Everything influences everything else. ND investigation Bob's style with Kat and Tanya. 16 March 25

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. And you can give it to us. And then welcome again to another nonduality group discussion. We're going to give us a little intro, we're going to do it together, and then we're going to open up for discussion just as usual. Just as Bob has given us a shining example how to. So the basics of nonduality is that you are already present and aware of your presence. I would like to confirm for people who are watching us and then welcome that you can hear that we are audible and we are audible enough because as usually there might be some issues.

So we are already, everyone's already present and aware of the presence and it is just this and nothing else. There is really nothing else to the natural state, to the state of clear self-shining presence-awareness. It is just this, being aware, being existent, being aware that you exist, being aware of presence. So we can establish right from the start that everyone is already existing and already aware of the existence. And that's it. In ancient religions they would call it omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, Omnipresence is really just presence. If you are Christian you would say the Lord's presence. You keep the Lord's presence in your heart all the time and that's the presence.

You don't have to call it Lord, you can call it love, you can call it just presence and nothing else. Omnipotence is the recognition of that one power behind everything. And if you call it God, that's obviously God's power, but you may call it life. You may call it just the omnipotence, which in another translations would be called a power of love, which is the action of Holy Spirit, the action force, the movement, the expression. And omniscience, which is the knowing. And the knowing is really a capacity for knowing, rather than knowing this, that or the other. This, that or the other is a content of knowing.

But the knowing, the capacity for knowing, everyone has the capacity for knowing, the fact that you know that you exist. And it isn't a content, existence is not a content of knowing, it's inseparable. You can't exist and not know it, and you can't... Yeah, that's really it. And I think the sound is good, thank you Anthony. So this is the natural state. Everyone was born to the natural state and the natural state is what is always here throughout the childhood, throughout the youth and adulthood and always and forever. The natural state is there even if the body is off, even if the body is in coma, even if the processor is switched off, even when the body is no more.

Natural state isn't and it is. It is the pure potentiality. It is what they call awareness. And that awareness is never not here. We can't even say that it is here because to be acknowledged or experienced it needs the vehicle. So it dreams itself a vehicle or it grows itself a vehicle of experiencing. It's like you have the electromagnetic waves running through or you have Wi-Fi in a field and you need to put a receiver so it is experienced and expressed, that field. So the field of pure knowing is there and it is experienced and expressed through that seeming vehicle of consciousness. We can't say that there is a body that is separated from it because everything is it, but we can use it as a pointer.

That this presence of awareness, this capacity for knowing is always there, it's never not here. And this is one thing that is consistent throughout life. Bob calls it presence. Presence. It doesn't have any sensory qualities. It doesn't taste, it doesn't smell, it doesn't have a color, shape, form, dimension, size, nothing. But you can't deny that there is a presence, there is an awareness of being alive, being here. I am the One, the One, the One. The content was completely completely different Your emotions your feelings your experiences all of it was different That the content But that presence, that spaceless, timeless, not limited to any concepts, not limited to the shape and size of the body, not attached to the body, that one never changed because it doesn't have qualities.

How could it change? It didn't get warmer or colder or didn't get bigger or smaller. It might have seemingly got obscured and this is what we're dealing with. The obscuration, the natural state is there. Everyone is already aware of presence. But it may feel like, yes, I understand intellectually but I don't experience it. The Eye that wants to experience it is the very veil that is hiding it. The mind that wants to drop away. How do I make the mind drop away? Who is the I that wants to make the mind drop away? The I that wants this moment to be different, to be more blissful, more pleasurable, more fulfilling.

The I that has an idea about the cosmic union or joining or something different than this. This moment as it is, is no good. I have a headache, I wounded my foot, people don't love me, I resent something or someone. Those ideas belong to the so-called imagined self, the I. They always relate to the sense of I. And what is that sense of I? What is that veil or obscuration which takes the attention away From that beautiful field of pure knowing that is unadulterated, that is unstained by anything like space. What obscures the space? If you see how the whole vehicle of experiencing and expression is designed, it is designed to attend to the obscurations.

It is designed, the field of seeing. Bob often asks, what's the first thing you see? No one answers that this is space. You don't really see space. You take it for granted. You see objects in space. That is the calibration of the machine. Nobody's guilty of it. That's how it functions. What's the first thing you hear? What's the only thing you hear? What's the thing that call for the attention? The sounds. Not the silence. People may have ambitions of attaining silence, persist in silence, but even that is a delusion. Who is there to persist, attain or achieve? It's the noise, the individual, the self, the ideas, the collection of ideas, The cage of concepts wants to attain something or achieve something.

Same with the space that we don't see, the stillness that we don't attend to, because again the wiring of that bio-computer, that processor, is to attend to movements. The movements that can threaten the body. So of course, naturally, the attention goes to self-preservation, the threatening sights, the threatening thoughts. And that's beautiful once you see through it. You can give it a smile, you can see how the body is responding to real threats, and how it works itself out with the imaginary threats. And then have a good laugh about it, because you understand that's not you doing it. Because the you is the presence, is the presence of awareness or is the field, the knowing, the space.

And from that perspective, we can just be absolutely mind blown in the way how the life unfolds, how this vehicle of yours responds, how it projects darkness or light, joy or sadness, Depending on the vitamin levels, depending on the weather, depending on the menstrual cycle, depending on the 10,000 things, depending on your level of medication or your electrical impulses. Yes, the projector is completely programmed to project particular interpretation of the world. The world that is neutral. There is nothing either good nor bad, nor ugly, nor beautiful, nor sad, nor happy. The world is, the space has no qualities. But you can see how your projector is interpreting people's behaviors because it is likely never to stop because unless, like Bob says, unless there is a brain damage or Alzheimer's disease, the narrative will probably keep going.

