What is the best thing you can do against ignorance in the world?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And I thank you for being here. Instead of being here, you could have spent your time trying to argue with people out in the world to try to rid them of their ignorance. When the ultimate ignorance is to try to work on someone else rather than oneself. And you could have kept judging the world and putting meaning to every little thing that happens and trying to judge it good, bad, advantageous, disadvantageous, rude, polite. Instead of doing any of that, you are here engaging with beauty, with the world of ideas, of which hopefully we are selecting the most timeless and the most universal ones, the ones that are relevant to all of us. And you're away from distractions, away from resentment, from envy, from thinking about other people, and to see which of my beliefs are false, which ones can I let go? What truths can I adopt? How can I change my life to be more in accordance with everything that is beautiful, with love, with truth, with justice.

SPEAKER_05 1:47

Or it's like, versus when I do engage in things that I like to do, like hobbies, passions, it's like when I practice gratitude in the morning, it's it just feels more intense, or it feels like when I'm engaging with hobbies, that gratitude is reinforced and it feels so much more connected. So it's just an observation that I made. Whereas even though, once again, the thing that I'll be expressing gratitude for didn't change. I mean, in a 3D world, nothing really changed. But it's just interesting how when we put focus onto something or we observe the way something makes us feel, it's like nothing really changed, but it's how we chose to take it in. And so I just found that a really interesting observation. How when we do things that we love to do, it makes everything else flow so much more naturally, and it helps bring purpose. And so, yeah, I just really I noticed it really sometimes it feels like I don't even need to journal or practice any gratitude in the morning because in the evening, if I do something like go running or go reading or do like do some painting, that feels the same as meditating or expressing gratitude. So I just found that really interesting, and I've never really encountered or I've never placed any attention to that before. So I thought that was interesting to bring up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's very, very interesting. And I would like to actually ask a couple questions about that because it is it is a very, very crucial uh finding of yours that you are obviously seeing in your experience. This is how it came up. It didn't come up in theory, you didn't read it in a book, it came up in your experience. So this is a this is a very, very interesting uh point. So what I wanna what it made me think of and what I want to say before I ask a couple of things is um obviously we see great benefit from having a practice. Okay, and that practice can be whatever you want, whatever again, once again, shows up in your experience, what what truly helps you in however way you want to define that. Obviously, we talk a lot about journaling, we talk a lot about um just being mindful, we talk about reading. All of these as a combination is a practice. You mentioned meditation, of course, that is very much part of um a lot of people's practices. And often we adopt these practices and and we feel better in many ways, right? The practice itself shows immediate results and uh especially over time, it really adds up to great insights and great changes in habit, exactly where we want the change to occur. However, we often skip or don't give a lot of weight to the question, what is this practice for? Okay, the practice of reading is is to be able to learn more, the practice of meditating is to become more mindful. Gratitude and whatever way you do it, whether you're journaling or whatever else you're doing, is to notice all the things one is grateful for. Okay, so that's the immediate purpose. And that's great, that's why we do these things. But what is the ultimate purpose? Is the ultimate purpose to keep doing this practice forever? Or is there some other purpose to all of this doing, to all of this habit changing, to all of this practice? That's what I would like to ask you. What is your ultimate goal? Or what do you see as the ultimate purpose of your practice?

SPEAKER_05 6:06

I appreciate that question because to tell you honestly, last year I would have said it would be for the goal of a future outcome, or to eventually become a better person, or to engage with better habits, and then make those habits so consistent that I don't have to think about them too much, or just happens every day. As if now I would say, I don't think there's any intention or goal. I think it's just practice that brings presence and just feels it just feels really good and it feels like I'm connecting with myself, which is once again for me present. And so I found that actually removing any form of intention or goal is what makes it feel so special, or what makes it feel like I can repeat it over and over again in that special feeling. I feel it doesn't go away or it's never diminished the more I practice. So I'd say for me it's actually removing any form of goal or intention just to stay present because I believe we only really get the present moment, we don't live in the future or the past. So yeah, I'd say for me, it's just just stay present and grounded with myself.

unknown 7:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Right. And the amazing thing is that you are now seeing the true fruits of your practice. The true fruits of your practice. Again, I don't consider the true fruits of any practice to be, you know, I read more, I like reading more, I read more, and I learn more, and that's what I wanted. That's the that's the immediate, smaller fruit. The true fruit to me is that the practice, whatever the practice gives you, at some point, you don't need it anymore. Thanks to the practice. It's a it's a funny thing. It's it sounds a bit ironic, but to me, that's the ultimate fruit of any practice is that it takes you beyond itself. It takes you beyond itself. It takes you from somewhere that you don't want to be to somewhere where you want to be, but also does not make you dependent on itself, meaning you don't have to do it forever. At some point, even the practice itself falls away. It's almost like maybe comparable to the to the so-called practice wheels on a bicycle, right? They are there for you to to help you learn certain things about about how to ride a bicycle, but they're they're not supposed to be there forever, the training wheels. Right? They're supposed to come off at some point. So any practice that says, no, no, these training wheels, they need to be on here forever. I mean, this is the only way you're ever going to be able to ride a bicycle. That ultimately is gonna be a limiting practice. Literally, it's gonna limit you because with uh someone who's ready for those wheels to come off, at that point, those wheels become an impediment to really going fast, to really taking the corners uh well, right? And so now this is happening naturally to you, slowly, slowly. And we don't have to have any expectations of, oh, this is gonna increase or this is a great thing or this or that. No, none of that. I'm just trying to point out that which is already being pointed out to you, which is wow, even the practice itself, I don't need anymore. I don't need anymore. I can see, you know, part of this practice was for me to see all the things that I'm grateful for that I couldn't see before. I wasn't maybe noticing them. So I started a practice of gratitude. Right. And now you're saying, even when I don't do my gratitude practice specifically, I'm still grateful. Because when I do certain activities, oh, it's so beautiful. Whereas before, maybe the voice inside of your head would have said, Okay, um you can't really be painting right now. I mean, there's much more to do. There's there will be that uh unreasonable shame as if you're not supposed to live your life, right? Because there's always something more practical to do technically. But we're not here to achieve logistical practical goals. Even those logistical practical goals are to a greater end, just like the practice itself. So now this is happening to you naturally, which I think uh objectively without being emotional about it, is a beautiful thing because the practice is taking you beyond the practice, which is beautiful. There are people who have been meditating for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years. We meditate to go beyond meditation. We pray to go beyond prayer. We journal to go beyond writing. Where it's written on our mind and every fiber of our being at that point. We don't need to go write it down in a journal anymore. We live these things, so to to to journal, to list things, to say, oh, these are the things I'm grateful for. At some point it's so obvious, I feel like I'm writing down every time I take a breath, I make a note somewhere. Why would I do that? Right? Now, one last important thing that I also want to weigh against that is this is not to say that everyone who's journaling right now and who very much the day they don't journal, they they feel you know things are going out of control. This is not to say, oh, you're at a beginner level. And when you're gonna be really advanced, you're you're gonna stop journaling. This is an expectation that the mind will create. This is not at all what I'm saying. The one who's engaged in the practice is doing just as much the work of life as the one who feels that right now practice, uh pride the practice is not needed, the journaling is not needed, the meditation is not needed, whatever it may be, whatever the practice is for that person. So I want to draw that important distinction. We should not come to our practice thinking, oh, I need this because I'm a beginner. That's why the training will analogy is actually not not a good one at all. Um but they're words and we must use that some somehow. So they're equal. There's no such thing. It's the mind, it's the ego that ranks things and that values things and that puts one on top of another and makes a narrative. There's no such thing with this. The the doing of the practice is just as valuable as the non-doing of the practice because one feels that it is not so needed anymore. So I just want to point that out. But it is a beautiful place. And to be done with a practice does not mean we're done with it forever. You're saying these days it feels good, maybe in a week and a month, and a year, you're gonna feel like engaging in an even heavier, so to speak, practice. Even more things than you used to do before as a practice. Who knows? This is what I'm saying. There's no value difference between these two. It's whatever is needed right now. Because the practice ultimately is to take oneself to a place where things are effortless. Peace is effortless, being is effortless. You have no other choice than to be. You have no other choice. It's not something you can turn on or off. Um and your existence has happened, that's never gonna change. Peace is stillness, all these things are effortless. And so all our practices are towards this end, to come to that effortless peace, peaceful state, which we are already experiencing during the practice. This is why I'm saying the practice, there's nothing wrong with the practice. Um, but there are different ways of experiencing depending on what's happening in life. And so I find that beautiful, and I want to point that out to everyone that we should not be so rigid, both in doing the practice as well as in not doing. Oh, I don't need the practice anymore. So even though I'm feeling some uneasiness in me and it's not so effortless, I'm not gonna go back to it because that would be to backtrack. That would be to lose progress. No, no, no, absolutely not, right? All I'm saying is let's get rid of that rigidity, let's do the practice without rigidity, let's not do the practice without rigidity, whatever it is. There is very much such uh a thing such as attachment to detachment. There are a lot of people who are attached to detachment, and that's um not right as well because it's not easy, it's an uneasiness. So that's perhaps why people say non-attachment. Not detachment, non-attachment. So just like you came here to point that out, I wanna I just wanted to further amplify, I think, what's happening there, which I think is beautiful. And so I want to show everyone this is a flowing thing. This is a flexible thing, this is a beautiful thing, this is not a rigid thing, this is not coursework. This is not clocking in, clocking out. This is whatever it is it needs for you to be. This is just awareness. Yeah, so thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_05 15:44

