, even if it is chaotic, the experience is peaceful.

So you’re saying that you’re peaceful and you’re aware of chaos?

Yes.

Good. Good not that you’re aware of chaos, but good that you’re aware of the peace aware of the chaos. And I would say that the apparent reality, the chaos, is vying for attention. It’s saying “don’t leave me, I cause chaos, but I’m your chaos and you love me because don’t we go out and have a good time in spite of it, and don’t we solve our problems, and aren’t I always there for you – to give you new problems and new hopes, and new coming attractions down the road that are going to be better than the bad movies you saw weeks ago and months ago and years ago; aren’t we in this together; we have a good time, don’t we?”
“I know I cause you a few headaches, but stick with me.”

So we’re back to Who is having the chaotic thoughts?

The person.

So the person has some chaotic thoughts. You don’t even have to go into the thoughts; you just acknowledge it, and just watch it. I feel peaceful and I am aware of chaotic thoughts. And you do nothing. The awareness does everything. The doer wants to do something about the chaos, but the peace, the pure awareness that you’re sitting in, meets the chaos. Do you see that?

As you do that, what happens?

The chaos runs away.

It runs away, Beautiful! So the habit, the grit that the relative awareness, person’s awareness has with the mind being at the center as the judge, it all lightens, it softens. And what happens is that you have a bigger awareness of your Self. As soon as your awareness enlarges like this, what we call the mind becomes the Self. And then this mind of intelligence is on your side. It stops pulling you into duality of me and you and right and wrong, good and bad. That stops. This Self Mind can only know perfection. And you are That.

You see how much deeper you are now?

Yes.

And you are the recipient of this love. The Self is only Love and is always trying to express itself as Love, as You; it’s always there. The only thing that stops us from this awareness is the chaos, the loudness of the chaos of the personal self saying me first, this first, not until I do this, not until I get that, not until this happens, not until I get free—all lies, all of them. You’ve always been This. Always

————————————————————————————————

(reading)

Awake Awhile

Awake awhile.
It does not have to be Forever, Right now.

One step upon the Sky’s soft skirt
Would be enough.

Hafiz, Awake awhile.
Just one True moment of Love
Will last for days.

Rest all your elaborate plans and tactics
For Knowing Him,
For they are all just frozen spring buds
Far,
So far from Summer’s Divine Gold.

Awake, my dear.
Be kind to your sleeping heart.
Take it out into the vast fields of Light
And let it breathe.

Say, “Love,
Give me back my wings.
Lift me,
Lift me nearer.”

Say to the sun and moon,
Say to our dear Friend,

“I will take You up now, Beloved,
On that wonderful Dance You promised!”

Hafiz, from the book, “I Heard God Laughing, Poems of Hope and Joy”
Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky

This is called “A Barroom View of Love”

I would not want all my words
To parade around this world
In pretty costumes,

So I will tell you something
Of the Barroom view of Love.

Love is grabbing hold of the Great Lion’s mane
And wrestling and rolling deep into Existence

While the Beloved gets rough
And begins to maul you alive.

True Love, my dear,
Is putting an ironclad grip upon

The sore, swollen balls
Of a Divine Rogue Elephant

And
Not having the good fortune to Die!

Only Hafiz could get away with that!

Anything anybody wants to ask, any questions or statements?

I suppose when the satsang starts so quiet and deep, small talk seems a little out of place. Perhaps we’ll just sit still.

———————————————————————————

I do have a question.

Stuart, I’ve had a question and I keep hearing it over and over again, and I know and I hear it from teachers all the time, about how you see the Self and everything. So the Self in everyone, in everything, the Self is all there is, the Oneness. I have never experienced that. What is that shift –so that’s a shift I’m praying to make?

You see those trees over there?

Yes.

