This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
One and a half. Peter? Peter? Hello? Jordan? Justin? Wilma? And I will just start with a couple of words because this one, because it's two months since Bob is not in form. It's exactly two months today and he's not in a form, can't hug him. A lot of people, a lot more people actually, came forward and told me what a huge change was for them, his passing and having no body to rely on with the reminders and just finding the truth within themselves. So that's a good news. And another thing that I wanted to quickly share.They're on it. They're on it. Okay. We'll be back on.
So this is one other thing that I wanted to share today just to start, because then we will have a wonderful privilege to listen to Lindsay today. I invited her. But first, one thing that was, and well, Bob and I had a million things to share in common and to enjoy in common, but one thing that stood out was to see someone coming home, see someone when the pointers are landing and the message is reflected back with clarity and joy that shines forth. And one beautiful young man from the UK that I had individual meetings for the last, I don't know, maybe less than a couple of months, I think, Ismail Ahmed, he has reflected back that message in a short poem that I just found so beautiful that I can't stop.
I requested him if I can share it. So I'm going to read it quickly. What has a beginning has an end. What has an enemy has a friend. But what is beginning? What is end? What is an enemy?What is a friend? Do I go left where nothing is right? Or do I go right where nothing is left? But nothing is everything. What is left is also right. All meaning is glorious, yet it is all gloriously meaningless. It's just that beautiful reflection of collapse of the duality that I asked him to read a couple of times because it's so beautiful. So that's that for the introduction.
Lindsay, would you like to come here?So hold it up like that. You have to hold it up like that? Okay. Can I? Oh, okay. Well, first of all, I just want to really honour Bob. Because it's because of him that I'm here today. It feels strange to come here today and feel his presence but not have him in form.This is the first time I'm coming since... Bob's buddy passed away. And I don't have a spiel. I literally do not have a spiel. I have no clue what words are going to come. I can say that I can only speak from my own experience of what this unfolding of recognition of truth is and has been and continues to be.
As I am breathed, as my heart's being beat,And... As I find myself here again and again, continually kind of in this awakening again and again and again and again to what the actuality ofof this this is, what the actuality, what the living, what it means to to actually be, to be with the understanding and the knowledge that who and what I am cannot be named and it cannot be pointed to and it cannot beWe can't really, like we can only ever point to it. And I think that's really interesting from the perspective of the human experience because the human body is part of that. There's the brain and there's the body.
And it's non-dual. Therefore, there is nothing that we can say that doesn't actually belong to the truth of what we are. It includes everything.And what's been coming lately for me is the words that Bob would say, unaltered, unmodified, and uncorrected. And, you know, in moments in my life where I notice there's some kind of conditioning that's at the forefront, that's got its grips, it's got a grip into assuming itself to be something. And there's a sense of separation, even that is unaltered, unmodified and uncorrected. And then it becomes really the inquiry of, ah, how to... It really is a lived inquiry. It's how to be.
Even with this, even with this, what we might call unacceptable, unacceptable violence that we, that I myself might even notice arising in the conditioned overlay of who I believe myself to be. And I don't know, it's like... I've been running this group that I've calledcircle of presence and I find it really interesting to kind of come together with other humans and to really just, with the intention of actually really dropping into the not, actually not knowing at all anything about this moment. And to be with each other and to be able to kind of, bring attention to the movements and the thoughts and the tendencies and the ways that we might want to shut down or move away or collapse.
OrUm, And it's like, it's really hard to speak about this sometimes. It's like to have that intention of, wow, everything is included. There is. There is nothing. That we can actually say about ourselves. From the finite perspective, That is true.And yet we also can't negate those things that come up, which are human tendency and conditioning that has been programmed and wired into the body and the brain. We also can't negate that. And what I know from my own lived experience is thatis that this kind of perception of like suffering that I experience, human suffering, and the pain and the, um, The pain and the wanting to get rid of that.part of the healing, for want of a better word, or part of the resolution and the peace that underlies that is the capacity to and to actually experience the raw actuality of what is presently here.
There can be no moving away. It's inevitable that...if I was raped, if I was abused, if I was neglected, if I nearly died at childbirth, that all of those things are wired and conditioned into the human experience and that part of this understanding of I am not the body and I am not the mind, isn't so that we can negate our human experience. It's so that we can actually experience the full extentof what hasn't of what hasn't been felt prior. Because sometimes when there's shock and there's trauma, which I'd say 99% of humans are walking around, human, human being, the creature, are walking around. managing, so the conditioning is wired according to how we get on top of, keep things unconscious in the shadow so that We don't have to actually feel.
And I can just speak to my own experience with that. So when I came to non-duality when I was 19, I didn't know that part of what I was running from was the fact that I didn't know how to meet. The human experience because there was so much pain and so much trauma that was undigested and unacknowledged in my life and it took me so what happened initially was that the understanding although it was a very direct and lived experience and whenever i sat with bob it would remind me again and again through thepointers of the truth of who I was. It also, out in the world, it became a kind of panacea.
