WEBVTT 00:00:11.640 --> 00:00:16.650 To enter the human experience is to enter a great forgetting. 00:00:18.730 --> 00:00:24.970 The veil of the conditioned mind obscures the truth of who we really are, 00:00:28.050 --> 00:00:34.210 casting us into a world of separation, limitation and doubt. 00:00:36.370 --> 00:00:42.050 So who are you really? Are you just a mind living in a body, 00:00:42.760 --> 00:00:48.210 navigating through life, trying to find happiness and avoiding suffering? 00:00:48.210 --> 00:00:54.860 Or maybe something else entirely, something much deeper, something eternal. 00:00:54.860 --> 00:01:00.180 Something that can't be explained in words. Something that when realized 00:01:00.180 --> 00:01:06.720 brings true peace and true fulfillment.  Here we're going to look beyond the veil 00:01:06.720 --> 00:01:12.220 of the mind, beyond thoughts and sensations, to find out the truth 00:01:12.220 --> 00:01:15.632 of who we really are. 00:01:33.392 --> 00:01:37.392 So what is the mind? 00:01:37.792 --> 00:01:44.430 Throughout history, this question has been  asked countless times. From humanity's 00:01:44.430 --> 00:01:49.790 earliest spiritual and scientific inquiries the human mind has been 00:01:49.790 --> 00:01:55.380 conceptualized and understood in various ways across different cultures. 00:01:55.380 --> 00:02:01.580 Humans have used philosophy, psychological and scientific theories as well as 00:02:01.580 --> 00:02:08.280 methods of direct investigation to penetrate the mind's secrets.. to find out 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:14.790 who we are beyond the mind and body. Ordinarily we think of mind as being 00:02:14.790 --> 00:02:19.220 maybe something inside the head like the brain and it's do with thinking 00:02:19.220 --> 00:02:27.505 and cognition but the mind is much deeper than this. The mind is actually duality. 00:02:28.155 --> 00:02:33.260 It's also known as Maya or Illusion. It's also known as ego. 00:02:33.900 --> 00:02:41.050 In Latin the word ego means simply "I". When the sense of "I" is limited to some 00:02:41.050 --> 00:02:47.915 thing it is maya, illusion, but when it's unlimited... when it wakes up as 00:02:47.915 --> 00:02:53.920 consciousness itself, within which all phenomena arises and passes away, 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:59.470 then there's no longer an identification with a separate "I". 00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:06.920 The true meaning of the word "I" is infinite awareness, infinite consciousness 00:03:06.920 --> 00:03:13.410 That's the only "I" or the only Self there is. However for most of us 00:03:13.410 --> 00:03:19.670 our sense of our self has become so entangled in the content of experience... 00:03:19.670 --> 00:03:25.560 thoughts, images, feelings, and so on, that we don't perceive ourself as we 00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:32.760 essentially and originally are. But we know ourselves in a modified way... mixed 00:03:32.760 --> 00:03:39.970 with the content of experience. And this mixture of the true and only "I" of infinite 00:03:39.970 --> 00:03:44.940 awareness or infinite Consciousness with the content of experience makes for this 00:03:44.940 --> 00:03:51.230 illusory self which is what is usually referred to as the the ego or the 00:03:51.230 --> 00:03:57.710 separate self. The ego is an idea very persistent very strong, very solid, that 00:03:57.710 --> 00:04:04.860 we are a person... a separate entity inside a body mind. Or sometimes 00:04:04.860 --> 00:04:10.381 we think to be just a body mind. The ego is an aspect of the mind which forms 00:04:10.381 --> 00:04:17.510 at a young age and it's that aspect which gives us a sense of I am an individual me. 00:04:17.510 --> 00:04:25.820 The ego is literally a made up entity and it's not real and it's that which 00:04:25.820 --> 00:04:34.460 we identify as the body. It's the part of the mind that thinks it's separate. 00:04:34.460 --> 00:04:42.790 The ego is the personal sense of me but it's not the true self. 00:04:43.750 --> 00:04:49.630 It's a whole imagined construct of me it's not ultimately who I am. Ultimately 00:04:49.630 --> 00:04:58.279 who I am is that which is deeper and this underlying presence that's always here. 00:04:58.869 --> 00:05:05.600 The dualistic mind is made of two fundamental aspects... the witness and 00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:11.540 what is witnessed. There's the phenomena of the world made up of sensations 00:05:11.540 --> 00:05:17.930 perceptions and egoic preferences, and then there's the sense that there's an "I" 00:05:17.930 --> 00:05:25.110 that is separate, witnessing. Awakening is waking up from this duality... from the 00:05:25.110 --> 00:05:32.260 split between witness and witnessed. Between subject and object, to realize 00:05:32.260 --> 00:05:38.710 primordial awareness that is ever present. 00:05:38.710 --> 00:05:45.600 If you look at young children, young  children don't have an ego and they live 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:50.730 in a state of participation. They live in a state of exhilaration, because 00:05:50.730 --> 00:05:54.590 they are not separate to the world. 00:05:54.930 --> 00:06:01.130 When we're born we're dependent and we don't yet have conceptual thinking. 00:06:01.130 --> 00:06:06.709 As we develop, we develop concepts and what's called self-awareness, which is the 00:06:06.709 --> 00:06:12.040 ability to reflect on what we're doing in order to become independent. 00:06:12.040 --> 00:06:16.880 So that thinking process becomes this internal identity. 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:23.640 The formation of the ego begins soon after birth. We begin to develop a personal 00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:31.790 identity which we eventually call "I" or "me". The mirror stage in human 00:06:31.790 --> 00:06:38.740 development is the point at which a child recognizes themself in a mirror, usually 00:06:38.740 --> 00:06:46.050 around 6 to 18 months of age. And it is just one part of the formation of the ego 00:06:46.050 --> 00:06:52.710 via the process of identification. It's not that we get our ego from recognizing 00:06:52.710 --> 00:06:59.390 a character in the mirror. It's part of a socialization process or conditioning 00:06:59.390 --> 00:07:07.730 as those around us begin to treat us as a  separate person, as a separate "I". 00:07:07.730 --> 00:07:13.870 We learn to identify a sense of "I" through the sensations that arise on the body, 00:07:13.870 --> 00:07:21.740 through perception and conceptualization of things. The mind divides and separates 00:07:21.740 --> 00:07:28.020 one thing from another, and then we develop preferences towards those things. 00:07:28.020 --> 00:07:34.050 Some things we like, some some things we don't like. This "I" becomes our 00:07:34.050 --> 00:07:40.140 individual separate and unique identity as we move through life. 00:07:40.140 --> 00:07:44.250 It is the story of who we believe we are. 00:07:44.250 --> 00:07:48.430 And the consciousness that we are, starts to believe it when we are very young. 00:07:48.430 --> 00:07:54.965 When we are children and it grows with us  until we are completely convinced 00:07:54.965 --> 00:08:00.930 to be a person. As people grow and move towards adolescent and into adulthood they 00:08:00.930 --> 00:08:06.760 develop a sense of separation; a sense of being an "I" who lives inside their heads. 00:08:06.760 --> 00:08:15.980 So they become separate egos who live in a state of wanting, 00:08:15.980 --> 00:08:21.130 a state of incompleteness, whose lives  are dominated by a desire to 00:08:21.130 --> 00:08:25.990 accumulate things to compensate for their incompleteness. 00:08:25.990 --> 00:08:31.350 It's the mind that causes all the issues all the problems. The mind is a power 00:08:31.350 --> 00:08:35.330 that creates the entire illusion of separation... 