Yeah, of course. Yeah. I just thought it was just something on my mind, and I guess I never made the time to speak on it or reflect on it properly during the week of exams, but I thought others will might relate to this. And you also mentioned something really interesting to me. You said detachment versus non-attachment. I've never thought of that, thought of it, thought of it that way before, because if you say detachment versus non-attachment, I guess that's implying that there's nothing to attach to. If we're so grounded every day, why should we be attached to being detached from everything if we practice gratitude and we do whatever we do to feel connected to ourselves? If that's what the essence of joy is and purpose in our life, then what is there to attach to? Even if it's too attached to detachment, I feel like that's just a really important and good thing you said, because sometimes with the ego, you can get wrapped up in that. Oh, I should be journaling because I don't want to be attached to everything in life. But I feel like that also takes away from the purpose and the joy feeling that and the freeing feeling that journaling or whatever meditation anyone does gives. So I'm definitely gonna write that down attachment versus non-attachment. And I'll definitely be thinking about that today.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I mean, uh to me, the example comes to mind of, for example, this is what uh so many times asceticism leads to misery, also, because people become attached to their ascetic practices. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Comes back to practice. Random example, let's say someone chooses to sleep on the floor because they're saying, I want to break my attachment to comfort, to luxury. I don't want that to be a need for me anymore, right? I don't want that to be my master anymore. And and that's a great thing. But then they become attached to sleeping on the floor, right? Because, you know, maybe their back starts hurting and then they don't want to go back to the bed because then they feel like they're failing. They're failing in their practice, they're failing, they're going back into, they're falling back into attachment. No, if you can go back to the bed because it's your back, not because you're yearning for luxury, then you have achieved non-attachment to luxury. But if you keep sleeping on the floor, even though it's not healthy for you, and um just because that's what you do, then you are attached to detachment. And that's just yet another attachment. And this is how the mind tricks us, this is how the mind overthinks and says, You're gonna fall back then. Right? It makes an evil out of something that is not an evil, and that's how we get trapped in our practices, right? That person might sleep on the on the floor for the rest of their life because they see that as an achievement of non-attachment. But it it actually isn't. Um if that's comfortable and if that's fun, actually, and it's sort of whatever, it's better than a bed, okay. So then you keep doing it. Right. There's also no such thing that you should not sleep on the floor ever. Um This is what I mean. It's this flexibility. We just have to it's it again comes back to intention versus outcome. Right? What's my intention on sleeping on the floor? What's my intention on sleeping in the bed? What's my intention in journaling? What's my intention in meditation? What's my intention in anything? This is the most important thing we keep coming back to. So yeah, that to me is the difference between detachment and non-attachment. It seems like the same thing, but crucial, crucial different difference. So yeah, thank you once again. And uh was there anything else you wanted to share or a question or say or anything?

SPEAKER_05 19:59

No, that was it. I yeah, that's sort of in my mind today. So thank you for sharing those wise words. I'll definitely be reflecting on them.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for um allowing us to speak about the practice thing because I think it's very important. We are at a point um where there are people here who have been with these ideas for a year or two, maybe even a little bit more. And so I want to point out that you might be at a point where the practice is actually becoming its own attachment. Right. And that's okay. That too is not a problem. That too just needs to be seen, and then it will effortlessly, naturally, maybe change into something else. Or it doesn't even need to change, even though the intention has changed. That's totally fine. So I will take our next speaker here.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

I've been thinking about something uh related to uh creativity and the vision and imagination, and I'm curious how you see it, because in previous kinships you mentioned that imagination is the source of uh cre is not the source of uh creative work and that it's intrusive and it sometimes harasses us, and that creativity comes from a vision that we receive and it serves a noble purpose. And I was wondering where these visions come from and why is it not as easy as as imagination and and I do notice sometimes when people see like a like a beautiful painting or a poem or like a piece of writing, and they often say, Oh, I wish I could I wish I could paint that, I wish I could uh see things this way. And And why does a vision come to some people and others don't? And is it because they they don't notice much or they are not open to them? And and sometimes and also when we when we sometimes face like art blog, like sometimes when like painters say that oh I haven't painted in a while, I'm I'm having art block or I haven't like uh wrote anything in a while. Um why is it sometimes hard to receive these visions? And why is it not as easy as as imagination? So that's what I've been thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for those questions. Again, once again, very important. And I'm glad that you're sort of it seems like you're dedicating yourself to figuring that out for yourself. That's why these questions are coming up, because these are not surface level questions, right? This is this is the next after. And um see those visions are not coming as you say because they're being obscured. Right? Vision, just like physical vision, this is just an analogy. We're not talking about physical vision, but as an analogy, the physical vision is effortless. There is no effort to it. In fact, it takes more effort to, you know how sometimes people sit in a chair and they're not doing anything and they're just looking at a wall, but you can tell they're not actually looking at anything, they're thinking about something, they're just like like that. It's actually more effort to have your eyes open to look at something, but to not perceive it and to be in your mind and to create scenarios and imaginations and to talk to that and to go through different scenarios and then to feel emotions and then to try to calm yourself down and to think of something else instead. It's much more difficult actually to engage with imagination than vision. And again, it's not a physical vision we're talking about, but it's the exact same thing. If you would just sit there and let these things come, they would come. Why they're it feels like they're not coming is because they're being obscured. Obscured by what? As is with all things, the reason is false beliefs. False beliefs. I am looking at a painting, but what I'm doing actually is superimposing. Do we know what superimposing means? Uh there's a real object there, but I am projecting onto its surface another image. That's essentially what I'm doing. So I'm looking at the painting, I'm seeing the painting, but I'm superimposing on it. Oh, this is talent. Someone was born with this. This cannot be achieved in a lifetime by studying, by by trying, by training. This is inborn skill. This is inborn talent. You either have it or you don't. That's a projection I'm making on top of that painting. Instead of the surface of the painting, I am seeing uh a mind construct as the surface of the painting. Each brush stroke I superimpose on it talent rather than skill, which is different, right? Talent is inborn. You either have it or you don't. Skill is something that anyone can go out and train and and and achieve with certain physical limitations, of course. And so I am not really looking at the painting, I'm looking at the meaning that I have superimposed on it. So between me and the painting as it truly is, there is a projection of meaning that I have added on to it. And where does that projection come from? It was created in my imagination. And so this is why when we get out of the imagination, when we say, when we look at an object, and this could be anything, this could be a banana, this could be someone's dog, this could be someone's house, this could be my own hand. Am I looking at the thing itself, or am I looking at the thing plus, plus, plus, plus, right? Am I looking at my hand and I superimpose on it age? And I say, hmm, my hand used to look better. See, whatever that means, that that's another meaning. That's another projection. What's better? Um, I have a scar on it now. Okay, what does that mean? The scar is there, okay. That's reality. What does the scar mean to you? It means damage to me. But there are so many people who are proud of scars. Maybe they got it as when they were a soldier and they or they they were a firefighter and they saved someone. That's how they got their scar, and they're actually quite proud of it. Now that's not right either. That's just another meaning. That's just another judgment we put on that. That's another superimposition, right? It can be positive, it can be negative. All I'm trying to point out is where I see damage, someone else sees an achievement. How is that possible? How can objective reality be interpreted so differently by imagination, by beliefs? And I don't even want to call them false beliefs. That's just another judgment, right? But if we are suffering, if we are in misery, if we say, I don't want this belief, then it is a false belief, right? So it's a it's on an individual, it's discerned on an individual basis. But either way, it comes back to a belief. This scar means this to me. And so that's why it becomes good or bad. But if I would come out of my imagination, if I would notice, and this is all it takes, notice, observation, awareness, and everything. The answer is awareness on everything I'm telling you. But we'll specifically talk about it in this case. That's how we understand concepts. If I am aware of the judgment coming in of the scar, of the painting, what it took to make that painting, what each bush stroke, the skill it took in my mind. If I can notice, uh-this scar means this, hold on. That's a value judgment. That's something I am saying. That's something I am believing, but I don't, there's no necessity for me to believe that. I am not being forced to believe. This is coming from me. This is not in reality, this is not objective. What is objective then? Let's strip it down to reality. Reality is that there is a scar.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Any more than that? Is reality telling us any more than that? No, it's not. We add the rest. We add the rest.

SPEAKER_04 29:25

So you're saying sorry. So you're saying that we we perceive things as we are, not as they truly are.

