We fear losing everything even though we own nothing

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Thank you for being here and spending your time talking about who we truly are, the true self, of awareness, of reason, of truth, of love, when instead you could have been spending your time seeing all the ugliness in the world and not realizing that it is our own superimposition of our own worldview onto the world. And that the world doesn't really look like that. And uh thank you also for being here and for seeing that we lack nothing. If we lack anything at all, it is the vision of the fact that we do not lack anything.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

People sometimes struggle with uh the feeling that we are behind in life and that is compared to the others, whether it is um regarding our careers, relationships, achievements, uh even when we logically know that comparison is basically unfair. If the mind naturally uses comparison just to understand what it is in life, then do you think the goal is really to eliminate it or to change our relationship with it so it doesn't turn into self-judgmental pressure? Um, in other words, can we still see where we are in relation to others or to time without turning it into a story that says, ah, we aren't behind, we are not enough, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

Of course. This once again, um, this is a question that you've asked that looks at the same thing that we keep discussing over and over again, and that's a good thing, that's a right thing, um, at a slightly different angle. And this is what the mind is going to do until it wraps itself around something. Okay, we're gonna have to look at the same thing from slightly different angles, right? Here's the one thing in the center, and we're gonna have to look at it from all angles until we really understand. And because uh I I think it was actually you and I who uh maybe talked about the logistical and the non-logistical, the physical and the non-physical before, right? And this comes back to that. And so I appreciate your question because um, even though this is a different question, the answer is the same. And if we learn to ask questions, I find, that lead to the same answer always, that's when we know that we are asking the right questions, not the right, not the right question. Well, there are wrong questions, right? I mean, let's be honest. There are questions that are simply uh lead nowhere or that get us caught up in nothing. And every second spent on nothing is a second not spent on something. And so this is one of those questions. And once again, my answer is uh notice the difference, which right now is very subtle. This is why this is not appearing, right? As soon as this question comes up one day, this is going to appear to you immediately. You're gonna see this is just a different question, uh, looking at the same thing from a slightly different perspective. And the logistical, the difference between logistical and non-logistical, the difference between physical and non-physical. We live in two realms that are not separate from each other. It's like a spectrum, maybe, right? On this end, there's the physical, on this end, there's the non-physical, and they are different. They are different, right? The physical cannot touch the non-physical, and vice versa. But it is one thing. I don't want to make it sound like these are separate things, um, like a spectrum, perhaps, right? And we need, but we need to be able to see where on that spectrum our questions, our ideas, our thoughts, our actions lie, right? So the question you've asked about comparison, I would say, lies entirely somewhere on the spectrum in the area of the physical, in the area of the logistical. Right? Because as you mentioned, you said in our careers we feel behind, or in our relationships or whatever. A career or relationship, these are these are logistical things.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Whereas on the other side, in the non-logistical, there is no body, literally, your human body cannot go there because it's a physical thing, right? Uh, and and therefore, everything that we do with the body is not there, it is not relevant, let's say, in that area of the spectrum of the of the self, of life, of the world, of the universe. And our confusion always lies in thinking that something logistical is also on the non-logistical side. Thinking that something physical can impact the non-physical. And when we think of the true self, when we say, what is the true self? Am I my body? Am I my past? Am I other people's opinions about me? Am I my goals, my wishes, my desires, my regrets, or uh my upbringing, my nationality, my age, my hair color? Am I these things? Or am I the awareness that perceives these things? The awareness without which I could not be aware of my body, of my relationships, of my career, of the house I live in, of my favorite color, of my taste preferences, of my dislikes, of my dreams, of my regrets, everything I'm ashamed of, everything I should have done bad. None of this I can even perceive, even perceive, let alone judge good or bad or whatever. I cannot even know of these things without the true self. And that true self is what? Awareness. I am the simple fundamental sense and reality of being without which anything we do is not possible. And that awareness, that true fundamental sense of being, where does that lie? Is that physical? Is awareness uh just a physical thing? Or is it non-physical? Is it a logistical thing? Is it something we do, something we plan, something we service, something we use? Or is it a non-logistical? Is it that which discerns and uh makes use of all the logistical and physical things? This is always the questions we need to we need to ask ourselves. And we of course need not and and also should not get into this whole conversation that we're having right now in our heads when we're trying to do this, because that's when thoughts come in, and that's when little things can get out of hand, we can go into rabbit holes, right? But what we can do, simple, simple, simple thing, to have all of this conversation in one moment, in one moment, is simply to ask, for example, when the thought comes, oh, I wonder if I'm behind in life, whatever that might mean, whatever that might mean, right? I wonder if I'm behind in life. One question who is speaking right now? Who is speaking right now? Identify yourself. We want to know who we're talking to, right? So when the when this thought appears, we didn't make this thought, right? We didn't make it come about. We did not, before we had the thought saying, I want to have this thought now, and then we had the thought. No, the thought came in, and uh we can hang on to the thought. We can say, please stay as long as possible. We can do that. But if we don't do that, the thought also on its own goes away at some point, right? We never had a thought for 10 hours, for 10 days, 10 months, 10 years, however long you want to go. You never had a single thought uh where you cannot remember the time before you had it, right? There was always a time before the thought. There wasn't there's no thought that we have now that we've always had. So the thought creates however it is created, it comes whenever it comes and it goes whenever it goes. So the thought is not you, you are observing the thought. You're saying, I had this thought. This occurred to me. So whenever a thought comes to you, whenever a voice speaks to you, whenever something occurs to you, all you have to say, ask, is who is speaking right now? And then you can notice, well, behind in life, okay, where does time exist? In the physical or in the non-physical? In the logistical or the non-logistical? Where does time exist? I would say it exists in the physical, in the logistical, right? And uh, where does a career exist when we say I'm behind in life? What do you mean by life? Well, you really what I mean is my career, let's say. Okay, where does career exist? In the logistical or the non-logistical? In the physical or the non-physical? That too in the physical, in the logistical. Okay, so now we really know who's speaking. Who's speaking is this person, the personality, the image that goes to work and comes back and and um makes a living or has a hard time making a living, or oh, now they're doing much better. Oh, now they're doing much worse. Now COVID. Right? And now, ah, relief. Okay, we're going back to normal a little bit. That person, that person is speaking right now. That person is feeling behind in life, or is wondering, am I behind in life? Or compares themselves to others and says, Oh, I'm much ahead. I am much ahead than this person. I don't know what I was worrying about. Whatever is being said, it is being said by this person. Now, the ultimate question is, are you this person? Or is this the person of you? Are you this person, or is this the person of you? Right? Because this person too can go away, and in fact, does go away, right? When the career goes away and we've identified with the career. Some people, I mean, you can say, okay, that's just one of my identities. Some people lose their family, their careers, uh, pretty much all of their body, right? The use of most of their body, their entire memory of what has been till then, and all, therefore, their goals, dreams, and desires and wishes in one day. There are people who this happens to. So now, after that, is the is the person gone? You know, because the career is gone, the family's gone, the health is gone, this and that, the house, the memories, even everything is gone. So is there no one there anymore? Is it evaporated into air? No, the person is still there. And so the person of them went away or changed severely, or something almost insane happened to them, to that person. But the true self, the awareness, the being, the existence is still there. And then many people, this is an opportunity for so many people to say, wow, all these things I identified with, which were taken from me by accident, by war, whatever it is. Wow, I realize now that was never me because I thought it was me, and now all that's taken away from me, but I am still here. I am. And so this is an opportunity to either say that or to say, I've lost everything. And now I'm gonna rebuild. Okay, I used to be this, uh, now I'm gonna be this. Now