Individual session with Sailor Bob from 12.12.2023

Let's see. Okay. Alright, it's recording. Thanks for meeting with me tonight. How are you doing? Alright. Good. I wanted to give you some updates, like you said, and all my classes got cancelled for tomorrow, so I thought this would be a good time. I had a pretty rough couple of weeks and it kicked up a lot of old patterns and it's only in the past couple of days that things have started to settle down again. At least the events haven't really started to settle down, but the mind has started to settle down. The thoughts and the feelings have started to settle down to where I can look at them and be like, all right, that's just the old patterns.

Those are just the old habits. Those are just the old habits, the old energy that I've lived with my whole life. And because I had forgotten some of the things that we had talked about last week, the just relaxing into it stuff, and I was like, how do I relax into it? I knew how to relax into it. How do I do this again? And I was like, and I started to realize, like, the thoughts are not the answer. The thoughts can ask any question they want, that's not the answer there. And start to kind of like, alright, kind of let the thoughts go and let anything go, let anything that felt like an identity to Tristan go.

And not let it disappear, but just let it do whatever it wanted to do. Just kind of let it hang out in the space of space. And recognize the distance there, recognize the space there between the thoughts, the space between the whatever I am and the identity of the I, you know, the identity that's been claimed this whole life. But it also, it just, it surprised me too that when I went through this drama the past couple of weeks, that it kicked up so much crap. And that, you know, how quick those old patterns came back, those old habits came back of ruminating and feeling doubt and feeling, you know, all these things.

I guess the point of nonduality is to find out what you are. It's not to not have those feelings, but just not to recognize that you are not those feelings. But there's no me there that has those feelings. But anyways, I just wanted to share that with you because that's kind of what I've been going through for the past couple of weeks. Well, if you leave the thoughts as they are, detached from them, see, as soon as the story comes up, that's what it is, it's a story. Right. But you're still present and aware without the story, without the thoughts. So when the story starts, just tell yourself, I'm not going to go there, just let it be.

I just recognize what I write down. Imprisoned and away. Any negative story? I don't need a story. Pardon? I said I don't need a story, no. To not to be present and aware. The story that tempts me though, it's like a drug that you keep coming back to is If I don't ruminate about this, if I don't think about it, then I'm not claiming responsibility and I'm not being the responsible person. Well, you don't know, just see what the response is. When you react, there's a difference between reacting and responding. The response becomes just natural when you're reacting to it. You get the imagination and feelings and everything else you're bringing that into it.

The fear, the anger, the stress, the unhappiness, the guilt, all those things come about from reaction. Something comes up, you're just naturally responding to it. Well, it'll keep, it'll keep changing. Leave it as it is. We take it on board and we bank it ourselves You said it will keep changing What will keep changing I can't hear you. What is that? You said it will keep changing. But I wasn't sure what you referred to. What keeps changing? The story keeps changing. Another thought will come up. I shouldn't be thinking that. What about this and what about that? I am very grateful to the audience who have come to the event.

But you're not telling yourself this is no good and I should be doing this. As soon as the thought starts, the thinking, thought then becomes the feeling and the feelings become emotional. It can be anger, depression, anxiety, stress or happiness or joy or whatever. It gets into the emotion. You moved away from without the story and still that presence-awareness, which is nothing right or nothing wrong with it, just as it is. And happen will, that's natural, you don't know what your next thought's going to be, but it will come up naturally. And so you see, continuation of the story don't go there. I'm not going to go there and see what else comes up.

And you realize the natural response will come about. But it's the end of it. The conceptual image you've got about yourself. We beat ourselves up with the words all the time. And the words are not the thing. Come back to that, what is wrong with right now if I don't think about it? Well, what do you realise from that? You realise without a thought, and this will be a thought coming up, without a thought, I can't say it's right, wrong, good or bad or anything at all about it. And so you don't continue with the thought. Give it a try and see how it goes.