And the tendency to whatever, judge, evaluate, compare, they might keep going. But what does it matter if you understand that this is just the computer running its programs? This is not you It doesn have anything to do You just watch it You see it back and wow that fascinating That amazing Oh my gosh this body Oh it took me I have a lot of questions you can ask me in the comments They find themselves in a situation and that situation they one with it. And that's completely different modality of functioning. That's a different way of living. But you are completely flowing with life. You're one with life.

You don't chase anything. You don't desire anything. You don't crave anything. And it doesn't mean that the craving won't show up. You know the body, chocolate ice cream and then is that is that idea charged enough for the body to go and follow and grab it? Oh, I wonder. No, it isn't. It goes another way. The idea of maybe avoiding this. But none of it is any of my doing. It is absolutely fascinating how it unfolds. And you don't know your next thought. You don't know your next action, your next response. One thing that you can know is, I wonder how is the body going to respond?

What is the body going to project? Being curious about the unfolding and what is any other body going to project or respond? Or you may be completely disinterested at times with the body and the attention follows and just joins the forest The This constantly changing, but that which witnesses the dream, that never changes. And that is what you are. And you know it in your heart. Because you couldn't be that which changes. How would you know? If there is anything that existed yesterday and doesn't exist today, that's obviously not you. I am you, because you are here, you are always here. I wonder if the sound is still good?

Yes. Tania, would you like to try it? There is not much left to say. I will just say it in a different way, I guess. And it took me a while to understand that saying, I am that I am. What does that mean, I am that I am? There's so many ways you can read that. But I am, we are, that sense of presence. That's it. It's that simple, I am that I am. It's that sameness, that consistency of existence, that awakeness, presence-awareness. And you can... have you ever been outside of that, away from that? Take a look. Never. It's always been there. You've never had any experience without that.

It wouldn't be possible. It has to be there. You can only... that field of potential, just watching and experiencing and discovering what's happening and that is changing. That experience is changing all the time. But the background, the I am, never changes. There's no... so there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to be. There's no one to be. There's nothing to change into. There's nothing to become. You already are that and begin there. Begin and end there. Don't need to change anything as if you could. As if you could. And if you think you can, take a look. Take a look and do the investigation and see can you find that self-center that you think you are, that little person, the name and form.

Do the investigation. Can you find a reference point? Can you find some kind of framing or boundary which defines it in any way? This seeming unit vehicle self, little self. And when you looking for it who looking Can you find who looking If you can, that would be something. But all there ever is, is what's happening. And you may close your eyes and say, I'm going inside, I'm going inner. Where are you going? Where are you going? There's no, there's actually, there's no inside or outside. And there's no mind. There is no central mini me controller. It's just a term that we use, it's shorthand, for saying, you know, vibrations in that field of potential.

But you will won't, it's futile trying to understand it beyond knowing that you can't understand it with the mind. We can only be it, being it, is knowing. It's all efforts spent to try and uncover the meaning of this or why. It's all, you could say in a way, it's just more words. Intention is that it remain a mystery. And that choices are made, but not by mini-me, not by the seeming entity. Things just happen. And like Kat was saying, you can't identify a single cause of anything. Ten thousand things, It's another way of saying that everything influences everything else, like a spider's web. You pull one little thread and the whole web vibrates.

You can't control anything. There's no one there to control. See if you can find the controller. You won't find it. It's just what's happening. And that's a beautiful thing when you can sit back and relax. Oh, hey, wait a minute. Jeez, there's no me, mini me. God, I never did anything wrong. I also never did anything right because there's no me to do it. It's just happening. You don't need to take the blame or the credit for anything. There's no one to take the credit or the blame. It's just happening. You can relax, relax. Even that you can't do. That will just happen. So there's no point in worrying, as if you could control that.

We're all here in the tiger's mouth and it's inescapable. But ultimately every word that comes out of our mouths and we have to express it in some way will always fall short. It will be heard by one person and not another. That's absolutely fine. That's how it is. But I Am that I Am. I Am that sense of presence. You just leave it there and not have anything else to say. That's me. Beautiful, beautiful. Alligary and then all silence. I am not sure if I can see if life brings up any desire for further expression, because it seems to just enjoy pointing back to itself through the vehicles.

And also, you know, you might have ideas or questions. What about this? Bob always invited, yes, but. What about therapy? What about diets? Well, yeah, fascinating, isn't it? All those creations of the world, like the womb of creation. I don't think we can say that on the screen. No, Bob would be very unhappy if we use the C word. We have a standing joke about the womb of creation, the universe that actually expands forever and ever, and that intelligence energy of that life essence shows up in the ten thousand ways in every thought, every idea, every concept. It's just another child of the universe expressing, experiencing itself through the vehicle, as the vehicle.

And in that, if you see every problem, doubt or idea in the light of that being another expression of the universe, nothing that relates to me, even if you see the me,

All this is part of the dream. Now suddenly, any doubt, any question, any idea is the same thing. It's just the Universe dancing its dance, just showing itself to itself. Look at me! Oh, cool! Look at me! Look at me, oh, religion, politics, climate change, the trauma, all those things like wow, how prolific, how incredible. From the point of freedom where you are not a doer or you are not the recipient or you are not invested as mini-me, I really like that mini-me.

But you are that open field of holding space for anything that arises, but you are not preoccupied with any of it. All those things are just moving through the field like clouds moving through the sky, showing themselves, being appreciated or depreciated or ignored, neutral. It doesn't matter what valuation comes with it because that's the content also. So you see the cloud, oh that's an ugly cloud. Who said that? That's another cloud. Oh that's a beautiful cloud. Well that's also another cloud. And they just move through the field and the fields that you are, the space that you are, is always free. Even if at points, because that's the point of dreaming, there is a forgetting that it is a dream, and the whole of the attention gets sucked into the act of eating ice cream or fighting with someone.

What's wrong with that? Usually in the moment it is absolutely beautiful as it appears. You know when you look at the animals fighting in nature, fighting for survival, fighting for food, or meeting and mating. It is absolute completeness in the totality. It's magical. There's nothing wrong unless the thought comes and says, well, hey, wait a minute, it should be different. Now, what's wrong with right now if you don't think about it? Everything are as they are. And that part which you say relax, you can't even relax, absolutely. Who is there to relax? But the relaxed space-like awareness is always there underneath any content, underneath anything and everything that is happening.