I'm gonna identify with this and this and this and this. So build a new identity. When you lose your identity, you can either build a new identity or you can realize that that was never you, and then never build a new identity, or which is the most wonderful thing, I think. We can have a person of us, we can have a personality, we can have an image, we can have a little person running around, making a living, coming back home, getting frustrated that uh the fridge just broke, even though they just bought that two years ago, uh, or the dog is sick, or no, wonderful, now I'm getting another dog, but my dog's gonna have a friend. What all these things are occurring in this person's life, but at all times I am seeing the person. And I am never thinking that I, the awareness, the true self, the being without which nothing is possible, I am not thinking that I am this person. I am never saying I am this person. I'm saying this is the person, this little thing here right here. Cute little thing, good little thing, okay. But it's just a little thing. Um, that is the person of me. And when you do that, you can still think about the career. You can still um, instead of judging, which it was so many people do, you can now discern. The difference between judging and discerning is that there's no emotion involved, pure reason. Reason guided by love, reason guided by justice, reason guided by truth. Now we can discern with love, justice, and truth rather than judge with anger, regret, and desire. What a big difference. So now we can discern is this person behind in their career? Okay, but uh maybe I maybe this person is a little behind. Is this now a reason for regret, shame, resentment? The world is against me. Well, I'm applying for promotions, but I never get them, and that's unfair. Do we want to live like this? Or do we want to say, objectively, yeah, okay, I guess uh for my age, for my education, for this and that. Uh, not quite there where other people that age with that education are. Now, is this a problem? No, to the true self, certainly not. But okay, we want to make more money. Absolutely fine. There's nothing wrong with that. And so, what can we do? Let's discern what we can do rather than judge whom we can blame for this. And so many people, when I say judge and hate, they don't even judge and hate other people only. They judge and hate themselves. And this is where we get into that funny contradiction. Who is hating whom? When we say I have so much disappointment, so much self-hate, because I'm behind in life, behind in career, whatever. Who is hating whom? And now we know who's hating whom. The person is hating the true self, the awareness, the simple being, which has no opinions, which has no shame or regret or desires or wishes or judgments, but which is the source of every single action and emotion and thought. Source as in that which gives it life, not which sends us those emotions, but which without which emotions and thoughts are not even possible. Without you existing, you cannot have a thought. Without you existing, you cannot have an emotion. So simply saying, who is speaking right now? And if it's something that is not acceptable to discernment, to that pure reason guided by love and truth, the question might be, or the the thought, the emotion that comes might be dismissed altogether. I'm saying, who's behind in life? And why is that a problem? You know, pure reason guided by love and truth will ask you this then. Say, why is this a problem? And the little person that wants the career that feels so neglected, that feels so discouraged and so disappointed, will say, Well, it's good for me to have a great career. I I need, I want to make my dreams come true. And I have I've wanted this forever since I was a child, and my parents want to be proud of me. I want to make them proud. And uh reason was okay, you need to go sit down, calm down. Okay, none of this is a problem. None of this is a problem. And so, how else is peace possible? I want to know this, right? This seems to work for me. This seems to make sense to me. And if something else makes sense to someone else, that is excellent for them. I wish them well, I wish them the best. Uh but I wonder how else is peace possible? And isn't it amazing that peace is possible with so so simply, not by attaining the career, not by having to get get someone else's approval, not by um being liked by someone or being highly regarded, having a great reputation, making a lot of money, not with all these things which take so much time and so much effort and are never guaranteed and are always under the danger of peril. But this true self can look at that and uh have no problem with anything. Yet at the same time, it is still allowed to go for whatever career, to go for money, and I want to have a lot of friends, and I want to do this. Fine, if that makes sense to you, and uh you've discerned that to be a right and proper thing for you to do, then not only are you allowed to do it, you will be in the best position to do it. Without anger, without resentment, without frustration, without blind desire that doesn't even let so many people sleep at night because of desiring of what they do not have, of what they cannot have so many times, even. And that's another thing. Maybe my desire is to be a top athlete and something, and it's literally, physically, logistically, impossible. But I've identified with that so much because I wanted that since I was a child, let's say. So now is peace impossible for me? So now is happiness out of reach? Very much so. If I identify as this person who wants to be the athlete but cannot be, but still wants to be, then yeah, how can I ever have peace? But if I know that this wannabe athlete is the is what the person of me wants, and it's only what the person of me can even achieve. The true, the the awareness doesn't even have the body to do that. And it's not interested, it doesn't have a desire or an aversion towards it. And so this is the most beautiful thing. Everything is allowed, nothing needs to be suppressed, nothing needs to be ignored, nothing needs to be denied, nothing needs to be hated or resented in any way whatsoever. Everything is still possible. And in fact, the person with this understanding, with this disposition, is the one, in my opinion, the one who has the highest chances of attaining anything, any desire, any career, any whatever. But again, they're not gonna need it. They're just gonna say, this is the right and proper thing to do. I have uh so many years on this earth, and uh I have a body, I have certain resources, I have a certain amount of time. This is one I want what I want to put that towards. I think it's a good thing to do. Go ahead by all means, by all means, and find other aware people with this understanding, perhaps. This would be a delight, wouldn't it, to that person even to come in contact through what they do on this earth with other aware people. I mean, what a wonderful thing. Yet still, this does not make. The true self better. And if things don't go the way that this person wants, it does not make the true self worse. Peace always. Peace never as something that has to be attained. Peace never as something that has to be achieved, proven, uh, be worthy of. No, peace is your birthright. And I say birthright only because I that I find that to be the grandest word possible for entitlement. But it is not even only a birthright, it is something we already have. We are sitting on it. We cannot do anything without the ground of peace, the ground of being, this effortless thing that our very existence awareness is sitting on. Without it, it would have no ground to operate on, good or bad. And so this is what we're trying to gain the vision of here. If we're trying to do anything, if we lack anything, it is this vision. And uh, we're not the first people to do this either. So I don't even know what we are so afraid of. I don't even know what we think we cannot do and why we can't do it. Everyone's doing this. Everyone's who is in con coming in contact with this and says, I recognize this as truth. This is this is uh connecting with me, and uh, I'm gonna give it my time, I'm gonna give it certain resources, I'm gonna make it my own, I'm gonna find my own personal connection to it. These people have it. If you give yourself to it like this, it is waiting to come and it cannot wait to come and be you, fill you up. But we have to empty ourselves first. We have to empty ourselves of the confusion between logistic and non-logistical, physical, non-physical, what is the true self? This is why the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, are saying, know thyself. When you know thyself, you know everything, and you can do everything. And knowing everything that includes peace. And so uh I think you'll agree with me, it is once again an issue of the vision of the true self, which includes the vision of what is logistical, what is non-logistical, and can these two things touch each other? Can the physical touch the non-physical? It is only a vision of this. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Yeah, yeah, it absolutely makes sense. Um, as you said at the beginning, it goes back to the same thing that we discussed the last time, which is you stay with the thought. This is the first thing. Um, when I asked you about how can I respond or reply to someone without um hurting them, and you said, Well, you're gonna feel uncomfortable doing so, but it's you sit with the thought, even if you're gonna feel that way. So this is the first thing that um uh you repeated today as well, which it makes sense, which is the first thing I guess that we should do is to sit with these kind of ideas, and then uh you ask who is speaking. And of course, uh it sounded as going from something that is complicated to be simple, and by making it simple, I guess now I have I don't know if I should call it a blueprint, which is just trying to uh separate the questions, you know, the physical, the non-physical, logistical, non-logistical, and then you try to answer these questions, and then you will get to the conclusion that you are seeking. So, yeah, it feels kind of similar to my last question, and in order to get the right answer, I should sit with it and try to um answer each question separately.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