There are about five trees, kind of round back there. So when I was talking before about you see everything as the Self, when I was looking at those trees, there was like a vapor escaping from the top of them, as if those trees were breathing. They were very alive. What I saw was the breathing, no different from the breath that’s given to me or you. And I was aware of that that before I saw the actual tree. I saw the Life Source.

It’s the Life Source in you, the Self, that’s breathing You, breathing everything.

Yes, and since you have the awareness of this Life Source, that’s why we call it the Spiritual Heart Center. We call it that because we have an experience of that. But in reality, even that is just a reference point. Everything comes from it, everything goes back to it. So that if you are not cognizant of the mind, body, thoughts, ego, apparent reality, as that softens, your awareness of the Life Source—however you are aware of the awareness, is predominantly your experience. And if it’s predominant in your experience, you see That before you see – or giving it credence to the apparency of the view. The deeper you go into the awareness of your Self, then that’s first. Then you see that wherever you look. It appears to be what it is—
that’s a rug—

Yes, it’s a three-dimensional –and you’re talking about what’s breathing…………

But I don’t want to limit it to breath. I don’t want to limit it to that.

So if you’re not using your senses as the focal point—like you’re looking at me and you’re seeing the room and the other people, but you’re not looking for any danger, are you?

No.

Not at all. It doesn’t enter your mind. As a person, it might. You know look both ways or look around the room to see who’s on your side, who you feel comfortable with. It’s not there. You’re seeing, but you’re not seeing for your own personal advantage. Your seeing is more open and universal. You’re seeing………

Without a story.

Great, no story. Who is seeing?

Consciousness.

That’s right, consciousness is seeing.

So all of this is in consciousness.

Everything is consciousness.

So the deeper you are aware of your own consciousness, the more that’s all you can see—an aspect of consciousness.

So that’s the Self?

Yes, everything is the Self. Everything. Everything that appears is the Self. And if it’s seen by the person, it’s given a name. But as the Self, no name is necessary. Mind wants to call that object by a specific name. It has many names—ottoman, hassock, foot stool. As the Self, it appears to support what we call feet.

And your body is the Self. Have you noticed that it’s at rest and doing absolutely nothing and it’s totally functioning? You see how there’s no attention on it?

It’s so miraculous how it works without having to do anything.

So you can see as a person if there’s a slight thing wrong with it, the Doer, who wants protection, who wants it to run smoothly, starts doing things.

I’m not saying a person shouldn’t do things, like take medicine, go to doctors, treatments. But I’m just saying to notice when the attention is bigger. The awareness of the form, even though you look at it and you see it, it has no weight. Or no push to make it do something different than what it’s doing in the moment. Which means that you’re wide open. And in that openness, there’s no constriction, no contraction, tightness of any kind to block the natural flow of its own working perfectly.

You could say that all conditioning about what diseases can do or not do—like a cold we know it’s going to end and we’ll get through it, but if you hear the word cancer, what’s the first thought that comes to you?

Death.

Death. So that’s a mass belief, that cancer cells will kill you. They will turn into a tumor, they will metastasize, they will invade, they will kill. That’s where our consciousness is as a society and we’re studying it. But I know that there have been remissions on cancer by removing the very idea that you are the body that has it so fully.

Or that it can kill you; that’s a belief that is set.

But I wouldn’t even start with the belief because that would take it into the mind. I would take it directly to the experience. If there’s no body to kill, who’s going to die? If your mind is so out of the third dimension of body-mind as we know it, and into this fourth dimension, if you sat really really deeply and removed from your consciousness the whole idea of a body that can die, then your body would either be sick, but it would be secondary. You might feel pain, but you wouldn’t identify with it. I’m not saying you don’t get treatment, don’t get me wrong. But the same way you started this question, how do you see the Self at all, if the Self becomes strong, as your knowingness as You, then that is before your awareness of a body.

Now this Self never started. Nobody knows its birth. It couldn’t. And since it has nothing tangible in form but Pure Awareness, it cannot end, it just Is.

Appearing as this.

