A belief is not the actual - Bob Adamson

Sense of separation. The idea of an individual, a person, a separate entity. Nobody ever tells us, listen, you were never separate in the first place. So the belief has taken on that we are separate entities, we are persons, we are individuals. And the belief is not the action. Have a look and see how many beliefs you've got. And see that the belief can never be the action. And the definition and dictionary of a belief is an unquestioned acceptance of something in the absence of reason. Acceptance of an alleged fact without positive knowledge or proof. Because a lot of people, they won't stand up to investigation.

Facts you're absolutely certain of, which is the actual, is the fact of your own being. There's nobody you can say, I am not. You don't believe you are, there's nobody who believes that. You know it. If you believe that you are, you're not. You're not there at all. You might believe that, but you're not. But you could never believe that because you actually know that you are. It's that knowingness. There's always and everywhere a meaning. We can't do much with I am. A little child can't do much with that I thought, that I am. So what do we do with it? To make it seem insubstantial and give it some reality, we add to it events, experiences and conditioning, and we add on to that a lot of things.

I find violence, I'm Australian, I'm a good fellow, I'm not so good, I've got a low self-esteem or something happened to my child, and I feel insufficient or not complete, or I'm unhappy or resentful, or I've got a bad, angry nature. All these concepts are added on to that I thought. And we've built a mental picture of what we believe ourselves to be, a conceptual image. And that conceptual image, the energy of belief constantly going in it, makes it seem insubstantial and solid. Makes it feel like an entity. Anybody who's never looked at this, and has never looked at his eye, will say, yeah, this is me, this is I.

But if you go into it closely enough and see what you're referring to, you'll find that you can't find a me or an I there that has any substance or any independent nature really. It's just a group of concepts you've got. And that group of concepts is what begins to be called the self-centred or the ego. And you're told in a lot of the things that your ego is your problem. You've got to sublimate it, you've got to destroy it, you've got to do this and that with it. And that becomes the reference point, that self-centred or ego. And everything is relative to that. All their problems are problems of relationship with it.

Relative to it. Relative to what I think or what I believe or what I see or hear and translate. And all their problems are relationship. Because relationship is dualism. Relative to it. It's me and the other. And we're talking about remembering again, never forget it, but it's non-duality. One without a second, there is only that. There's always an only and everything. And there can be absolutely no duality in non-duality. If there was, it wouldn't be non-duality. But we've got to believe in all this dualism. And as I say, the manifestations appear in our dualism. That's why it is not the reality. It's the way it appears.

And it couldn't appear any other way. There wouldn't be any appearance if there wasn't... The day couldn't be without night. Silence couldn't be without sound. Movement couldn't be without stillness. Past, future, all the rest of it. It's all appearance must rely on its opposite to appear. So they are both affection. They're both appearance only. And everything is relative to this self-centeredness. Judged from there is good or bad, pleasant or painful, happy or sad. We refer to the me, the past memory, things that have happened to us, and we judge it from there. I like it, how do you know? Well, I've had this experience before, it was great.

I don't like it, I've had it before, and I don't like it. So it's relative to that mental image I've got of that myself. It's judged from there as good or bad, pleasant or painful, happy or sad. But we point out here that self-centeredness, that so-called self-centeredness, that's kept us in seeming bondage for so long, is a fiction. It doesn't need to be looked at or analyzed, which you can go on analyzing forever. You try to analyze it and work it out in the mind, it'll keep dividing. You go into one story and another story, and you see how this mind duality has been split up.

Five factors, thirty-two tatvas, a hundred and so and so, so and so and so and so. All trying to divide. Put the reality at a non-duality level. But it can't. It's still non-dual. It's split up our concepts from here.