00:08:35.330 --> 00:08:41.410 The entire illusion or appearance of being a person living in a world. 00:08:41.410 --> 00:08:48.750 We could experientially verify that every time we experience 00:08:48.750 --> 00:08:56.590 psychological suffering we can always trace it back to the belief to be this 00:08:56.590 --> 00:09:04.020 separate person, this separate entity. There are no exceptions, no exceptions. 00:09:04.020 --> 00:09:11.000 I'm not talking about physical pain, but psychological suffering is absolutely 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:18.819 unnecessary it is predicated upon the belief to be this separate or 00:09:18.819 --> 00:09:26.960 apparently separate body mind. Because we're like fragments who've been 00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:32.919 broken away from the whole, like jigsaw pieces that have become disconnected and 00:09:32.919 --> 00:09:38.110 spread far apart. So there is a feeling of "something's missing", 00:09:38.110 --> 00:09:42.156 "something's not right". The mind seems like an insurmountable obstacle. 00:09:42.156 --> 00:09:46.800 How can we overcome the mind? The mind seems to have no end. 00:09:47.330 --> 00:09:53.190 Attempting to conquer the mind using the mind creates an endless struggle. 00:09:53.190 --> 00:09:59.120 Akin to trying to lift oneself up by pulling on one's own bootstraps. 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:05.600 The ego structure can feel devastated, lost and confused, feeling that life 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:12.030 has no meaning, and as that seeking mind struggles we experience what St John 00:10:12.030 --> 00:10:18.160 of the Cross called The Dark Night of the Soul. This is a necessary part of the 00:10:18.160 --> 00:10:24.883 disillusionment process. It is only by letting go of seeking and the false 00:10:24.883 --> 00:10:32.860 identification with the seeker that we come into direct union with life. 00:10:44.170 --> 00:10:49.680 I was in a good place in my life. I had sort of given up on the spiritual search, 00:10:49.680 --> 00:10:55.440 not because I'd given up as such but because there was nothing else really to 00:10:55.440 --> 00:11:00.961 look for. I wasn't seeking enlightenment. I wasn't seeking a awakening. I was 00:11:00.961 --> 00:11:06.970 seeking peace and I was seeking happiness and I found that surrender to what is was 00:11:06.970 --> 00:11:12.430 the only way and that life was my teacher. After many many many years of searching 00:11:12.430 --> 00:11:22.390 everything fell away. The structure of the me that I knew myself as fell away. 00:11:23.350 --> 00:11:33.710 I was sitting in my living room  and over a period of a few weeks a great 00:11:33.710 --> 00:11:43.780 sort of inner desolation seemed to appear in me. So this was unexpected, this vast 00:11:43.780 --> 00:11:52.460 inner landscape of darkness... a kind of abandonment... an existential abandonment 00:11:52.460 --> 00:12:03.900 from life itself. And I noticed how the mind's movement wanted to move away from 00:12:03.900 --> 00:12:11.470 this inner landscape of darkness. And I asked a question to myself: 00:12:11.470 --> 00:12:17.800 "What is the meaning of suffering? What is the nature of suffering? 00:12:17.800 --> 00:12:25.670 How can suffering end?" Or perhaps it doesn't end and in that question what 00:12:25.670 --> 00:12:32.220 arose was this willingness to not move from where I was, to not move away from 00:12:32.220 --> 00:12:39.730 that dark landscape, and to surrender in that even if it meant the end of me. 00:12:39.730 --> 00:12:46.286 And I didn't know what that meant, the end of me, but it came up as a kind of knowing 00:12:46.286 --> 00:12:51.820 that wasn't yet conscious, and in that moment totally unexpectedly the whole 00:12:51.820 --> 00:13:02.030 structure of self died. It's like the whole 'me' identity died, and surprisingly 00:13:02.030 --> 00:13:11.570 there was a merging with life itself that ended the separation between me and life. 00:13:11.570 --> 00:13:20.320 And from that point on I knew that I and life are one; there is no separation... 00:13:20.320 --> 00:13:27.320 it's all in the mind's movement. And from that point on the whole structure of this 00:13:27.320 --> 00:13:35.530 'Amoda' that had been built on a victim identity, not just a victim of 00:13:35.530 --> 00:13:40.440 circumstances, but a victim of my feelings a victim of emotions, a victim of 00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:44.790 thoughts, and therefore constantly trying to change those, to change thoughts to 00:13:44.790 --> 00:13:49.517 change feelings, to make them better, to make them more positive, to make them more 00:13:49.517 --> 00:13:58.510 uplifted... that ended. And without the  victim it was as if I was born anew. 00:13:58.510 --> 00:14:05.330 So I died and I was reborn in that. It's like all the veils of perception that 00:14:05.330 --> 00:14:11.460 were built on the identity of Amoda as a me with her history, with her thoughts, 00:14:11.460 --> 00:14:17.898 with her beliefs, with her experiences, just came undone. So it was totally naked 00:14:17.898 --> 00:14:23.510 from that moment on and it's never changed since then. 00:14:27.050 --> 00:14:33.610 In Buddhism the first Noble Truth  is that there is suffering. There is this 00:14:33.610 --> 00:14:40.210 inherent dissatisfaction within the conditioned mind. Dukkha or the chronic 00:14:40.210 --> 00:14:47.120 dissatisfaction of the mind encompasses not only physical and emotional pain but 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:53.690 also more subtle forms of dissatisfaction such as the inherent impermanence of all 00:14:53.690 --> 00:15:00.780 things and the inability to find lasting satisfaction in worldly pursuits. 00:15:00.780 --> 00:15:07.180 True happiness or fulfillment cannot be found in external material pursuits. 00:15:07.710 --> 00:15:11.428 Even when things go the way we think they should. Even when we're following 00:15:11.428 --> 00:15:16.365 the script, being a good person, we have  successful relationships, successful 00:15:16.365 --> 00:15:21.970 careers, even then there's often this underlying sense that something's just not 00:15:21.970 --> 00:15:29.090 quite right. Something that we're missing, something that we're not perceiving 00:15:29.090 --> 00:15:36.020 accurately, and the closer we look at that often it becomes more vivid, more obvious. 00:15:36.020 --> 00:15:42.690 So what I often say is the first step in the awakening process is acknowledging 00:15:42.690 --> 00:15:50.280 that we suffer. We could summarize it by saying it's a sort of sense that life 00:15:50.280 --> 00:15:56.360 just isn't functioning right, or perhaps  I'm not functioning right within life. 00:15:56.360 --> 00:15:59.893 But it's uncomfortable... it's grace that it's uncomfortable because it leads us 00:15:59.893 --> 00:16:07.173 into this investigation that can take us to places that we never could have imagined. 00:16:07.173 --> 00:16:15.520 Why do people suffer? If we talk about physical pain we have to understand that 00:16:15.520 --> 00:16:24.350 the reason why we experience physical pain is because physical pain is a protection 00:16:24.350 --> 00:16:33.770 device that we have genetically inherited. If we never experienced pain we would 00:16:33.770 --> 00:16:43.410 constantly bump into objects and our body would drink sulfuric acid and our body 00:16:43.410 --> 00:16:51.740 wouldn't last for too long. The reason of psychological pain is different. It is: 00:16:51.740 --> 00:17:00.330 "you're making a mistake". So psychological pain is not a problem, 00:17:00.330 --> 00:17:05.930 it is the beginning of the solution. Psychological pain is telling us a lesson 00:17:05.930 --> 00:17:12.540 about another mistake we make which is to believe we are a separate human being. 00:17:12.540 --> 00:17:19.150 That's a mistake... that's a fundamental mistake. It is the original sin; 00:17:19.150 --> 00:17:28.840 the original sin that kicks us out of the Kingdom, out of the garden of Eden. 00:17:30.360 --> 00:17:37.790 The original meaning of the word sin means "to miss the mark". 