unknown 29:37

Right?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

You could you could say that, yeah. And um all false beliefs, all superimpositions on objective reality or reality period, come from the imagination. The imagination takes uh sense perception, right? The vision is coming in the way it is. It takes that sense perception, it builds it into an image, and then it interprets that image, it puts commentary on it. The imagination does, then the mind does generally, if you let it, right? So it is a learning of seeing. It is a learning of taking that which obscures vision. The vision is already there. How can I have this kind of vision? Why don't some people have this vision and others do? No, they all have that vision. They all have that vision, especially the vision that we're talking about, physical vision, yeah, most human beings have, right? 99.9% probably. Uh, but this vision that we're talking about, 100% of humans have. 100% of humans. So it's not about having or not having, it's about having it obscured or not. And the only thing that obscures vision, truth, reality, um, love, all these things are false beliefs, identities, the ego. These are all synonyms. These are all synonyms, okay? The false self. The false self itself is something created in the imagination. It does not exist in reality. If we would just stick with reality when it comes to that, we would just sit here and feel our being. We would say, what's the one thing? If I asked you, what's the one thing you can be sure of as you're sitting here? There's no imagination, no thoughts. You would say, the only thing I'm sure is I am. I am. And then the imagination may come in, and the thinking may come in, I am an unskilled artist. I am a blocked writer, I am a disadvantaged student, or you know, I am a very successful so-and-so. I mean, whatever it is, right? The imagination adds to the simple objective fact of I am. It adds to it, I am this, I am that, now this, then that. And so as we become aware, here again, key point awareness of a false belief, we drop it. How do we become aware of false beliefs? By examining our beliefs. Simple thing, very simple thing. I should eat a banana in the morning. Why? Uh to get more potassium, and uh it doesn't give my stomach any issues, and it tastes good, and it's affordable, and it makes sense. But if you're having too much potassium, then uh-huh. I see that's a false belief. A banana is actually not good for me, even though generally banana is not an unhealth unhealthy food to me in the context of my experience of my life, my body, my biology, right now, at this time, it is an unhealthy food. So by examining that, I saw that. No one's gonna tell me that. And even if they tell me I have to believe it, it has to make sense to me. Otherwise, I won't do it. And so, this is the same thing I'm trying to point out on a perhaps a less questioned level, because a doctor might ask you, hey, what are you eating? Because these levels are high. And so you might get questioned that way. But no one's ever going to question you on, hey, what do you think about the imagination? Is it really necessary? Who asks anyone like this? We're so unchallenged in these things, right? And this is why we are good friends to each other here, because we we challenge ourselves and each other in ways that the world generally doesn't. And so when I say, hey, I want to suggest this to you, I if I feel that I am seeing, that I'm experiencing, that imagination is not only not necessary, but it is actually quite harmful because we all experience the harassment of the imagination and we keep it. We keep it. This is something we're doing, we're giving it life. Without us, it could imit the imagination does not exist. We keep it because we say, but it is also necessary, though, for creativity, for perceiving beauty, for creating beauty. And I challenge that by saying, look, try it the next time, whenever you're making your crafts, your art, your amazing things, your your makerness. Um, don't engage with the imagination and see if it doesn't come to you as a vision, as a seeing. And I'm reporting back to you that I never need the imagination now in everything I do, right? And you don't have to be uh a full-time artist to need creativity. We all create, we all need creative solutions, for example. That's the creativity. Uh in that sense, making art, creativity is for everyone. It's it's a vital human need and it's a vital inborn human skill. So I'm telling you, I'm not I'm not needing it. Maybe you do. Okay, so then that's your experience. I'm just suggesting it, I'm just challenging it. Right. And then you can go examine it for yourself if you so choose to do. And whatever comes out of it, comes out of it. But to answer your question, uh, no, in my opinion, no one lacks the vision itself, the ability, the apparatus of that vision, no one lacks it. It is obscured. Just like when people say, I don't know myself, I don't know who I am, or I'm disappointed in myself, or I'm experiencing a lot of self-hatred, or who are you talking about? That's when we challenge people in that way, right? When you say, I am disappointed in myself, who is disappointed in whom? Can you explain that to me? And then more often than not, people realize, oh yeah, well, there aren't two people inside of me, so how can I do that? Oh, interesting. I've constructed a persona, an identity in which I am disappointed in. But that identity, that persona is not me. So, uh-huh. Even my self-disappointment is not actually directed at me, but at a mind construct that I've come up with, perhaps with the imagination. And uh I heard one other question in there that we might as well answer, uh, where you said imagination seems so much easier to engage with than vision. I have a bit of a theory on that, but it doesn't change what we've said so far, right? That we don't need to know how things came about to know how they are and what the solutions are. But it seems to me, again, drawing from my own experience, that when we were children, we didn't so much like what we saw. The vision of the present moment, we didn't like so much because we were forced to do a lot of things. We were forced to wake up early in the morning, go to some school with at first filled with strangers, and uh a lot of challenges of learning. I can't comprehend this, feeling stupid, feeling inadequate, feeling like uh less deserving, less worth, less able than other people, with which we are directly being compared with through grades and and um performance reports and all these things. And and then at night, you know, we come home after five hours, eight hours in some countries, 10 hours of that, and then there's still homework to do. That's horrible. It's just horrible, right? And so what we do in class, in between class, during homework, as much as we can, we escaped into our imagination. We escaped, we were looking for an escape. And so that's when we trained our imagination. That's when we trained to go in there to escape, to make reality different than it is, to make it more bearable, so to speak, to make it prettier, to escape, plain and simple. And we've been escaping ever since because elementary school ended, and then middle school came, and then uh high school came, and for many people after that, university, a bachelor's degree came. For a lot of people after that, a master's degree came, and for some people, even after that, another master's came, and for some people, yet, even after that, a doctorate and another doctorate came. And so now we're 30, 40-year-old people who have been escaping from reality almost all of their lives. And so we're experts in our imagination, we're experts in imagining things, in in being able to turn that machine on, to look at us at something physically, but to not even perceive it and instead be in our minds. It's a much more complicated indirect procedure if you if you really notice it, if you think about it, in my opinion. This is my opinion. And so now we're experts in imagining. And we have obscured our vision with it. And so now it's time to come out of the imagination and to come back into reality. As far as we can perceive it. Okay, uh, some people might argue you you never see reality objectively, it's always filtered in some, okay, but let's come down to the minimum amount of filters possible, right? Whatever that might be. And um, let's examine our beliefs, all these beliefs that we conjured up in our imagination as a result of our imagination, and let's examine them. If they are fine, let's double down on them. Right. But if we feel now that they have become unnecessary, that they do not correspond to our lived experience, to uh to the reality as we perceive it in its most fundamental elemental form, then let's let let's let go of them. And as we let go of them, the vision is you know less and less obscured. And we do not need perfect vision, or maybe no one has perfect vision, but uh there is a vision enough where we can see the world, right? And um that now we're we're able to um see things, now we're able to see that, for example, this is something I believe I'm seeing, like I already said, that talent does not exist, that skill has been mistaken for talent. Because I've tried to find talent and I can't find it. I've I've read the biographies of some of the most so-called creative, talented people. We just talked about Da Vinci in a in a video. Does it get more creative than him? Uh, but read his life. There is no such thing as imagination necessary. He had vision, it came to him and then he wrote it down. He drew it, he painted it, he looked at reality. There are many paintings of Da Vinci where the sort of like it is now on me, the lights coming from this direction, there's shadow. And they've analyzed the pupils of the person being drawn, and they saw that uh he drew this pupil smaller, more contracted than this one.

SPEAKER_04 42:47

Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yeah, meaning someone just opened the door and the light just came in, and so it hits this eye first. And yeah, now is that imagination? Did he imagine that? Did he come to that with imagination or with vision, with perceiving, with awareness, with being free of everything that obstructs that vision, obstructs that ability to notice things in the world? And again, I'm giving a physical example, but it's the same with non-physical things. If we are free to observe, we will see. If we are free to observe, we will see. And to become free of um the obstruction is just to drop false beliefs which come from the imagination. So come out of the imagination, and you come out of it simply by noticing it. You're saying, Wow, this is uh I'm I'm looking at a wall right now, but I'm thinking about what happened twelve years ago in another country. I'm observing I'm I'm seeing that this is happening. Okay, and as soon as you notice, you have a choice. You can keep going into that, or you can't. And this is again one important point that I always want to bring up. I always want to weigh things against each other, right? Now it sounds like I'm bashing the imagination, maybe to some people. I'm not. It should be a choice. If you want to go into memory, if you want to go into speculation, because you know, at your work logistically, you have to. You just have a certain set of information and the rest is missing, but you a decision needs to be made. This is when imagination can come in and fill in the rest as best as it can, and then we can say, okay, as best as I can, I'm making this decision. And so I'm using imagination then. But why is imagination allowed to rule my life when I'm not even aware that it is doing so? That part I don't agree with. So if we learn to see imagination and we can come out of it anytime we want, or rather come to a point where we go into it when we choose and are never naturally in it, then we live an unobstructed life where even that which was obscuring our vision can be used to further our vision. This is the ultimate goal. This is what I'm basing every single thing on. If there was such a thing as a personal philosophy of mine, this is the test, this is the guideline that nothing is an enemy, nothing needs to die, nothing needs to be fought, everything can be turned around to our advantage. And I have yet to encounter any single thing that either I myself or someone in the world has not been able to turn around and take an advantage out of it. And so to me, it's being proven every single time we talk about anything. And obviously I have personal limitations. Da Vinci had personal limitations, everyone here has personal limitations, um, Socrates had personal limitations. We don't all have a hundred percent of vision. We don't all see how every single thing can be turned around to our advantage. Maybe someone, someday someone will come in here and say, What about this? And obviously, oh, I don't know. I don't know, you know. But it doesn't mean that because I fail to see it, that there isn't a way to turn around, turn it around into an advantage. But yet again, uh, as I'm saying, I have not encountered that yet, even. And so it is with imagination, and so it is with vision. And um all we have to do, look, we we're talking about a lot of different things, and it sounds like we're saying a lot of different things, but really it all comes down to awareness. Awareness. Every single thing that obstructs your awareness is what obstructs your vision. And to become aware is is the simplest thing ever. You know, to become aware. This is, I think, why a lot of people also like being here, because as we are here, we're not thinking about other things. Most people are not thinking about most other things when they're here. And that's also perhaps why we like to paint, why we like to do certain hobbies or art, because as we're doing that, right? And uh everyone can become, if they're not already, they can become aware right now by concentrating on what I'm saying, right? If it sounds interesting, you're already naturally concentrated on something that sounds interesting to you. But even if this is not interesting to you right now, if you want to experience awareness, just pretend that it's interesting and just listen to my words and nothing else. And you will see right now, in between my words, there's no thought. There's no imagination. As you are listening, even in between the words, there's awareness. No thoughts, no nothing obstructing. And we can learn to just be like that at all times. So you just here right now we have experienced awareness if we hadn't already. Okay, that's what it feels like. That's that's what it is. It's as simple as that. And in that moment, uh something could have come to you. Some words, an image, uh a composition if you're a musician, whatever, whatever it is, an idea of how to fix a certain solution, uh, fix a certain problem. It could have come to you at that point. It's we don't know when it comes, how it comes, but now at that time we were open. We were open to it. This is what it is all about. It's an openness. To be obscured is to be closed, and ultimately we close ourselves because we are the ones holding on to false beliefs. We are the one eating that banana every single day without questioning. So, yeah, we're not aware, we don't know what we're doing, but we could be. This is why Socrates said an unexamined life is a life not worth living. This is why. Because you're an autopilot, you're not living. And so I I hope that answers that question a little bit, as well as gives some practical guidance on you know how to achieve that, because we also don't want to just talk about theory, right?