It became a kind of way that I jumped out of my human experience into a cloud of knowing that gave me a sense of security, but I was still in separation. And it was only through the kind of support that would come to me from invisible and visible realms around trauma therapy that I actually needed to do. In order to be able to find the capacity within myself to meet the...to meet and not move away from and be able to still be present to the tidal waves that have a beginning, a middle and an end. The massive tidal wave of emotional overwhelm and being able to go, oh, okay, even that, even that is not who I am, but I can only say that when I've met it, when I've actually let it really have me, completely have me.
And still in that, in the deep inquiry of that, be able to locate through the direct experience the truth that I am that which is beyond all finite, beyond all movement, beyond all thought, beyond all beginning, middle, end of any object in the field. But not from the perspective of I am that and this is not me. I am also that wave. So it is such a paradox that the mind can never actually grass. It has to be made one's own lived andAnd I mean, I sit in humiliation, you know, of recognizing, whoa, like right now, like the ideas that I once had of what it should mean to realize this.
It became a defense against the truth of what is arising moment to moment to moment to moment as the human Lindsay and all the conditioning and the wiring that has been conditioned in and wired in here. The ideas I had around what I should look like, how I should be, were utterly ridiculous because those ideas were basically jumping from A to Z. For example, you know, being equanimous, being unperturbed, being out in the world as an object,trying to somehow embody the qualities that Bob was pointing to, which is absolutely ridiculous because the expression of who we are is always going to be finite. It can't not.
The expression of who I am is so limited within the capacity, the laws of nature. Like, right? So how can that be what has created it? It can't. And so there's a great humility that comes. When one realizes that this understanding is a lived experience, it's a lived and living experience that essentially brings one, brings the one to its knees because it knows that it does not exist. Separate to that which is unnameable. And yeah.So... So, yeah, I... I think that's really all I have to say. And I just, I remember one other thing that Bob used to say that has always stuck with me.
99.9% of everything you say and everything you do is for yourself and there isn't one. And so it's these pointers that... Were pointed out once upon a time in the past here that one needs, I needed to discover for myself what they actually mean. So I'm not just parroting the pointers or copying a spiel. Rather, I can embody that pointer now because I see the truth of it. But it's taken a lot of deep self-inquiry. It's almost like there's a flash of awakening, which is what happened. For me, when I sat with Bob for the very first time,this time it I was so desperate I was like fuck I don't I don't know how to live in this world and I don't even know what I'm looking for I mean I didn't I mean I was taken to Bob out of sheer desperation and the moment he spoke, what he had to say, there was absolutely no question.
That what he was saying was the truth. And I felt for the first time and probably my, at least definitely in my teenage years, that I was home.But that was just the very beginning. It was like a taste. And then decades later, you know, when I look back on the journey, which is still unfolding, which is still there's a deepening and a maturing of this understanding. And the suffering has brought me to the inquiry again and again. Even now in my life, you know, there are places where I, that things I haven't met within myself that are painful and difficult and... But it's okay. It's not, it's like it should be that way.
It's not meant to be that way. It should be that way. And I feel like it's grist for the mill for actually what we're here for, which is to realize our true nature so that we can genuinely and authentically be that that we are, which is love. And care and all the qualities that do belong to the intelligence of life, you know, and that we can, I mean, what is the purpose? Like, you know, I've asked myself, like, what is the purpose of non-duality? Is it just so we can I don't know, feel powerful and like,we can go around being an authority. I don't think it's got anything to do with that.
It's about recognising our true nature so that greed and hate and all the things that create suffering can be seen and felt in our own selves. Like that, that to me, it's like I have to be able to acknowledge pain I've caused others. Like that's, that's really, that's been very important to me that, you know, lately I've been thinking a lot about integrity and inquiring a lot about what integrity is and, you know,And integrity is wholeness, you know, and how does one live and act integrous to the whole, to the intelligence of all life? Well, from my experience, I can only do that through radical self- honesty for all the ways I haven't been integrous in my life and what's contributed to that.
So I don't really, and people might disagree with me, which is totally fine, but from my experience, this is not a get out of jail free card at all. It's actually the opposite. It's actually when we wake up to our true nature, then nothing can be negated. Nothing at all can be negated anymore. And it really is, at least from what I experience, there's a greater demand for accountability. There's a greater demand to be responsive and responsible for one's actions because consciousness is consciousness. It's aware. And so the mental gymnastics that can go on to filter bad behavior out. And of course, we could go and say, well, who's the one that's it's of course, you can do all of that.
And that's, for me, from my understanding, it's a very big game.inquiry into unraveling what I am and what I am not. But then that keeps going. It doesn't stop. Okay, I'm done. I'm finished speaking, I think. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that was powerful and beautiful. Gorgeous. And we have a few people here. Tibor and Deborah and Tanya says, good morning. Tanya says, the poem was perfection, so beautifully clear, reflecting the clarity here. Yeah, and love and best wishes from South Africa and good morning from Tracy and Zoran and Vivek and beautiful Lindsay says Anika. Thank you for sharing that. Love the Sangha. And Julia says beautiful non-spill spill.