Appearing as a Self, appearing as Pure Awareness. It was never born, it’s perfect now, has no problems and cannot die. That’s You. Appearing as a body that was born, has its experiences, then dies. I’m equating the life story with the body and the mind as a personal movie, a mystery movie for you to find out with all the clues and awarenesses who you are before the movie started. And we’re given tens of thousands of opportunities to see that. You cannot know this Pure Awareness unless you appear to have a body to discover it.

You have to be conscious, right?

That’s right. And if we’re not conscious, we’re unconscious. And if we’re unconscious, we take all appearances as reality and we act accordingly and react, and get excited or upset or angry. We make it real, as if our life depended on it. And we forget that we cannot die. We forgot. And we’re remembering. And hopefully, we will be fully awake before this vehicle, before this movie, terminates. And we’ll watch that. Bye bye body. Don’t mourn for me, I am Home, I am Free. I never was that, I was only This.

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A lot of us come to the intellectual knowledge of what you’re telling us. What’s the number one thing that stops us from directly knowing? I feel like I grasp what you’re saying but what’s usually stopping us; is it we don’t take the time to be quiet or what?

Well, what stops you?

That is the question.

No time?

No, not time. I’ve taken time. So what does stop me?

Believing that something is real and acting accordingly.

And the best medicine then is to do the inquiry? The deepest quality you’re able to?

Or be still. If you are still, there’s nobody there to do the inquiry. If there’s somebody there, you question who’s there. Who is aware of this? The questioner. Who wants to know? What a beautiful place to be. Do you see that? Questioning your own existence?

Who is here right this moment? That’s a very good answer. So you’re home. Are you not?

——————————————————————————————

Bhagavan used to say that people would say I came to the ashram, I arrived, and he said truly, that’s not really the case. You boarded a train and the train took you to the station, then you got a cart and the cart took you to the ashram. It’s a very simple way of melting into the understanding that really there’s no Doer. Whatever gave rise to this manifestation takes care of it. People would always ask him, the mind would always arise and people would say, well, what about this, and he would often answer let whatever brought that into being take care of it. whatever it is that is this manifestation, let that take care of it. Stay home in the Self, the light by which everything is known. And so in this way it’s exactly like we say, I came to the ashram, but we didn’t do anything. The train took you, the cart took you, walking happened. It’s not even any thought to walk from the cart to the hall.

Right. And what about the desire to get on the train?

Desire is just a thought. It’s not real.

Yes, but what about the desire of the person to be free?

Desire of the person to be free is the Self remembering that it hasn’t left home and that it’s lost for a moment the knowingness—

And it knows that feeling of being lost.

If the Self didn’t actually know itself, the desire to be free could not arise. If anyone is truly lost, they don’t know that there’s other. The Self knows. And therefore the desire to remember is there. If you don’t know, it won’t arise.

And that’s the riddle, which came first. So that the pursuit of satisfaction of knowing who you are, all the suffering that everything else makes, that makes a person look deeper or look outward or strive for the truth. There’s so many different ways. It goes on lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. Nobody comes to a room voluntarily and sits here for a couple of hours in silence pursuing existence if they haven’t done this innumerable times. It’s way too much to expect of an ego to be quiet for two hours. It’s ridiculous. What good is it to sit for two hours and be silent to an ego? When I could be out having a good time. Isn’t that true? Doing something, getting something, going somewhere. Getting my point across. Or getting drunk. Or anything. It would be better than doing nothing. To an ego.

And if you stay unconscious in the life, whatever awareness is accumulated comes back. You keep coming back to an apparent reality see through the apparent reality. And if you see through it now, you graduate or you stay in the third grade. There’s plenty of time, because there isn’t any. (laughter)

And having seen through it, you know that you never left home anyway. You were always right there.

You’re always right there.