00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:44.514 Egoic consciousness is a pathological state of mind whereby we constantly 00:17:44.514 --> 00:17:51.200 miss the mark. This is the meaning of "the fall". We are focused on the fruits 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:56.850 of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, focused on thoughts. 00:17:56.850 --> 00:18:03.050 The dualistic mind is made of the phenomena that forms the perceived world of form; 00:18:03.050 --> 00:18:10.250 made of sensations, perceptions, egoic preferences, and this sense that there is 00:18:10.250 --> 00:18:17.480 an "I" that is separate, witnessing. It is this "I" thought that is at the root of 00:18:17.480 --> 00:18:20.580 identification with the ego. 00:18:20.580 --> 00:18:30.226 Whatever we are experiencing it is I who am experiencing it. If I am sad or anxious 00:18:30.226 --> 00:18:34.770 or lonely it is I who am having that experience. If I'm talking with you 00:18:34.770 --> 00:18:39.800 it is I who am talking. If I'm seeing the world it is I who am seeing the world. 00:18:39.800 --> 00:18:47.620 So all our experience revolves around this "I". "I" is the central character 00:18:47.620 --> 00:18:58.680 in all our experience so that the essential investigation... the prerequisite for 00:18:58.680 --> 00:19:03.841 awakening, is to explore and recognize the nature of the "I" 00:19:03.841 --> 00:19:06.900 or the self that we really are. 00:19:06.900 --> 00:19:13.247 In the heart Sutra one of the most revered teachings of Buddhism it says that to be 00:19:13.247 --> 00:19:19.670 liberated we must realize this entire mechanism of the dualistic mind 00:19:19.670 --> 00:19:28.650 to be empty of self. When the "I" thought drops, then duality itself collapses. 00:19:28.650 --> 00:19:35.120 Form is realized as exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form. 00:19:35.120 --> 00:19:43.850 In the samadhi state, emptiness dances as fullness, stillness is inherent within 00:19:43.850 --> 00:19:51.570 movement, silence inherent within  sound. Life is experienced directly, 00:19:51.570 --> 00:19:58.580 not mediated via the filter of the mind. When we no longer go after the fruits 00:19:58.580 --> 00:20:04.660 of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when we no longer interface with the world 00:20:04.660 --> 00:20:11.923 in the old way, it is liberation, the end of suffering. 00:20:11.923 --> 00:20:18.550 As long as we believe to be having our own mind or our own ignorance or our own ego, 00:20:18.550 --> 00:20:23.920 it is because we are viewing this from a separate point of view and this is okay 00:20:23.920 --> 00:20:27.840 you know at the beginning that's how you're going to see it. But it's not how things 00:20:27.840 --> 00:20:36.410 are in reality. In reality there is only life. That's it. Only pure life into action 00:20:36.410 --> 00:20:40.700 So suffering is this resistance to life, resistance to our yes, 00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:46.230 resistance to our no, resistance to anything that is appearing, 00:20:46.230 --> 00:20:53.140 because we feel separated. And awakening is the healing of this separation, 00:20:53.140 --> 00:20:56.534 of this idea to be separated. 00:20:56.534 --> 00:21:01.750 We can start to understand egoic  resistance in the mind by observing the 00:21:01.750 --> 00:21:09.910 larger principle of how all energy moves in the universe. One way to understand is 00:21:09.910 --> 00:21:15.980 by looking at something called a Lichtenberg figure. A Lichtenberg figure 00:21:15.980 --> 00:21:21.820 is a pattern that occurs when high voltage electrical discharge passes through 00:21:21.820 --> 00:21:28.200 materials. The electrical discharge creates a pattern of branching channels 00:21:28.200 --> 00:21:36.150 that look like trees. Here electricity is going into wood. In this example the 00:21:36.150 --> 00:21:42.980 Lichtenberg figure is created by injecting trillions of electrons into an acrylic 00:21:42.980 --> 00:21:49.984 block using a 5 million volt particle accelerator. All physical matter, in this 00:21:49.984 --> 00:21:56.610 case the acrylic block, is a resistance or slowing down of energy. 00:21:56.610 --> 00:22:02.680 In a thunderstorm the resistance of the air affects the formation of the conductive 00:22:02.680 --> 00:22:08.560 channel and the current flow. When we observe the treelike structures created by 00:22:08.560 --> 00:22:15.960 the energy we're seeing the path that energy took through the medium 00:22:15.960 --> 00:22:21.429 through time. These treelike patterns or branching patterns are found at all levels 00:22:21.429 --> 00:22:31.597 and scales of nature, from the micro to the macro. The very fabric of the universe 00:22:31.597 --> 00:22:38.930 is a play of form, a play of resistance; one giant mind playing a kind of hide 00:22:38.930 --> 00:22:46.440 and seek with itself. Samskaras or unconscious patterns are created when the 00:22:46.440 --> 00:22:54.410 charge of an experience is high. Energies come together and the "I" thought appears. 00:22:54.410 --> 00:23:00.930 Resistance appears. If there's no resistance then energy just passes through 00:23:00.930 --> 00:23:07.020 life flows through. But when there's resistance, when "I" appears, 00:23:07.020 --> 00:23:12.510 then the energy branches off, creating new pathways in the unconscious mind. 00:23:12.510 --> 00:23:20.040 These patterns run autonomously, hiding and growing in the shadows until they're 00:23:20.040 --> 00:23:25.433 revealed again and consciously integrated  into the whole. 00:23:26.263 --> 00:23:31.870 The very first memory I have is of being really scared and I didn't know why I was 00:23:31.870 --> 00:23:38.910 scared and feeling like something was going to go wrong in any particular moment, 00:23:38.910 --> 00:23:46.360 and that feeling persisted throughout my whole life and intensified in my 20s. 00:23:46.360 --> 00:23:52.440 And I sank into a deep depression even after having four children. 00:23:52.440 --> 00:23:59.440 And I ended up going through probably 3 or 4 years where I was really searching 00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:03.500 for something but didn't know what that was. I never heard about awakening, didn't 00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:11.040 know what that was. And over time it began to become clear that whatever I was looking 00:24:11.040 --> 00:24:18.050 for wasn't to be found in my outer life. I had a good family, good business at the 00:24:18.050 --> 00:24:23.020 time; all the things that anyone could want. And yet still felt really empty 00:24:23.020 --> 00:24:32.960 inside, and eventually as part of healing from my depression I discovered meditation 00:24:32.960 --> 00:24:41.830 and dived into that, found some kind of peace, some deep sense of contentment, 00:24:41.830 --> 00:24:48.000 and for the first time in my entire life that sense of dread or fear had disappeared 00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:55.090 just momentarily for that first time ever. So I began to try to find out everything I 00:24:55.090 --> 00:24:59.757 could about what had happened, why that change. And why it had come back again, 00:24:59.757 --> 00:25:05.260 that feeling of fear. I began to research different spiritual pathways and came 00:25:05.260 --> 00:25:10.480 across this term awakening, enlightenment, and began to try to understand 00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:19.920 what that is. Eventually 15-20 years later came to recognize that it is 00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:24.850 when we're not believing our thoughts anymore. Thoughts might still be going on, 00:25:24.850 --> 00:25:29.530 but the fear was coming from believing my thoughts, believing that I was just 00:25:29.530 --> 00:25:36.860 a person or someone who was going about my life, and came to see I was a lot more 00:25:36.860 --> 00:25:46.510 than that. I am infinite and that over a period of 5 years that began to stabilize 00:25:46.510 --> 00:25:50.779 for lack of a better word. I had to look at everything that was coming up 00:25:50.779 --> 00:25:58.720 in the way of that, the sense of not being a good enough parent, the sense of 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:05.108 this feeling of inadequacy in my core.  