And yes, I would just love to acknowledge that part because you always bring such a nice, juicy, emotionally deep and rich substance in all the sharings ever that I ever heard you bring in. That fearlessness of actually facing everything, including the stuff that... Some survival strategy would deny habitually. Oh no, I never hurt anyone. I'm all right. They are wrong. No, hello, there is this body-mind causes harm without eveneven knowing it like Bob often says you touch your face and you crippled and murdered lots of creatures lots of life showing up as the bacteria so maggots or whatever and I found that along the my own life that people got offended because I didn't make an eye contact I'm short-sighted and they were wounded and they were really hurt that I somehow ignore them or not acknowledge them and they are also situations when this and again the the social conditioning and the upbringing and the childhood trauma contribute to this body behave in particular way sometimes lashing out with fury sometimes wallowing in a deep dark sadness or shame or whatever the pattern is because they are also patterns these things were often kind of brushed away and distracted from now there is absolute fearlessness and welcoming to whatever life brings to the to the picture whatever it is there isn't anything to run away from resist or get distracted Because in a way, I am that life appearing as that erupting volcano of passion.
I am that life which is crying itself to sleep or whatever it is. And at the same time, I'm also the knowing of it, the basic screen, which is absolutely...free and untouched by anything that appears on the screen. And that one brings the discipline and it brings the curiosity and the fearlessness to meet whatever shows up. I remember sharing on some of the meetings, amazement that I would experience after nearly 10 years and nine years of living with Bob consistently getting getting the fearless furiously dysregulated by some line of events which would which would cause the emotional outburst of this body that I haven't seen in years and I didn't even think it has it in it It's just real fury that it even has it in it.
Just... You couldn't help it. Yeah, it's a prankster. Okay, so it is the clock. Yeah, and people were complaining about it because it kills the train of thought. So I'm not speaking anymore. You say something. I have nothing to say. I'm very quiet this morning. Trying to figure that some, your love's put me at the top of the world. What's the...Yeah. Ah, gee. The starting point is You are that. You are that. Yet. When seeming eye looks for its little self,Can't be found. So who is it that suffers? Who is it that carries the baggage of a life history? Where is that someone? Feels like it's a sense, there's an experiencing, there's a discovering of stuff happening in the moment, in the moment spontaneously arising.And it's happening.
And you cannot deny that you exist. But where is the individual? Where is the... someone, the entity that suffers. And no one can discover that or look for you.to be. Experienced And you, the seeming you, are not the causal agent. The little you is not making things happen. They're just happening. There's no control, the individual, seeming individual level over what's happening. It's just the experiencing. It's just the experiencing. Yet thoughts and words and concepts come. To narrate the experience.seemingly giving it some meaning. It's obituary. They're symbols. It's not the real. It's not what's actually happening, the narration. Comes in over the top of the excretes.When the seeming suffering comes, And certainly the psychological suffering.
There's no requirement to push it away or bring it in. It just is. It just is experienced. And that's why Bob would always say, leave it unaltered, unchanged, unmodified.And even that. No one individual can do. There is no individual doer. That is the... Whole trick to the whole manifestation is the energy of belief in a little me, the little I, that things are happening too.Things happen too over time. It's just arising in the moment spontaneously. And acceptance. But that's just what is. And there's No denying. That you exist.But there's also no way, there's no real understanding of what that is. It just is. Put words on it and labels and try to explain it.
They're just, again, all symbols. It just is what is. Everything. Non-dual. Everything. Where can you go from there? Where do you go? There's nothing to do. There's no one to change. There's nothing to be done.next oh yeah that was that was gorgeous that's beautiful and that's how lindsey also started that you know as i'm sitting here being bred and the heart is being beat yes the same way if there is some big trauma in the body, life may actually take you to the place where you find yourself addressing it and you're not doing it either. No one does anything at all. And just getting, seeing that the taking credit narrative, which comes, oh, I'm addressing, I'm denying, I'm bypassing, and I'm, you know, all of that is just a piece of software narrating what is believed in, in a moment, which is also no one doing and no one speaking.
It's complete automatic narration to recognize that there is no one who can ever do anything right or wrong, who can never neglect or not do something or others, not others, is sheer impossibility. There is no one there, never is. There may appear to be someone because that's the trick. That's the cosmic joke. That's the way in which life can experience a reflection of itself as a form so it knows itself as a formlessness. That's the only thing in a joke. And I have a couple of things.here Peter says really relates to judging others and measuring responses when really we have no idea on their past conditioning and it is just that separate self that does that the presence that we really doesn't care yes that's just a narrative it isn't even a real separate self because it feels like there is one but there really isn't it couldn't be separate self is absolutely impossible even though you know for those who believe in angels they are an experience and for those who believes in devils and and have paranoia that's an experience so the separate self when believed it feels real but when you look and see if you can find it and see that you can't well just let you take it from there and tanya says there is no individual i or me nowhere for the story of a me and the suffering to stick to nowhere for any story to land nothing wrong or right no problems ever nothing lacking or missing absolutely and this is really also again not to deny that there is a human experience that there is a pain and pleasure playing out in the dream there is a beauty and ugliness there is a sadness and joyThey're all appearing and they all experienced and they are.
non-resisted they they aren't resisted because if there is no self to resist it they experienced absolutely fully completely like the weather they are though experienced with remembering that this is the content the dream content that is constantly changing And the reality is that which doesn't. Reality never changes. Reality is that which is the pure knowing of the ever-changing, constantly changing dream of pains and pleasures and joys and sadnesses. And this is again what we always invite to come back. Direct experience. Direct experiencing. Because the experience is that which constantly changes. But the experiencing is the capacity for the experience. The capacity never changes. Capacity is there before the birth.