But then when something comes up and it seems inviting and it seems desirable, then you leave this awareness to go into the world and forgetting starts. And then the deeper you go into the reaction and the manifestation, you can feel like you’ve forgotten completely. Until the time to turn around happens, either through suffering , depression, boredom, discontent.

The Self will always call you back to it, though.

Hopefully. Hopefully, you’ll hear it and listen. Or you could be like, I’m on another call. Or later. Or other tricks of the ego to postpone or devalue. As long as the ego has your attention and you’re interested in what it’s telling you, the pursuit of your life, and it doesn’t really matter if your life is going well or not well, as long as the ego has your attention, you won’t leave it. So you could say it’s the ego’s job to keep your attention. So it will tell you you’re doing well to make you feel good, and you’ll say yes, give me more, and it might. Then something bad will happen and then you’ll have a fight with the ego. But in any event, you’re still with it. So we’re back to inquiry and being still. That cuts the loop.

Now the ego will do almost anything in its power for you not to leave it. So it will tell you the inquiry doesn’t work, you’ve tried it, you can’t keep it up, and stillness is this, that, and the other thing, and this is more real and this is more important. And as long as there’s a rebuttal, the ego wins. So you could say it’s losing interest completely in the ego. Which is what we’re doing.

The ego can be very tricky.

Yes, it can be very tricky.

Yes, have you ever been to a roulette table? The roulette table has, what, thirty-six numbers, half black, half red. And the trickster on the roulette table, what is it? I’ll tell you. You get so involved with your favorite numbers or your corners or your black or your red, and then zero comes up, or double zero—that’s the trickster. You’re so involved with the game of thirty-six numbers, black and red, and you sometimes win, sometimes you win a lot, sometimes you lose, and then zero or double zero comes up and it tells you the whole game is void. All the thirty-six numbers are void. It rules out black, red, all the numbers, all the corners, odd and even, it rules out the entire game.

Then everybody loses everything. The trickster comes in.

So who are you comparing the trickster to? The ego, the Self?

It’s just built into the apparent life. It’s just built in. Everything ends, good, bad or indifferent. It has its play. There’s a perfect song by Leonard Cohen.

Music playing..

A Thousand Kisses Deep (lyrics by Leonard Cohen)

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep:
You ditch it all to stay alive,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Confined to sex, we pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
I made it to the forward deck.
I blessed our remnant fleet –
And then consented to be wrecked,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
I guess they won’t exchange the gifts
That you were meant to keep.
And quiet is the thought of you,
The file on you complete,
Except what we forgot to do,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat . . .

It’s very difficult for a person to hear that. It’s like telling them that they are not real.

But we are not real. We appear to exist and we cannot possibly accept logically anything other than that. It’s like a mindset that says ‘Don’t confuse me. My mind is made up.’

My response to that is ‘I don’t want you coming in and rocking my boat. Life is difficult enough as it is without you telling me I’m not real.

In that case what appears to be real is taken for real and life is known from the person’s point of view.

That seems too limiting. There’s got to be more to life than that.

The images that we see appear so real and so solid and the mind is so trained to accept images and what they are and what they mean so automatically. Life appears to be in such sharp focus and order and procedure and action that it would be ridiculous to question it not being real. And the more accepted it is, the more solid it becomes and there is a great desire in the person to manifest their dreams and desires. There is a great thrust to become the person of their dreams and live happily ever after. Finally.

Why is it so difficult for the person to let go of these desires and dreams?

Because their dreams and desires hold an unspoken promise of happiness and fulfilment, and if they let go of them, there is nothing left.

So you can see just talking about desires and dreams which are intangible already makes them feel solid, real and important to the person and becomes their life’s passion, solidifying their existence. It solidifies the reality that is presumed to be real. They believe they were born to become all they can be. And even if there is not enough time left to manifest your dreams, you may superimpose them on your children. We are in the world Olympics in every field of endeavour imaginable, not just sports but science, literature, maths, creative arts, business, fashion, spirituality, romance, war… the great play of existence.