I had to really look at that and 00:26:05.108 --> 00:26:12.546 investigate that and contemplate that. And eventually the peace became stable 00:26:12.546 --> 00:26:18.950 effortless, and even joy and love, sometimes even bliss. A deep sense of 00:26:18.950 --> 00:26:24.650 everything being okay, feeling at home, feeling safe, feeling that I can love 00:26:24.650 --> 00:26:30.120 myself, I like myself which is something that was not possible before for me. 00:26:32.270 --> 00:26:37.430 Many people get a glimpse of awakening but then seem to lose it. 00:26:37.430 --> 00:26:42.990 There's this game of I've got it and then I've lost it, or I'm awake and now 00:26:42.990 --> 00:26:49.500 the mind has come back. This happens when awakening is not fully recognized 00:26:49.500 --> 00:26:58.520 for what it is. Often there's a pleasant state when samadhi occurs; energy, bliss 00:26:58.520 --> 00:27:05.640 or a change in the mind consciousness or  perception and a sense of ease or freedom. 00:27:05.640 --> 00:27:10.399 And one will naturally mistake the phenomenal state for the truth 00:27:10.399 --> 00:27:17.684 of who you are. Often after a glimpse of awakening one will start seeking states 00:27:17.684 --> 00:27:24.080 or experiences rather than recognizing the awareness that is already present, 00:27:24.080 --> 00:27:30.320 and realizing it to be the source of true fulfillment. The truth of who you are 00:27:30.320 --> 00:27:38.250 is not a temporary state or experience. The phenomena comes and goes but the one 00:27:38.250 --> 00:27:46.890 who remains, primordial awareness, always IS. If you continue seeking states 00:27:46.890 --> 00:27:52.780 or experiences, eventually the seeker will get stronger and stronger and you will get 00:27:52.780 --> 00:27:58.170 farther and farther from the truth. The Seeker always misses the mark 00:27:58.170 --> 00:28:04.210 by chasing what is impermanent, just like an addict chasing temporary highs, 00:28:04.210 --> 00:28:08.110 and just like the addict the false seeker will always come 00:28:08.110 --> 00:28:11.540 to a crisis point or failure point. 00:28:11.540 --> 00:28:17.498 Life is a festival of addictive patterns of behavior and when I say that I don't mean 00:28:17.498 --> 00:28:23.920 only addiction to drugs like alcohol and nicotine. Everything that is preponderant 00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:27.970 in society tends to be addictive patterns of behavior; addiction to 00:28:27.970 --> 00:28:34.320 reality television, addiction to celebrity life addiction to buying the next pair of 00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:40.379 shoes, and why is that? The reason for that is that we are desperate to find a 00:28:40.379 --> 00:28:48.270 way to escape the profoundly meaningless and unnatural way of life that we have. 00:28:48.270 --> 00:28:52.401 But we don't know how to escape that so we try to compensate for it by engaging 00:28:52.401 --> 00:29:02.080 in addiction. Now understanding reality  has this peculiar characteristic of making 00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:06.610 life more natural, making life better aligned with the rhythm and flow 00:29:06.610 --> 00:29:10.440 and the directions of nature. If that happens there is no need 00:29:10.440 --> 00:29:15.130 for the addiction anymore, and we will live more fulfilling, healthier overall 00:29:15.130 --> 00:29:22.160 better lives without skewed perspectives  like the notion that your life is about you 00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:26.560 and my life is about me, which is one of the most unnatural things imaginable. 00:29:26.560 --> 00:29:32.169 It's like the blossom on my apple tree thinking my life's about me and I need to 00:29:32.169 --> 00:29:36.230 survive forever. If the blossom had its way there would be no more apples 00:29:36.230 --> 00:29:38.410 and no more apple trees. 00:29:38.410 --> 00:29:43.917 Once we understand the truth there is naturally a flip from an ego centered 00:29:43.917 --> 00:29:49.740 life or a life that is constantly feeding the patterns of craving and aversion, 00:29:49.740 --> 00:29:54.920 to a life that is more natural, more in the flow. 00:29:54.920 --> 00:29:59.990 And then it can happen at a certain point that this idea goes into crisis and maybe 00:29:59.990 --> 00:30:07.380 we start to seek spiritually or maybe before then some psychological inquiry. 00:30:07.380 --> 00:30:11.770 Then comes a moment in which we are ready to see beyond this illusion of being 00:30:11.770 --> 00:30:18.615 separated and let's say a conscious spiritual seeking starts. This spiritual 00:30:18.615 --> 00:30:23.720 seeking might starts before we are aware that we are spiritually seeking. 00:30:23.720 --> 00:30:33.557 When it's conscious we can see this unfolding of life no more as something 00:30:33.557 --> 00:30:38.050 to fight against, but as an invitation to wake up, 00:30:38.050 --> 00:30:40.570 so we start to be more open to life. 00:30:40.570 --> 00:30:47.250 Also suffering is the best natural tool to foment insight. 00:30:47.250 --> 00:30:52.123 We don't ask the deep questions unless we are suffering. If you're not suffering 00:30:52.123 --> 00:30:58.840 we just sort of ride the wave of life in a very Epicurean lighthearted superficial 00:30:58.840 --> 00:31:03.000 manner, and we never stop to think about what is happening. Who am I? 00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:06.030 what is this about? No. What is the purpose of it all? 00:31:06.030 --> 00:31:10.000 What's the meaning of it? We don't ask those questions unless we suffer. 00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:13.860 So suffering is a tremendous tool. It's very conducive to insight. 00:31:13.860 --> 00:31:20.930 Now we make it worse than it needs to be. We invent unnecessary superfluous suffering. 00:31:20.930 --> 00:31:25.410 I like to call it meta-suffering, and meta suffering comes from that little voice 00:31:25.410 --> 00:31:31.150 in your head that says you are suffering and you shouldn't be. That doubles the 00:31:31.150 --> 00:31:35.700 suffering right there. Because now not only do we still have the suffering that's 00:31:35.700 --> 00:31:40.385 natural and part of your life and you can't avoid, now you have the meta-suffering for 00:31:40.385 --> 00:31:46.510 being at war with nature, for being at war with the original suffering. The game is 00:31:46.510 --> 00:31:52.625 not to get rid of a natural process conducive to insight, a key tool 00:31:52.625 --> 00:31:58.380 of nature, the game is to not exacerbate it unnecessarily by waging war against it 00:32:00.080 --> 00:32:07.292 When we drop resistance to suffering then  it is no longer suffering. It transmutes 00:32:07.292 --> 00:32:13.900 into something that is for your benefit. Often in spiritual circles we hear the 00:32:13.900 --> 00:32:21.575 phrase "love what is." It is possible to love whatever pain is arising by learning 00:32:21.575 --> 00:32:27.322 to surrender egoic preferences understanding that what is arising 00:32:27.322 --> 00:32:33.794 is simply intense phenomena that actually takes you deeper into connection with life 00:32:33.794 --> 00:32:39.400 By remaining equanimous with what is, we begin purifying the patterns of 00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:47.290 resistance within the ego structure. This brings us to the surrender paradox. 