Youtube recording: 02/20/2025
Meditation: MP3 Audio file
SanghaOfOne.com   

Hello, everyone.

Lovely to be with you
freshly this moment.

This ordinary presence.

The inhalation and exhalation
of the body.

We are there
as awareness,
present.

Noticing what we notice
effortlessly,
choicelessly.

We dive in the peace;
in the peace of our true nature.

Nothing is excluded.
There is no agenda.
The mind is left without a job.

A dog barking in the distance.
What is it?

A thought may appear to us.
What is it?

So for the duration of this meeting
we can let it all be,
every sensation in the body.

Anything,
everything which appears.

We don’t know it, do we?
In presence,
there is no time.

No issues.
There’s no room
for a me-story
in presence
because the me-story
requires the past,
requires time,
and we never truly step out
of presence and go back into time.

We don’t have a time machine.

So what is it to be
this timeless presence?
Awareness of awareness.
Aware that I’m aware.
Awareness aware that it is aware.

Effortlessly.

There is no separate entity
anywhere that’s aware.
That narrative is just a novel,
a movie produced
in the Hollywood of the mind.

So many movies
with a hero and a villain.
Imaginary stuff
because you are not the body.

You are not some entity
that you imagine
and feel yourself to be.

These are just ripples
on the surface of the pond.
You know yourself.
When you know yourself,
you know yourself
as this formless awareness.
Not as something you perceive,
imagine and feel.

So there is the understanding
about your true nature,
which is the understanding
about the reality,
about that,
which is
which knows itself.

I know I am.
It’s a direct knowingness.

Not in time.

And it is that,
which we refer to
as home or reality,
which is always on board,
recognizing itself,
knowing itself,
being itself,
and knowing and perceiving
its creation.

Knowing and perceiving
the world,
the body,
images,
memories,
mountains,
rivers,
sensations.

Nama Rupa,
names and forms.

But the name is arbitrary.
Your conceptual forms are arbitrary.

If you put on purple glasses
and the snow is purple,
it’s a different perception.

If you look at the world through a prism,
the entire realm of shifts instantaneously
into a rainbow of forms.
The rainbow forms.

But what is it
that which is changeless
this moment.

Not some narrative about eternity,
but in this moment,
experientially,
directly,
viscerally.

It’s beyond the mind, isn’t it?
Beyond conception.

We refer to ourself as I.
What is this self
that we refer to as I?
Is it the male and female form?

I, eighty five pound,
ten year old,
male female form…
Is that what the I is?

I, a hundred and seventy pound,
five foot eight.
Body-mind structure with a bank account
and two cars in the garage.
Is that I when when I say I,
is that what I’m referring to?

And what is it that refers to itself as I?
What is it?

There’s only one candidate.
Only one,
which refers to itself as I.
It is I itself.
I refers to I as I.

There’s no other candidate.
Everything else is a hoax.

How could a rabbit refer to itself
as an antelope?
How could a squirrel refer to itself
as a turtle?

It’s not possible.
The rabbit can only refer itself
as a rabbit.
The rabbit refers to itself as a rabbit;
as a metaphor, of course.

We’re not talking about body-minds here.
But the moment you understand
what is being shared, it’s a done deal.

Bingo.
No need to go any further.
I – I is, as Ramana Maharishi said, I – I.
I refers to itself.

So there is an understanding
about reality,
about truth,
about yourself,
a liberating understanding.

There is no person who’s understanding.
It is understanding
just blooming out of consciousness.

The perfume of the rose.
Because we’re interested.
We’re interested in God’s game.

We hear God’s knocking at the door,
and we’re interested in opening the door.
We don’t know what we’re opening the door to,
but we’re opening the door.

Moment by moment,
we open the door.
Yeah. That’s it.

Expose it all.
The end of the fear and the strategy,
the strategy. Strategizing?
Strategizing?
Is that the word?

The end of strategizing
to preserve to preserve the illusion
in maintaining the sense of separation.

Yuck.

What sort of fun is that?
Endless defense mechanisms
and blaming mechanisms
and judgments and regrets
and a hope for a better future.
For whom?

For the me-narrative.
It’s part of the me-story.
Oh, chapter 26.
Okay.
Chapter 26.

Yes,
when you are unhappy,
you are always unhappy
as an imaginary personal self.
It’s the me-story,
it is about mortality:
I’m a mortal entity.

Wow!
That’s a heavy one
a heavy one to carry
throughout our life.
“I’m a mortal entity”.

And it gets heavier with time
because we don’t get younger.
Nobody doesn’t get healthier with time.

But we’re so habituated to our unhappiness.
We’re so habituated to our personal story,
images, and beliefs about ourselves,
very subtle.

Sometimes
sometimes
sometimes
not so subtle.

We just reside inside the cocoon of our mind,
weaving the story and swimming in the mud.
But it’s okay because every now and then,
we can take a shower. Right?

It’s okay.
Is not that bad because
it is a shower area.

The mind is so habituated to operate
in the material realm,
some imaginary material realm:
There is a world out there.
There are things out there.

There is a reality out there
which is material,
immaterial reality.

You know,
the table of elements is the proof,
the proof of material reality:
Magnesium is not manganese.

Mind-stuff!
Believing in the material reality.

It’s constantly changing.
New discovery, new elements.
Discovering new elements.

You are not defined
by anything
you perceive or conceive.

Reality is self-defined.

So if you have any questions,
you are welcome.