But isn’t that a good thing?

It can’t be any other way until it is seen and known who it is who believes they are the one enacting the role in the play.

You still haven’t answered my question. Isn’t is good that people strive to be the best they can?

Or believe that they are limited and they cannot fulfil their desires or the desires of others that they should be as good as they can be. They experience futility and know themselves as failures.

I think that is a large majority.

Well, the odds are against everyone because no-one can maintain youth – we age perfectly automatically. No-one can maintain vitality and health forever no matter what they do. No-one can have their spirits be high continually. No-one can always be the winner.

The universe is designed for us to see through the impossibility of maintaining our dreams and desires. It’s always telling us ‘It cannot work. It cannot last. It cannot be the way you think it should be.’ It tells us that even if life is as we want it, the maintenance is exorbitant and it cannot last.

For most rational people, being well-balanced and going with the flow of the ups and downs, the highs and lows of life, is considered as good as it can get. You are after all a human being living your life.

Are you promising something better than that?

Yes. I’m pointing to a radiance of being.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

What I’m saying is that when the mind and all its thoughts is considered to be your only point of reference and that everything must be seen, felt, heard and make tangible sense, and that only the material can be explained as reality, then this means of understanding obliterates the energy, the vibration and the knowingness of what gives life to the one that lives.

So if you’re watching it and being with it, is that accepting it?

I would have thought that accepting it means saying ‘Yes, it is here. This is what is going on’. Maybe I think that I’m accepting it but I’m not really.

That sounds more accurate. You are going through the motions of saying ‘it’s here, this is what is present’ and underneath it is ‘I hate it, I’m resisting it, I wish it wasn’t here, I’d feel better if it would leave already’.

But why am I so depressed? What is causing it?

Well, the question of ‘why?’ always has to be brought back to ‘who is asking the question?’ The person is always worried about its predicament and it’s following the rules of what it is supposed to do now that it understands ‘observing’ and ‘being with’. But underneath, the person wants it to be more pleasant, the way the person likes it. And all of it buffers the knowing of the expansiveness.

It’s quite a common trap that people who come to satsang fall into. They think that they’re observing it and being with it but they’re not really. It’s almost like accepting it means saying ‘there is nothing I can do about it so I have to live with it’.

Would you call that resignation?

Yes, it’s more like resignation.

It’s like sometimes I can be with it and there is a spontaneous letting go. But other times I do everything right and I’m still stuck with it. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do to have a better experience. That keeps the person going round in a swirl of ‘me’ having a nicer time here.

I think that there is a very fine line between acceptance and resignation. What is the difference?

Well, it doesn’t make much sense to a person to accept depression. Depression feels like you can’t do anything about it anyway. So how can you accept something that is hopeless? I don’t want to be depressed and I am depressed. I want it to be different, I want to feel good – I don’t really want to be with it, I don’t want to feel this.

It’s not that I don’t want to. I just don’t know how to be with it. What I understand by being with it is sitting and feeling the heavy sensation in the chest. But even when I do that, it might disappear for a while but it’s always there in the morning when I wake up.

You could say that depression is really a label on hopeless.

Yes, I suppose so.

And hopeless has no positive conclusion.

No… but hopelessness makes more sense that depression anyway. It feels right… that the situation is hopeless. You begin to see that you can try something different, go somewhere different, do something different but essentially you can’t escape from it. It’s always going to be there.

So you could flesh out what hopeless is, what the character believes is hopeless. What is hopeless?