00:32:47.290 --> 00:32:53.381 The surrender paradox is realizing that whatever you resist persists. 00:32:53.381 --> 00:33:00.450 The resistance actually gives power to the ego. The ego is nothing but the 00:33:00.450 --> 00:33:06.130 resistance itself. Sometimes on the path we get the idea that we shouldn't 00:33:06.130 --> 00:33:12.320 experience this or that emotion. We might feel that we're regressing if we feel hate 00:33:12.320 --> 00:33:19.300 or anger. The experience of the full range of human emotions is necessary. 00:33:19.300 --> 00:33:25.292 The paradox is that when we accept each emotion fully, dropping the resistance 00:33:25.292 --> 00:33:31.458 to it, it transmutes from emotion, which is full of beliefs, judgments, and 00:33:31.458 --> 00:33:37.130 and preferences, to pure feeling; to pure aliveness, 00:33:37.130 --> 00:33:43.170 which is beyond the evaluating mind. 00:33:47.460 --> 00:33:54.000 There's a famous story in Zen that  illustrates this point. Once a student 00:33:54.000 --> 00:34:01.308 asked Tenzin, a Zen master known for his wisdom and tranquility, "Master when your 00:34:01.308 --> 00:34:09.430 wife passed away did you feel sadness?" Tenzin replied "Of course I felt sadness, 00:34:09.430 --> 00:34:15.700 how could I not?" The student was puzzled and then asked, "But I thought you were a 00:34:15.700 --> 00:34:23.580 Zen master. Shouldn't you be beyond such emotions?" Tenzin smiled gently and 00:34:23.580 --> 00:34:30.870 responded, "Ah, you misunderstand. When I felt sadness I allowed myself to 00:34:30.870 --> 00:34:38.000 feel it fully, and to experience it deeply. And in doing so I honored the truth of 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:44.860 that moment. Then like clouds passing through the sky the sadness came and went. 00:34:45.380 --> 00:34:57.470 But the sky, the vastness of my being, remained unchanged. 00:35:02.920 --> 00:35:10.640 My awakening began really when I was in  graduate school, when a series of personal 00:35:10.640 --> 00:35:20.520 experiences really challenged me To begin  to question the purpose of life, of my 00:35:20.520 --> 00:35:29.560 life in particular, and the meaning. I began questioning, what's the point of 00:35:29.560 --> 00:35:35.820 all that I was doing. The experience was one of just being aware without being 00:35:35.820 --> 00:35:43.947 anything in particular. It was very liberating. There was a great sense of 00:35:43.947 --> 00:35:52.280 release, like something that had been under great pressure releasing, and there 00:35:52.280 --> 00:35:58.220 was relaxation and exhilaration, and all I remember was just being. 00:35:58.220 --> 00:36:03.320 That's all I want to be... just be. Nothin in particular. I call it the big shift 00:36:03.320 --> 00:36:13.520 for me. It really changed... almost like I want to say "inside out" but the way 00:36:13.520 --> 00:36:19.090 I saw things and the way I experienced things, the way I saw people, interacted 00:36:19.090 --> 00:36:25.760 with people.. and the flip is in the sense that all that I was experiencing, 00:36:25.760 --> 00:36:34.330 no matter what I was doing or saying, is simply awareness being expressed. 00:36:34.330 --> 00:36:39.750 The awareness that I am being expressed, so in that moment, in any moment, 00:36:39.750 --> 00:36:45.360 whatever I was saying or doing, that's  all that was happening is being aware, 00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:52.760 and that has stayed. But it has continued to reveal its nature. It was like I could 00:36:52.760 --> 00:37:01.140 see thoughts flowing by, and whatever action needed to happen, 00:37:01.140 --> 00:37:06.380 the action just came up and then the body was just basically acting out the action. 00:37:06.380 --> 00:37:10.810 It was no longer like before, whereas before I would think something, 00:37:10.810 --> 00:37:14.720 "I think I need to do this " and the "I" this person would be doing it. 00:37:14.720 --> 00:37:20.220 No. What's happening, what started to happen was, I'm just being. Being aware 00:37:20.220 --> 00:37:29.550 and actions just were arising and then the body was the tool and I was watching it in 00:37:29.550 --> 00:37:35.130 real time. The body is simply implementing any action arising in awareness 00:37:35.130 --> 00:37:39.800 and I happen to be a participant and an observer. I think that's the best part. 00:37:41.790 --> 00:37:49.190 Awareness is choiceless. The true Self is beyond choosing. Upon hearing that, 00:37:49.190 --> 00:37:54.740 one might say "okay I'm going to give up everything. I'm just not going to choose 00:37:54.740 --> 00:38:00.120 anything. I'll just sit in a cave. And many people have done that. 00:38:00.120 --> 00:38:06.629 But the problem is, that would still be a choice. I'm just choosing to suppress my 00:38:06.629 --> 00:38:13.490 choices and desires. It's the conditioned mind choosing to not choose. 00:38:13.490 --> 00:38:19.510 Both choosing and non-choosing are all at the level of the conditioned mind. 00:38:19.510 --> 00:38:24.120 But who or what is aware of that mind? 00:38:24.120 --> 00:38:28.600 After awakening you will find the conditioned self may still choose its 00:38:28.600 --> 00:38:35.530 favorite tea. It will still eat the diet that is best for the body. It's not that 00:38:35.530 --> 00:38:39.850 choosing isn't happening anymore. Many choices are still happening, 00:38:39.850 --> 00:38:45.960 arising all the time. But the difference is the sense of "I" is not entangled 00:38:45.960 --> 00:38:51.220 with any of that. The "I" thought has dropped away. 00:38:51.220 --> 00:39:01.560 "I" am not choosing, nor am I suppressing choice. 00:39:03.160 --> 00:39:09.350 So waking up is like demolishing the invisible walls of the ego, this armor, 00:39:09.350 --> 00:39:15.990 and recognizing our Oneness with it all. And the result is outstanding because 00:39:15.990 --> 00:39:20.770 we discovered that we were not suffering anger, pain, sadness... we were suffering 00:39:20.770 --> 00:39:27.890 our refusal of life, and we can learn to be so open that we are 00:39:27.890 --> 00:39:32.680 consciously one with life as it is. 00:39:32.680 --> 00:39:40.570 We'd rather feel good than suffer.. that's just normal, something in the human 00:39:40.570 --> 00:39:48.520 being, the ordinary species of homo sapiens, would rather feel good 00:39:48.520 --> 00:39:56.960 than feel bad. And I think that in the times when we become aware that 00:39:56.960 --> 00:40:02.920 it actually feels good to be conscious, something in us registers in the ordinary 00:40:02.920 --> 00:40:12.110 human brain, "Oh, I like this. This is possible." And it reinforces itself. 00:40:12.110 --> 00:40:17.980 Awakening can happen in stages gradually, or it can happen all at once in a 00:40:17.980 --> 00:40:24.360 radical flip, where we suddenly know who we are, as if waking from a dream. 00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:31.550 As if we've been asleep all our lives in our dream character. To stay awake 00:40:31.550 --> 00:40:36.220 there is an ongoing purification of the self structure required. 00:40:36.220 --> 00:40:43.308 Even if we have a full awakening it is important to be vigilant, to not believe 00:40:43.308 --> 00:40:49.840 the next thought, to remain equanimous with what is when unconscious thoughts 00:40:49.840 --> 00:40:56.800 surface. Otherwise the unconscious patterns of the mind may obscure the truth 00:40:56.800 --> 00:41:04.290 The unconscious must become a transparent unconscious. If we do not face what is in 00:41:04.290 --> 00:41:10.070 the unconscious we'll fall into what has been called spiritual bypassing. 00:41:10.070 --> 00:41:16.960 Spiritual bypassing refers to the tendency of some individuals to insist that they 00:41:16.960 --> 00:41:23.660 are already awake in order to avoid dealing with difficult emotions, unresolved 00:41:23.660 --> 00:41:30.670 psychological issues, or real life challenges. The egoic mind can appropriate 00:41:30.670 --> 00:41:37.950 a glimpse of awakening and keep one from living from that place of truth. 