Although, again, don't complicate it, right? I mean, you are simplifying it, that's great, but don't complicate it. The real question is just who's speaking right now, right? As soon as you can step away from your question or whatever the events that are going on unfolding in front of you, which you are wondering about, if as long as you can step away from them just that little bit, just enough to ask, okay, hold on a minute. We'll figure this out, but like one second now. Who is speaking right now? And the answer to that question will unfold also into the logistical answer that you're looking for, right? Who's speaking right now? Uh huh. It's the person. It's the person, it's not the true self. This is nothing to the true self, it is something to the person, the persona, the personality that I have, that I am in the outer world, in the physical world, and the logistical world, the image that I present uh knowingly or unknowingly. Uh, this is uh this is a question that is coming from that, and this is an answer that can only affect that part of the realm, that part of being, right? And so the disposition changes. So, you know, what's the point of anxiety? What's the point of nervousness? What's the point of stress when it comes to this? When you know the true self uh cannot be made better or worse by the outcome of whatever's going on. So we need to know what we're talking about, what we're deliberating about. Isn't that the most important key to any logistical or non-logistical question to figure something out, to know what we're actually talking about here? I mean, that's really all this is. And once we know that, we can say, okay, so this is a career thing, this is a physical thing, this is a logistical thing. So let's think about it logistically. Let's not think about it so emotionally. It's like, oh no, if I don't solve this problem, if I don't come up with a solution, if my solution is not good enough, um, then I'll be in a really bad way. Who's speaking right now? Who will be in a really bad way? And you say, well, okay, here again, that's the person. But even will the person be in a bad way? Even that I think falls away. The the the true self says, but look, even to that little person, this is not going to be the end of the world. Ah, okay. So now all of a sudden, I can have a problem and still be at peace. I can have a challenge to overcome and still be at peace. And I can have a so-called loss and still be at peace. And I can have a so-called success and still be at peace. That exhilaration, that thrill is not gonna um take my mind away somewhere else either. I can always bring it back and say, Who is speaking? What is this to whom? Is this success a success to the true self? Or is this the success of the person? Say, well, of course it's the success of the person. I just won this prize. Can the true self win a prize? Can the physical prize be given to the true self? No. So this too is for the person. And then they say, okay, calm down now. Okay, just because you've had a success, this doesn't mean any, this doesn't make the true self better. So don't get caught up in these ideas, right? Because that's another way of getting caught up in things when things are going well, right? When people think of us well, when the career is going well, however that's defined, then we get lost into those, in those thoughts, and we think we are once again something that we are not, a successful person. Before we were not so successful person, or someone who was hoping to be successful and who was wondering if they ever will be successful. And now we're a successful person. My gosh, when will it ever end? Right. And as soon as we have a success and we identify with it and we believe in it, we go on to fear of losing it. We say, well, right now things are going really well, but this is so fragile. I mean, uh, and there are people who don't wish this for me and they want to take this away from me, and it's such a mess, right? Identification with anything, even so-called good things, leads to bad things. Even uh desiring happiness as you are desiring it, desiring it, it's an unhappy state. And as soon as you achieve happiness, we go on to uh fearing of losing this happiness that we supposedly have right now. But if we're fearing to lose the happiness that we have right now, we are not happy. Does that sound like happiness to fear to be to live in fear of loss? And so this is everything. Because again, even if you're ahead in life, uh that's not gonna bring us peace. To the person who identifies with their location in life, whether they're ahead or behind or wherever they are, someone who identifies with that is never gonna be happy, even when they're ahead of everyone else. There are literally always has been, right? Someone always has been the richest person on earth, whoever that ever was, right? Every 10 years, perhaps it's someone else. Go back to the even prehistory, right? When there were any commodities, whoever was the richest person then and whoever is the richest person now, put them all together. Let's say there have been 10,000, the richest people on earth, 10,000 of them. How many of them do we think were at peace? Had peace? And uh, however many of them have been at peace, was it because they were the richest person on earth? This is the question. Even if they were at peace, or however many of them were at peace, was it because of their wealth? Or was it because of something else? Was it because that they knew that they were not their wealth? And when they used to be poor, um, was it because they knew they weren't? That wasn't them. So these are questions to ask. Only as pointers, right? Not to write a thesis on, not to prove it to someone else, not to discuss it with someone else, but just as pointers and say, okay, I wonder which which direction, left or right, left or right, left or right. And uh, if we consistently see ourselves going one way or the other with these questions, then that that points also to some truth, to some fact. And I think ultimately these kinds of things point to the true self and um what is real and what is not real points to these things. So, and uh the question of the fortnight could not be more relevant to what you are asking. Uh, the question of the fortnight right now is what will you be when you grow up? And uh you can answer that if you'd like to. I'm just asking and I'm not expecting you to answer it. Maybe you haven't thought about it, maybe you don't want to answer it. That's totally up to you. But if you want to answer, what will you be when you grow up?