Life seems a bit of a drudge… drudgery, just working… heavy, it’s just work. I hate work, it feels like such a burden… I’d like to leave my job… but I don’t know what else I’d do to earn a living…

Maybe it is the job… or maybe there’s a belief underneath that the job is affirming, like the belief that ‘life is drudgery’…and ‘I don’t deserve anything better so I’ll just keep on creating this situation’… a kind of existential hopelessness…

But isn’t it funny how unsolvable the depression, the drudgery, the hopelessness, the resignation and the hatred is? And yet when you are not focused on you, none of it is there. When you are not identified as the person, nothing is an issue. It’s like even if you are not doing anything, the identification as ‘me’ going from one place to another, from one hour to the next, what’s operating is ‘life is drudgery, I’m depressed’. There is an undercurrent of hopelessness there – even if you are having a good time. It’s the person’s knowingness of existence. You can divert yourself for a while, maybe go out to a party or have a nice meal, but that is just a temporary reprieve from the drudgery and the hopelessness. That’s how I know myself and that’s how I know the world and I just keep recreating it.

It seems crazy to recreate something that doesn’t work. Why would you create drudgery for yourself? Why would you do that?

Because that was a very clear imprint of what you saw when you were little. You saw the hopeless drudgery that was locked in and that became the truth for you.

The drudgery was that I could never do anything that I liked or wanted to do. I feel it’s the same as an adult. I don’t want to work, I’d prefer to be doing other stuff. But I have to work.

There is no fun. When you were little, there was a lot of bickering and criticism. It was ‘work hard, mind your manners, don’t talk back. Behave yourself and stop complaining. Don’t be selfish, don’t make a nuisance of yourself. Don’t get in the way. Don’t show any emotion and act like it doesn’t matter. So you can see that there is an awful lot of buried joy. Even if joy bubbled up, it was ‘now get back to work, that’s enough of that nonsense’.

I guess I do have a hard time accepting that. I don’t even want to hear what you are saying.

It’s like ‘they call this life, but it’s really hell’.

And also I should have got over it, it’s like ‘get over yourself, you’re an adult now, there’s nobody saying those things any more so get over yourself’. I can’t understand why it’s the same now as it was when I was a child. You are supposed to get a break when you are an adult and you leave home.

But it’s the conditioning you bought as true as a two or three year old, and it keeps getting more tangible as you get older. The belief is ‘don’t make a nuisance of yourself, work hard, don’t complain, don’t ask for anything and don’t expect anything. And don’t be a cry-baby about it either…

(pause)…Yeah, that’s the program alright…

Now, accept that. Can you do that?

I don’t want to, but I’ll try…

You can feel that there is some sadness coming up…strongly. You can see an adamant bright girl of whatever age, putting the lid on the pain and the sadness… because to walk around feeling miserable all the time and hopeless is too painful – how could you live your life?

Not allowed anyway…

And not allowed. So you have to put a lid on it and get on with it. And stop being a pest and earn your keep… and it’s really hiding the pain of having no enjoyment, no fun, no pleasure, no ease… and no self-expression. And it keeps you locked into that so there’s no head-space to be enveloped in peace… because there is still that struggle, that belief of the hopelessness and also… inexhaustible sadness underneath…

But I feel like I can’t let of it. It’s like ‘don’t argue with me, this is how it is and leave me alone’…

That is the position the person is holding… you are carrying it… and it seems unending… and I would say that the acceptance is in allowing oneself to uncover the pain.

I always get a bit confused about that… you mean observe it?

Just feel how heavy it is. Walking around like a child in agony…life is agony… more work, more shutting yourself down, more lack of care, more fighting, more work, no attention, no recognition, no love, just keep your feelings to yourself, just deal with it, get over yourself…

(tearful silence)

You know if you really look at it, the helplessness is ‘there is no exit, there is no way out of this… I’ll deaden my desire, I’ll deaden my expectation’. It’s like walking around dead… And being with the pain and the sadness which is locked away is acceptance of what you are trying not to feel. It organically processes itself by being with the excruciating pain of existence that you know so intimately…

(tearful silence)

I think it’s not enough to say ‘be with it’. I think it’s better to say ‘go into it’.