SPEAKER_04 49:59

Yeah, that was amazing. Thank you so much. Um, this was more than I ever hoped for as an answer. Um, it did clear so many, you know, like fog in my mind. I mean, and I might not really grasp the entire answer. I might want to listen to this again. But like you said, maybe we need to accept reality more so that we can uh like stop uh having like to escape to imagination and to like like you said to remove these filters so that the vision can can come clear, like not you know, foggy with imagination.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Yeah, it's all a synonym, it all works together. You know, awareness is the same as openness, is the same as acceptance, and um everything that obscures you is the same as uh everything that is false, everything that is an illusion. Um all that it's it's non-acceptance, it's this it's disagreement, it's tension, it's resistance, all these are synonyms, right? Different words, and people use them in different ways, but let's see the commonality and everything, right? There are two camps, so to speak, although that also is just a false separation. But there's awareness and there's unawareness, although, again, it's not two different things because aware unawareness does not really exist. Unawareness is just the absence of awareness, it is the non-existence of something that does truly exist. And it's the same with imagination and vision, right? Whenever you're in your imagination, it's the absence of vision you cannot see. And so we're just gonna see that more and more. It's a very subtle difference right now. It's easy to slip one side or the other, right? You it's not always easy to discern. But the more we engage with this, the more the subtle things become more obvious. And when something is obvious, it becomes effortless. It's so obvious to me. I don't need to study it, I don't need to look at it for 10 hours. I I can clearly see it now. But it used to be a very subtle thing, a very complicated looking thing. This is this is see, we're we're talking about vision again, actually. Yes. And so all we need to do is stay with it, stay with it. Uh when you're distracted, it's okay. Notice it's a distraction. Awareness, here we go again. See, vision that it is a distraction. And do you want that distraction? Uh, if the answer is no, then you will now be able to choose. Then, okay, then I will not continue to communicate with it. Because the distraction comes in, the thought comes in, the emotion comes in, the event in the world certainly comes into my life. I'm not trying to block that. I can't block that. What I do with it is what's important. So the scar on my hand has occurred. Okay, so now how am I going to think about it? That's my choice, right? It doesn't sometimes feel a choice because as a choice because we're so conditioned to see meaning as an intrinsic, necessary uh thing when it is not, right? When children who have been conditioned, oh, to have a scar is a bad thing, it's it's ugly, it's a it's a deformity, whatever you might think. As soon as the child gets a wound, it starts worrying about is it going to become a scar? Because scars are bad. And it and the child maybe doesn't rightfully so, you know, doesn't have the even the idea that this can be questioned. And so now that we're adults, now that we um have a certain amount of resources, attention to put towards things, why not choose to examine and re-examine the things that we are choosing to do every single day? That's what it's all about. And as we are examining things, they're going to become more and more obvious. And the fact that it is largely a choice is going to become more and more and more obvious. And once that is obvious, it's a simple act of choosing one thing over another. That's what I would say to all of that. And so I appreciate uh you talking about this because this is how subtle things become more obvious by revisiting it, by asking specific questions about it. And um just because it's the last week we have the opportunity to talk about it, I want to ask you the question of the Fortnite. You don't have to answer. I'm just gonna ask it, and then you can say, actually, I didn't think about it, so I don't really have an answer. But um I'll say it. What is the very best thing you can do against ignorance in the world?

SPEAKER_04 55:13

Um I I haven't really like uh thought about it a lot, but I would say that I mean there's ignorance in the world, but it doesn't have to disturb my peace if I could just like not think about it as uh as much because I can't really change people and I can't really change certain situations in the world, but I can change how I how I see them and how I react to them. So I mean the change should happen to me. I should change the way I I should work on myself into accepting that there's always going to be ignorance and there always going to be people who would like act certain ways that they might to us seem ignorant, but we can't do anything about that. We could just you know, just um accept it and I would say move on. Um that was that was my answer. I didn't really think about it a lot.

SPEAKER_01 56:37

That's okay. Uh in a way, you're always thinking about it, by the way. This is just the specific phrasing of this question, right? Because we're seeing ignorance every day in ourselves and others, and we are wondering, you know, what can I do about this? But so I appreciate that. I appreciate that answer, and I appreciate all that you've brought here today. And um I'm I'm glad to see you um dedicated again. Dedication being just what we use our time and attention to do, right? And so in that way, you have been very dedicated to um the so-called work of life, what we like to call that. And um I think you are seeing the results and you are going to continue to see them. And this sort of comes back a little bit to the talent versus skill. This is not a talent, this is a skill you're developing. This is a this you're you're doing something in the world, and necessarily you're getting the reaction, right? And so this is this is just like that. It's just like ARP, it's just like uh physically training your body. It's the same thing. You put into it and you get it, you're gonna get it. Dedication brings its uh fruit, especially in the non-physical realm, right? Because in the physical realm, we can be prevented, but in the non-physical realm, you give your time to something, you give your resources to something, whatever it may be, and you're gonna get something in return. Uh, something is going to happen. And so, um, yeah, once again, I appreciate you. And I will move you back to the audience for now so that we can invite our next speaker. But thank you so much once again. I'm telling you, this is how subtle things become obvious. And once they become obvious, well, they've become obvious. And so there is no confusion, and there is no um asking this or this, and there's no consulting imagination anymore because imagination is speculation. We talked about this before, too. Imagination cannot be done without speculation, and speculation cannot be done without imagination. And we only speculate when things are unclear to us, when we don't know. But when something is obvious to us, we do know, and we don't need to speculate. And that being said, I will invite our next speaker.

SPEAKER_03 59:10

I have two questions in regards to uh this week's Fortnite uh question.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Yes, the the question is what is the very best thing you can do against ignorance in the world.

SPEAKER_03 59:26

Exactly. So I noticed that a lot of people in the uh in the responses were uh saying that they should fight their own ignorance and um mostly be indifferent to ignorance that exists in the world. So um my question is uh from when we get born, like when humans are born, we are born ignorant and we rely on the generosity of other people and other humans around us to fight our own ignorance. So my question is shouldn't we return the favor in a way and uh try to fight the ignorance in others? And uh I posted yesterday in the uh in the censor chat about um the allegory in Plato's Republic about the cave allegory, and um in this story he is compelled to uh to turn around and uh see so if anyone doesn't know what the um allegory of the cave is is a bunch of prisoners are um uh are imprisoned in a cave where um they can't really see the outside world and they are uh imprisoned in darkness and they can only see the shadows being casted upon a wall um of statues or uh of statues uh behind them, where the sunlight uh casts shadows on the wall in front of them. And uh the only way uh for them to actually see the truth is for them to turn around and uh see the light. The thing is, um uh Plato says that the uh person who escapes uh needs to be compelled and uh he fights, he resists against his own ignorance to look uh to look straight at the light. And when he comes back to the cave to convince others um to to also turn around, they are that they refuse because the comfort of ignorance is uh is more is more relaxing to them in a way to have your answer rather than when you go to ignorant people and you try to convince them, you try to save them, they tell you to go away.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