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Yeah, sure. That's uh that's a good question, actually. And I I'm not gonna lie, I don't have like a final answer to the question, maybe because as you mentioned before, I complicate things before I give it an answer. But I try to think about the question. And I was just writing about it and I reached a point where I was like, the last time I heard this question was maybe before graduating high school, maybe that was the last time, and uh then it stopped being asked, and then I was thinking that it sounded as, or it seems as an assumption that human identities somehow seems as a destination, and that there is a fixed point in time or some future, a completed version of me towards which I am somehow obligated to aim. And it assumes that becoming is a problem to be solved, and that adulthood is the resolution. And when I was thinking about it this way, I was just writing and writing, and the word that kept showing up is becoming. So I was like, okay, becoming this, becoming that. And I remembered what you did the last time with the word understand and how you tried to uh define it, and I was like, hmm, becoming is a is a good word, you know, it's it's showing up a lot, and I was like, it seems if we can separate the word, we have be and coming, it's like two words fused into one, and we have a state of existence which is be that is perpetually arriving, coming. So it's not be arrived, be here, it's coming. So it's always mid-motion and it's never finished. And when I had this, I just stopped and I was like, so maybe this question is timeless, and maybe it doesn't have an answer, which is I am always becoming something, and I might not have the final answer anytime soon. So I was like, okay, I'm just gonna stop here. So this was like basically my conclusion. I I might be wrong, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