When that seeming expression of awareness as a consciousness in a form is there, the capacity for experiencing is there. And experiencing may be seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, or maybe just part of it. Maybe just hearing for someone who is blind. Maybe just touching. It is as a capacity, unchanging.The content varies and the content is rich and juicy and it is there to be acknowledged and appreciated because again, without it, there is no formlessness. Without that reflection, that seeming separation, there is nothing. There is no existence. There is no content of experience. There is nothing. And it is unimaginable and there is no need to even imagine it because this, the living dream, the living dream is all there is.
This is the content of the present moment. And it's beautiful. It's there to be appreciated. It's there to be loved. It's there to be hated. It's there to be whatever it is that is the response to a dream. It's also content of the dream. You know, it's very, very natural to experience resistance to suffering. It would be fairly sickly if it wasn't resisted, if it arises, if it has sense of woundedness or pain arises in consciousness. And there is no sense of, oh my God, ouch, the clenching, just like, you know, the animal breaks a leg when it falls in a trap. Straight away the whole body tenses or when there is a wave of chill it is normal to experience that initial reaction but as the inquiry fallsthat initial resistance is completely seen through included and acknowledged and as it is acknowledged the energy of belief withdraws from it and it stays in the field of knowing and the resistance settles down and that which is being resisted whatever the feeling is is really lived fully is really embraced and tanya also says thank you for highlighting the humanness also as well as the absolute seeing yes it's indistinguishable inseparable and there is no need to deny any of it It's like they say, it's the absolute having a human adventure.
It's the vacation from the eternity of nothingness. A little break in which the dream is being dreamt. That there is something going on. There is a time going on. Something that fluctuates in time. What a magnificent illusion. And it wouldn't be magnificent if not for the moments of pain and darkness and sadness. Because without that, the pain and the pleasure and joy and beauty wouldn't have been experienced. Because the experience in duality has to be polarized, has to be day, night, pleasure, pain, winter, summer. And having that bigger picture in heart that the screen is never touched.go through the dark winter and the dark night of the soul there is an appreciation even for that there is appreciation for the for that acknowledgement of the part in that bowl of pain and suffering and resistance that which is a pure knowing of it which is untouched uncontaminated and which doesn't suffer which appreciate the suffering but doesn't really is holding space for it is allowing it to be did you want to I've just got this analogy coming up, like when a newborn baby arrives and let's say, I don't know, it's neglected, then it's going to cry more.
It's going to express the pain of that separation, but it's unconscious. It's not aware that it's aware, right? And it's like the development of intelligence, I suppose, through the human being is the awakening of consciousness. To the fact that it's having a human experience. So consciousness itself is waking up to the factthat it's having a human experience and the recognition that it is also not the human, it is consciousness. So it's just, I don't know, I was just kind of thinking about, you know, that trajectory of a newborn baby arriving and it is the pure intelligence energy. But there's not a capacity at that time for consciousness to look back on itself and be aware of the truth of who it is.
It's just fully immersed in the happening as one experience. Of whatever it is it's experiencing. Yeah. So. Yeah. That's a beautiful aspect. Same with the animals. They only really only forgetting, forgetting and imagining, imagining, dreaming about being separate. Gives that full capacity for realizing that, oh, that was just a bad dream. I am not. But without the reasoning which creates that conceptual image and which imagines itself in the dream as a character, That's impossible. Animals take it for granted. Babies, they don't have...have reflection, oh, it shouldn't be happening to me. Yeah, because it's like we couldn't actually be here unless the intelligence became unconscious of itself and that becomes the fire, I suppose, that sets us on the path of inquiry in the first place.
Like it is the separation itself or the belief in separation. That initiates us on the path to look within and to question our reality, I suppose. Yeah, that's fascinating. It is. It's so elegant. What a dream. You know, the reasoning capacity which is necessary for forgetting who you are and equally necessary for realizing. Yes. That it's like, what a brilliance. You could say, well, yes, that's really a godliness or absoluteness because, you know, that level of brilliance, that level of, it gives the dream away. Like, shit, it must be a dream. It couldn't be that magnificent.I don't have anything. I don't think anything's coming up.
Yeah. Was it over here, Hyman? Anyone? Anyone? Please. The thought that came to my mind is that my presence in this room is entirely dependent on your forgiveness.Thank you. Thank you. I have a comment here from Tracy. When there is no one actually doing anything and nothing actually being done, then how does one maintain the motivation to do anything? I only ask you to my history with depression and being isolated and disabled. It's really easy for me to slip into apathy. Yes, absolutely. See, and that's difficult and really hard conditioning and predicament to be in. If you look at the natural world, if you look at the wild creatures who do not have the capacity to narrate experience and motivate themselves with concepts, which also only come when they are inspired somehow through the book or some other person.
So even with the motivating, the thought has to come from outside. If you go to the shelter and you see abused or neglected animals, their cats or dogs, you will see that unfortunately the depression and apathy are part of life too.And from the perspective of individual, it feels really, really unfair that, oh, I have this deficiencies in my body, neurotransmitters or trauma, and I can't perform as well as other people who do not have that condition. And yes, from individual perspective, there's absolutely nothing fair in life. But when you look from life's perspective, The unique experience of pain, suffering and depression that you're going through is the only way life can experience fully that life story.