00:41:37.950 --> 00:41:43.430 I was sitting on my bed thinking about the mammogram I was about to go for the 00:41:43.430 --> 00:41:50.610 next day, and it had always been an extreme anxiety producing experience 00:41:50.610 --> 00:42:00.930 which I had once a year, and I was tired of feeling so scared. Tired of being afraid 00:42:00.930 --> 00:42:07.310 of dying and I was sitting on the bed and out of the blue I had this thought 00:42:07.310 --> 00:42:17.040 Couldn't I do this thing tomorrow without freaking out? And there was a thought 00:42:17.040 --> 00:42:28.030 really, just a thought but suddenly I felt this surge of a realization that 00:42:28.030 --> 00:42:38.630 I could indeed. And I didn't know how I knew that. I didn't know what had just 00:42:38.630 --> 00:42:47.860 changed, but something clearly had just changed. And I was stunned and I suddenly 00:42:47.860 --> 00:42:55.260 knew that it was going to be different from all the terrible anxiety I'd had 00:42:55.260 --> 00:43:01.000 all the years prior. And that didn't mean that the mammogram was going to 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:05.290 turn out fine. It didn't mean I didn't have breast cancer. 00:43:05.290 --> 00:43:12.800 That was really bizarre to me. It was a stunner and I got up and went in to my 00:43:12.800 --> 00:43:21.150 partner who was busy at his computer and I just stood in the doorway and 00:43:21.150 --> 00:43:24.160 he finally looked up he realized I was there and he said "What?" 00:43:24.160 --> 00:43:35.260 And I said, something's just happened. And I told him in the coming days little 00:43:35.260 --> 00:43:40.190 by little I began to realize it wasn't just that fear didn't seem to animate me 00:43:40.190 --> 00:43:50.920 anymore. I felt peaceful, completely without my ordinary ongoing stress. 00:43:50.920 --> 00:43:59.240 My mind was still. My outer life was basically the same but it was many months 00:43:59.240 --> 00:44:03.750 before I understood that this was awakening that had happened. 00:44:03.750 --> 00:44:09.140 It was a long time really. All I knew was I didn't hurt anymore in the way I had. 00:44:10.460 --> 00:44:16.520 And my mind was quiet and it's been like that ever since. 00:44:17.890 --> 00:44:24.874 There can be no memory of awakening itself There is only memory of experiences and 00:44:24.874 --> 00:44:31.330 phenomena. Whenever there is a memory there's always some resistance trace in 00:44:31.330 --> 00:44:37.381 the mind. This resistance trace is the original repetition... 00:44:37.381 --> 00:44:43.080 the beginning of the "I" thought. Awakening itself does not leave a trace 00:44:43.080 --> 00:44:50.040 in the mind. It is not an experience. Primordial awareness wakes up to itself 00:44:50.040 --> 00:44:58.374 in the now, unmediated by memory and the filtering of the mind. If we are chasing 00:44:58.374 --> 00:45:05.370 any state, any experience, and trying to live there, then we've missed it. 00:45:05.370 --> 00:45:11.770 If it comes and goes, if it's not here now then it's not your true nature. 00:45:16.140 --> 00:45:22.830 Let's take a moment to inquire directly  into our true nature. Directly means 00:45:22.830 --> 00:45:31.350 not via the mind. You cannot recognize that which is beyond the mind by means 00:45:31.350 --> 00:45:41.830 of the mind. Shift your attention inward and be aware of this moment. Become aware 00:45:41.830 --> 00:45:50.280 of awareness itself. Notice the thoughts, sensations and emotions that arise within 00:45:50.280 --> 00:45:57.760 this space, but also recognize the spaciousness within which they arise. 00:45:58.600 --> 00:46:04.660 Phenomena may bubble up from the unconscious. Thoughts, memories, 00:46:04.660 --> 00:46:11.560 feelings, emotions, energies; this is a natural clearing process that unfolds 00:46:11.560 --> 00:46:18.680 when we inquire. Just be open to anything that arises as a result of your inquiry. 00:46:18.680 --> 00:46:24.270 Allow yourself to abide in the natural state of the mind, 00:46:24.270 --> 00:46:32.280 free from the limitations of conceptual elaboration. 00:46:36.070 --> 00:46:43.400 So my own awakening occurred in essentially two fundamentally different 00:46:43.400 --> 00:46:51.710 movements. I approached the initial shift from a place of suffering, profound 00:46:51.710 --> 00:46:56.440 suffering, and I had known that it had something to do with thoughts. 00:46:56.440 --> 00:47:00.629 It had something to do with the way I was thinking, the way I was perceiving the world, 00:47:00.629 --> 00:47:06.700 the way I was perceiving myself. And this led me into a direct investigation 00:47:06.700 --> 00:47:12.730 of the nature of thought itself. And most importantly the nature of the thinker; 00:47:12.730 --> 00:47:17.440 the nature of the one who is seemingly bound by those thoughts. 00:47:17.440 --> 00:47:26.960 So with this direct investigation the sense of being a thinker was dissolved and 00:47:26.960 --> 00:47:33.120 with the sense of being a thinker being  dissolved, then all thought forms sort of 00:47:33.120 --> 00:47:40.320 lost meaning to me. What I didn't realize is when that happens we're left with a sort 00:47:40.320 --> 00:47:48.280 of pure or unbound conscious experience. And to me that was tremendously peaceful, 00:47:48.280 --> 00:47:56.950 tremendously relieving of my suffering. That was the first part of my awakening. 00:47:56.950 --> 00:48:02.640 I had no idea even from there with the clarity that was revealed, with the peace 00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:08.260 that was revealed, that it could go deeper That it could go a lot deeper. 00:48:08.260 --> 00:48:15.680 So over a period of a few days the initial glimpse, the initial very profound, very 00:48:15.680 --> 00:48:25.760 releasing, and surprising experience broke  open into something that goes beyond the 00:48:25.760 --> 00:48:32.810 human dimension; goes beyond the confines of who I take myself to be 00:48:32.810 --> 00:48:38.810 in any form at all. And how I take the world to be in any form at all. 00:48:38.810 --> 00:48:44.980 All of that was dismantled. What was left, what is left it is 00:48:44.980 --> 00:48:52.267 extremely difficult to actually formulate  into words, but through the book, 00:48:52.267 --> 00:48:56.730 through direct interactions with people who are interested in addressing this, 00:48:56.730 --> 00:49:00.440 it can be revealed and it can be revealed to that that person 00:49:00.440 --> 00:49:05.890 if they're ready for it and interested in investigating it themselves. 00:49:07.120 --> 00:49:15.480 No one can tell you what the mind is, what the matrix is, what you are. 00:49:15.480 --> 00:49:22.500 To know the immeasurable, the ineffable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet 00:49:22.500 --> 00:49:28.560 and still without any movement. In that deep quiet and profound 00:49:28.560 --> 00:49:33.576 silence there's a possibility of coming upon something which is 00:49:33.576 --> 00:49:40.410 timeless, eternal and beyond all measure. 00:49:40.410 --> 00:49:47.710 Let's say, to make a metaphor that awakening is when your head, 00:49:47.710 --> 00:49:52.110 the head of the ego, has been chopped by life. 00:49:52.110 --> 00:49:57.067 You saw clearly that you are not your bodymind. You're not an entity 00:49:57.067 --> 00:50:02.240 inside the bodymind but yes, the head has been chopped by life 00:50:02.240 --> 00:50:06.870 but it's still rolling down the hill, and as it's rolling down the hill 00:50:06.870 --> 00:50:13.258 it carries with it old patterns, old schemes, old point of views, that are 00:50:13.258 --> 00:50:18.830 no more nourished by your attention. You're resting in the witnessing solidly, 00:50:18.830 --> 00:50:23.720 you see these old patterns unfolding, you're not involved with them, 00:50:23.720 --> 00:50:27.580 but they're still happening. So the head is rolling down the hill 00:50:27.580 --> 00:50:34.040 but at a certain point it is going to stop. No more movement of old karmas 00:50:34.040 --> 00:50:39.680 coming into action. No more patterns emerging that you need to look for and 00:50:39.680 --> 00:50:48.110 dissolve. They're gone. And that's Moksha, that's Liberation. What I've been seeing 00:50:48.110 --> 00:51:04.470 is a progressive opening up to seeing life not as a person inside the body, but as 00:51:04.470 --> 00:51:11.875 a peaceful silent witnessing of it in which there were moments in which there was 00:51:11.875 --> 00:51:17.600 just actions, but there was no doer of those actions. 