Wow, that is so amazing, and you're absolutely right. Becoming is always the word itself is telling us being is coming, it's gonna come if you do this, if you do that, perhaps this and that, right? It's coming. And once again, when we ask, is the true self becoming or is it already?

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Um, I think it's already it already exists, right?

SPEAKER_03 36:52

The true self, that the this awareness, this existence, this being without which we cannot do anything, whether becoming or unbecoming, we cannot do anything without that which already is. And the true self, again, once everything logistical, everything physical has been taken out, taken out of any definition that is so crowded with these things of the true self, what remains? You know, uh, age is not the true self, nationality is not the self, even time does not factor into the true self. The true self, the person has desires, wishes, and shames and regrets, but the true self does not have that because the true self has now no memory. The true self accesses memory, it accesses the mind, it accesses the senses, the senses. But the true self is not the senses, and the true self is not the activity of this body in the past or now. And so the true self has no desires, it has no dreams of becoming this or that. It already is, it already is the existence of every single thing we do in our life. Without this being, which already is, which is not becoming, it is already fully there. Without that, we cannot do anything. Yet we keep thinking that with this already existent, perfect really being, we still need to go and become something with it, using that as a tool or something, I don't know, as a vehicle. How? What what can be better than this? What can be better than this timeless, changeless, uh fundamental I am existence, which the physical cannot touch, the logistical cannot touch, its house can burn down, its entire family can move away. Yet this true self, the self, cannot be made better or worse by that. It still exists the same way, it still is. So who again, who's speaking when I s when when when we're saying I'm becoming, I need to become who is speaking? It's the person, it's not the true self. So that's an amazing, amazing realization that you have. And then one more question about this realization is peace a movement or is peace stillness?