Let me repeat back what you said and make sure I understood. I got it. I got it. Can you speak a little bit? Can you hear me a little better now? Not much. Let's see what's going on here. I am a member of the National Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. I don't know. That's better now. That's better? Okay. Let's see what I was going to say. I think you said... He said, if the story comes up... Okay, there was a car driving by and I could really hear it through the computer. You said, if a story, I think you said, if a story comes up, ask yourself, What is the story if there's no thought?

What's wrong with right now if there's no thought? And then just don't follow the thought around. And then see what happens. See with it, the story becomes something seemingly continuing. But if you detach from it, don't attach to it, leave it, it'll constantly change. Okay The story constantly changes Yeah Well it does You know what did she say to me or what did I do This will happen and that'll happen. I'm going to go back into some things that happened in the past and imagine something in the future. And it's all objective. You're aware of a lot of it. It's all the content of that awareness.

Now the awareness is not touched at all. It's only when the thoughts comes, you put the feeling comes into it, the sensation, and then that feeling gets emotional. Anger, fear, happiness or joy, whatever the emotion might be. But it's all based on thought. Without the thought, and you're not going to be without the thought there, you know, the living will be there, but what seems so real and things before the thought, the story, we're involved, we've been involved in the story all the time. And it's all objective. It's all in your mind, you're aware of what's going on, the happiness, unhappiness, whatever These are the words that are going on.

There's an awareness of that. If there's awareness of it, it means it's objective. What's the subject? The subject is a pure awareness, which you can't say is good, bad, good and bad, or anything at all about it. Objective means me and the other, you know, something. There's something other than me. That's duality. Everything as it is, is nonduality. So the good and the bad are not separate. The pleasure and the pain are not separate. Happiness, sadness, we separate them, divide them, and that's where it causes problems. But there couldn't be day without night. Couldn't be winter without summer. Couldn't be the high tide without the low tide.

Couldn't be you without the me. There's nothing, no duality whatsoever. So, it's only the way we conceptualise and think about. It's all the one life, the one essence, the one intelligence, isn't it? And that's what you are, that one life. Are you the body? No, you're not. You say my body, my house, my car, you know you're not the house, not the car. Maybe you're not the body either, when you look at it you see you're not. Body is made up of elements, air, earth, fire, water, space. Take the air out of your body, it won't last too long, so you're not separate from the air.

Take the fire, you know the body temperature, you should get hypothermia if that wasn't working, and die. Top-triggered water, body's 60% water, you know, you die of thirst. So you're not separate from those elements at all. But the sense of separation is the problem there. That's one. Separation is duality, relativity, relationship. There's no relationship relative, it's just the one essence. I feel like it's a stupid question because we've talked about it before. I'm gonna ask it anyways. The separation is the problem when you feel like you're separated but you're not separated. It feels contradictory when we talk about this though. You're not the thoughts, you're not the body, What's the basic space of phenomena?

Another great reality is the basic space of phenomena. Base, they're telling you there what the base of it is. Space is space and yet there's nothing you can postulate or think of that can be outside of space. Space is no thing and everything is the content of space. You're a thing, I'm a thing, your friends, your relatives, all things, the trees, the flowers, everything is all the content. There's none of those things you can mention that are outside of space. There's nothing that's outside of space. Everything is the content of space. Space is nothing, not nothing. We say nothing we think it a vacuum word but nothing means you got no pattern shape or form And that how it is The pattern shape and form is Maya They tell you that Now I a ripper It illusion So that's when you say, that's why you mean you're not the body or the thought, because those things are part of space as well.

But it's like saying that a wave is just a part of water. Well, it is, but it's also the ocean, it's still water, so the body and the thought, those are all part of space as well. So you are not separate from that, but you're not the idea of a body, you are not the idea of whatever. That's putting a label on something that's not really true. Well, yeah, we believe we are separate because when you let your parents call you Tristan, I Am Tristan. But you're not. You are the absolute. Everything is absolute. But we divide it with the words. It tells you in the Bible, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.