00:51:17.600 --> 00:51:23.770 A dog was barking... it was just a barking in the silence, or there was somebody 00:51:23.770 --> 00:51:32.080 walking, or my body walking, and it was just the walking. Not somebody walking. 00:51:32.080 --> 00:51:36.950 And this was accompanied with the silencing of the inner dialogue 00:51:36.950 --> 00:51:43.520 that was sometimes accompanying my life. So these moments of stepping out 00:51:43.520 --> 00:51:48.090 of this sense of being a person came  more and more frequently. 00:51:48.090 --> 00:51:53.080 And as this was happening everything that I thought to be, 00:51:53.080 --> 00:52:00.600 or to be engaged in life started to have a different sense. 00:52:00.600 --> 00:52:08.400 Instead of seeing like life against me or  difficult for me, or trying to ask to pray 00:52:08.400 --> 00:52:22.810 for a change, I started to become able to see that all that was aiming towards 00:52:22.810 --> 00:52:28.320 something higher, to open my heart more. To be more available to life. 00:52:28.320 --> 00:52:32.963 I started to see that what I called accidents or mistakes or things 00:52:32.963 --> 00:52:38.880 I didn't like, they were not wrong, and they were not against me. 00:52:38.880 --> 00:52:44.770 They were actually showing me a deeper reality which I was not in contact with. 00:52:44.770 --> 00:52:50.301 So all prayers became more like an amen. Thy will be done. All requests were 00:52:50.301 --> 00:53:00.870 more like, help me to see where I'm still refusing life, where I'm still refusing 00:53:00.870 --> 00:53:07.830 something. Where I still am suffering because I say no to the unfolding 00:53:07.830 --> 00:53:13.240 of life itself. So there was an opening up. And more this opening up to life 00:53:13.240 --> 00:53:18.770 happened and more these moments of conscious witnessing came. 00:53:18.770 --> 00:53:27.360 Awakening is just the beginning of this opening up. And it never ends in a way. 00:53:27.360 --> 00:53:38.590 It is a never ending opening. And the more this happens, more what we still see as 00:53:38.590 --> 00:53:49.920 difficult as contraction as fear, you really see that it's a trampoline towards 00:53:49.920 --> 00:54:05.600 a higher love. A dimension of love, of peace, of compassion, and we are all in it. 00:54:05.600 --> 00:54:11.680 Even those we think they're not. We are all taken in it. 00:54:15.820 --> 00:54:20.430 We can know that consciousness exists. That we can know for certain. 00:54:20.430 --> 00:54:24.940 Everything else we can make educated guesses about. Maybe very good guesses, 00:54:24.940 --> 00:54:30.580 but guesses nonetheless. Consciousness is the only pre theoretical 00:54:30.580 --> 00:54:36.320 given fact of nature. Everything else are theoretical abstractions that arise within 00:54:36.320 --> 00:54:42.510 consciousness. Consciousness is the sole axiom of nature. That it exists is the only 00:54:42.510 --> 00:54:48.950 absolutely certain thing in nature. And I can assure you that based on reasoning 00:54:48.950 --> 00:54:53.020 and the empirical evidence coming out from foundations of physics coming out from the 00:54:53.020 --> 00:54:57.932 neuroscience of consciousness, it has become extraordinarily unlikely that 00:54:57.932 --> 00:55:02.660 consciousness is not fundamental. To think of consciousness as secondary or 00:55:02.660 --> 00:55:08.300 epiphenomenal leads to all kinds of  insoluble problems. So there is excellent 00:55:08.300 --> 00:55:12.960 rational and empirical reason to take consciousness as at least one of if not 00:55:12.960 --> 00:55:18.580 the only fundamental building block of nature. Physics is fundamentally a science 00:55:18.580 --> 00:55:24.610 of perception. It's an attempt to account for the patterns and regularities of the 00:55:24.610 --> 00:55:30.200 world we perceive. It does not attempt to transcend perception. 00:55:30.200 --> 00:55:34.930 Even when physicists use instruments like  telescopes, microscopes, oscilloscope's, 00:55:34.930 --> 00:55:39.490 or whatever-a-scopes you want, the output of these instruments still needs 00:55:39.490 --> 00:55:46.050 to be perceived. So everything in physics gets filtered out through the paradigm 00:55:46.050 --> 00:55:50.970 of perception, so to say. Physics is a science of perception. Therefore it does 00:55:50.970 --> 00:55:57.826 not make any attempt to see fundamentally beyond the physical or fundamentally beyond 00:55:57.826 --> 00:56:04.597 matter, because physicality and matter are just other words for the world we perceive, 00:56:04.597 --> 00:56:12.310 for the contents of perception. Life is the instrument for its own understanding. 00:56:12.310 --> 00:56:18.678 To understand life you don't unplug from life. You don't unplug from that which 00:56:18.678 --> 00:56:23.250 you're trying to understand. What you do is you pay attention to what's happening, 00:56:23.250 --> 00:56:29.070 try to capture the nuance. Ask yourself, "What is this about? Why is this happening? 00:56:29.070 --> 00:56:34.390 What does this mean?" Life in the world is a book to be read and deciphered. 00:56:34.390 --> 00:56:40.330 But we may get so caught up in an understandable need to suffer less, 00:56:40.330 --> 00:56:43.918 that we forget to read the book. We forget to pay attention. 00:56:43.918 --> 00:56:49.020 While the book is the key to its own decipherment. If you decipher the book 00:56:49.020 --> 00:56:55.600 of life you will automatically suffer less, but you can't decipher it if you're not 00:56:55.600 --> 00:56:58.670 with your eyes on the ball, if you're not paying attention. 00:56:58.670 --> 00:57:01.690 Life is the tool to its own understanding. 00:57:01.690 --> 00:57:09.120 All the great religious and spiritual traditions were founded on this 00:57:09.120 --> 00:57:18.630 understanding. Namely that the there is  one infinite and indivisible reality which 00:57:18.630 --> 00:57:28.490 shines in each of us, as the experience "I am" and which appears to us as the world. 00:57:28.490 --> 00:57:36.140 In other words there is an ocean of being so to speak, that underlies everyone and 00:57:36.140 --> 00:57:41.640 everything from which everyone and everything derives its existence. 00:57:41.640 --> 00:57:46.160 In which everyone and everything lives, and into which it vanishes 00:57:46.160 --> 00:57:51.480 and disappears. And this is really the founding principle of all the great 00:57:51.480 --> 00:57:56.950 religious traditions, this the recognition of the the unity of Being. 00:57:56.950 --> 00:58:06.110 The first Hermetic principle is that "The all is mind, the universe is mental." 00:58:06.110 --> 00:58:14.400 Wherever we look is the one mind. As Rumi said, "Wherever I look, there is the 00:58:14.400 --> 00:58:22.170 face of God." Whether we peer into the micro world or into the macrocosm of space, 00:58:22.170 --> 00:58:30.500 we find the one mind. Here is an image of human neurons, and this is a simulated 00:58:30.500 --> 00:58:35.440 image of Dark Matter distribution throughout the Universe. 00:58:35.440 --> 00:58:41.280 The Millennium run is a simulation done by the Max Planck Institute using 00:58:41.280 --> 00:58:47.513 supercomputers to create a representation of the distribution and evolution of dark 00:58:47.513 --> 00:58:53.680 matter in the universe. Dark Matter forms a vast Cosmic web of interconnected 00:58:53.680 --> 00:58:59.310 filaments and nodes which is visually almost identical to neurons and the 00:58:59.310 --> 00:59:05.310 neuropathways found in a human brain. And the same pattern is ubiquitous 00:59:05.310 --> 00:59:14.130 throughout nature. We can call it the One Mind, or God or simply "all that is". 