SPEAKER_02 39:32

I would say stillness, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:35

Peace peace does not need to go somewhere. Oh, now I can be at rest. Now I can be still, right? Peace is stillness, peace is stillness, and so but becoming is a motion, right? Or is becoming a stillness? Is becoming emotion or a stillness? Okay, so do you see from the simple realization? Well, when I say simple, I mean fundamental realization that you had about becoming what already the truth that is in the word itself, we are seeing, uh-huh, who's becoming and uh is becoming motion or stillness, and is peace stillness or motion? And so we can see that becoming does not belong to the true self, and becoming does not belong to peace. And so if we want to have peace, if we want to be that which already be, which is the true self, then we must stop becoming. And again, this is going to sound like well, didn't we just say we can still have the career? Yes. We just need to make sure that we understand that the career is not going to make us into something, the true self. Because again, who are we speaking about here? Are we speaking about becoming something for the true self? Or are we speaking about becoming something via the career or anything else of the person? And so if the true self already is, and if peace is actually stillness and not motion, then all this becoming is not for the true self, it is for the person, which is completely allowed. And that's totally fine, and it can be a very beautiful thing. We just have to make sure that we keep this understanding in mind that nothing that we can do logistically or physically is going to truly, now we're talking about the true self, is going to make me better or is going to make me worse. Not me, the person. So let's let's play the game, let's do this, let's do uh try to achieve certain physical, logistical things, which genuinely and objectively are the right thing to do, if they are such things. But the true self will know that. So let's do that, but let's always remember this our success in them does not make us worse, and our so-called failure in them does not make us um, our success in them does not make us better, and our failure does not make us worse. Someone who knows this, someone who knows this, what can happen to them? What can ever happen to someone who knows this? Yet this person can still do anything they want. Amazing. This is the amazingness, and this is exactly what this question uh intended to bring out. This idea that becoming is uh a false state. It's not true. We can never become. We can never become, we can never become something when we grow up. We've already are grown up. The true self was grown up, complete, and became as soon as this life started. It is the person who is trying to grow up, it is the person who has dreams for when they grow up. It is this person who is trying to become. This is the separation that we always need to uh keep in mind, and that's going to become more obvious as we dwell with these kinds of questions and realizations and understandings and this kind of knowledge, right? Um, who's the one becoming, who's the one who's already is? This is this is the amazing thing, right? So the difference between the self and the true self, uh, physical, non physical, logistical, non logistical. And these are just names I'm giving it, by the way, logistical, physical. I find them helpful, but there are many other ways of thinking about this as well, right? Outside, inside, whatever. And so, but if we keep this in mind, if this very subtle thing, admittedly, this is a very subtle, subtle thing. Especially to the little bitty person that we are. This is a very easy-to-miss thing. But once we become aware of it, it is our work of life. And this is all that the work of life is. The work of life also sounds like a becoming, right? And it is a becoming for the person. For the person to realize that there is more. Again, it is not the being that we lack, but the vision of it. And so the work of life is simply to become aware of this distinction. Once we see this, the work of life is completed. And to do this work of life, we need nothing than a few pointers from maybe a few friends and some logistical physical time and some obstructions, physical or non-physical, to be removed from the in front of our vision. But once that is done, that little bit of being, becoming is accomplished, once that is accomplished, it's over. And you can, like I said, still do whatever you want physically, logistically with your life. But it's simply not going to take you in and out of peace anymore. And so this is what the question intended, and I'm glad you uh are seeing this. And this is the vision. This is the vision I'm talking about this whole time. Merely talking about it makes it sound like more complicated than it is. It makes it sound like uh more special than it really is, because this is not special at all. This is for everyone, this is for all of us. And it is not difficult and it is not complicated because truth is simple. Um, nothing that is not simple can be attained by everyone, but truth can be attained by everyone. And so this is the simple truth. Every time something happens to you, to whom is it happening? Every time a thought, emotion comes, who is speaking right now? If we keep this distinction in mind, not a single thing can happen to us. Not a single thing. So I appreciate that very much. Your question and your answer to the question of the 49th, this is amazing. And um, I have to say, I haven't looked into the word become myself. So that might be a good word for the newsletter, perhaps as well, for for other people to become aware of this distinction. Uh, we'll see what the word origin of all that is and how it came about, but it might be very interesting. So, but already what you've made out of it is the most interesting that could possibly be. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

