Thank you Charlie for the transcript:
So to start, if you could either close your eyes or turn your gaze inward. And welcome your experience. Welcome whatever thoughts, whatever sensations are arising for you. Simply welcome, allow and simply be.
You don’t need to need to pursue anything, remember anything, learn anything, fix anything, for the duration of this meeting. Just enjoy, celebrate your freedom which is the freedom given to you that nobody can take away from you.
We are so habituated to engage in various thoughts and activities. But for now, you don’t need to. Be like the wide-open sky that has no issues with whatever appears within it no matter the shape ofthe clouds, the form of the clouds, the size of the clouds. The sky is untouched, unmoved. And you are That, you are this borderless aware presence. The screen.
Whatever appears to you is limited, is a form, whether it’s a thought, a bodily sensation or a perception. They seem to have a beginning and an ending. But you remain as you are, without any beginning, without any ending. ‘You’ meaning this transparent borderless awareness.
There is nothing that you need to do to be this awareness. Your very nature, your reality is this awareness, this presence that knows no division. The reality that perceives without effort and without being shaped by that which it perceives.
Unopposed aware presence which is not made out of matter, molecules, atoms, not made out of thoughts, feelings. Awareness is made out of itself. Reality refers to itself, from itself, to itself. This reality is One. One aware presence. One ‘I’. One being. One truth. Not lacking anything. Not seeking, missing, desiring anything. This is peace and happiness. The absence of the sense of lack. The absence of missing and seeking is peace and happiness. The reality of ‘I’, ‘I’ awareness.
And this ‘I’ awareness appears to itself and from itself as beauty; beauty in the world, the beauty of perception, beauty of creation. As love; the recognition of our innate intimacy which is celebrated in relationship. Not just close intimate relationships but relationships across the board. As Peace; the absence of inner conflict and outer conflict. As Wisdom; which is the clarity, the discrimination between the false, the impermanent and that which is causeless.
The recognition of our reality, the reality of consciousness, we recognise one reality. The reality of everything as this consciousness, awareness. The reality of minds and worlds and universes and bodies. One reality. The mind comes to rest within this recognition and dissolves. Ends the sense of separation, the ignorance, the confusion about that which I Am. The end of searching, of seeking, of looking beyond and beyond.
In peace and happiness, there is no separate self. There is no separate subject and object. There is no gain and loss. Everything that you gain you lose. Gain and loss are the sense of separation at the mind level. There is no gain and loss in God’s kingdom.
Magdi answer
I seem to have recognised to some extent that I am awareness and the nature of awareness is peace, but I still a deep longing to know the true nature of awareness as infinite and eternal.
You did mention peace, that’s a knowingness of awareness that is experiential. The experience of peace is the experience of awareness. Now, sometimes we confuse the peace with something that has caused it. We say, what caused the peace is that for instance ‘I sat in front of the lake and watched the sunrise and watched nature and experienced peace’ and so therefore I need to stay by the lake and then I will experience peace. But I cannot stay by the lake, I have so many other things to do. So, then we say, maybe if I can know what awareness is that would help me. But how can you know awareness if you are awareness? Right now you’re awake, how do you know you are awake? You are awake! You cant be something else than awareness and then know awareness as being something else. You can see your dog because you are not your dog. You know your dog because you are not your dog. Your eye can perceive the sunshine, can perceive your dog, but it cannot perceive itself, because it is itself. You are awareness. Awareness is the ‘I’. That which is hearing these words. Without awareness, the body-mind instrument that we call Charlie is like a fan without the plug. Without the plug it is not the fan. So similarly, the body-mind Charlie without awareness, what is Charlie? It is an instrument that is being used by awareness. So are you the instrument, the body-mind, or are you awareness? So then you ask yourself, what perceives? If you say the body-mind perceives, then you are assuming that flesh and bones, or atoms and molecules perceive. But in fact it is the other way round. You perceive the atoms and molecules, flesh and blood. Whichever way you perceive them, you perceive them.
So the knowingness of awareness is an inner knowingness, a non-objective knowingness. We know it as ‘I’. ‘I am’. This ‘I am’ is not ‘I am Magdi’ or ‘I am Charlie’. It is ‘I am’. It’s a non-objective knowingness. You cannot know awareness as an experience. You know it intuitively, innerly, as itself. It knows itself because the ‘I’ knows that it is. I know I am. The qualities of awareness, which are not caused by any practice or meditation or by any walk in the woods or by having a lovely partner. The qualities of awareness are inherent to awareness. The qualities of love, of beauty, of freedom, of happiness. These are non-objective. So when you experience peace, it is a non-objective experience. That which is non-objective cannot be caused by anything. It is. It is not born nor does it die. Now via the senses, the experience is that of objects and forms. The objects and the forms, they appear and disappear, they dance, but they have no effect whatsoever upon the peace of being, upon our true nature, upon awareness.