All things were made by Him, by the Word, and there was nothing made that was made without the Word. So that's all, that's all words. God, word, you, me, I, this, that, all words, all concepts. What are you without the word? What's wrong with right now if you don't have it? Nothing, aside from sometimes discomfort. Nothing is wrong except for sometimes it's uncomfortable. Yeah, it can seem uncomfortable and if it's uncomfortable, are you going to persist in the word? I don't persist in the word, but what I mean by discomfort is like, in my life, there's often anxiety and you don't have to persist in the word of anxiety, but the anxiety still does go away.

But what's making the anxiety? The story, which is all words. You're anxious about this, that, and the other, what happened, what hasn't happened, it's a story. Detached from the story. It's all words. Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare tells of that. And that's the way the mind functions, words, good, bad, pleasant, painful, That being said, if there's no word, what is it? It's just as it is. Unaltered, unmodified, uncorrected. It reminds me a little bit of actually something I was thinking about on, um, I was going to class, I think it was yesterday. It was sometime this week. I imagined someone asking me how I'm enjoying my time here in Germany.

And generally I'm enjoying it, but I was thinking of all the negative things. I was thinking of the weather, I was thinking of anxiety about the future, not knowing what I'm going to do for my job. I was worried about money, I was thinking about all these things. And then I realized that those things aren't going to change whether or not I feel good about it or feel bad about it. Those things don't really matter, it's how I look at it. And as you said at the start, they're all imagined. They're not happening right now. Nisargad tells you nothing can trouble you except in your own imagination.

We image in, create mental or conceptual images which are thoughts. And, of course, we build ourselves up with the Word. Mm-hmm. One of the pointers that I remind myself of a lot, and I find it to be really helpful, is it's something I think that, I'm sure you told it to me, I think I've read it somewhere else by the Japanese banky the Japanese guy but anyway the pointer is try to imagine what you were like before you were born or who you were before you were born something like that try to imagine you try to imagine yourself before you were born and I think a lot about how this body is going to die and how this body is going to die how the mind will shut off all that stuff and And you said one time, like, when you die, you go back to where you, it goes back to how it was before you were born.

Was that so bad? No, it wasn't, because I didn't know. And, but when I think about that, the pointer that I realize is that presence, that awareness that is there before the body is born and after the body dies, is still here now. And... And everything that is recognized, all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the appearance, all the maya that is recognized is recognized because that appearance is here in a body that is functioning. Or an appearance of a body that is functioning. And I reflect on the, I remind myself, I reflect on, or I guess you could say that the mind is doing its own reflection at this point, of that anything that I recognize, even if I say that's awareness, that's awareness, is not awareness.

But it's awareness that is doing the recognizing. And it's in that, when I do that, there's this, and I know that it's not me doing it, but for the sake of language here, when I do that, it's like you see that the natural power of the universe, the natural power of life, the natural power of whatever you want to call it, is just functioning the way it's supposed to be functioning. And it's just being recognized. It's just being recognized by that awareness. Yeah. As the Buddha called it, cognizing emptiness. It's the emptiness itself that's doing the cognizing, not you or I are cognizing it. He made the statement that emptiness is form.

All these forms are that cognizing emptiness, including you, me, the trees, the flowers, and everything. Emptiness is forms and the forms can be nothing other than the emptiness. When you talk about reflection and imaging, reflection is like an image in the mirror. Nothing can trouble you except your own imagination. Break that word imagination down to image in. We're creating mental images about it. Reflections are the same thing. You look at a mirror, what do you see? Reflections or images. Now you can't say they're not there, because they are. Go up and try and get an image or a reflection out of the mirror. You can't.