I mean, thanks to you for thank you for pointing out the word, understand to all of us, because if I didn't uh hear that example, probably I would just read the word as it is and just trust by it. But I was like, let's just analyze it a little bit because it's coming up a lot. And yeah, so thank you. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

Always be looking up words. This is my recommendation to everyone and anyone. Always be looking up words. The word origin, which is a I mean, this is a scientific thing, right? To to look at the dictionary and to see how it came about, anthropology, the the realm of ideas, this, how did this come about? That's history and it's philosophy, and it's every it's so beautiful. Looking up word origins can tell you so much. It is so, so interesting and so, so edifying to look up word origins. So I always do that. And um, some of the most amazing insights, as I would count one of yours uh to be one of those as well, come from doing doing that, looking up word origins. So highly, highly recommend it to everyone. And it's so easy, just pull out your phone, type in, become word origin, understand word origin. It's the most fascinating thing to do. Um, so thank you very much. Uh once again, very enriching. And I'm gonna move you to the audience uh for now. As always, with uh great gratitude. Thank you so much. And um thank you. I will invite our next speaker. And once again, wow, what an amazing conversation, what an amazing uh insight. Look, two people speaking to each other. This is all this is. Has this ever been anything else? It's two people speaking to each other. We haven't referenced any books, we haven't studied anything that is uh somehow enables us to do this, and other people can't. No, this is just two people in their free time without even uh most of the time knowing each other's names. I mean, none, nothing matters. This is the power of the living word. And the person who's coming up was wondering about this at some point. Um, what is the difference between the written word and the and the living word? This is the living word, this cannot be written. Because it's a back and forth and it's an understanding, it's an exchanging of insights, and it's a building on each other and building together and this vision, and it's a most wonderful thing. So, once again, thank you very much. And I've invited our next speaker. Um, and hello, hello, hi.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, hi everyone, hi artists. Hi, I hope you're doing well.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Um, um, last time we talked about uh imagination and vision, and I liked your insights about it. And this week I wanted to discuss a similar topic that has interested me for a long time now, and it's the concept of the artist in the muse, and especially in portraiture. I find portraits really interesting because they almost preserve a person, they like freeze a moment in a way, they kind of immortalize them through the artist's perception of them. And this actually made me think of you because I know you've been amused for a well-known artist, and I've seen some of her works of you actually, and I found them really fascinating because there was something very soft and perceptive in the way she captured you. It almost felt like she wasn't just painting your face, but something she perceived through you, um, behind your physical appearance and persona. And it made me curious about the experience from the other side, from the muses side. And I have two questions. Um, what does it feel like to be repeatedly interpreted uh through another artist's vision? And why do some people become a source of inspiration and others don't? Those were my two questions.