It is already relaxed. Nobody needs to do anything. It's just a simple recognition. Oh, yes. The part underlying everything, witnessing everything is present and is relaxed already. Even if there is just a very, very faint realization of that, even if there is no attention at all, and it is completely forgotten, even then there is nothing wrong. So the investigation is really just to go on when there is something wrong, when there is a strong suffering. That brings the point of suffering. Why is the suffering even there? Well, how else would the investigation be perpetuated? That's the invitation. Psychological suffering. Oh, it feels it happens to me.

Which me? What is that me? And see what knows that me. Where is that me appearing? To who is that me appearing? And a little break, a little bit of a respite again. And then life rushed through, straight through with all the turmoil and roller coasters and no time and no sleep and no this and so many tasks and bills and health issues and relationship issues. What a ride! And then psychological suffering with it. Yes, but other people have it better. Yes, but it could have been better. I could have married the other guy and my life would be different. Wow. What a dream. But of course, when this one is automatically believed, what a nightmare.

A nightmare of your imagination. Nothing can hurt you apart from your own imagination. It's incredible, really. Wow. It's just, and it's all ephemeral, isn't it? It's all passing, changing, and nothing sticks to the I am, does it? Nothing sticks. Doesn't matter what beauty occurs, what magical, extraordinary experience that has a beginning and an end. All of these are not the same. Or the horror, you know, the great tsunami wiping out thousands of people or trauma in your own home all of that can happen yet the I Am is still the same untouched untainted everywhere you go unchanged That's amazing, amazing, what an amazing illusion. You could say in a way it's a co-creation of seeming entities that think they're individuals.

But it's, yeah, wow, the same life looking through your eyes and your eyes and your eyes and your eyes. That sense of I Am-ness, that life, it's the same for every seeming entity in this room and outside this room. It's the very same. It's the same, it's the same for Bob. There was no difference. I see if I have any inclusions of people who are with us online. You are the one exception for me. Catherine says love to everyone from James and Catherine. Anthony says, be alive instead of believe. That's a beautiful one. Yeah, it's just a play of words. And Tania says, good morning and much love to everyone.

Good morning from Annika and good morning, so I'll just keep. And Peter says, beautifully presented. And we have Peter having a mic. Jamie, can I give you another one? Are you busy? Go ahead. I don't know what I'm saying. No? Okay. Am I on? Yeah. I'm on. Maybe I'll talk a little bit about a concept that Nisargadatta used to talk on. And he used to have this concept of prior to I Am. What we are is prior to consciousness. Now there is a lot of talk about we are that I Am, that I Am-ness that we are. And it's true that prior to thought there is a felt sense of I Am-ness, kind of like a vibration, hum, an energy that is there.

What I discovered is that felt sense of I Am-ness can also be a trap. It's also a place that we can get stuck because to that felt sense of I Am-ness we can retreat there. And from there we see that thoughts are just happening, feelings are just happening, everything is just happening. There is no doer, there is just a happening. And from that felt presence of I am-ness, we can witness all that happening. But what Nisargadatta is pointing out is that that's not it. It's another trap of the mind that we can get caught in, caught up on, the kind of station that we get stuck at.

If we investigate with an openness that felt presence of I Am, that that's also an object to what we are. What knows that I Am-ness? In the discovery of that, there's an instant acceptance of all that's appearing, Including the thoughts, the selfing, the feeling of being a me, the feeling of wholeness, the feeling of I am-ness, feeling of joy, sadness, whatever is appearing. There's a total acceptance. It took me a long time to see that because I realized that that kind of I am-ness, presence, can be a kind of spiritual bypassing. It's a comfortable place to dwell and to meditate and to be, but it's also not the reality that the great masters are pointing to.

And I just thought I'd point it out. It may be helpful to anybody here. They may resonate with what's being said. But it was seen here that that I am-ness is just another object appearing to the reality which I'm not even going to try and point, you know, it's the mystery. Beautiful. So in that reality everything is accepted just as it is. So it's not a comfortable place always to be because really ultimately I think what we all here for is to understand what we are at our core and what we are is that wholeness that reality including all the flaws all the wonders all the magnificence and everything.

There is nothing excluded from what is, this is what is, significant, glorious, sad, it's terrifying, it's wonderful. It's all of those things and it's a celebration and I'm just happy to be here and celebrate it with all my fellow travellers. That's all I got to say. That was gorgeous. Anyone else? Oh, Tasha, please. No? No? Do we have anyone else here? Nope. I agree. 100%. That's it too. Bob would always say there is no duality in nonduality. And what exactly is that pointing to? What is the duality that seems to be appearing in the nonduality? I guess I would point out that that duality is the I am, is the me, is the idea of getting something, losing something, being, non-being, having, not having.

That is the appearance. Even the feeling of being, sometimes there's not being. It's all of that is, that's an illusion. That's the dream. And what is happening for some of us is we're believing the dream. Because we're all dreaming, whether we know it or not. The suffering, apart from the feelings that arise in what is, which is there is no problem with whatever feelings, it's the psychological feeling that what this is should be other than what is appearing. I am the suffering. That's the psychological suffering. And that's the feeling that something needs to change. Even if the feeling of suffering is there, that somehow I have to, I have to work, conquer this suffering and get out of suffering or this sadness.

I have to do something. I have to meditate, I have to go and have a beer, whatever. It's that uncomfortableness with life that is unnecessary. Everything else is appearing is necessary. It's all part of what is and there's no problem with that. It's the I, it's that duality appearing in nonduality that wants to somehow be anywhere else other than here. Because the me, when investigated, the enemy of me is this. I quit this what's happening is it it's never enough for me is either in the future imagining where it can be somewhere down the track or remembering the past of what was and what could have been and that's the whole story of nonduality past future happy sad wanting having so that's all that needs to be The question that needs to be investigated is when that sense of uncomfortableness comes up that this isn't enough.