For life, for the intelligence itself, it needs you with all that goes with it. To go to the depth of that. And if you relax your own individual story as much as you can, you will see how the life will move you. Life may move you, perhaps, to find someone like Lindsay and do the presence, circles of presence. And you can probably Google it, or I can put the website down. on the YouTube. And find a situation, you know, life moves you. Life moves you to eat when you are hungry, to drink water when you are thirsty. Life will move you to find the motivation and life will also move you to not find the motivation when there is experiencing, when the life is to experience the depression and lying low.
Just like Bob's example of the river. Sometimes the river flows merrily, happily, and does a lot, and sometimes it goes stagnant, and it almost stops, and not much is going on. And the narrative straight away comes with complaints, because that's what it narrates. But there are ways in which life moves you. You may switch on the radio and you may hear about someone speaking about the B deficiencies. And you might check your blood and see if there is any chemical imbalance in the system, which may just do the job or get the serotonin production, eat some kimchi or something. That might be ways in which life will cut it.
Because since it came up in, you know, right now, to be seen, to be experienced, and perhaps to be even... Remedied maybe that's the way life is moving you and Tracy also says I actuallyspent the majority of my time with wildlife and my rescue dog and cat and sheep. They teach me so much. How beautiful. Yes. See, life is already grounding you through that and it will continue doing so. And I see Lindsay has the... It's okay. I was going to say something that... You kind of just said it anyway. Anyone? Yes, please.Yeah, I felt that when Lindsay was speaking, it brought home some significant truths about the character and the things that get in the way for understanding to take place.
And just reflecting on that, I'm one of those characters that likes a quiet life. And I like my ideal of contentment is just to settle down with a good book, preferably on non-duality or Zogchen, something in the same line.And I realized that this desire for a quiet, undisturbed life, has its limitations because life keeps throwing up these barriers that Lindsay talked about. When these deep, deep emotions arise. And the question, why is this happening to me? And it's, yeah, it's easy not to confront the raw actuality of it if you've got a nice... Sort of place where you can go and you can, You can look up what Bob said and you can do this practice or that practice to make you Well, settle the mind.
So there's lots of very clever tricks you can use to have this quiet life and avoid confronting that unpleasant, difficult suffering that arises.was saying that authentically and truthfully, not just reacting with aversion. Greed, anger and delusion. Usual way. I thought it was very powerful and beautiful. Reminder in what Lindsay said. So thank you. Thank you, Ross, and thank you for highlighting it too. Brendan, would you like to add something, please?I'm actually not sure what to say. The mic? I'm a bit wordless. It's probably a good thing. Um,I actually don't have anything to say. Wow. Can I read a couple of your last insights that you sent me?
They are so, so brilliant. Yeah, I'm finding it hard to articulate. I hear you. And I'm just going to... Because... Brendan is one of the people for who things really started landing when Bob was not in the form anymore. And oh my gosh, that was just such a joy. A lot landed when Bob was still there so he could enjoy. But the things that landed after, I, you know, came in my heart. He enjoyed it through me. And that was quite a few of those.I'll just start from the back. So that was the realization here. Hey Kat, there is no doer, no person, only life.
Creator and creation is an illusion created by the mind. Religion separates us by the world. Is this right? Absolutely, absolutely. And so if I find it hard to word what I'm pointing, oh, okay, that was the experience. Naming the experience so that was one here before from the last month hey whatever is happening now is just taken as it is difficulties or not the body may be struggling but there is acceptance abiding as awareness it feels like there is nothing left to do not bound by content love and awareness are the same as there is no me no doer love naturally blossoms from there no one to fix to beautiful it's just it's just so it's it's such joy to see insights like that pulling out and being shared is like there is no greater blessing than seeing that reflection so would anyone like to share some nice good juicy yummyYeah, just what you read of, is it Brendan?
Yeah. Yeah, your insights and... Oh, now I think it's gone. Let me see if it comes back. Oh, yeah. It made me think of compassion and what compassion is. And then this kind of scenario came into my mind of like when I...I'm able to meet the really difficult places within myself, like really meet the anger or meet the disgust or meet the grungy emotions that don't fit the image. Then when I'm in life and I'm meeting other humans that are having or experiencing those emotions as well, then I can know, I can understand. It's like their compassion can arise because I've been able to. Meet those experiences within myself.
And I just think of my work as a midwife, and I go really deep with humans, basically, preparing for birth and holding space for women and people when they're bringing a baby earthside. It's like that human experience of opening to all that hasn't been met and how this understanding, and I'm just thinking of Bob in his last days too, and the raw experience of breakdown of body shutting downof organs, like the raw intense pain that would be felt, and being able to not move away from that. It's like there's some kind of, like the intelligence itself becomes this kind of harmonizing harmonizing balm, healing balm or something that underlies thislike the gnarliness of what it is to experience a human form and all that that entails.
Yeah, so I was just thinking of compassion and like what compassion is. And it's almost like the inseparableness of experiencing.Like, yeah, boy, sometimes it's hard to put things into words. Like you get these kind of like flashes of insight and it's like, oh, I want to flesh that out. I want to bring that out. And I feel like I'm going a little bit round in circles, but. Yeah, that's it. Maybe if you take the word compassion, and compassion, I don't know if it's like con, but with, you know. So with and passion is like activity. So the experience is like the activity. And with, like, maybe it's experience in two places, you know, it's a similar experience.