They get angry, and so it is a person who has already turned around and is looking around, and perhaps they can't see the exit of the cave, but they are looking around, they're not looking at the shadows anymore and thinking that there's all that's all there is, they're looking around for guidance. That's when you come can come in and say, uh, look, there's an exit here, and uh I'm telling you, there's a whole world out there. There's sunlight and there are trees and there's the sky, it's amazing. Come see, and they'll say, Oh, okay, I've been waiting for this. But the one who's still looking at the shadows is just gonna be like, go away. And so ignorance is not not knowing. Socrates said, you know, uh, the oracle in Athens, the Delphic Oracle, uh pronounced one day that uh the most uh wise man on earth, his name is Socrates, and everyone went to Socrates and said, Socrates, the oracle said that you are the wisest man on earth. And Socrates says, It is true, for I know that I know nothing. So not knowing is not ignorance. I know the word can mean that I was ignorant of this rule, sure, but what the ignorance we're talking about is moral ignorance, and so um that ignorance is not a not knowing, it is a not wanting to know, and um also not knowing what they are rejecting that they don't want to know. That's true ignorance, because when we say, okay, uh uh a liar is being ignorant of the damage that they're causing. Or rather, people say, uh, you know, uh a liar knows that lying is wrong. They do it anyway, but they don't really know it's wrong. Yeah, they they think they are acting against something, but they don't really know what they're acting against. They're acting against a simple life, they're acting against peace, they're acting against awareness. If they knew that, they wouldn't do it. They do know that they are lying. Yes, you are correct, and in that way they do know that they're doing something wrong. But why it is wrong, they do not know. Anyone who knows why it is wrong to not do something or to do something, that's when they stop doing the wrong thing. So not knowing is not ignorance, right? The man in the cave who is looking for the exit, who who believes that there must be more to life than these shadows on a wall, but simply does not know where the exit is or where to look or who to ask, that one is not ignorant. That one is looking. It's a seeker. All of us here, I don't want to judge, but I I think it's fair to say, at least most of us here are seekers. A seeker is not ignorant, a seek a seeker does not know. That's why they're seeking, but they're not ignorant. The ignorant person is the one who says, I know. All there is to this world are these shadows. I am convinced of that. It's all I can see. How could there be more than what I can see? That is true ignorance. True ignorance is to know something very well, actually. And so to that person, you cannot go and say, You're being ignorant, you are wrong, I'm gonna prove it to you. Uh they're gonna say, No, no way, no way. Even if you took them outside, they would say it's an illusion. They'd say, You're tricking me, I'm dreaming, or something. They don't, they, they can't. They're not open, they're not ready. And so this is why so many of our friends here are responding to the question, not here in the kinship meetings, but in the chat. At uh in our Discord channel about the question of the Fortnite. They're saying uh the best thing to do against ignorance in the world is to do something about your own ignorance because you are the one seeking, you are the one listening, and whom, as Epictetus says, whom better to convince you than you? And so have you rid yourself of all your ignorance yet? Have you rid yourself of all your false beliefs that that currently you are so certain of? Have you examined them and seen if they are really worth believing in and worth dedicating your life to? You know, you know, you have great wisdom. Uh, and when I say you, I mean all of us, everyone in the world. Uh, you have great wisdom, but uh have you ridden ridden yourself of all your ignorance? Uh until you have done so, perhaps it is not so wise to go out in the world and to try to convince others who are not even willing or ready to be convinced, to, to, to see that the outside and to come out of the cave. And so uh this is not to say that as we work on ourselves, we cannot also offer uh some guidance and some support to others, not at all. But this is the fundamental ignorance to think that everyone out there just needs to be convinced, and then they would see the light, and then they would see the truth. No, they're not ready. And uh, by you thinking that they just need to be convinced, and I just need to go out there and fight for what is right, fight to convince someone, fight someone's false beliefs. That is the height of ignorance, actually. And I'm not blaming anyone, I'm I'm just seeing this as an experience, right? When we say, and there's a great quote by one of my favorite authors about this, right? Emerson. He said, um, I'm gonna heavily paraphrase because I don't actually remember. I only remember the sense of it. He said, you know, it's a folly to uh try to renovate someone else when one's self has not yet been renovated. And so uh the best thing, this is why the question is also phrased that way, right? What is not what's something you can do against ignorance in the world? Because going out and trying to uh convince other people is something you can do against ignorance. The question is, what is the very best thing? The very best thing that you can do against ignorance in the world. The very best thing that you can do is you truly in this way. And so the anger may drop from you. As ignorance drops, anger drops. As anger drops, hate, resentment, uh, uh an unforgiving nature, uh regret, shame, envy, all these things drop. And the best person to go and do something against ignorance in the world is a person who has dropped their anger, hatred, resentment, envy, their judgment towards the world. Because when we look out and see ignorance in the world, we see people hating each other and we call that ignorant. We see people judging each other when it's not right to judge. We see people condemning other people's lifestyles and saying, hey, that's just a lifestyle just like yours. And that's why we say there is ignorance in the world because we observe these things. Yet we are doing the same thing. We're saying, I'm all good, I'm all fine. There's nothing for me to work on anymore. I'm gonna go work on you. But that's what exactly what that person is thinking. I'm gonna work on the uh person who has voted differently in the last election. I'm gonna work on my neighbor, I'm gonna work on my family members because they're not they're not seeing this yet. And so this is why, truly, the best thing you can do against ignorance in the world is whatever you can do against ignorance inside of you. And as we've discussed a few times here, as you are getting rid of your ignorance and thereby dropping your anger, your hatred, your um condemnation of the world, your judgment against the world, you're increasing necessarily what? Peace, understanding, tolerance, stillness, contentment. And who is not out there in the world looking for peace? Who is not looking for peace? Everyone is constantly looking at each other on Instagram and saying, oh, they seem peaceful, they seem like they have a great life. And it's not real, right? Oftentimes, but they're it's just proof that everyone is constantly looking for that. And so they see you in peace all of a sudden. Uh, you've been working on yourself for a long time, and now you this person's peace is increasing. This is my family member, this is my friend, this is my co-worker. Uh, I'm seeing this happening in front of me. How is this person doing this? That's when they'll start looking away from the shadows on the wall and look at this person who is like looking around the cave, trying to find an exit. It's like, wow, there's more to this world than the shadows on the wall. And so if you want to change the world, change yourself. And the world, more often than not, takes notice. And again, I want to balance that by saying that is not why we work on ourselves. We do not work on ourselves so that others may notice and so that we can change them that way. No, that's not why. It is an often occurring side effect, but that's not why we do it. Right. But again, if you want to think that way, if you want to think, what is the most effective thing I can do against the ignorance in the world, again, the same, the answer is the same. Work on yourself and the world, more likely than not, will take notice. And they will come to you when before you had to come to them and you had to yell in their face or smack their book out of their hand, their phone out of their hand, whatever was giving them false impressions, false ideas, and say, listen to me, listen to me. This is not you, you need to. Whereas you were doing that, now they're gonna say, Hey, uh, excuse me, you know, can I pick your brain on something? Uh, what do you think about judgment? I see you you stop judging people, and I and I wonder how you can do that because there is objectively so much bad in the world. How can you just not judge? And I see you still being very effective in your life. How do you do that? Can you give me some tips? Again, don't expect this to happen. Don't expect this to happen, and never make it a reason to work on yourself to for this to happen out in the world, uh, because you will be disappointed. And uh to be disappointed is ignorant. And so, um, and it is against peace, right? It takes you out of your peace. So that's not why to do it, but I'm telling you, uh it is likely that you that you will observe this. I am observing it, I am observing it in others. Others are telling me that they are observing it. So I think uh that to give my answer a little early, uh, that would be my answer to the question. And that's I think what is echoed by many other people here. And I think this is the true sense of what they're saying. When they're saying instead of focusing on other people, work on yourself, it it works in every single way, right? It's a win-win-win. There's no such thing as uh, yeah, you work on yourself, but don't you want to extend that favor to others? This is how you extend it to others. You see what I'm saying? As you are working on yourself, you are increasing awareness in the world. As you are decreasing ignorance in yourself, you're necessarily decreasing ignorance in the world in many ways. You know, by taking it away from yourself, you're already decreasing ignorance in the world, right? But also in this indirect way that I just talked about, where others might notice it and say, hey, how can I do that too? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:51

Yes, very much. In your answers to the first question, you already answered the second question. So thank you for very much for your uh time. My second question was I I think I didn't mention, yeah, it was uh how to use reason to differentiate between the kind of ignorance that you should fight against and the kind of ignorance that you should be indifferent to. And I think in your answer, you mentioned that uh either in either type of ignorance, I think one should aspire to fight the ignorance inside themselves first, and by way of fighting their their own ignorance, the world will take notice and there it's um it's gonna be a positive influence, like in a way, to the world. So thank you very much for your answer, Mr. Atash. Thank you for saying that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:37

Thank you for thank you very much for your questions, because your question uh has made this dialogue happen, right? And now we have a few things to consider, uh, if we want to consider them, that can decrease our ignorance and again, in many ways, decrease the ignorance in the world as well. So I I very much appreciate that. And I will uh move you back to the audience for now. And I also want to say, though, just because I heard you say it, don't fight ignorance. Whether in yourself or in others, don't fight ignorance. Ignorance is not something to be fought. Ignorance is telling you, let's go fight. Ignorance is the one telling you there are enemies, and enemies must be battled and um defeated. True ignorance, or rather, the the fundamental ignorance that all other ignorance is based on is the ignorance that there are enemies, that there's something wrong in the world, that we know better, right? Because to be able to say this is wrong, you need to know what's better. So when I'm saying uh oh, this land should not have been occupied by this group of people, it should have been these people. Uh, do I really know what I'm talking about? Do I really know? Me just asking that myself, maybe I examine it and I say, Yeah, I do really know because there's historical evidence and this all that and all this. Okay, so then I made sure of that. But was I sure of it before? There are so many people expressing opinions because they heard the opinion itself from someone and they're just repeating the opinion, not repeating the research that was done. Right? So fighting is the opposite of what we need to do. When fighting ceases, I would say 98% of ignorance drops from us already. And the rest is just applying reason to say, hey, I believe this. Is this concurrent with facts and data and common sense? Yes or no, you know, and the rest is like that. But really the root of all ignorance is that there is something to fight. And we're thinking, even when we're saying, ah, I see, I can fight this enemy by not fighting it at all. Ah, I see, I get it now. No, it's it's not a trick, it's not a mind game, it's not, it's not yet another strategy. The ignorance itself is that we have enemies and that there is uh evil in the world, and uh that it is also the kind of evil that can be defeated. We just need to devote all our time and energy, and we need to get upset about this, we need to get angry about this, otherwise we're never gonna defeat evil. To defeat ignorance in the world, we must defeat the idea that ignorance must be defeated. Okay. And uh before I get too paradoxical, I'll uh go back to Andrew here.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:59

Hello, can you hear me now? Hey, I can hear you now, yeah. Great stuff. Um yeah, it's it's funny. Uh uh it's how um I notice themes come up in our kinships, how everyone seems to ask around the same topic in. Always, yeah. I think what I've got to say is very much aligned with the last three uh questioners, um, but in a kind of different perspective. So what what I've been thinking on is this reliance, or what does it mean when we use these capitalized notions such as truth or reality? Like it's still not clear to me what we are kind of appealing to with these uh capitalized notions. And I I've in particular been focusing on what it means to have a truth with a capital T. And for myself personally, you know, uh, you know, we we were just speaking about um the allegory of Plato's cave. And for me, that's our reality. You know, we are we are skullbound, you know, we we are making images within our you know the the dark caverns of our of our skulls, and we have reality-making impressions on our sensorium, but I have no true concept at all what is actually happening out there in reality, only at the interface of my awareness, you know, and you know, my mind matter and reality-making impressions that I've got this, you know, this appearances happening within my uh awareness, and I've got no bearing at all how true a representation they are. And what I think, you know, there is some um, like I can say, I'm not even too sure if if we if we should say there is a truth with a with a small you know uh a small cap. It seems to me, you know, that we are trying to align ourselves with reality. And that, you know, as much as been has been a very big repetition in these last questions, it's it's this eradication or trying to you know lessen our um notions of false beliefs. So we can constantly try and refine these beliefs that we're holding on to to get ourselves more aligned to our sense of of reality, but we're never going to be able to completely eradicate ourselves of beliefs. You know, there is there is awareness which is outside of beliefs, there is this, you know, the theater in which everything is taking place within. But as soon as we're going to make a conception or conceive of something within that, it's it's a belief notion. And and yes, so it just seems to me I can't make any assertions of a capital sort um that is independent of my subjective experience. And we can we can have things like science, you know, which we are trying to contend, you know, we're trying to make sense of the world, but it it's that's very much an example of how we do it through consensus. You know, there's we we have agreements on what a p-value should be that makes something significant, right? And then we'll have a discussion around it and critique it, and there'll be consensus around this, but we're always of the notion that it's incomplete. There's always something extra additional that could be happened onto it. So, yeah, so that that I'm just trying to understand then if we are going to appeal to these things like truth with a capital T, is that saying there's some sort of ideal truth that we should be striving for? And then isn't that in itself then like an act of imagination that there's something you know different to what is actually appearing within my awareness?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:26