What's happening is not enough. And for the me, this can be never enough because it can't know this. I can only go into imagination, imagine what I can be, one day what I will be, or what I was. That's all that needs to be looked at. And as I mentioned, there's different stages of the investigation. What I discovered was for a long time retreating what I thought was the presence was just another felt sense of the body prior to the mind, prior to thought, but it's almost another part of the mind witnessing what's happening. So we get to the understanding that I'm not the doer.

I'm not creating the thoughts. I'm not creating the feelings. But the retreat into that, because if the felt sense of I am-ness, it's like what Bob talks about the sun being self-shining. So we feel a beautiful radiance from the sun. And that radiance is felt and it warms the whole body. That's an effect of the source. That's not the source. The source of that radiance, of that light, is the sun. And often that felt sense of I am-ness is like the radiance from the reality from what we are. But it not the ultimate goal And the minute we open our mouths, as Peter said once before, you know, or twice, we're screwed.

Because it's so limited. The minute we try and describe something with a word or two, we limit it. And that is the conundrum. What we can describe quite well with words is what we're not, is a duality. We can talk about that a lot, the fact that what's appearing, the dream, that can be described. The ultimate saying is, it includes all of that. What we are not is still what we are. It's like when we're having our night dream. It's radiating from what we are, it's an appearance, it's not reality, it's what's appearing, it The difference is the believing in the appearance that whatever the mind throws up is truth.

Because the mind tells me that I'm going to be destitute next week, I'm going to lose my job or whatever. That's not true. How does the mind know that? But the energy of belief goes into it and that creates a very extreme feeling of uncomfortableness in the body, which is a real feeling. Because that feeling is real. The cortisol, the adrenaline, stress hormones, they're a real feeling. But the story isn't real. That's the difference. So acceptance of what is, is okay, even if there is a believing in the story. But ultimately, why we're all here is because we've been, a lot of our lives we've believed that story and we've suffered and we've looked.

Surely there's got to be another way because there's a feeling, a sort of calling inside us that this... A longing. Yeah, a longing to come home to what is. And eventually when we come home to that, it's okay. It's just okay. But we're always home. We're never away from home. It's only an illusion that we're not home. You cannot escape home. Well that's the understanding. It's always there. When this is seen, is that it's always been this way. That's it. That's the seeing that we've never actually gone in. And you said beautifully once, another meeting that we have, you know, like it's fine to have, you can have concepts all day long and all night, just hold no concepts.

And you know, Bob said something beautiful to me about two weeks before he passed and I was in the kitchen, I think I talked about this last week, making a noise or whatever and he called me over. And he said, what are you doing? Nothing. What do you know? Nothing. Nothing. That's it. What are you doing? What do you know? Nothing. You're not doing anything because you're not the doer. And you don't know anything. The only thing you know is no thing. You know, Bob would say, are you not aware right now? Can you say you're not aware right now? The potential for the question indicates that there is something I don't quite know what it is and I can't understand it with the so-called mind.

So drop it. Not that you can do that either. And relax. There's two ways of seeing that though because of course once you open your mouth you're into duality. So, Duality, we've got two ends of the stick. Yes, I'm not the doer, I'm not the feeler, I'm not doing any of that, I'm doing nothing. But what's the other end of the stick? I'm doing everything. Yes, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm speaking through you, I'm laughing through you, I'm that car driving past. I'm doing the whole thing. Not as Jamie, but as that reality. And in the true seeing of that, such an enjoyment. There's all...

Like, I'm a musician. I love music. I listen to music all day. And there's a certain appreciation I get out of music now that was never there when I was stuck in the mind. And that appreciation is, I listen to music and it's me. I love this song. This song is amazing. And I'm just hearing myself to it. Because it's all me, not Jamie, but the reality. So there's two ways that we see that the individual ego which sees that, okay, as an individual I don't exist and I don't do anything. But the ultimate understanding is I'm doing everything. I am that. There's no room for duality and nonduality and everything is one and not even one, as Bob loved to say.

Not even one. Not even one. Wrap your head around that. All you can do is sit in silence. Yes, that's it. Yes, it is true. Ultimately. And ultimately. And we are. And we are. Let's face it, that is the silence that speaks, is the silence, is the stillness that moves. Could there be a sound without that silence? Because all sound emanates from the silence, just as all objects are emanating from the space. Without that space of silence, there would be no sound. It's the reality, everything is emanating from that. I have a comment here. I have a comment from Anthony who says the me is a subtle now, but I sense it when I'm in that I am-ness.

There is a residual ownership of it. Thank you. Yeah. Beautiful. I also have, I've been shared, a friend shared with me, I think it's a really just a poetic statement of how the world appears to a poet. I think he identified it with it, but that's just a way of looking at things. There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is. It is the sadness of understanding that life is not a grand adventure, but a series of small insignificant moments. That love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile fleeting emotion. That happiness is not a permanent state, but a rare fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto.

And in that understanding there is a profound loneliness and a sense of being cut off from the world, from other people, from oneself. How romantic and how delusional! Because who is there to claim that they know how the world is? Who is there to say I am lonely, cut off, isolated because I am the great seer and you are all delusional. You all believe in a dream but I am enlightened and I know I'm alone in this one. My goodness, it sounds so sweet because part of the description is very accurate. Nothing is what it seems to be. The great love affairs are just a story.

The fleeting emotion is not a permanent state. So true. But then it goes off the stray, but I am here and you are all there. I am the teacher and you are all students. Oh my God, what a sad delusion. It really is a sad place to be. If you find yourself lonely and isolated from life itself, that is really a depression. It is. And if that's believed, my goodness, that's a really dark place to be. Would you say, I mean, just, I don't have much experience of the seeker world, but would you say that's quite, occurs very frequently among, you know, so-called seekers? They think they finders.