The way you can know awareness is by coming to clarity that the past is a hundred percent, absolutely gone and that presence is, in spite of whatever the past was, presence is, undisturbed, unperturbed. That which is unperturbed, that which is present, is ‘I’, the real I, the real reality, the reality of presence, of consciousness. And then its ok, completely ok for the body-mind to have been subject to various events in the past via parents, friends in school, whatever. Whatever events the body-mind has been subject to and will be subject to has no effect upon presence, upon awareness. The ‘I’ is not at the same realm of the world body-mind. ‘I’ is not objective, not phenomenal. At the phenomenal realm there are relationships, one could say cause and effect. A impacts upon B, B upon C etc. and that is God’s play, God’s billiard game. But, in spite of that realm of world-body-mind, ‘I’ is this peace. Nothing is ever happening or has ever happened to ‘I’. And there may be at the body-mind level sensations, perceptions, thoughts and images, but they have no effect whatsoever upon ‘I’, presence, the reality that perceives them. So the sun is always shining. Opening the veils, opening the drapes is understanding that I am not an object in time and space. There is a male body-mind. There are mountains and lakes and rivers, dogs and cats and elephants. Galaxies. I am not an object in time and space. I am the reality of consciousness. The reality of consciousness that has no age. Its not 40, 50, 60 years old. It’s not getting older or younger. And that reality, the reality of consciousness, is one reality. There aren’t two realities. So the reality of the world, of the galaxies, of the body, of the mind, the reality of perceptions and sensation is one reality, the reality of consciousness. To come to clarity what ‘I’ refers to when you say ‘I’, when ‘I’ arises within your language or in your mind. To be clear that ‘I’ does not refer to anything perceived. It does not refer to a mother, father, daughter, son a brother, a sister. It does not refer to a body-mind. Be clear what ‘I’ refers to. The transparency, the reality of consciousness. That which you cannot deny. Nor can you ever separate yourself from it. Nor can you separate anything from it.
So we are watchful not to pursue or seek an experience. It’s ok to enjoy experiencing. Swimming, going for a walk, having dinner with your partner. But not to seek it. Enjoy Gods creation but in seeking an experience, we separate ourselves, we personify ourself with the sense of lack which is a falsehood. As presence, as awareness, nothing is lacking. The body may experience hunger, so we feed it. It may experience tiredness, so we provide it some rest if possible, as best we can. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don’t.
I seemed to have been seeking an experience of awareness as infinite and eternal, when that it is what it already is.
Yes, when you are seeking awareness, no matter how expansive you imagine it, it still has an objective aspect to it. Whatever you are seeking, has an objective aspect to it. But we love love. But love is non-objective. We love friendship, we love beauty, we love happiness, we love joy, we love honour, we love respect. Non-objective. Of course they can express themselves in our life as we invite friends over for dinner, we enjoy friendship. It can take on a form. But the fact that it takes on a form does not mean it is a form. Happiness can be celebrated in life by just being with friends and looking in their faces and chatting with them. It can take on a form but this does not mean it is a form. Awareness, which is love, peace and happiness is completely available to us. 24/7 it is available to us. Because it is that which we are. We do not seek it. Can you seek that which you are? But when you imagine yourself to be a result of the past. A son, a daughter, somebody, the history. When we are in the history, it’s as if we are a body-mind in history. ‘Hopefully it will get better’ etc. that model is not necessary for happiness. It is actually the opposite of happiness. It is a falsehood. Because our experience is that of presence, the reality of our experience, there are no words for it. We say presence, we say freshness, we say not-knowing. We use words to point to that which is beyond words. It is not captured in words. Nothing is lacking to that which we truly are. When I use the word truly, it may be misunderstood that there is something else which we are. No, there is only that which we truly are. So when you form an object of any form, even a subtle object, you have also objectified yourself. Now there is subject and an object. When there is an object we seek, there is immediately a sense of lack and hope. We hope for attainment. It’s all mental and a felt contraction within the body. So within the body we are on alert, we are hunting. So in the body, we disengage the body, we invite the body to relaxation, to spaciousness, which is the spaciousness of consciousness.