Yeah, I appreciate that. It's a fundamental uh great question to to always examine and re-examine, absolutely. And I just want to suggest this to you, you know, just to think about. I believe in something. Let's and let's take the notion of truth as an example. It's just an example. We could we could say anything, but let's, since we're talking about it, let's take the notion of truth. Uh, I believe that it is a certain way. You might believe that it is uh another certain way. A third person might suspend judgment altogether. A fourth person might believe a combination of what you and I believe and add something even of their own. A fifth person, yet another completely distinct thing that none of us have ever thought about. That's what they're applying their belief to. So, what's the commonality here? Everyone is perceiving truth, as you say, differently, or a combination, and it's never, there's never any agreement, as you say, even on the question of pie, I mean, mathematics, there is no full agreement. And and we we say that perhaps there never will be. However, what we all have in common is our capacity to believe. I am applying my belief to one thing, and you're applying it to another, and a third person is maybe applying it to the exact same thing as I am, or yet again something different. What we have in common, though, is the capacity to believe. The apparatus of belief is existent and real in every single one of these people who cannot agree on anything. They cannot agree on what to believe in. Yet they all believe. Even the one who disbelieves, even the one who believes in the non-existence is applying their belief to disbelief. And so this is what we all have in common. And um the commonality of every single disagreement is the capacity to disagree, for example. So when you go behind the beliefs, when you go behind the concepts, when you go behind even the concept of pie, there is that which everything is resting on. And so to me, that is truth. Truth, for example, a part of that capital T truth is that while we all believe in different things, or believe in the same things, or even if no one believed in the same thing as another, we all share the capacity to believe. That is part of capital T truth. And when I say reality is this, and you say reality is this, and again, once again, we disagree, we are interpreting reality. But what is it that we're interpreting? The thing which we are interpreting rightly or wrongly, whatever it is, right? See, again, behind right and wrong, behind right and wrong, there there is something that we are interpreting. There is something that we are superimposing, a belief, an idea, a notion, a concept, a disbelief, any something on. So our superimposition is flawed and it's lacking and it's correct or incorrect. But that what we are superimposing onto, that thing exists. And that thing is real. And whether we know how it is real, what makes it real, what is its reality, what is reality, it's it is there. It is there. And so it's the same with me uh when it comes to capital T truth. I'm not saying I can see truth. I'm certainly not saying I can see it perfectly. All I know is that it's there. All I know is that it's there. And it's sort of like trying to define the self and not being able to. We cannot do it. All those people who can define the self very well are actually the ones that know least about it. Because they'll they'll think they're exactly this age, this nationality, and they're this career, and they're this, and they have this past and this future, and that's me. But they don't know they're not any of those things. So, and if even if they didn't, even if they did know that they are not any of these things, especially then they would not be able to define the self. And so, in the same way, perhaps we cannot define reality and we cannot define truth, which to me are synonyms. As I've uh mentioned before, everything that is real is true, and everything that is true is real. There's no such thing that is real but not true, or that is true but not real. And so to me that's synonymous. And and yes, as you have said, we are only animals that that perceive reality. And then again, we could argue are we perceiving it rightly or wrongly, or to what degree are we doing this? And um, but that there is reality, that there is something to perceive wrongly, that is truth, no? Right. That this thing exists is truth. And so when I say truth, I mean that capital T truth. And I do believe that we are able to, to whatever degree, I'm not going to argue about the degree because I don't know, that we are able to perceive truth and that we are then also, of course, able to align with it because we do not stand apart from reality. These, whatever you want to call them, these godly beings or these mere animals, what again, that's where we would disagree with a bunch of different people, right? But that we are part of reality, that we do not stand apart from reality, that we all agree on, no? Because uh, is there such a thing as all of creation and then we're standing apart from it looking at it? Are we something else of creation? If we are not part of creation, where are we looking from? Where do we go to see that? And so I would argue, I think, uh safely, that we do not stand apart from reality. We are not standing in a second reality to look like looking at first reality, or we are not standing in unreality looking at reality somehow. Uh whatever the all these differences, all these components, all these things are that we think we see or that are really there, whatever the case might be, all of that is one. And that one is reality. And so, whatever it is we are experiencing, whatever it is we're believing, and however correct or incorrect that might be, whatever that thing is that we're looking at and perceiving rightly or wrongly, or whatever, that thing exists. And that is what I call reality. And uh to me, reality and truth are synonymous in many ways. And uh so when I say truth, that's what I mean. And I base all my beliefs, which can be false, which can be all kinds of things, but I base all my beliefs, I try to anyway, on these what I call timeless and universal ideas, such as the one we just talked about about belief. I am seeing people disagreeing on every single thing. Every single thing. There is not a single thing in the world that everyone agrees on or that everyone disagrees with, not a single thing, but that every single person who believes or disbelieves in something has the capacity to believe or disbelieve, that I can see. And on that fact, I am building uh my beliefs and my actions and and and everything I do in the world by saying, for example, uh that judgment is wrong, because our beliefs change all the time. They change from person to person and they change within a person over time. And so when you're seeing this fact that no two people can agree on thing, but that they're all doing that disagreeing with each other with the ability to disagree and agree, with the ability to believe or disbelieve or to suspend judgment, that to me is an amazing underlying universal and timeless idea that we can rely on. And even that I don't draw any value from or any um opinion from. All I am drawing from that is how beautiful. How beautiful that underneath, behind or above and beyond, however you want to think about it, there is a commonality behind every single disagreement. There is the fundamental mutuality of sharing the apparatus of agreement or disagreement. I find that a beautiful universal thing. And the universe is universal, right? Reality, truth is universal, and so this is my little glimpse into that so-called capital R reality or capital T truth. And I find that the closer I stay to these things that I find that appear to me as universal, again, we can disagree on that, but in my own experience, this satisfies me. And so I find the closer that I stay to that, and the less I build on that with my own imagination, with my own whatever, the more I'm feeling like I am, I am living my nature as a human being, and the more satisfied, content, fulfilled of an experience I have. And this is why I go on about universal timeless ideas. If we just get down to universal and timeless ideas and stick to them and don't add to them with our perception, with our imagination, with our speculation, with our whatever, whatever, um, then we sort of have a simple, again, not maybe entirely truth and entirely aligned with reality at all, but as simple as it can be, as fulfilled as it can be, as natural as it can be, as effortless, as peaceful as it can be. And after all, that's what we're all trying to achieve in yet again, so many different ways. See, this is again one of the fundamental mutualities that we have. We're all looking for peace differently, but we're all looking for what we think is the same thing, right? Peace, peace, peace. And um to me, this is how I achieved that. And I'm not going to go further and say this is the only way to achieve it, this is the best way to achieve it, as so many people do. This is where I want to pull back and say, what an amazing grace this universe has, that it is achievable, that it seems like Jesus achieved it, it seems like Socrates achieved it, it seems like the Buddha achieved it, it seems like so many other people you can meet on the street have achieved it. I just find that beautiful. And I'm not looking, I'm not gonna rank these ways of doing it, just like they did it for themselves. How beautiful that this is even possible. And that one person is doing it, however, they're doing it, shows the reality, the truth, that it can be done. That it can be done. And so why don't I just look to myself and um try to see how I can do it, find my own personal connection to truth, to reality. And that personal connection, once again, can be incorrect to some degree. And again, who's to say correct, incorrect, right? That's the thing. I just find that everything that is natural, peaceful, still shows up in experience. And uh, if that shows up in my experience, if peace is growing in between the distractions, in between the turmoil, so to speak, then I'm gonna do more of that. And and that's all. And I'm not gonna try to convince anyone else, look, this is truth, this is peace, this is love, this is that. As we always do here, we're just offering suggestions. This is showing up in my experience. Since I love you as my kin, I would like you to consider this, suggest this as it has been suggested to me, and I found value in it. And so when I say truth, I am referencing this thing that exists independently of my way of referencing it. And I don't claim to know that uh to know what I am referencing, certainly not fully, but I do claim to know that I'm referencing a real thing, whatever that might be. All I know is it's independent, it's universal, it's timeless, and it is changeless. That's all I think I know about it, and I try to not go much further than that. So I'm referencing, when I say truth, I'm referencing this thing that I know myself, I will perhaps never know fully or even even any any any large percentage of it at all. I just seem to be able to not be able to uh deny its existence. It's sort of in a good way slapping me in the face every single day in some way. In its infinite unknowableness, perhaps even. But I can see it is there. And that, whatever that is, however it is, I call that capital T truth slash reality.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:07

And so I mean, I'm in very much in large part agreement with everything you say in terms of uh speaking about disagreements, but uh I I agree with everything. And well, perhaps one thing that uh where it falls short for me, at least where I don't have that maybe that that insight is this timeless notion to this all. So for me, you know, it seems like the statements that we can have confidence that have truth are all statements of the subjective nature of our reality, and we can make statements that we think these are common to all of the subjective experiences. And the you know, the in terms of what I can assert between my nature with reality and my awareness is that it you know it's appearing on this boundary of awareness, and very much what what you asserted there's a beauty to it. I think you know what what is the felt sense of when it's aligned and it feels true, is that even in adversity and you know, travesty and watching a tragedy, there's still a felt sense of beauty to that alignment is something you know that that feels correct about it all. And what where I think that beauty is emerging is because you know we're engaged in an act of creation, it's this participatory creation that's taking place. And for me, it it feels open-ended. You know, it doesn't, it's it's it's always gonna be, you know, if there's anything eternal about it, it's it's always going to be incomplete. And everything else about it is going to likely, you know, um not from the perspective of my awareness, but is going to be in flux. You know, my awareness is invariant, and and perhaps the timelessness comes from the perspective taking, but I can't assign anything outside of that to be timeless. That to me seems, again, we're uh stepping outside the bounds of what I could ever truly perceive in this kind of open-ended creation.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:13