They are deluded that they, I, have understood what you have not. Correct. Yeah, it's a trap. Yeah, it is a trap. It's a trap. Yeah. I don't know how frequent it is, I don't know how often people fall for that trap, and who are those? This is still life playing its game. But that's really sad place to be. I would recommend a strong antidepressant to that, just to write out the factory. Yeah, that was being shared in the nonduality discussion. Because it also is, as Tania says, it might be. I mean, I've heard people saying that, oh, I got it. I got the understanding. Nobody else got it.

Nobody else understands. I'm so alone in it. There is no understanding in it. There is no understanding. There is no understanding in it. If there is I, if there is any sense of separate I, separate from others, from the world, left, that's no understanding. That's that delusion, grandiosity delusion, which may be very, very dark. There is no understanding in that. But it may feel really, oh, I've embraced nonduality is dark. I remember dealing with one man, a young man who had a really dark LSD trip. And he found himself faced with the reality that is cold and dark and empty and just the vastness of non And he was positively traumatized for about I think a year I think Dean pulled him out of it eventually using microdosing Anyway, that was really a story.

But when you are susceptible to mind-altering substances, which open up all the neural pathways, that's the danger. Suddenly, that dark trip looked more real and more convincing than anything that young man went through his entire life because he was more receptive, he was more open and that was very depressive. He had suicidal ideation for about a year after that incident. Bob used to say, sometimes people would excitedly say, oh I've got it, I've got it, I understand it. Bob would laugh and say, no, life, for want of a better word, has got you. Exactly. You haven't got it. There's no I. There's no I. No I to get it.

Yeah, thank you for that. And Tania says here, New Zealand Tania says here, there is curiosity here. What is it like when all illusions have dropped? Is there just what is appearing which includes everything and excludes nothing? Nothing missing? No seeker? Nothing to fix or improve? No me? Beautiful. That's beautiful, Tania. You have really good way of putting it. That's exactly it. That's it. There is sense of nothing missing, nothing excluded, nothing to be fixed. There is, you know, even if the me misbehaves, you know, the character is very badly socialized and it has awkwardness about it, or it has addiction, or whatever the dream character has, or might have annoying accent, or whatever it has, that's not you.

You are the presence in which you are seeing the unfolding of the moment, always fresh and new. Shut up! I just want to ask Jamie, so from my own insights too, It seems that, you know how we say that the world's not real? It feels like the not real and the real coexist at the same time. Beautiful. So, I went through a period of detachment, thinking that I'm not this, I'm not this, I'm not this, I'm not someone else's suffering. And what I found is I went through a period of inclusion that everything is arising in awareness, even someone else's suffering. And where everything and nothing at the same time.

There's still a subtle duality in the idea that everything's arising in awareness. Because you've still got the two things there, haven't you? You've got the awareness and things arising within it. It's still a subtle duality. It's hard to say it in another way. There's just what's arising. Okay. The awareness is the sort of concepts. It's just what's happening. There's no awareness of what's happening. The subtle awareness is that subtle felt sense of I Am-ness. Because it's that I Am-ness that I'm aware of this. This is arising within me. That's kind of the subtle duality. That's sort of what we're seeing here was one of the last things to see through.

Is that I am awareness and all this is appearing in me as awareness. But that's still the me. It's a very, very subtle me. But it's still a subtle duality. That needs to drop too. Or it doesn't need to drop, but it can drop as well. The line that I'm reminded of is Nisargadatta's line, Wisdom says I'm nothing, love says I'm everything, in between the two my life flows. And also, my experience with talking with people and hearing people here in the groups as well is, Bob often points out that the sea doesn't have to necessarily stop appearing blue. Sometimes the sense of me or the perception of me or that pattern of identifying with me never drops away.

And that's okay too. That's also known. That's also what arises. So it seems like the life is playing its game and sometimes it completely clears the picture that there isn't really, there isn't enemy at all, no traces of it. Even when the body is actually just punching someone in the head there is no me doing it at all There is no illusion of me no sense of me It just doesn feel right to even translate it or as there is a me or subtle me doing any of it. And in other cases, oh, you know, I got caught up and it feels real and it is a good description.

Oh, I got caught up, who got caught up? The attention got caught up, but it feels like I am the attention. I am the movement of attention. Well, you couldn't possibly be the movement of attention if you were the knowing of the movement. But it still feels this way. It describes itself this way. And for a lot of people that I know that are hanging around Bob for 20, 30, 40 years, that is how it is. And what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. Even if there is a persistent sense of me that can get caught up but it doesn't last very long or it drops away quickly, that's just how life experiences itself in the dream.

So expecting or comparing or imagining that, oh, but for you there is no me whatsoever. Well, who knows? Maybe for that person who got caught up, experience of presence isn't any different. Just the description is different, the language is different, the association is different, the interpretation is different. And that is all content of the dream. That all doesn't matter. Ultimately, even when the realization never lands, the dream will end. How wonderful. The dream will end. There may be a realization that it is a dream throughout the course of life and that really drops the psychological suffering. It doesn't drop physical pain, it doesn't drop discomfort, it doesn't annihilate troubles and challenges, and it does not stop the body from getting dysregulated.

It doesn't stop depression from happening if there is B12 deficiency or if there is over medication of one or the other drugs. The body is part of the dream. It belongs to the dream and it goes with the dream. The body responds to the dream as it has been conditioned. So the body will still respond to the weather, to the menstrual period, to the food, to the other bodies, the way it has been conditioned. If someone was growing up in a violent, abusive environment, they will hold the trauma just like the dog or cat will hold the trauma if they were kicked and battered. It's just the body will still process the best it can whatever it is dealing with.

But the idea that I am this body, it may be residual, it may kick in or it may drop away. And it doesn't matter to life, to what you really are, it doesn't really matter. Because the dream will end. Awakening to the dream may or may not be experienced to this extent or that extent, but it still belongs to the dream. It's still a dream world. Awakening to the dream in a dream. The dream will end. And you know, in an illusion, in an illusion, which is the product of an imagination, how could there ever be degrees of rightness? Yes. Or some measure of closeness, which distinguishes one from another, to the so-called self.