And more with the experience as being somehow experienced by no experience there. But yeah, with passion, with activity, with the activity. I don't know.I heard someone say that the root of compassion was from some language like Latin or Greek, but it meant to suffer along with. Yes. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah. What Lindsay was just saying just reminded me of something Bobbi said. Love all of it. Or none of it. Love all of it.as it is now, right now. I don't know who I'm, who's speaking and who's being spoken to. There's no doers in this room, right? It's a paradox. It's such a joke, right?
But love, love all of it. Right now, as it is.without trying to reach back into a past that doesn't exist or projecting loving becoming to a future just right now right now What is your experience? Looking through these eyes, hearing from these ears, this nose, and knowing that there's nothing behind that. It's blank. But it's not that there's nothing. There's a knowing that there's something. It's just without words. What is it? It's just happening.It's beautiful. It actually reminds me of a situation. One woman, she was a mother of my friend who passed away recently. But she had this... Well, of course, this is a body-mind machine.
So she had this strategy developed, that response. The body was conditioned to always dwell in other people's misfortune. It was mechanical. She wasn't a doer of it. It was a habit. It was persistent habit. She would switch on the TV and she would have it one on the channel of the news. Every single flood, fire, tragedy, airplane crash, train crash. She would... Cry all day long she would imagine people being victims of that train crash or the airplane crash imagining all it must have been separated marriages a woman who would be loving her husband and waiting for him and perhaps a child that would be orphaned now and would have no she would really really give it all of it she would just She would love being in that state of perpetual compassion in this horrific dream of what is not happening right now.horrific dream of what other people might experience if they think about it but maybe they don't and that was so incredible for me because that's also life doing it there's also no one who is holding on to anything who is has created that behavior or that pattern.
It's just a phenomenon arising in consciousness, that lady. It was incredible because I can see that tendency, you know, to really immerse yourself in that very, very deep, fearless immersion in something so overwhelmingly painful. Because then if you get to the bottom of that, there's nothing that can ever break you. You've been in hell, so what else can happen? But it also is an unconscious strategy or pattern. It is not something super noble that me as a great angel of Bodhisattva is doing because there is no me doing anything whatsoever. And what Bob would say, you know, nobody loves to suffer. She did not love to suffer.
She believed she needed to suffer because life was calling for it, because the reality in which she was growing was full of fires and floods and victims. And if there was nothing reported on the news, well, she...She could always recall the Holocaust. She was growing in Poland. She's been in Auschwitz many times. So there was always something that could easily be brought back. But there wasn't her bringing it back. The memory of the tragedy would arise because the body was conditioned this way. It was habituated. It was a comfort zone. It was something familiar. Almost in the same way that the woman who had the alcoholic father would marry the alcoholic because the familiarity thing there and she would divorce him after she got beaten up and raped and she would marry another one just the same and another one it's a horrible horrible evil circle from the human perspective but from life's perspective again this is the opportunity to see that there is no doer there is just a conditioned patterns playing out and a consciousness experiencing itself through those conditioned patterns with the depth of every single experience with the juiciness and richness of every single experience being neither good nor bad being just what is Because that lady, she did not have an idea that she should be experiencing something else.
Quite the opposite. If there was any idea narrating, and it probably was, then, oh, it's wrong to eat the chocolate cake. It's wrong when so many people suffer. She would deny her.any joy or any pleasures of seeing her grandchildren growing up because of that programming because of that conditioning but there was no the worship even in that so realizing because now the the idea is oh my god yes i realized that but she didn't so i don't suffer but she does yes subjectively there is a suffering on the personal human dream there is a suffering the human character is bound to get sick old and die And it may happen with pain.
Actually, in Bob's case, the pain never rose for the last three months over the level two and a half or three. So there was no pain associated with dying or shutting the organs. But this was just because of the modern medicine and the wonderful care that we had to support that. So physical pain wasn't there. Mental health obviously wasn't there either. Up until the last day, there was beautiful serenity and completely leaving the moment as it was showing up with no resistance. But they are people who do experience, you know, like Tracy was saying, you know, the darkness of the depression. And that one is also, they are multitude, 10,000 or more, infinite amount of factors that play out and create that outcome.
And in some cases, the...Life does not bring the solution, does not bring the idea of how to shift out of it. And that state is persistent and it is daunting and it is difficult. Still recognizing that it can only happen because there is awareness, because there is existence. Everything that happens, pain, depression, rape, tragedy, fires, flood, can only happen because there is an existence. And that existence is the prerequisite and is priority, is the baseline. And recognizing that existence and letting some of the attention preferably the more the better some of that cognizing capacity rest in that recognition of existence the remaining attention is left for the experiencing.
And the experiencing, again, there is the duality of the experience, pain, content, pleasure, pain, sadness and joy, and there is the unchanging reality of existence, that which never changes, that can even appreciate the pain, that can even love the pain. I had a lot of sessions of outbursts of tears when Bob passed away and even before. Every one of that contained the element of almost bliss.that I loved that the body was doing that, that was doing those outbursts. And it's still like yesterday, I don't know, three, four, five times, I would just dive into the little videos, 10 seconds long, where Bob is looking at me and waving and giving me a smile.