So you can't say it is, you can't say it is not. And that's the same as this whole universe. It appears to be so. And when you're locked into the appearance and start a story about it, well that story becomes emotional. Thought, feeling and emotion. Keep the thought there long enough, it comes as a sensation or a feeling. Keep that feeling there long enough and it'll go into either one of the opposite, it'll either be love or hate. You've read that Heng Shing Wing, haven't you? You should have a copy of it somewhere. The right way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Like the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. I remember that line, and I remember thinking it was always such a complicated, anxiety-inducing line, because it's like everything is kept in this very precarious balance, and the minute you have a single preference, your whole world goes to hell. And I was like, well, Jesus, that's a tall order. How am I supposed to not have any preferences ever in the entire world? Allied, what did you say? I said that I always thought that that line in the Sing Sing Ming Yeah is, was kind of a pretty scary line because it said as soon as you have a preference then there's, I can't remember how it was worded, but As soon as you have a preference, the balance is out of whack.

And then you're in heaven or you're in hell. And I thought, well, how am I supposed to go through life without having a single preference ever? Like, it's just... It says, hold, you know, hold no opinions for or against anything. You can have the opinions, but don't cling to them. Fix out and make a story out of them. If it comes up and needs to be acted on, let the natural spontaneous reaction come about it, but don't clink it. And it says when no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to be. So that old habitual attaching to things, that ceases to be and you're left with pure presence-awareness.

The thoughts will come up and they won't be the conflict. Coming back to the foreigner I was using earlier I wanted to mention something about recognizing who you were before you were born and recognizing that that the same presence that will be after you dead I think that's a very clear pointer, but I also think that I would be lying if I said that I don't feel a sense of sadness when I think about how the presence-awareness, which is here before I was born, will be here after I'm dead. Now it's experiencing the world through this body, but once the body is dead, it won't experience anything.

And there's, I feel sad about that. And I don't know how to, I don't know what to, if there's anything to say to that or come to terms with about that. It still feels like there's a loss there somehow, even though I know the body doesn't last forever. But it seems like what's the good of awareness, recognising everything if there's no body to recognise? It's like, what's the point of having eyes if they're blind? That's what I say. There couldn't be any problem if it didn't have a body to express through. That's what happens, it forms patterns, shapes and forms to express through. But the pattern, shapes and forms are still that emptiness.

There's nothing you can postulate outside of space. Space like awareness. Space is no thing. And everything in this manifestation is the content of space. So can something come from nothing? It can't. So everything is really no thing appearing. And that's what it is. If you didn't have that particular pattern, you're called Tristan, And you'd be a corpse, you wouldn't even have the body or anything. You'd just be that space like it was. So it forms the pattern to express you. That pattern is not separate from the space. And you know that. You're in space right now. Try and get out of it. Right. Space is no thing.

It hasn't got any shape. You can't say it begins because you can't find a point where it begins. You can't say it in. They talk about in the beginning, you know, it was a big bang. What would the big bang be if it was such a thing as a big bang? It would have to be in something, and it was in space. So it's all space, nothing outside of it. Space is nothing appearing as everything. When you take that state to it, who's going to be hurt? You're the absolute. If you're the absolute, who can be superior to you? No one. I Am That, Ramana Maharshi, I Nchagiri, Dzogchen, Veda, Veda, presence-awareness, Mahavakya.

And we discriminate it by taking the pattern, shape and form to be real with the words we've learnt. That's a tree, that's a flower, that's the sun. Put labels on all these things, all these appearances and take them to be separate. That's me, that's you. That's something else. But we divide it with the word, the concept. I guess I still feel that there'd be a sense of a, when I think about it, of course I'm thinking about it now, about a future event that hasn't happened, there's still a sense of a loss though at the thought of not being able to experience the world or experience, perceive the world through the appearance of Tristan anymore, when Tristan's gone.

What's all that? Imagination. Imaging in, creating mental images. Believing in the images and they seem unreal, causing the upset in the body. Nothing can trouble you except your own imagination. This is a very important issue for the mental health of his life. They cannot be free from this, and he is not free from the power of the mind. He cannot be free from the power of the mind. This is a very important question. He is free from the power of the mind. Mental image is about everything. I have tried. It sucks. I have tried living without the imagining, and you can't really do it. Try it and see.