Or a comparison of superiority. Yes. Bob was always about that. Forget about worshipping the messenger. That is a trap for sure. Nobody has got anything you don't have. There is nothing to get. That's it. And there's, like I said, how could there possibly be any degree of rightness or wrongness? And also, all the ideas that are arising, that things should be different, that these discussions should be different, that people's sharing should be different, that the energy should flow differently, that anything should or could be different, that's suffering. That is psychological suffering. If I think that things should or could be different, oh my God, this is the conflict with life because life presented this way exactly as it is.

So if there is an I that objects to life, that's suffering. If that I relaxes, aha, this is how it's happening, this is how it is expressed. Well, there is a, the I is dissolving. Now there is just an aha, and who says aha? Aha is being said, the silence speaks. Who knows what anyone will say next? Getting out of the way and letting it express as it does. Pointing out, it might express as objections, it might express as criticism, but realizing that there is no objector. There is no one, the judgment may arise, but there is no authorship of that judgment. Judgment is just the dysregulation of the machine And it not even dysregulation it really just kind of if we look at it closer it a helpful function The capacity for that machine to constantly complain and judge and find faults is a helpful capacity If not for that, we probably wouldn't be sitting on the comfortable sofas.

Because there had to be an idea that brought it into existence at some point or the other. Believing that I am right and it should be different. That's suffering. It doesn't have to be this way. Life unfolds as it does. Being transparent like space in which that life is allowed to unfold as it is. That's the oneness of life, that's the flowing of the river, it can still bash you. Nisargad also said, and a lot of Masters have said it, that there's nothing wrong with thinking, with the mind, that the mind is a wonderful servant, it's a terrible Master. The Master has been forgotten. So all this understanding is, is just putting everything back in its rightful place.

And from the level of intelligence, which is the reality, we can see that the mind takes its rightful place as a creative instrument, and is a wonderful instrument. And that intelligence we can see whenever the mind starts to want to assert it's bullshit again. You just don't buy into it. It's not bought into. Thoughts, thinking is wonderful. I don't think I'd ever want my mind to go totally silent and never think again because I love... The manner. Yeah, the mind can be endlessly entertained. But it's when we take that ownership over it that that's running the show. We think that the mind is running the show.

That's when we're in, that's when we just get into some trouble. But the mind is a wonderful, wonderful servant. And to me, that's all this message is communication is about is everything taking its rightful place as what they call the natural state. And the natural state is resting as the reality that what we are and appearing in that is the creativity, The mirror is able to reflect everything beautifully. The mirror is totally untouched by whatever appears. So it doesn't argue, it doesn't say, I only want to see Kat, I don't want to see him because I don't like his head or something. It doesn't pick or choose, it just accepts and reflects what's appearing.

And it's a perfect analogy for what we are, that reality just is like a mirror cleansed, able to reflect whatever is appearing without an argument, without, let's call it unconditional love. I like that. That's beautiful. Whatever the mind objects to is an invitation to question. So listen to the objections. Wow, thank you. Thank you for the objections. And Joseph? Yeah, I was listening before. I don't know who spoke about with the center and then you spoke about, you spoke a lot of suffering. And it was quite interesting suffering the pleasure and pain. Two weeks ago I went to a place with a lot of men and they spoke about that as well.

It was quite interesting to see what is happening with the suffering and what the mind does to do that. It goes to places, imagining them and feeling the feelings which we maybe felt before. And then twirling on those thoughts creates the suffering rather than being present. And for me it was quite interesting because we have also physical pain and physical pleasure and we have psychology pain and pleasure. And when I looked at the physical pain And imagining stuff and touch that by accident and you burn your hands. You suddenly pull your hand back and I pull my hand back and don't touch it again. But with the psychology suffering, a lot of people, even myself, start thinking about it and twirling it on.

But in the physical one, we don't actually do it. So that was quite interesting to have that actually analogy and like hang on. I am a person who is not physically aware of what I am doing. Bob always says, don't go there. Yeah, don't go there. And to me, when I think about don't go there, I am just imagining stuff. I will stop you. Yeah, stop, okay. Period. So it's quite interesting. I don't know why we tend to do it emotionally but physically we don't. It's quite interesting. It's a great insight. I thought about that but I never really... It's really great and I would like to invite everyone, if you have insights and everybody does have insights, you have no idea how helpful it can be for those who are listening, how beautiful, how it could be a kiss in the lips if you share it, if you just give it away.

Or if you have questions, I can't tell you how much love has Mitra called out in people for asking questions, you don't have many questions now. I'm excited that you don't. I know, yes, it is beautiful, but if there is anyone who does have question, you're gonna be showered with love and gratitude for those who will be watching it later, and who can't ask these questions. They are not here, they don't have this comfort of coming here, or they may even be too shy, or they may not, you know, like just, yeah, please open up, contribute, see what comes up, see what the insight, and thank you, Brendan, you had the beautiful insights to share too.

I'm glad to share too. And Peter last week and anyone and everyone. Ross, you always bring a little bit of a nice pearls of Buddhism. Just bring it on because we don't know. I had situations and we have Zoom groups also that we have people who will trigger couple of listeners and would cause the resistance, but others will just completely melt in the expression. So like Tania was saying, you know, don't worship the messenger, tune into the message. But sometimes, you know, the particular frequency of expression may not sit well with someone, but it will be a saving grace for someone else. I've seen it happening only too many times.

That's why, that's why Bob also always encourage people, speak, speak up. You don't know where it I will be a force for good to help some miserable bastard somewhere out in the world. There is no I and there is no miserable bastard. But if you actually let yourself just open up and let life speak, like Jesus in the Sermon of the Month, what are you going to tell them? I don't know, I'll get out of the way and let the Father speak. Bless the cheese makers. It's probably more so directed at you Jamie. I was thinking about pain and suffering and how probably almost most humans, but especially myself, There's a high degree of self-improvement.