No, you're right. You're absolutely like what what we perceive as timelessness is also just a perception, and we don't know. But uh, I am just I found that when I zoom way out, like even when I say this entire universe has collapsed, right? Like the Big Bang in reverse or whatever, and then it has and something entirely new, and everything's starting from all over. Well, now that is reality. There's this continuousness to reality, that whatever it is, right? Today it is this, tomorrow it is that, uh, and and the next day it is composed of entirely different things. But whatever it is, it is. There's always an is-ness to reality. There's no, there doesn't seem to be, again, of course, you're rightfully pointing out that this is too just an observation. There doesn't seem to be a gap to reality. There doesn't seem to be a stuttering to reality, there doesn't seem to be a beginning or an end, right? Because the notion of time is also just our notion, by the way, as you know, as you very well know, better than me, even. Uh, that too is a notion. And that notion itself is inside of it's within reality, it's not outside of reality. And so I just find this universality, it's almost like the the in the infinity symbol, right? It's not a timelessness as in uh a sequential thing, and it just keeps going and going, it's almost like uh the figure eight kind of infinity, kind of timelessness, kind of universality. But yeah, you're right. Even that is to say that we are sort of getting into the realm of what I perceive of it. And um, like I said before, I just want to stick with the fact that much like the self, even though I am totally helpless in defining what it may be, uh, as helpless as I am in that, as sure I am that this undefinable thing that can't be defined by me does in fact exist. And so capital T truth to me is that. Whereas truth is, you know, the sun is whatever temperature. That's that's a truth. That's maybe a fact, right? And it can be a changing fact. That's that's lower case truth, uh, which includes pretty much all of science. But uh the capital T truth is that to me. And it's the same with capital J justice. I always keep talking about, you know, the physical here on earth, so to speak, law courts, the judges and the jury, which is very much imperfect, which is trying to align itself with that uh as we perceive higher idea concept of capital J justice itself. What does justice tell us? That's what we should do, right? That striving itself, although imperfect and never perhaps perfectable, is again evidence of this thing. What are we striving for? What is it that we think we're seeing? What are we trying to be in alignment for? Whatever that is in the realm of what is right to do and what is wrong to do. That's what I call justice, capital J Justice. And when I'm trying to accept things as they are, I look to what? My opinions, my beliefs, other people's beliefs or opinions? Is that a good idea? Or am I looking for this thing that is saying necessity, necessity. That could be another capital, capitalized word, right? Necessity, because everything that is real is necessary. So, as you mentioned, even in so-called catastrophes, in terrible things that are happening as we perceive it, what can we be sure of there that is objective? We can be sure that it has a capital N necessity to it. Right? We say, was it really necessary for you to do that? No, not in that way. Not in that way. But for an event that already has occurred to have occurred, that is necessary. That is necessary. And and reality is composed of uh everything that is necessary in that very sense. So everything that is real is necessary, everything that is necessary is true, everything that is true is real, etc. It's sort of our kind of thing, it seems. But again, if even just sticking to the very, very fundamental, the things that I even in my life that I wished weren't true at some point, those things now I've I find inescapable and beautiful, and those are the very, very fundamental things, like the belief, the disagreement thing we talked about. Uh that we cannot talk away, that we cannot create by talking about it either. It's it's obvious to us. It's it is there. It is there. We didn't invent it, we cannot destroy it, we cannot change it, we cannot manipulate it, we cannot touch it for better or for worse. These are some of the features I find of everything that is true in the highest sense. So uh, yeah, but I appreciate always uh the the questions you bring, and this is certainly as fundamental a question as it can be. And this is what I always say we need to find our own personal connection. And I also always say, this is my personal connection to truth, to that which I think is universal and timeless, right? It's this is my personal connection to it. This is the way I'm seeing it, this is my angle. Um and I encourage every single human being. This is part of my talking about another capital word, by the way, love, right? When I say uh love as an act, as a disposition is to wish well, this is included in my well-wishing for everyone, that every single person finds their own personal connection, their own direct connection to truth, to justice, to love, to all these things. This just happens to be mine. And I offer it as it has been offered to me, but so that others can consider it, can examine it, and take whatever part, if any or all of it, uh to be part of their own personal uh connection to truth, to God is another synonym to truth. A lot of people call truth God. And I and I like that. And that's that's another beautiful thing, by the way, to talk about that. And um, so I appreciate that once again. Was there anything else you wanted to say or share?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:14

No, that no, that that was uh that was beautiful. Thank you so much, as always. That was uh super helpful.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:20

Okay, I appreciate you very much. Thank you once again for especially battling uh uh sometimes connection issues, and I love when people are are are coming back and and sharing these beautiful things. Thank you so much. Uh as always, um, you made us think about something to say very important is silly. I mean, to me, it's it's the fundamental everything. This is why I always discourage also here in the server in Discord to talk about such things as politics, opinions in general, um, cultural norms, because our personal connection with truth is behind those or underneath those or above and beyond those, however you want to think about it. Once you get beyond culture, once you get beyond norms, once you get beyond opinion, there you will find an at first perhaps scary, unknowing. You'll say, Wow, here I know nothing. Here I'm not equipped, here all my so-called knowledge, the information I've gathered uh of and about the world, this cannot help me here. Here, I must make do on my own. Yet, even though everything is erased from me in this realm, all my opinions are useless, so to speak, as in they cannot be used. No one else can come here and and make sense of this for me. Yet, even though all of these things are taken away from me, I still exist. I am still here. I haven't been erased, all my cultural norms have been made useless, all my ideas and and opinions are don't apply here, yet I still exist. And now we're starting starting to find the beauty in the so-called dark and scary lonely place. It's like, wow, in this place beyond all words and opinions and beliefs and cultural norms and religions and philosophies, I still am. I wonder if this place is actually me. If I can still exist here, if I have a mutuality with this place at the very core of beingness, then perhaps I am in some way connected also in that being with this place, but let's not go too far too far. So I will uh take our next speaker here.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:15

Hi, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:49:17

Hello, hi.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:18

Yeah, I've never been here before. I have like 7,000 questions.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:22

Um well, you're welcome, and uh thank you for being here. And uh I hope so far you found it uh edifying and in a place where a lot of great, curious, kind people come together and just discuss the questions they have uh or the experiences they have, only to then have it show up in their experience again. Not not theory, not not arguing back and forth, but to just become more aligned with truth. So I hope it's been that for you so far.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:54

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like um. What you describe as truth, this independent, universal, timeless, unchanging thing, I would describe I would use the word soul. And um I'm curious when there's trauma and what's coming up for me is the video you did about the donkey um rescue thing when I'm about to ask this question. When it comes to trauma, um and I look at humans, myself included, as being um my mind, which has thoughts and ideas, um, my heart, which has feelings, my body, which has sensations, uh, my soul, which I would call the observer. I think healing can only happen in the present moment, which means I have to allow the experience to be as it is, not as I could change it. Because it's our it's an event that has already happened. So what I think I'm understanding you saying is that all events are fundamentally neutral in a sense, unless we give meaning to the events. And then the question arises well, then what is meaning?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:25

