Why are we here?

Magdi Badawy, 10-20-2024

Welcome, everyone.
Lovely to see you
and to be together
without history,
without stories,
without the past,
without narratives.

To meet each other freshly,
to meet one’s experience, freshly.

Because there is freedom
in meeting without a past.

There is peace,
in the absence of
being somebody.

We perceive this experience,
like in a dream.

So this is,
we say,
a waking dream,
meant for us to
awaken to the dreamer.

Because awakening
to the dreamer is freedom.

We all love freedom.
The causeless peace.

When the body mind is happy,
we are suspended in the bliss of the self.

There are no personal desires,
which is a fulfillment.
Not fulfillment because of
anything,
but the fulfillment of being,
being knowing itself.

Not as something limited,
something mortal.

The mind is a spinning machine,
like a windmill.

And the wind is God’s wind.

We imagine there is a personal doer,
a personal wind.

The question that was brought up is,
why are we here?

And what is it to be here?
What is this ‘here’ that we speak about?

Is it a village,
a town,
a city,
planet Earth,
my country.

Is it a mind state?
Are we in a mind state,
in a dream state?

My here and you are over there…
What is it to be here?

When you are no one,
when you’re not a personal entity,
when you’re not
a stream of thoughts and memories,
when you’re not a belief structure,
when you’re not
anything you imagine yourself to be,
when the mind is not loaded with stuff,
with information.

What is it to be here?

Maybe one could wonder
before exploring the question,
what is it to be here?

We could explore,
what is it to be?

Of course,
there is being somebody,
which is a stream of
memories and thoughts,
feelings and images.

But we know in our experience
there is something more to it,
that which always is.

Which,
cannot be labeled
as a stream of thought
and mind impressions.

I know I am,
before the mind engages
in the past and the future.

There is a Buddhist Koan that says
‘what is your true face
before you were born?’

What are you
before you were born?

What is it that is born?

What is it that appears and disappears?

Where does it appear from,
where does it go?

The mind is full of various theories,
beliefs, religious beliefs,
other philosophical beliefs.

But the question is not satisfied
by your religious or other belief,
it’s covered up,
but not satisfied.

What is it that is born?

The world appears to you;
that we know.
Thoughts,
bodily sensations,
world perceptions,
nama rupa, shapes and colors,
names and forms appear.

Effortlessly without anyone
doing anything.

They appear
and disappear
simultaneously
like a flash,
and in between every flash,
there is the unborn,
that which is not a flash.

Because you don’t disappear
between the perception
and the subsequent perception.

In between every thought
and every name, every form,
there is that which is not a name,
not a thought, not a form.

Mind experiences
are like rocks in the stream,
and we are busy jumping
from one rock to the next,
to the next,
to the next.

Where are we going?
If we are lovers of peace
and truth and happiness,
would it not make sense to stop?

Stop this jumping
from rock to rock to rock,
so that this silent,
radiant presence
can be revealed to you,
as that which is eternal,
in the shining light of awareness.

Our true home,
and true restfulness.

When you look
at your experience,
always in the moment,
not relying on past knowledge
or past information,
not relying on the mind,
the conditioned aspect.

When you take a direct look,
you find that the world appears to you.

The body appears to you
in various ways:
Images, sensations.

You are the invisible aspect.
The fullness, knowingness.

You do not appear as a form.
Or one could say,
you appear as all forms
without any exception.

You are not any particular object.

The sages say, you are
nowhere and everywhere.

So why are you here?
Are you here to comprehend
that you are nowhere
and everywhere,
that you are nobody
and everybody,
nothing and everything.

The formless self
manifesting as infinite forms
without ever being a form.

Because Being cannot be a form.
Being is oneness.
And yet,
Being manifests as form.

That’s why it is said that
form is in fact formless,
in essence, formless.

So you can relax your grip
upon being a physical entity,
whatever that means.

This mind impression
somehow is embodied
and leads to calcification
within the body in the
creation of an illusory structure.

It’s all mind.
It’s your reality
outside of consciousness.
This formless awareness.

Maybe we are here
to relax in presence.

It’s quite a journey
to relax in presence,
past presence.

Because love is revealed
in this relaxation,
when freedom is revealed,
irrespective of what may be
appearing in the body,
in the world, in the mind,
there is this vastness,
this vast Beingness,
effortless, borderless.

Maybe we are here
to come to this understanding.
It’s a joyful understanding.

Maybe we’re here
to be kind to each other.

That’s quite a challenge,
to be kind to oneself.

To be the other,
while, in fact,
there is no other.

To relax
our habitual hold,
our habitual grasping
and pushing back.

That’s quite a challenge.

But, we have complete availability
in this moment,
to just let go of whatever
we’re holding on to right now.

To allow God’s complete freedom
without interfering.

Because your interference is just illusion.

Sometimes we say it’s
your separation from God.

Your illusory separation from God.

So invite your body mind,
everything that you know,
everything that you imagine,
to be complete freedom.