That's just sort of how I've been most of my life. And I was thinking when you were talking about maybe recontextualizing the word pain and suffering to, if I can use the acupuncture analogy of, it's just meridians that are blocked. So it's not necessarily pain and suffering, it's just there's a change that needs to happen in order to bring us back into balance. The Chinese medicine point of view and interestingly what drew me to Chinese medicine many years ago was their conceptual understanding of what they call mind which is xin heart. So in Chinese or in Eastern philosophy, our mind is not in our brain, it's in our heart.

If you ask anyone, point to yourself, we go, this is me. We don't go, this is me. So the heart is an energy and like all energies, it can get disturbed. The Nisargad terms are the two most common terms used by the Nisargad people. So we're born into this world perfect. You look at a small child when it's born, it's breathing, its whole body, it's like it bellows and the energies and everything's freely moving. And then as we move into the world, we bump up against the world. We start finding, you know, I can't put my hand in the fire, it's going to burn. We start to bump into the world and what that, the effect that has on our organs, it starts to create certain blockages within how that chi is flowing through the body.

The state of perfect health is the free flow of chi and blood through the body. As we start to move into life and we bump into life and we start to have so-called negative experiences, our parents yelling at us and going to school and getting bullied or whatever, start to cause the heart energy and the liver energy and that to start to get blockages. So the chi is not moving as freely. Our mind starts to become more stuck. We become more of a me. That sense of individualism gets more and more ossified as we grow. We reach our teenage years and we discover beer, for instance, or smoke in a joint.

Nisargad tathagat I am the one who is the one temporarily override those blockages that have started to form in the energy system We feel a sense of freedom, like the first joint you have, or the first time you have a beer, you go, I Am All-Joyous and Free and I Feel Alive, because it's temporary overriding those blockages causing the qi to flow through you. But what happens is then we have that first beer and then the second beer is not as good as the first beer. And then we're always chasing, if anybody who's done a lot of substances, we know that the first time you do, the first line of cocaine you have, the first beer you have, whatever, it's going to always be the best.

And then we're chasing that and then we start down the path of seeking because we feel a sense of relief, a sense of free flow. And we think the answer to that is either in drugs, sex, material, buying stuff, new cars, houses, relationships, because all of those temporarily create the free flow of qi and blood through the body, give us, bring us back closer to the natural state. But that path of seeking ultimately ends up in, and it did in this case, spiritual seeking. Because the ultimate material gain is, I want to achieve enlightenment. I'm going to understand how the universe works and I'm going to, you know, whatever.

That's the ultimate form of seeking. So ultimately our journey through life is from that perfect child. Somehow trying to, through whatever seeking that we find to get back to that. So yes, a lot of that process and in my case what I discovered, I was introduced to about 20 years ago through a random spontaneous meeting of somebody in the guitar shop. I was introduced to a practice called Chigung, which is probably the oldest exercise that's known. It's thousands of years old and it's working. Because I'd reached a point of no more that I couldn't go any further. I'd gone as far as I could with the substances and the sex and all that sort of stuff, that I'd reached this point of like there's just no more benefit.

I was fortunate that that came into my life at that time. I met this guy and he goes, this is what you're going to do. You're going to get up at 5 o'clock every morning, you're going to stand with your bare feet on the ground and you're going to do this. And you're going to do it for months and months and months and nothing's going to happen. And at that stage my energy was so, all the hard energy, everything was so stuck, so ossified I was so depressed and anxious that I did this exercise. I said, do it. You're going to do it for months.

Nothing's going to happen, but just keep doing it. Don't stop. And I did. And eventually, like if you imagine if you kink a hose, right, and you've got a pressure coming through it, then if you kink it, that pressure is going to build up behind that kink and eventually it's going to force its way through. These Qigong practices are kind of like that of starting to clean out, unblock that energy system so that the energy can flow freely through the organs again and we can start to feel that sense of wholeness. Now for me that wasn't the final solution, that was just like the beginning.

It fills the dream. Yes, it could clear the dream. I actually had a more stable base to investigate because from where I was before that, I wouldn't have even been able to investigate, wouldn't be ready for this message because I was too trapped in this little porno theatre of my own mind of poor me and how hard I'm being done by in life and nobody understands me and the drug abuse and all that sort of stuff. So yes, back to your question, that actually has an effect on our suffering if the qi in the blood is not moving. And ultimately we are an expression of that.

We are individuals because we all have a different genetic makeup and our own conditioning. I see that we're all like a musical instrument and this is how I describe it to my patients. So we're not the doer. Life moves through us. It's animating these bodies. But if the energy system of the body is all gummed up, that life force isn't able to move as freely through us. So therefore our actions aren't going to be as efficacious. We're not going to be as free moving in life. So what I, my job as an acupuncturist when I'm working with people is to look to find out where that energy is not moving.

Maybe it's got to do with the concepts and that too, because it's not just a physical thing. It's an energetic thing that once the flute is all old and tuned and all the keys are moving smoothly, then it can play a beautiful song. If it's rusted and the keys are stuck, that life force can do whatever it is, but it's not going to be able to play that beautiful tune through it. So yes, on the physical level, there is that that we can do through our lifestyle things, through our diet through meditation practices like qigong other practice which is helpful They not going to give us the final solution I Am That Ramana Maharshi I Nchagiri Dzogchen Veda Vedanta presence Mahavakya I am going back to the core of nonduality because that's true, life will move you.

And like Bob often says, it moved him from the alcoholism to transcendental meditation or even before that through muktananda and everything. But it doesn't mean that everybody has to go and become alcoholic and then become meditator and then do the practices. The core or the instinct is there is only life and the life will move or inspire. Some vehicle will become and will stay and will remain a rusty flute because from the perspective of life, it isn't wrong to have completely, completely scrambled horrible experience. For life, nothing is good or bad, it is all neutral. But again, you are drawn in here to this message.