It'll show you how to do it. Try to live without imagining things? Try to live without picturing how the future might be I say it just as it is So like you don I mean, but you still have thoughts about future events. You still have imagination, you still have... That's just how the mind works. It works with hypotheticals. Those don't go away, I'm sure. You would. The imagination, the mind works with hypotheticals and works with things that haven't happened yet or happened in the past. That's just the functioning of the mind, that doesn't go away I'm sure. I can't hear you again. Okay. All right, can you hear me better?

Can you hear me now? No? Let me see here. That's not what I want to look at. Next noise cancellation. All right, can you hear me any different? That's a bit better, yeah. All right, we'll try that. We'll see if that works. What I was saying is, you said try living without imagination, and if you try it, it'll show you that you see things just as they are. My question there was, but surely your mind still has thoughts about the future or hypotheticals or anything because that's what the mind does. So you can't, I don't see how a person can live without imagination if their mind is still functioning.

Yeah, if it comes up, detach from it, don't, because if you keep it there, you're adding to the story of it. If it comes up and see it and detach from it, let it be, see what, you know, as Nisargad had said, realize you're dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking four ways out. The dream is not your concern, your concern is you love one part of it and not the other. He says love all of it or none of it and the rest will be done for you. And that's true, life itself carries it out. Translator. I Am the One Who Is You.

The One Who Is You is the One Who Is Not. All functioning, happening. Now, it says in that Hing Shing Ming, Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. Well, that's impossible, because what we call heavens is the sky. We look up into the heavens, and the earth's rolling around the sky all the time. They're not apart, and they can never be apart. We discriminate and make them seemingly so. That's the same as thoughts, good and bad. Shakespeare tells us, nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Good, bad, pleasant, painful, happy, sad, loving, hating. That's how we think all the time in the pairs of opposites.

When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth shall infinitely abide. If you wish to know the truth, hold no opinions for or against any. Just leave it as it is, instead of opinionating it, and it will change what is necessary. And if it's seemingly bad, well that's how it'll be. But you won't be locked into it. You'll see it as it is and it moves on. But when you say, oh it's bad, and you get a story about it, oh I shouldn do this and blah blah blah you keeping it there While you keeping it there it going to bug you continually But detach from it That what I say detachment Leave it as it is and alter it unmodify it uncorrect it You'll never grasp the answer in the mind.

I need to be reminded of that over and over, but I do recognize that because when, for whatever reason, things were clear or apparently clear, it was clear that the answer wasn't in the mind. The mind was just trying to grab onto a thought in the mind was like trying to grab onto a cloud, you know, trying to hold onto a cloud and you just can't, or trying to grab onto a piece of blue sky. You can't really grab onto a piece of blue sky. It looks blue, like you've said before, you know, take a bucket and get blue out of the ocean or something like that.

It looks blue, but you can't really grab it. Yeah. Well, the same with thoughts, you know, you see that? Opinions, thoughts, you know, nothing, Shakespeare tells you nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes you so. So it appears good and bad, that's not how it appears. But when you say, oh it's bad, then of course the story starts. It's bad because of this and now that happened and blah blah blah. And you're keeping it there, you're keeping it there and attaching to it and making it worse. I'm thinking of some events that happened in my life recently that stirred up all these emotions and what happened and I'm trying to see where things went wrong.

Maybe it doesn't really matter where things went wrong, I mean, because things played out the way they were going to play out. I don't know. See, when I got recognised and understood it and came back from India, I thought everything's going to be right and live happily ever after, you know. We bought a farm and went on and on and on and had a drought, a flood, a drought and a flood, got washed out, lost all our money and on top of it I got bitten by the mosquitoes and got the Ross River Fever. And now I'll die on the blow of my fucking head off.

And I'm thinking, you know, what the hell, how's this, I've seen through this, now if it's, as it says it works, I'll test it out, does it? I am a member of the National Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Australian Government. I am a member of the National Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Australian Government. I was told with them and everything was all right. We had a bit of money, bought a house and then had another thing so we invested it with a dodgy solicitor. And they ripped us off. And so they were all gone again. I said shit, the same thing happened. I'm living in the shed again and just getting over the Ross River fever that lasted a couple of years.

