Youtube recording: 11/21/2024
Meditation: MP3 Audio file
SanghaOfOne.com

Welcome, everyone.

Lovely to be.
Lovely to see you.

Beautiful gathering of friends.

What is it that we are?
What is it that we’re experiencing?
What is this waking dream about?

Bodies are born,
named by the family;
the tribe rejoices.
One more member of the tribe.

Then we are integrated:
taught how to think,
how to behave,
what to believe,
what not to believe.

And over time,
the structures of the mind
get established.

Such a natural way:
Learning survival skills
and the pecking order.

What is it all about?

Feeding the body,
taking care of the body.

Accomplishing our goals,
more and more goals.

From one thing to the next thing;
and the next, and the next.
What’s happening?

So many thoughts
connected to our conditioned mind.

Memories that appear to us.

Where are we heading?

Our culture, our society
gets more and more complex.

The sense of isolation
on the increase;
loneliness,
meaninglessness.

As if we’ve been dropped in the ocean
and need to hold on to various rafts
and various aids to float and survive.
For what purpose?

What are we
what are we protecting?
What are we aiming for?

When we turn,
to the mind for answers,
we we find a maze,
a history;
with all its carnage
and wars
and tribal rivalries.

Endless thoughts.

But where is the light?
Is there a light?

This is just an experiment in nothingness,
this human experience,
a big mistake that we are living?

Can the mind answer these questions?
Can we find the answer in
appearing and disappearing
thoughts and memories and sensations?

Is the question ‘what is this about’
a relevant question?

Or are we meant to just
go through the motions?
The conditioned mind
from one thing to the next thing
to the next thing.

Could it be that it’s just
a movement away from stillness?

Because from the mind’s perspective,
there are no goodies in stillness.
No things to identify with,
to grasp on,
to defend,
to be proud of.

From the mind’s perspective,
we need to think about something,
get the juice, squeeze
that expression, that experience
to get something for me!
A bag of goodies.

A petrifying,
rotting bag of goodies,
stale.

This silent presence,
what is the threat?
What is it that’s being threatened?

Is this entire human experience
about more and more mind,
more and more phenomenal experiences.

They’re…
they’re impermanent.

Then we hold on to the memories.
What is it to hold on to memory?
Such an empty chore,
vain activity.

I have a bag full of memories!
How silly.

What for a moment
is the experience of being
without the past,
without stories,
without histories,
without narratives,
without belonging to a tribe
or a particular point of view
that we hold onto
and identify with?

Or is it to drop the mind?
Is it that we are dropping?
Is there really anything
that is real
that we are dropping?

How,
how could we drop something
which is real?

Can reality be dropped?
Only the illusion.

No, we’re not even dropping it.
It’s the understanding that it’s an illusion.
That is the meaning of dropping.
It’s an understanding.

The understanding that this mind structure
has no reality of its own,
just an illusory manifestation
which we mistake to be real,
which we choose to give it power,
the power of thoughts
and sensations
and the power of the belief:

…that there is somebody
Who is, subject to mind,
subject to events?

In this moment,
the absence of story and history,
the absence of time,
I am.

I is is-ness,
is being,
is this effortless awareness,
which is and undeniable and
knows it is and
knows it is aware.

Any thought or mind impression
that appears to you,
when you look for it,
it’s not there anymore.

You bring it back in your imagination.

So much effort in maintaining belief,
in maintaining the me-narrative,
me and
my life and
my world and
my body and
my money and
my relationships?

Where is the peace in that?
And what’s the point?

Is there any happiness
in flipping the mind like,
you’re flipping a pancake
over and over and over?

We all love
happiness and
peace,
sweet relationships,
harmonious interactions.

Do we need to maintain
a personal image?
Do we need this effort, this travail?

What is it that gets in the way of
being and trusting being,
this effortless beingness,
this effortless awareness,
this silent,
still,
effortlessly peaceful
presence.

We know that experientially.
We all know experientially
this effortless joy and peace
and effortless happiness.

Do we need to play the me-game?
Do we need to keep going back
to the mind and get hooked
into the me-feeling and the me-belief.

Sometimes we get the impression
that we wanna
get something out of our experience,
get something or
get somewhere, or to
get it.

Who, who is behind the scene?
What is what is it that wants to
get something,
get somewhere?

It’s such a beautiful meeting
when we are with somebody who
is free from the mind,
is not wanting something,
or working on a certain agenda
about their personhood.

There is gratitude.
Meeting
in love,
in innocence,
in the purity and simplicity of
a greeting that has no purpose.

Notice your feeling state,
sensations in your body-mind.
They only have the power
that you give them.

You are the freedom.
You are free.
You are the freedom of being.

This awareness,
this consciousness,
which doesn’t get sick,
doesn’t get wealthy.

Recognize yourself as that
impersonal awarenesses,
God’s awareness,
universal awareness.
There is no other reality.

There isn’t that and me
as a body-mind.
No.
When you look for the
me body-mind,
you only find concepts and beliefs
and what we refer to as thoughts,
which we don’t even know
what they are of themselves.

But what we know
about thoughts and
about all experiences
is our direct experience of awareness,
awareness, knowing it is aware.

The reality of all perceptions,
that which cannot be removed.

Sometimes we say,
we say that which is between perceptions,
but that’s just a pedagogical means,
pedagogical way of speaking,
because there is no in-between,
in fact.

What’s in-between?
Awareness.
Something else than awareness?
Awareness dash nonawareness
dash awareness
dash nonawareness.

This is well,
it’s non awareness.
There’s no such thing.
It’s an oxymoron.

So own your understanding.
Live your understanding.

Don’t put it in the background.
Oh, well, I’ll visit it when I need it.
Let me continue with all my
worries and
concerns and
troubles and
depressions and…

But I can,
when I need it,
go back to truth,
to this reality
which perceives this understanding.

No.
That’s like being given a beautiful pearl necklace.

Maybe speaking for the ladies
or being given a beautiful lift
and putting it in the attic.

You cannot put yourself in the attic.
All your thoughts and images and beliefs
about yourself, that’s the headache.

But you are
the universe,
the formless reality,
the peace of being.

If you have any questions,
make sure to unmute yourself
and you can raise your hand,
and you can turn on your videos,
if you feel like it.
I’d love to see you.

So any questions?