You are receptive. You might get inspired just what was Jamie saying, and you can give credit to life. It's the life that responds to invitation. It's the life itself that responds to the inspiration. It's always on life. Don't get me wrong, anything I said to me wasn't my, wasn't the most incredible thing about what I shared then is that it was a happening. It wasn't me deciding that okay I'm going to do this, I'm doing this practice. Life led me to that. Like even the fact that I'm an acupuncturist now still stuns my head as a musician. I go back to it, I go how did life has brought me to there?

I happened to walk into a shop at the time when there was this fellow here who shared this message about Qigong and something rung a bell and caused me to practice and then life, that's how life led me. So, Kat's exactly right. There's nothing right or wrong. There's a need that's okay, that's what you need to do. It's a sharing of what happened here on my path, that all our paths are different. But if there is a preparation to hear this message, then it's not you that's going to do the preparation. Maybe my drug addiction for 15 years or something was my sadhana. I don't know.

Like who knows what that preparation is and life will take you, just as life eventually brought me here to Bob, A Mata-Satya, Nisargad tsa-Namah, Veda-Satya, Prathit-Satya, Prathit-Satya, Veda-Satya. The three things that I've mentioned, which is the truth, truth, and the truth, are the same. If you put energy into belief, into the belief that there is someone there who suffers, that is an invitation to do the investigation. Take a look, see if you can find that someone who suffers. Take a look. Can you find the reference point? Can you find a boundary? Or is it just what's happening? That's the illusion of the I of the individual entity which is a habit.

So it's an invitation, seeming psychological suffering, I'm not talking about physical pain, seeming psychological suffering, it's an invitation to take a look. And also you may acknowledge life in all thy ways again. You know that it took Bob through the alcoholism meditation, Thank you for watching. Learn that life skills, you know, because yes, the dream, the dream is completely affected by all the elements of the dream. If the body is healthy, yes, the dream will be different. If there is a healthy, clean diet, yes, the dream will be different. If there is a warm, loving family, yes, the dream will be different. If there are skills, for example, you can fly the jet plane or you can learn to recite very long poem.

All of those skills, the brain skills, the dietary, the cleanness, they will alter the dream. But as Jaini said, ultimately, it's not the point to have a pleasurable dream, although it's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong if life moves you to gain life skills or to get clean or to get healthy or to eat or... It is nothing wrong in anything, but it's equally nothing wrong in Nisargadatta smoking cigarettes up until the last day and giving himself a throat cancer and dying of it. It's nothing wrong with that either, because life is behind every experience, pleasant and unpleasant, healthy and unhealthy. So just stay open to what life is moving you and the body is already calibrated to do its best to survive and to thrive So if there is a threat it will if it equipped this way it will anticipate the outcome it will respond to the threat And if there is a pleasure on the horizon, it will be attracted towards it, it will be repelled from the pain.

It's a really, really very basic way of functioning and it is on life. And if there is inspiration towards eating in particular way or exercising in a particular way or finding a healer or practice, put it on life. Because the moment, you know what happens when I related to a me and I've been there. I am a vegan, I'm better than you. I practice Qigong. I've been in China practicing Qigong. Oh, you only did it here? I'm better than you. But what these so-called bad habits all stem from the sense of separation, mostly anyway. Like, you know, spending years doing substances, I was just trying to get out of myself.

I couldn't stand just being me, this me. I was a kind of escape from that me. What I discovered ultimately in waking up is that those things just fall away of their own because there's just no need for that anymore. There's nothing. Or don't, like Nisargadatta. Yeah, but with some, not all of them, and in my case, not all of them have, but most of them, and the severity of them, because there's more and more as the integration of this understanding happens, is that the solution tends to be to whatever we're feeling that there's a tendency to want to escape from, that the solution is to escape from.

So, what is the most important thing that we need to understand when we try to design a model? What we need to understand, what we need to understand the most, is the idea that we need to create a model, I think it is not the only idea that we need to create, we need There's really no problem there at all. Not the brain or the nervous system that arises in space. All arises in space. Because we are over time right now, I'm just going to include one last comment from Anthony who said, I've stopped smoking weed again for a month now. I don't think I can touch it or it pulls me in.

Fingers crossed it doesn't. But if it does, blame it on life because everything is on life. Really, there is no one there doing anything. There is no one there who quits, who stops. There is no one who is free. There is no one who attained enlightenment. There really is just what's happening. There's no personal self. There's no personal self, but there's an intelligence that is shining through all of us that witnesses unhelpful things and in the witnessing it can't change it, it can't do anything but just in the understanding of what like like I can, Nisargadatta smoked till the day he died but I can guarantee he wasn't smoking trying to get away from himself.

You know, it was just a pattern that was there, it was neither good nor bad and that's the difference. Yes, the difference is exactly that, the justifying narrative. Because the body does what it does and the narrative takes credit for it. Oh, this is I, I'm trying to do something, I am real, I exist. I have a couple of more comments from the community and then we wrap it up and we go. So Tania says, thank you Kat, Jamie, Tania and all. It seems what is reality is what is here without thought. Beautiful, Tania. And thought is not reality, it is appearing, but what's thought about is not true.

What is thought about is not true and is not what I am. That's brilliant, that's absolutely it. And Anthony says, improvising on a guitar was my induction. Who is playing? Where is it arising? That's the right approach. And Martin says, hey, I'm Marty, I'm a thought addict. I believe my thoughts are real. Santa comes every year and I am the story the mind comes up with in my head. I came into existence three weeks after I was born when my parents finally found a name for me after reading through a magazine. Hopefully I never knock my head and forget this story, otherwise I will exist as no thing without any catchy stories.

I love it. That's beautiful, Marty. You should be a book writer. That would be a wonderful short story. And Anthony says tobacco is less impactful on the mind, I feel. Life feels it again. Life is judging, life is doing everything. And life just concluding that beautiful discussion. And thank you for being with us.