So how is this one going to work out? And there was a solicitor's guarantee fund. We didn't know that solicitors were going to pay into this fund because there's a lot of dodgy solicitors and they get a bad name if they don't. So all the solicitors pay into this fund. So when any trouble comes up, the Law Institute backs them up and pays the people out. So after a couple of years, we got the capital back. Lost all the interest, we got the capital back. That was it. And other things happened in this. And Barbara died, and that was the end of me, I just puttered along.

And now behold, Kat turns up, half my age, from the other side of the world, didn't know. And that's beautiful. So it all worked itself out. Now I've got cancer of the guts and a big ulceration. It's gonna get me sooner or later. But it won't matter. Because I'm not going anywhere. Well, I appreciate you telling me that because it's easy to... I appreciate you telling me that. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you still hear me? You're fading again. Okay. Can you hear me still now? Yeah. Alright. I said that I appreciate you telling me that because I... It's easy, sometimes I think too, like, well I'm getting this, I'm getting clearly, it's going to be just a smooth sailing life.

And then something dramatic happens. To be honest, the thing that happened here recently is a friend said something that I was hurt by. I pushed back and told her that she had hurt me and she ended our friendship. It had been a friendship of six or seven years over a cultural misunderstanding and me standing up for myself. I don't think she wants to have anything to do with me anymore and it broke my heart. I'm recovering from it far more quickly than I would have in the past, but it still hurt. And honestly, when I think about it, I still get a little angry about it now.

You know, it's still kind of fresh. When you think about it, dismiss it, you know. See, it's moved on. If there's anything more to come of it, it'll turn up again. But if it's not, you know, it's gone, something else will turn up. That's the way I find it, life still goes on. What's the difference between dismissing a thought and not taking care of something that you need to take care of? Like, not taking responsibility for something, for basically putting your head in the sand, to use that expression. What's the difference between dismissing a thought that would cause you pain versus having an uncomfortable thought that is a sign that you need to do something like you need to go and stop drinking or you need to go and whatever.

The need to respond is there, you respond, you do the response. That's why I say the rest will be done for you. It comes up as something you need to do, it'll happen. And happen in a much easier way than what you could ever work it out in the mind. Fall into place. The thing is when I responded to my friend and I told her that what I told her, I told her that she upset me, I feel like that response came from a natural place. And when I, I used to think that if responses came from a natural place, they would be recognized And they would not cause problems.

They would just be like, oh, we're just solving the problem. But instead, I responded from what I think was a natural place. And she ended our friendship. And I thought, well, fuck, that didn't work out the way I wanted it to. No, not the way you wanted to, but the way it is. And you might find that better. That's happened to me a million times, too. You know, I've gone for jobs and things like this. Never got them. I thought, oh, shit, that's bad, I see that in that particular job that somebody that took it was in a hell of a mess and the firm was in a hell of a mess.

Here's me going along alright. So if it had happened that way I'd have been in the same boat, but I wasn't. Yeah, that's a good point. There was a big sense of loss at the time and things like that happen too, you know. If they go, if she's gone, she's gone. The open it'll write itself as necessary to be that's the particular one or something else will turn up. Instead of brooding over that be open, keep your eyes open and look around and somebody might turn up. Just the same as I say when Barb died, a few years later Kat turned up. I didn't, wasn't interested in that happening.

I thought I was 80-odd. I thought, what's got you to do with me? Fucking 95. I thought you were 98. I thought you were 98. I thought you were older. Not yet. Well, I don't think I'll make 98. Maybe I was, I guess I was confusing your age with my grandma because she died when she was 98. Yeah. That's a good age. Yeah. It would have been cool to see her hit 100. It would have been nice to have a centurion in the family, I'm not sure if you'd like that as well, but I think that it just wasn't meant to be. Yes, I thought I'd like to live to 100, but if I lived to 100, who would know, who would care?