And I would sit with a big banana smile on my face. And there would be everything in it, the pain, the pleasure, the joy, all the feelings, that rich cocktail of intensity and juiciness of this. There's still habitual dwelling. But there isn't following the past or betraying the present moment. No, it arises. As he is showing up on my phone, everywhere, he's everywhere. So it arises naturally and it is celebrated as the part of the celebration of life as it shows up. There is no resistance to that arising. There is no seeking or beating oneself up. Oh, I am a grieving widow for 12 months.
I should be crying. There is no bullshit like that going on. It is a beautiful memory. It is a joyous memory. So even when the past arises in the moment, when majority of attention stays in the acknowledgement of the miraculousness of aliveness being in that moment, that past arising, it hasdifferent it has different flavor it has different fragrance there's a beauty in sadness there is a beauty in in pain and of course there is a lot of pain in sadness and a lot of pain in pain this is not to be denied But it isn't just a misery because of the aliveness that enables that seeming misery to show up.
That luminous radiance of existence that allows the day and night and the winter and summer and the cold and hot. That can't be forgotten anymore. And that doesn't have to be forgotten. And the life gets lighter. And there is a lightness even in the darkness. The light in the darkness. There is joy even in the sadness. Thanks everybody today. Great talk, you can call it a spiel. I'm just looking now and I'm seeing how the light is refracted into its different components. I don't know if you can see your head there, Kate. And I think that's the way it is for all of us. Everyone in the great...
differences represent an element of my mind, an element of my experience. You're all this, just me. Of course, I only identify with you. I identify with everybody in what they express. Aidan, I identify with you in the way that I see you today. Yeah. So on and so on. No difference. And in that, I must love you. That must be what love is, I suppose. I don't know. Opening, as you say. To the great experience of being human is what I've been accepting everybody in rather than rejecting. To be in. And that's where the compassion arises too, isn't it? Because in the moment I can let it be just as it is, just the extra minute, I become not the player, not the participant in it, but I become the eternal witness for a moment.
And even that story disappears too, and all the, as inexorably as the time and the swirl pulling takes place. We move on to the...We're already at the next instant. Everything we're looking at has already occurred. Like if you want to complain about somebody's behaviour, you're already it. You're already it, baby. You're already in it. Isn't that true, Russ? It's like you talk about your experience, which is very, very beautiful. I was moved by that. However, there's no separation in time. There's no saying, oh shit, I had this thing today or yesterday. Nothing like that is occurring. You're already in that, in the moment. You already see it absolutely clearly in the minute that you hold it in your awareness.The so-called, the seeming mind and the thoughts is always eternally playing catch up.
Already happened, just as you said, Pete. It's happening instantaneously the minute it comes out of the mouth. It's already, you know, the happening has already occurred. The mind is, you know, the post-event narrator.Always after. The thoughts come. You're paying attention to the thoughts then you are in effect in the past or in the future. You're not, it's, you know, Can you, and I don't know who I'm asking this of, can you? Just sit and...give no attention to the vibration, to the thoughts. Can you not name, you know, look, see and not try to understand? Not try to work it out, not try to classify, label, conceptualize, name.
Can you just see it as it is without any post-event narration being paid attention to?Sit in the park. See a tree and not label it a tree. See the grass and not label it grass. See a squirrel and not label it a squirrel. It just is. The experiencing of it in the moment because the labeling etc etc well there you go if you know if you're paying attention to it you're not putting your attention in what's happening right now spontaneously this pizza's no blah it's gone it's gone it's gone it's gone That's it. Beautiful. And that's also what Lindsay started from. Can you allow yourself to be in complete not knowing?
Not knowing, having no idea, having no clue. For the mind, that's a state of distress. I have to understand, no, I have to know what's going on. Oh shit, I have to have a full picture. I have to know who is enemy and who is friend. Like in a poem that Ismail put out. But really, the heart knows everything that needs to be known in the moment. And the knowing of the mind is just a translation of the urges that arise in the body. There is no knowing there.It is just a storyteller. Can you find comfort in being without a story? I have no idea who I am.
I have no idea how I got here. I have no idea what is going to happen to me tomorrow. I have no idea whether there is a past. I don't know whether there is anything to heal or whether there is anything to celebrate. No, I just, there is complete blankness in meeting life in that field of silence and seeing what comes, what shows up with no preference. Just that childlike openness. Let me see. Let me see what my next thought is going to be. I don't know. I don't care. Let me see what the next feeling is going to come. What's the next situation? I love that about Bob, his relentless attitude to questions.
Oh, are you ready to go? Are you ready to die, Bob? Oh, you know, there were people coming and giving him. That was outrageously ridiculous. People coming, oh, like a year or two years before he died. I came to say my goodbyes. You know, for me, you can go. I allow you. I permit you to die. I nearly kicked the idiot in the face. A couple of them. It's just so funny. It's so stupid. Bob would laugh.And up to the end, if he was asking if he's got a preference, no, he doesn't. He had no preference to be or not to be, but he does continuously have the curiosity.