00:59:16.020 --> 00:59:24.330 And what is referred to as God is not  some external being beyond and 00:59:24.330 --> 00:59:31.840 prior to the world. God is the the being that shines in each of us as the knowledge 00:59:31.840 --> 00:59:41.210 "I am" and appears to us as the world. So we could say from this point of view 00:59:41.210 --> 00:59:46.980 in religious language, the world is the appearance of the word of God, the Logos, 00:59:46.980 --> 00:59:56.040 and that we are localizations of God's mind within God's mind. 00:59:56.920 --> 01:00:02.590 So how does one universal field of subjectivity, one universal consciousness, 01:00:02.590 --> 01:00:05.880 how does it appear to be many? Because I can't read your thoughts, 01:00:05.880 --> 01:00:09.203 presumably you can't read mine. I don't know what's happening in the 01:00:09.203 --> 01:00:15.680 galaxy of Andromeda, not even in China. We don't have a full experience of the 01:00:15.680 --> 01:00:22.480 entirety of nature, so how can this one mind that nature is have these limitations 01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:27.678 and appear to be many? Well I think we know one natural process 01:00:27.678 --> 01:00:32.560 that does exactly that. It's called dissociation in psychiatry. It's a process 01:00:32.560 --> 01:00:38.808 according to which one mind seemingly fragments into multiple disjointed centers 01:00:38.808 --> 01:00:46.410 of awareness. We have definitive empirical evidence for this in people, in humans, 01:00:46.410 --> 01:00:54.460 from neuroimaging and now I think we are close to beginning to have an explicit 01:00:54.460 --> 01:01:00.550 conceptual account of dissociation based on integrated information theory, which is 01:01:00.550 --> 01:01:04.940 the main theory in the neuroscience of consciousness. When a dissociative boundary 01:01:04.940 --> 01:01:10.810 forms you can only see what is across that dissociative boundary through perception. 01:01:10.810 --> 01:01:16.730 And what you then perceive is matter, physicality. In other words 01:01:16.730 --> 01:01:22.920 matter, physicality, is a conscious appearance of a conscious process 01:01:22.920 --> 01:01:27.510 from across a dissociative boundary. 01:01:29.160 --> 01:01:34.140 Whether we describe these processes in terms of modern theories or using 01:01:34.140 --> 01:01:39.520 ancient models like the five skandhas, what matters is that we make these 01:01:39.520 --> 01:01:46.480 processes which are usually unconscious, conscious. When they are made conscious 01:01:46.480 --> 01:01:52.750 then resistance within the self structure can be dropped. The unconscious operation 01:01:52.750 --> 01:01:59.880 of "I" can be dropped. The perception that we are a physical body, the perception 01:01:59.880 --> 01:02:05.240 of sensations on the body, the conceptualization of objects and things, 01:02:05.240 --> 01:02:11.280 the identification with preferences towards  those things, and the sense that there is a 01:02:11.280 --> 01:02:18.560 witness watching all of this, all of these  mind processes are to be realized as empty 01:02:18.560 --> 01:02:26.600 of self. In other words we disidentify from the phenomena while allowing it to be 01:02:26.600 --> 01:02:34.860 exactly as it is. This is not a turning away from life. Quite the contrary this is 01:02:34.860 --> 01:02:40.408 a deepening of the intimacy with life. 01:02:41.328 --> 01:02:48.530 My understanding that consciousness is  fundamental and precedes physicality, 01:02:48.530 --> 01:02:53.720 over the years has fundamentally changed my experience of life in the world and 01:02:53.720 --> 01:02:59.560 what it means to be a human being alive in the world. To me it happened slowly. 01:02:59.560 --> 01:03:03.380 At first it was a merely conceptual understanding in my head, and then 01:03:03.380 --> 01:03:08.550 it sort of sunk into the body and started modulating my emotions, my feelings, 01:03:08.550 --> 01:03:14.090 and it changes everything. It changes what you consider to be a well-lived life, 01:03:14.090 --> 01:03:21.040 it changes what you consider to be goals worthy of working towards, it changes 01:03:21.040 --> 01:03:24.930 your perception of self, it changes your relationship to other living creatures, 01:03:24.930 --> 01:03:31.440 yeah it does change everything. Personal goals in terms of status, power, money, 01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:36.398 that has gone away. The awareness that my life is not at all, has never been, 01:03:36.398 --> 01:03:41.730 and will never be about me, but it's about nature, and I'm just one local manifestation 01:03:41.730 --> 01:03:48.040 of nature, that understanding leads to a profound relaxation of that anxiety 01:03:48.040 --> 01:03:52.395 that comes with the need to achieve certain personal goals or with the 01:03:52.395 --> 01:03:57.160 disappointment that comes when you don't reach those personal goals. 01:03:57.160 --> 01:04:03.040 All that stuff has gone. I live life now as a form of service to Nature. 01:04:03.040 --> 01:04:08.440 I'm open to doing whatever it is that nature wants to do through me and 01:04:08.440 --> 01:04:14.820 although that may sound like being bonded to service like a slave it doesn't 01:04:14.820 --> 01:04:20.670 feel like that. It feels like I no longer have the oppressive overwhelming responsibility 01:04:20.670 --> 01:04:25.400 to make myself personally happy. Which is the most oppressive idea 01:04:25.400 --> 01:04:29.610 that the human mind can have, which is that your life is about you and therefore 01:04:29.610 --> 01:04:33.850 you have the responsibility to be happy so when you fail on that it's your failure 01:04:33.850 --> 01:04:39.360 and then you start regretting it. No, that has gone. It has disappeared. 01:04:39.360 --> 01:04:44.580 That's one of the things that changed in my life. A deeper understanding of reality 01:04:44.580 --> 01:04:53.700 is directly conducive to empathy, to mutual respect, to non egoic purposes. 01:04:53.700 --> 01:04:57.410 It's conducive to less addictive patterns of behavior. 01:04:57.410 --> 01:05:03.640 So there is absolutely no doubt that if humanity's understanding were deeper 01:05:03.640 --> 01:05:09.130 and more pervasive, life would definitely be better. 01:05:09.860 --> 01:05:16.120 The solution to the world's problems is to recognize the true source of the problems, 01:05:16.120 --> 01:05:23.060 which is the ego that operates only for its own interest. It doesn't matter what 01:05:23.060 --> 01:05:30.890 the ego engages with; politics, religion, economics, or education. As long as it 01:05:30.890 --> 01:05:36.780 operates from the false premise that there is a separate "I", then we will continue 01:05:36.780 --> 01:05:43.110 to perpetuate suffering and separation.  The only solution for humanity now 01:05:43.110 --> 01:05:47.620 is to wake up. 01:05:50.450 --> 01:05:57.518 In Buddhism, when there is no longer a sense of self as a separate thing, and at 01:05:57.518 --> 01:06:05.680 the same time, no other than Self, it is nirvana, the cessation of self-centered 01:06:05.680 --> 01:06:11.760 activity, the cessation of delusion, the cessation of dreaming, 01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:17.220 and the waking up from the character in the dream of life. 01:06:17.220 --> 01:06:24.640 The Bible says the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. 01:06:24.640 --> 01:06:30.961 The Word is is often translated as Logos, which is an ancient word with a profound 01:06:30.961 --> 01:06:39.920 meaning. The logos is associated with eternity, Truth and direct revelation. 01:06:39.920 --> 01:06:45.310 You could say that it is through the Logos or through Christ Consciousness, 01:06:45.310 --> 01:06:58.120 or Buddha nature that God's mind is made known.