Well, meaning is interpretation, right? My senses perceive something, they have perceived something, and now let me interpret that. And what we use for that interpretation are our beliefs. And of course, we don't know are these true beliefs or are these false beliefs? And so this is why we keep repeating the what Socrates said, you know, an unexamined life is a life not worth living. He's simply pointing out, not that anyone should kill themselves because they don't examine their beliefs, but that it is so vital that we do. And the more that we do, uh, guided by reason and not uh by emotion, not that emotions are wrong, but emotions are not of reason. That's why we call them emotion, otherwise it's reason. And so, not that they're wrong, not that they are need to be killed or repressed or anything like that at all, but we don't want to be guided, guided by emotion, because we want to be guided by reason. And when we are guided by reason, we find uh it seems that it is the best tool, the best guide for seeing which belief is a false belief, which belief is a true belief, um, and which belief is necessary or unnecessary. And the more we do that, the more we make assign the correct correct meaning. Correct can mean anything, right? Well, however you define it, but correct as in that which is most conducive to peace, that which is most conducive to contentment. And um this is how we do that, and it's also a great idea and which pervades many philosophies, many, many religions in the world. The idea of not judging at all, the idea of not putting any meaning to it at all. And this is exactly what animals do. That's why I uh made that video with the donkeys, because each one of those donkeys in the video in that donkey rescue sanctuary, well, they've been rescued. Rescued from what? Um, from physical neglect, from birth defects, from quite severe injuries, from uh becoming dog food. I mean, from all kinds of things, right? And so we can, if you want to speak about trauma, I mean, that's a good place to look at trauma, right? There's a lot of neglect, what we might call abuse going on, right? There uh certainly animals that are being beaten, uh, all kinds of things. Yet you go there and you find every so-called traumatized, so-called abused donkey that formerly was in a in a very, very harsh abusive environment, just being a donkey, like any other donkey. Meaning what? Meaning the abuse was in the past. Yeah, as the abuse was being received, as the physical impacts were happening on their body, I'm sure there was there was pain. I'm sure there was fear, and I'm sure there was a distrust uh in in that particular person who did those things. And I'm sure there was a certain lack of wanting to enjoy the sun, the the food. Perhaps they they stopped eating and drinking for a long time, right? But as soon as the situation passes, that too passes. What we as humans do, we keep referring back. We keep using memory, imagination, speculation, value judgments, meaning that we put on things, and we keep bringing it back. So an event occurs for let's say 10 minutes. We tell someone about it for 10 minutes. Now we're experiencing the trauma for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and then we come home and then we we try to sleep, and then we keep thinking about it. The clock keeps ticking, the trauma keeps going on, the the event keeps going on, rather. But the animal doesn't do that. The animal might have a certain physical lasting impact from whatever trauma it has received, but in the mind at night, it doesn't keep rehashing the thing. It doesn't keep saying, I have experienced abuse. This is an abuser, I'm an abused one, I'm a I'm a victim, certainly, I am a traumatized one, I am a dis and that. Um I may never find happiness again. I mean, animals don't think like this. And I'm not saying animals are doing something, are more competent than something, right? They're doing that because of a certain perhaps cognitive, you know, they keep saying our nervous system, our cognition is so sophisticated, whatever relative to other animals, I guess. Um perhaps it is that so-called sophistication that we have that is even allowing us to do this. So maybe they're doing it from a lack of something. But certainly there's a lesson to be gained in that, is all I'm saying. I'm not saying let's act like animals. I am saying when a living organism doesn't rehash the thing, when it doesn't keep using imagination, whether it can't or because it just won't, it is moving past the thing. And it is finding peace again, and it is finding contentment again, and it is quite frankly finding joy that you don't even see in many humans again. An abused animal, not any animal, a formerly abused animal now is more joyous than a non-abused human being. Because they keep thinking of themselves, okay, there's no abuse, there's no trauma necessarily, but oh, I had a I had a bad childhood, my parents really didn't show enough attention or whatever. And and I'm not saying that's not true. Whatever happened, that the trauma is coming from, the idea of I'm a victim, I I've been abused, whatever that is coming from, that has well and truly occurred. There's no denying that. It's absolutely real. And we have been wronged. Mistakes have been made, abuse has occurred, absolutely correct. But what of it now? What of it now? It's past. And this is not to say that we let people off the hook, so to speak. No, the justice system, whatever it needs from us, let's supply it. Let's do it. This has occurred. Yeah, it's been 10 years, 20 years, but the the it's not over yet. The process is still going on in the courts. Okay, let's keep that going on. But inside, inside, inside, let's not identify as the person who is still under the influence of that. Because we are extending that influence, as I said, when we keep talking about it, when we keep thinking about it. And in fact, there is even a way to talk about it without identifying with it. So, well and truly, I'm not saying let's act like it didn't happen. I am saying let's not identify with it. And if we need to talk about it to police, to other people, to other people as a cautionary tale, whatever, as whatever. We can do all of that. We can do all of that, and then some, because we're not receiving trauma each time we talk about it. We're detached from it, right? So now we can actually talk about it more. Now we can actually give testimony, whether this be in a court or just generally in life, about the thing and against the abusers more and better and more effectively, while still completely operating out of peace, not saying this thing that happened 10 years ago or last week, even is still ruling over me. Because of this, I still cannot peace have peace. And before these people are brought to justice, or before they apologize to me, I cannot have peace. This is an idea, this is a mental construct. Yes, what they have done is real, but the fact that you now still cannot have peace because of what something has done, or because of some someone that they didn't even do, but they think about you. This is not true. This is not true. And the proof of that, of course, we see in many humans too, but I'm saying if you want to see proof of that at any time, go to your closest animal. You know, you see this in nature all the time. The event occurs, and as the event is occurring, it is being responded to in full force, full force. But when the event passes, the supposed effects of it to a large degree, at least the non-physical ones, they pass too. It is retained as a memory and used in case it happens again. So there are telltale signs that can now be avoided, and all that. But all of that can be done without resentment, without shame, without regret, without anger, without any of that. It doesn't come with it. The trauma does not necessarily come together with the traumatic event. The traumatic event is real, and the trauma is real too, but it is not, at least always, at least not to the extent that we think it is, necessary. We talk about here frequently, since you're new, you might not have heard it. We talk about a man called Victor Franco. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know him. Yeah, he looked excellent. Yeah, see, so you know he went to the Holocaust. Did he look at that as his trauma?

SPEAKER_02 2:01:42

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:42

He didn't. And this is not to say that anyone who's been through the Holocaust or anyone who's experienced anything traumatic uh should just uh pull it together and act the same way. Not at all. We are merely in his example and many other people like him, seeing that it is possible, that it is possible to not repress, to not ignore anything, yet still not be suffering from it after the event. We're just seeing that this is possible. That's all. And once this is seen, what that then means for us, what we should or should not do with it, that's all up to us. That's up to us. No one can say that because he did it, you should do it too, or anything. Or my trauma is worse than your if I can deal with this, you can deal with that. No, no, no, no, none of that. But just to see, okay, it is possible. It is possible. Animals do it all the time, humans do it many times, so it is possible. Uh-huh. Okay. What will I make with that fact? That's up to me. We're just pointing to the fact. And so this is what I, you know, this is I hope there's an answer in there somewhere for you to your question.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:02

Yeah, I think it's one of those things for me personally. Um some some things don't have an answer. And that's the answer.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:13

Yeah. But it is also uh a fact, right, that we're also seeing out in the world and history, in ourselves too, that peace is our natural condition. Peace is actually an effortless thing, even though many of us believe that it takes a lot of effort to get there. What we're trying to get to, we're already there, actually. That's what all the people who discover peace, so to speak, as you have mentioned, the soul you are calling the witness, right? The one who is observing everything. Uh, that observer does not lack peace. Whenever we we come back, we leave everything behind, all our ideas, opinions, all the events that happened in our life, we leave that aside for a second, and we just rest in that observer that we cannot put away from us, right? We can take all our experiences, all our personality, everything, and put it for a side for a second. That we cannot put to the side. That we cannot put to the side. We can't. And so just seeing that, wow, there's something in me, perhaps this is the true self, that I cannot put to the side, that was always here, that is always observing. It is the witness of everything, but never partakes in anything. And itself never judges anything. Itself doesn't have any desires, wishes, dreams, goals, or regrets or shame or anything like that. Wow, how amazing. How amazing. Perhaps this is why animals are doing that, because they have that I am, that being, that existence, that they are the observer, of course, because they exist, but they don't have a personality per se. They don't have um a past that they're making a story out of, and then future goals and dreams and wishes of where their career might lead them and all that. These are all projections, imaginations that we as humans are capable of making, and that perhaps uh get out of hand a little bit, right? But that is for everyone uh for themselves to decide, right? This is not me saying, okay, so now that you know this, you have no other choice, you have to, you know. I just want to point to the fact that this observer, as you've, as you know, is there, and that this observer cannot really be traumated. The trauma comes after. Trauma comes is somewhere in the person themselves. This observer, even that is just observing it, whether it's trauma or joy or relief or non-relief, the observer is observing, not saying anything about it, not judging it, not putting meaning to it, not telling his friends about it, uh, not go see a therapist about it. You know, that observer is just observing everything that comes after. And so just to be aware of that, I think, is a very beautiful thing in the truest sense of the word, and it's it's a very healing thing. It is so healing that it's like there's nothing to heal, actually, kind of healing. And it's beautiful. And I just think it's something that every single person can benefit from. Um, the understanding of what already exists, not creating something that didn't exist before because that's not the case, but just the vision of it. And so um, yeah, that's what we might say to that. And uh I I hope at least one of the 7,000 uh questions have been answered and we can maybe deal with the 6,999 uh in future weeks.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:48

Uh but I appreciate another time.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:51

Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you coming here and at least asking one of those 7,000. And we're all I'm always here, always ready every week uh to answer the rest of them. So I appreciate you being here. And uh thank you for sharing. And I and I hope it was a good experience for you here the first time. And uh, as I said, you're always welcome. Uh, not just here in the kinship meetings, but in the server generally, and all the little chats that are going on to ask and participate and and do whatever you'd like. We have book clubs here you might have seen. We have all kinds of things. Uh it's it's a pretty beautiful place, and you're always welcome to it. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_06 2:07:30

Wonderful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:32

All right. And uh I appreciate that question very much. That was a great, that was a great start to uh you were speaking here, perhaps. Always welcome, never expected. Just by the way, that's important to say too. There's no expectation, but always welcome. And so we are at the end once again, a little bit over time, but that's totally fine because it's for a good reason. It's always for a good reason. And um, and I've uh good thing I've already given you uh my answer to the question of the fortnight. And with that, we can uh conclude in a way uh the question of the fortnight. Although, as I always say, they're always going on, they're never finished. We have a whole channel dedicated to the question of the fortnight, which you're always welcome to keep adding answers, discussing, going back and forth on any of the current or past questions of the fortnight. Uh but since we are at the end of this question of the fortnight, at least talking about it during the kinship meetings, that means I owe you a new one. And uh our new question of the fortnight, as always, inspired from real life, uh came to me. Aha, there's the word came to me. See, I didn't go into my imagination to come up with this. It came to me yesterday when we were discussing our little book of the month book club. We had a little book club meeting, the first one uh of this new book club where we choose a relatively short book and we try to get through it in one month and to have a meeting there too. We so we just finished one. If you're looking to join for the next book that we're gonna discuss, make sure to go into the the uh central chat. And within the central chat, there's a thread called uh the monthly book club, I think it's called, or the book of the month, something. And um there you can make sure you can you can join, select, also have a vote in what the next book will be, and then start reading it and discuss. It's it was a great time. And uh the book that we discussed and the discussion we had brought up this question. And this is what I want you to see. This openness, right? I wasn't thinking about yesterday, I wasn't thinking about next week, I wasn't thinking about my uh worries, my potential things that can happen in the future. I was just there discussing the book, right? I was I was there doing what I was doing rather than so often we do, you know, we're driving, but we're thinking about something else. We're we're talking to someone, but really we're uh already on the way home, etc. But when you're just open, when you're just there and you're just discussing something, um the discussion centered around thrill seeking. Thrill seeking. And, you know, most of us might think of thrill seeking as jumping out of an airplane and the adrenaline you get from that. Sure, that's a thrill seeking, but there's there are so many more forms of thrill seeking, it's amazing. And uh, so I want to ask the question are you a thrill seeker? Are you a thrill seeker?