What's the next moment going to be? How is that going to unfold? So there was still a loving to be showing up as that curious attention. Hmm, let me see. Do we have another day in this body or do we not? Hmm, let me see. Oh, wonderful. We do. Oh, good. The life was celebrated up to the last moment with absolute fearlessness of what the next moment is going to bring. Just a curiosity and mild amazement, but no fear, no preference.It was beautiful up to the end. The not knowing mind, the curious open mind, mind childlike. And yet there was a mature, brilliant man inside as a human character as well.
Incredibly loving, incredibly patient. Beautifully grateful for everything that comes his way. Just, Don't let me start. Amarnath says, known is past notion. Most of times, even unknown is also continuation of known. Good to see you, Amarnath. Hey, yes, that's right. And Vivek says, no mind, no bondage, no liberation. Yeah, beautiful. Liberation, even that is a concept. All the concepts, all the pointers are useful in their limited area of applicability and ultimately useless and to be thrown away. What liberation? For whom? And what was ever bound? It is just a dream of being a dream character. And awakening to the dream and realizing that the dream character is just an appearance, it doesn't have an existence, doesn't make it necessarily thedisappear and it doesn't disappear the dream the dream goes on until it doesn't until you go to sleep and you go to the deep sleep in the night and then there is an interruption in that continuous projection of the world of the world of forms and objects and shapes and patterns and colors and and and all the experiences floating and changing But what a dream.
The dream is changing, but it doesn't stop in the direct experience. The changeless reality and the continuously changing content are just what is. Leaving it. Again, as was said, both Tanya and Lindsay highlighted, leaving it unaltered, unmodified, uncorrected, leaving it as it is, is what the space does, is what the sky-like awareness does. It leaves it as it is and let it unfold in its own course. And that means that the seeming agency that tries to control it and alter it and modify it and correct it, the seeming doer, the seeming ego that is struggling and wrestling and resisting it, is also to be left unaltered, unmodified and uncorrected.
Because it also is just a mechanical piece of software behavior pattern.that has been installed in that body-mind machine for the sheer necessity, like Lindsay was saying also, the consciousness dreams of separation because without that dream, the oneness cannot be experienced because what can be experienced has to be polarized. So the illusion of being separate and abandoned and lonely and isolated and confined in that cage of concepts can only drop away when it is fully embodied and seen to be an illusion. It doesn't stop appearing. So the realization is behind and beyond the illusion. The illusion appears on the realization, on that inseparable field of knowing, that the character is still appearing in the field of knowing.
The character with its cage and with its resistance and with its illusion of control and manipulation is an appearance in the field of knowing. And that field of knowing, whatever is the content of knowing, that field is unchanging. And you are that field. You are that knowing. You are that being, knowing and loving to be. You are the inseparable, unlocated, unborn, timeless, spaceless field of knowing. That pure, open field of consciousness in which the idea...of separate self-suffering arises and in which that idea dies every night when you go to sleep and arises again and dies again and it can be seen through in that field of knowing that can be recognized And even if that idea takes most of the attention and it takes that attention for the ride, oh, I've seen it and now I've lost it.
It can't be lost. It can't ever be lost. Because the I that takes credit for seeing it and the I that claims losing it is the dream character arising in the field of knowing. But the knowing hasn't changed. Doesn't matter what the dream character says. That knowing is never touched by remembering and forgetting of a dream character. That which remembers and forgets, that was one of Bob's pointer, is not your true self. And I think we have one more comment here. Oh, two more comments. Oh, three more comments. Julia says, Hey, man, there was a pregnant pause following you. Beautiful recognition of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a natural byproduct of letting go.
When it is seen, then there is no doer.It is seen that nobody does anything, nothing is picked up which needs to be forgiven, just as nobody does the forgiving. The story is over. That is beautiful, Julia. I kind of wanted to say the same thing, but I also wanted the pause to stay left. For you to say it thank you and tracy says cut i absolutely love the way you still speak of bob in the present tense i noticed that last week it's beautiful a wonderful reminder that he is still with us Thank you, Tracy. This is the dragon that he used to wear. Always in my heart.
And Tania says, beautiful sharing about Bobcat. Beautiful sharing everyone. Many voices of the one essence. Just stunning. Lots of love to all. And thank you, Kat, for putting into words that is directly experienced here in part. Thanks to Bob and your expressions of clarity. Much gratitude. Thank you, Tanya. And Amarnath, ideas, ideas, idea, ideas. Beautiful. And whole structure of thought is I. Thanks, Kat. Thank you, Amarnath. And Peter says, beautifully articulated, observing the dream character without expectation.Yes, so time for a gong, Tristan. Thank you, everyone. Oh, did you want to say something? I have a dinner. Oh, really? We didn't stop yet. Come on, give us the last word.
Just a simple question. We talk a lot about phenomena being what appears to be, Numenon very rarely gets mentioned. What's Numenon? That which is. Phenomena that appears to be a phenomenon that which is. Yes, that which never changes. Yes.Yes, that's it. Bob brings the dictionary definition of phenomena, that which appears to be, and phenomena that which is. Never changes. That's it. Who are you? Who are you? No thing. What do you know? No thing. What are you doing? No thing. That's it. And we go to eat then. Thank you. I'm still understanding. Phenomenal, yes. Long, phenomenal. Thank you.