I wouldn be I wouldn be living long after that What does it matter Where am I going I can only go back into space again Because everything disappears back into the space Do you ever feel any sadness or any sense of loss when you think about like I was asking earlier when you go back to space when you go back to that space-like awareness, that the world will never be experienced through the eyes of Bob. The appearance of Bob will be gone, so the world won't be interpreted through that. And that window to the world will be shut to the awareness. Yeah. That awareness will still be there, but awareness is, you know, it's a life essence itself, and that life is expressing as everything.

So it's still there in all these other expressions, but it has nothing to do with this particular life or pattern. That served its time, it's done what was necessary. I Am That, Ramana Maharshi, I Nisargad, presence-awareness, Mahavakya. You couldn't give a shit about it because you've never allowed it to congeal. And the other one is I don't mind. Somebody comes up and they'll say, can I do this or do that? You say, I don't mind. If you're not minding about it, couldn't care less. So spirit and matter are two ends of the one stick. What about, well, like, I'm in a group in the university here and we have to help with things on campus and sometimes I don't want to help with them.

It's part of my duty so I do it and I said I would do it so I'll do it. Sometimes I'd rather go to something else. Sometimes I don't want to pick the trash up or help organize the parties and stuff. I'd rather have free time or go enjoy the parties instead of work the parties. And it's a form of service and I'm okay with that. But it's hard to, at least for me, it feels hard to not have those preferences, even if you say you don't hold on to them. It's hard to not feel those preferences and not get caught in that web of being like, oh, I don't want to do this.

Sometimes you gotta do what you don't want to do. That's true, yeah, you're right. That works out alright too. And as I say, that's the way it happens and you might be surprised that might lead you to something else. Mm-hmm. I don't know what my next thought's gonna be, I don't know what the next activity's gonna be. I didn't expect this cancer to happen. I got this bloody bag on now. Gotta change that every now and again. It fills up and all the rest of it. And if I didn't have CAT, I wouldn't be able to do any of it. It's amazing how that's fallen into place, the function, being looked after.

I see. Well, I almost said, I wish I had better news for you. I wish I had a better or more uplifting, a better uplifting update for you. But then I realized that if I wanted to go and go into all of that, I was, it would just be going back into a thought. Instead of having this thought come up of feeling kind of self-pity, just let the thought go just now. I told you what the thought was, but I didn't tell it to tell it to you. I told it to tell you that that was a thought I was letting go right now. I guess that's part of the process.

It'll happen. Whatever happens will happen. Be open to it. That's the main thing. I found a website about nonduality texts, old texts, classical texts like from Ramana Maharshi, for example, and some of the old Vedic texts from India. And it was all people who have been long, long dead. And Nisargadatta wasn't on that list. And none of the people that I read really were on that list except for Ramana Maharshi You weren on the list John Wheeler and Randall Friend none of those guys were on the list. And there was a question and answer section and the person said, why are some more well-known or modern names not on your list?

And he said, because I don't find them to be very clear and I don't find them to be This is not the end. I'm not sure what's been said here might just dawn on you. Next time we talk, you might have opened up to it, see what's been recognized. The same with me, for years and years I was searching for this crap, getting nowhere. And then when I got to Nisargadatta, I heard what he was saying, it changed the whole thing. And even that, when I came back, I started talking about it, nobody wanted to listen to it, but then again, the more I was talking about it, the more it settled down in me.

Then people started to come and hear what I had to say. There was no intention of doing anything. I was in the Guru worship and Bhakti bath and all these sort of things for years. I think it was 17 odd years when I first started looking into the stuff till I got to the Sargonata. Now it's been 40 odd years since I went to him. It's been 40 odd years of bonus living. I wouldn't have lived this long if it hadn't been for what I've understood. And it hasn't been, as I say, it hasn't been an easy ride either, with the farm and the houses and the money and all the rest of it, and the sicknesses that have gone on and on.

But through it all, there was always an underlying sense of presence, the awareness that everything, you know, leave it as it is, it'll do it right itself. And instead of getting into the concepts and trying to make it work in a way, I don't know why they leave it where it happens does. In ways I'd never imagined at all. Well, I can't think of anything else to say and I know that you have your nurse coming up in a few minutes here. So I don't want you to think she'd be coming about five minutes or so. Coming what? Kat said your nurse would be there in about five minutes from now.