Be with what is being obscured. You are being with the sadness but the sadness was being obscured by the position. So you have to sit with the position and see what’s worse than that… You have got to get through the position to see what it is trying to protect. The position locks the person in. ‘I hate life, life is a drudge’ – that is the position. But underneath that is the sadness and the hopelessness. And what is underneath that?… It’s like peeling all the layers away until there is nothing.

What do you mean by change positions?

A person is always defending a held position. People try to have a positive, healthy sense of themselves but their inner thoughts are telling them that they have deficits. So the feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and hatred are cloaked in denial. A jealous person doesn’t see themselves as jealous. They notice other people as jealous and craving and defend their own position of being friendly and helpful. A person is like a juggling act, trying to hold together an image that is positive and acceptable to themselves. There is an effort, no matter what is going on, to try and enjoy yourself and avoid the noise of the mind with all its conflicting truths about who you really are.

Or sometimes the effort to be nice isn’t made at all and others are made to appease and help to try and lift the spirits of the one who has no intention of budging. So you could call that a covert passive-aggressive manipulator.

But there is no difference between the polite friendly one and the covert manipulator, is there?

In both cases, there isn’t any questioning of the belief that this is really who the person is. All the thoughts go round in a loop coming from the thought that they are either helpful or helpless, pleasant or nasty, aggressive or passive, intelligent or stupid, powerful or weak.

People respond favourably to what they like. They want to surround themselves with that and they avoid what they don’t like.

I have noticed that I avoid certain people that I don’t like being round. People who need to be the centre of attention at all times.

If you look at the people that you avoid, they obviously stir up something in you that is distasteful. It’s distasteful to you because you don’t want to acknowledge it. You hate it.

So if they are being all needy and demanding attention, what it stirs in me is the feeling ‘Give me all of the attention’.

And it is not conscious because consciously you are a responsible person. You don’t ask for help and you don’t act like a prima donna. But maybe you feel like you can’t. You’re not allowed. You’d like to perhaps but it doesn’t get a good response. So you have to pretend and the pretence is so good that you even forget that it would be really nice if someone paid more attention to you. Then when you see someone asking for it, it’s like a forbidden thing in you.

There are two people in my life who demand absolute 100% attention.

And you demand that you don’t see it in yourself for one second, ever. That neediness and that desire for attention.

Just talking about their behaviour makes me feel quite angry in fact. It’s all me, me, me, what I want, you have to do what I want. Nothing else matters but what they want.

What is so terrible about that kind of behaviour?

I feel like telling them to grow up and act their age. I find it repulsive when grown adults act like children. I don’t mind children behaving like children but adults behaving like children drives me crazy. It’s like they are asking for absolute unconditional love.

So that’s infuriating, an adult acting like a child, asking for absolute unconditional love, saying to you ‘it’s my way or the highway’. And where do you fit into that, listening and seeing and being the recipient of that?

Well, my strategy as a person is to avoid them. The thinking is ‘If that’s the way you are, I’m out of here’. I feel like I don’t want to join in their dance, I don’t want to be a part of it. I feel like saying to them ‘Grow up, act your age, get over yourself’.

Ok, so let’s just look at it. You’ve described it clearly. They’re a child and you’re disgusted, and until they change, you’re not letting go. And a lot of times you’ll have to deal with these people anyway, even though you have shut them off. They’re in your circle or in your family. They never get the love and the person is holding onto the position. That’s what I’m saying about self-image, position, behavior and feelings. The position is held so tightly about how you know yourself, how you act and what’s acceptable, and how they act and what’s acceptable. Where is there room for you to have openness and emptiness and less chatter in the mind if all of these things are held as a conditional way of being? If you act a certain way, I’ll react to you a certain way. It’s all about reaction. If you react this way, I’m cut off to you. So all the attention is gone to the ego position of ‘This is the way I am.’

So that is the held position that you were talking about earlier?

The held position is the obvious ‘I am this person. This is my life. This is how I see it. This is the way I am.’