Hello, everyone.
Lovely to see you and to be with you.

So we can invite ourself to be open,
invite ourselves to presence;
a fresh moment
of being and listening.

The body is breathing.
There is awareness.

The mystery of being.

So, we let go of the past.
We let go of the future, for now.

So we can connect
with something else,
which is not the result of thought,
which is not historical,
which is not a story,
an ongoing story about myself,
as a son or as a daughter.

So we suspend the mind,
which is deeply rooted in the belief
that I am a personal,
a separate entity,
that I am born.

When there is no reference
to the past or the future,
there is something magical.

Beyond words.

The profound silence
which is not a blank state.
It is meditation,
the contemplation
with no one doing anything.

Because when the past is suspended,
there is no me entity in presence,
meaning in this timeless moment.

There is a sort of holy stillness.
Without a me,
without a personal narrative.

And this holy stillness
is not disturbed
by the sunshine,
by the breath of the body;
is not disturbed by a passing thought.

Because it’s not trying
to hold on to anything.
It is not trying to achieve anything,
fix anything.

Body sensations appear
within this holy stillness.

Somehow this Holy Stillness
knows itself, as reality,
There’s creation.
There’s peace.
There’s freedom and love.

When we refer to I,
we are referring to that.

It is this still presence
which refers to itself.

It uses the word ‘I’
to refer to itself,
I refer to myself as I.

When I know myself
without referring to anything phenomenal;
and this knowingness cannot be explained.
And yet this knowingness pacifies the mind.
And draws the mind into the contemplation.

///

I want to talk about feelings today.

The best place to start with is our experience:
When we are experiencing a
negative feeling,
depression,
anger,
jealousy,
envy…
What is happening?

We say, I feel angry.
And we say, I feel depressed.

We are familiar with this way of speaking.
But what is the experience of feeling angry.
Experientially, what is it?

So we take a look:
I am angry,
so we take a look.

Of course,
there is a story
about what made me angry.
Maybe a story just defined my anger.

So there is some sort of story,
meaning some sort of narrative.
And there is also something
happening within the body.
Something happening
within the chest or the face or the fists.

So we experience anger, feelings
as both a narrative,
a storyline
about me and him and her,
or me and myself,
the good me and the bad me.

And we also experience
a feeling as bodily sensations.
Sometimes it’s in the gut,
sometimes in the neck.

What is going on?
The body is very sensitive.
It registers,
it displays the mind
in the body somatically.

And at the mind level,
the story line is strongly believed:
He or she did something wrong to me.
The world is not treating me correctly.

And the body, of course,
immediately registers that.

Maybe it’s a sort of protective
tendency in the body
to contract, to register the danger
so it is ready or gets ready to
fight, flee, or avoid?

This is our experience as human beings.
And we don’t like to experience negative feelings.

Sometimes we’re unable to navigate our life
with all what’s happening, so we seek therapy.

Trying to find some way
to cope and deal and still manage our life
a little bit better without being overtaken
by these depressions or angers or fears.

And it’s very helpful for many people to
seek some understanding and support.
There are many forms of therapies that are helpful.

Various methods.
But here, from the non dual perspective,
we address feelings and freedom
from negative feelings
as well, but from a nondual perspective.

Meaning, we invite ourself, if possible,
to take a look at our narrative,
if possible, to ask ourself:

What is this me who is hurt,
who’s been insulted,
who has not been treated fairly.
What is this me?

Of course, it’s very clear that
if somebody comes to harm you
with a stick or comes to harm your family,
comes to harm your body, then you respond.
You flee or you defend yourself or
you call for help.
But when we are talking about fear
and anger and the negative feelings,
we’re not talking about, this sort of situation.

We are talking about the world
not treating me the right way
or my boss or my partner
not treating me correctly.

Then we ask, What is this me?
Because right now in our experience,
there’s just awareness,
presence, listening,
in a sort of an openness.
We’re not trying to do anything,
but our experience is like that.
It’s just an open field of awareness.

But we all know that every now and then
there’s a me that appears
in this personal self.

What is it?
It seems to be very important
when it arises,
very significant.

We cannot ignore it.
We seem to be very familiar with it.
This me.

What is it?
What is this me?

In the absence of a story or a narrative,
relying on the past and all sorts
of future projections,
often it’s not possible
to take a look at this question.
It seems to be too complex.

That’s okay.
It’s not a question for everybody
or it’s not a question
that we can take a look at all the time.
Sometimes it’s not possible.

And yet somehow,
it’s a relevant question.

Because a lot of our behavior
and a lot of our feelings
are in one way or the other
about this personal self,
this me character.

This me, I would say this me-storyline,
which we repeat over and over.
So often we refer to ‘I’
rather than referring to ‘I’ as awareness,
as consciousness, as presence,
we refer to I as a me story.

There is a difference between the me story,
memory, and me narrative.

There’s a difference between that and I,
I meaning awareness,
the reality which perceives right now effortlessly.

It’s a big difference.
Because the ‘me’ exists in time,
but awareness, meaning ‘I’,
does not exist in time.

The impression of time,
memory appears in awareness.
Memory of the past of breakfast
this morning appears in awareness.

Time appears in awareness,
meaning in you.
You meaning you,
the reality which perceives right now,
the awareness which you are, which is.

The story line about the body mind,
about your parents,
about your partner,
about your children,
appears in awareness,
appears in you,
within you and is made out of you.

We all know that the feelings and
negative emotions relate to to the me,
the me story, me in time.

Sometimes an event happens to us
and it keeps revisiting us
again and again and again and again.

There are some therapies that invite us
to forgive, to forget, to let go
so that we can experience the freedom
from these thoughts, memories
that appear to us that affect our body.
That brings contractions and unhappiness
within our body mind.

When you remember an old hurt, we feel it.
We experience it in our body.
We experience it in our in our cells.
And when we’re experiencing this hurt in our body,
it’s toxic.
And when there is toxicity,
the body arises to protect itself,
to defend itself, to safeguard itself.

So there is all this activity going on in the body,
the alarm bell, the feeling level arises.
And, it is all somehow triggered,
not just by a memory of an old wound,
an old hurt, but also the belief in this moment
that I have been hurt, that I was hurt.

The belief that I refers to somebody,
a personal self,
a personal character,
who has been hurt.

So from the non dual perspective,
we invite ourselves to
see in this moment that, in fact,
the reality of our experience is awareness.

And that the me, with all its hurt, with all its history,
is a narrative arising in awareness,
and we do not need to believe it, to give it power.
Because reality and power belongs to awareness,
the reality that you are.

The body may be a male or female body,
may have a history,
but awareness has no history.
Consciousness has no history.
It is not phenomenal.
It is not material.
It is not made out of atoms and cells
and gluons and electric fields.

The world’s body mind may be so.
But you,
You are this invisible aware presence.

So not to speak much longer about feelings,
I just want to summarize that
the non dual teaching acknowledges feelings,
does not deny or ignore feelings,
does not oppose therapy when it’s needed.

But the focus on the non dual teaching
is to come to understanding
about feelings
because understanding liberates.

So sometimes,
in the non dual teaching,
we say: we’re not in the business of feeling management,
but we’re in the business of understanding
and this includes feelings, emotions.