Yeah. All right. The nurse, yeah, she's coming along. But she might be late, she might be early, who knows. Yeah, I can't think of anything else to say right now. I know that it's not as... There's more heavy energy over here than there was in our last call. But I guess whatever. Sometimes it's like that. I was going to ask if you'd ever heard of an author named Michael Lamford. Okay, it doesn't matter. I wanted to ask what you thought of him, but if you haven't heard of him, don't worry about it. I think if you resonate with them, it might be the one for you to hear.

But test them out. I read some of his stuff years ago and it didn't really do much for me. I've thought about going back and reading it again, but I don't know. I don't know, the point is, I'm not really that interested in reading texts right now. I feel like self-inquiry and what I've been doing should be enough. And I don't really need to read anymore, because I think if you read too much it can get confusing. On the other hand sometimes when you hear people say convincingly that you need to read this person or you never going to find enlightenment it can kind of scare you as well It can scare you as well and think, well, shit, maybe I should read this person.

You got that, I talk about the inner voice, intuition, the inner teacher, realize that there, that awareness. So give yourself a little wink and a little smile and say I know you're there. You take over and relax into it. Be warm towards it though. Love it a little bit. Love yourself a little bit. See what comes up. Different sensations, thoughts and feelings. You might find yourself getting answers. What do you mean by relax into it or warm to it? What do you mean? Can you explain what you mean by that? Well just, don't go into thought, but just, what do you do when you relax?

Just let go. Hmm, okay. That's what I thought you meant, I just wanted to make sure. Instead of stressing about it and worrying about it, you know, that's a blockage. But if you're not, that stress is not there to go against or position, stand you're taking, you relax, Then that life essence that they are can bring up the responses that are necessary. It tells you in the scriptures, Thou shalt hear a voice behind you saying, This is the way, walking in it, whether you turn to the left or turn to the right, so it's guiding you. The voice behind you is what they call the still small voice, the intuition in the teacher.

It's the thought that comes up here. My problem with there is I've never really either trusted my intuition or I never felt... That's not true, I have trusted it sometimes. But sometimes I don't feel like it's very clear. I can't tell what my intuition is saying. Well, don't claim it as your intuition. It's to you, it's to believe in you that is the problem, the separate entity. So go back and recognise the Absolute and ask yourself what can be added to Absolute? Nothing at all. What can be taken away from nothing? And if I am the Absolute, who's superior to me? No one. Who's inferior to you?

No one. What would I want from anybody else? And then like Nisargad says, the rest will be done for you. That inner voice, that life that you are, which is guiding you whether you know it or not, it's breathing you, beating your heart, growing your energy and all that. That'll resonate with the thoughts that are necessary. Instead of trying to work it out in the mind, which we do, we get into all sorts of conceptual trouble, It'll come up and shake you as Einstein told you. He says, I worked on this problem for days and nights, couldn't get the answer. One night I went to sleep and woke up the next morning and there it was.

It's come up and revealed itself. They say that the best thoughts happen in the three B's. Bed, bath and on the bus. Usually when you're not thinking about it, you're just relaxing. Yeah. And in that relaxation there's a sense of well-being, nothing wrong. That's a good start. Yeah. All right. Are we done? Oh, no, you're still on it. We can finish up, though, if you need to go, Bob. Pardon? We can finish up if you need to go. Okay. All right. Hey, keep in touch. I will. Have a good appointment. Hope it goes well. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. She'll make an appointment with you. You can see me online sometime.

Anyway, give her a call, an email. She'll work it out if you want to catch up again. Okay, that sounds good. If I see you online, I'll give you a call. Otherwise, I'll just tell Kat to... If I see you online, I'll call you. Otherwise, I'll just ask Kat to, if you're available. That's good, yeah. Okay. Alright, love you. Love you. Bye-bye.