SPEAKER_03 51:02

I have an interesting sort of fun fact about our philosophy, some of the people that we read in the kind of philosophy that we like. Some of us might be uh familiar, familiar with Platinus. He his name is close to Plato, and he actually was a Neoplatonist, meaning he was of the school of Plato, but hundreds of years later, and he's actually a very, very interesting person to read, very, very difficult um writings. I mean, he he was one of those philosophers who seemingly knew everything, all the way from the physical, how the planets go about in the universe, all the way down to the true self. And uh, as far as I know, he only has one big work in which all this is contained. And his name's Plotinus. Uh, maybe someone can write it in the chat. And uh his work is called The Eneads, and uh that sort of was the work that started it all for me in terms of seeing the non-physical behind the physical. And it really showed me that be as I put it now, that behind the visible, there's the invisible, and behind the invisible, there's the inconceivable, right? Because we can see physical things, of course, with our physical vision, and we can even see that these physical things would not be possible without the certain invisible things behind them. It's sort of, you know, this is a very simple, profane example, but um, the house is built because of the invisible intention, the invisible vision of whoever is building it or whoever is designed it at least, right? So we can clearly see that behind every house, there's a certain invisible something that we might not even fully be able to know. But there's something, clearly. Behind the visible, there's the invisible. And behind the invisible, even, there's the inconceivable, that which from which all that is visible and invisible comes from, without which it cannot exist. Right, and many people might call that God, but really to me, God is the inconceivable, the visible, and the invisible. It's everything. And so I'm saying that to say this, that Plotinus was also a teacher. He was a person of the living word. He had a school, people came, he had students, things like that, and and they would discuss. Perhaps they would sit around just like we're doing and just exchange insights. And uh one day one of his students really wanted him to be, as he would say it, immortalized, remembered. Right? So he said, Plotinus, uh, please allow me to hire an artist that will make uh a bust of you, a sculpture of your head, right? And uh Plotinus was against that. He said, Why make an image of an image? It's an image of an image, because he's saying this body, this what you're seeing, is merely an image, it's merely the visible of the invisible, and so that's how I tend to think about these things from my perspective, right? The artist's perspective is different, they're seeing something in the visible that is perhaps invisible, and that's what some of the best artists do, right? I think they portray the visible to portray something invisible, and for that invisibility to also make us think of the inconceivable of God, of being, of everything, right? And so I believe this is that kind of thing. And uh why anyone would ever be interested of making an image of this particular image that you're saying could only be uh the ideas that we share here right now. It is again that kinship that we're talking about, which transcends everything, right? Someone, whether it is us reading Plotinus or Seneca or Socrates and recognizing kin there, or um us meeting on the street and having a simple exchange and seeing that aha, this person too believes in this or that. It is like that. And so an artist might say, okay, that makes me uh want to uh portray this visible, this image, in order to point to certain invisible things. Right. But to me, that's again a sort of a point where things become special. It's like, okay, this person is special because through this person or this object or this scenery, right, for landscape painters or photographers, can these invisible and even inconceivable things be portrayed? I think this is in everything and isn't it is in all of us. If it wasn't in all of us, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't do this because why talk to anyone else if I believe that um this is not everyone's birthright and this isn't inside of everyone. So you have to ask the artist of why some people can be uh an image of an image, and uh others are best left alone to be just one image and not to make an image of that image. I don't know. I don't really know. But uh again, to me, the only possible reason could be the ideas behind the image, which are inside of everyone, everyone's birthright. Everyone is made to be able to perceive truth. The apparatus to do that, the ability to uh live according to truth is inside of everyone. And so that makes it everyone's birthright, and it makes it uh for everyone, period. I don't believe in that separation, so I can't answer that question. What makes someone uh some people so-called worthy of being depicted or certain objects, certain landscapes again, and others not. I can't say that it's not a belief that I share in that separation. Um you know, I personally simply don't have that way of thinking. When I, for example, I like to read, right? I didn't know forever what Seneca looked like. I I could not care less. It's only by accident that I saw a couple depictions of him now, or it's the same with Socrates or or anyone else. So many people are wondering, wow, what did Jesus look like? I literally could not care less. Could not care less because I already know everything about this person, right? I mean, what does it matter if Jesus was a woman? Uh totally different than what we thought, right? If if whatever he he if he had didn't have a single hair on his body, if he had that disease alopecia or whatever it's called, what does it matter? What does it matter? And so if you want to know Jesus, you know him by his ideas. If you want to know the Buddha, you know him by his ideas. If you want to know Simone Wei, another one of our favorite philosophers, uh, you know her through her ideas, not through her image. But again, this is no judgment on any kind of art. Art is, of course, beauty, and art is, of course, a pointer to truth and the inconceivable. And it's uh it's one of the also the needs that we all share to make art. We think of artists as these specialized people who are allowed to make art and who are able to make art, and we're not. No, we make art ourselves too. It's a book in one of my reading recommendations, right? Um, Alan De Sanyaki. What is art for? You can read that book, it's very interesting. Um, and it shows you that art has always existed in every community, in every society, in every community without art has perished. So it's a vital thing for all of us to do so. Again, there's no specialty there as well. Um, but to the person who does this as a full-time activity, right, even makes their living with that. That's a logistical physical question for such an artist to ask, right? Why does something interest you more than other things? And it might be a very interesting discussion, but it is more so logistical one, I think, than a non-physical one in which time interests uh the very materials with with with which we all do make art doesn't exist. So I can't fully answer that question, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Uh thank you. Um I did uh read uh read the book that you recommended in the the Ellen the Sanayaki book, and it was really interesting, and I will definitely uh read this one that you recommended. Um thank you for this answer. I always like talking about art and these topics, and I like your insights about them in a philosophical way, so thank you so much, Asis.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

Thank you. And I will ask you the question before now. You don't have to answer, but I'll ask it. Uh, what will you be when you grow up?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

I find it uh really difficult to answer this question because I wanted to be a lot of things, but I didn't get the chance to be all of them, but but at the end it's it's not what I want it to be, it's just discovering what I'm already am. Like I can be all of those things without actually that waiting to be that thing that I aspire to be. So I'm just vibing through life. I'm not actually wanting wanting to be someone like with like a certain career or certain status in life, so and I also liked the the answer of the the guy who talked before me, so I liked his answer more.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:32

Yeah, and uh I I think what you are also pointing out here, at least what I'm getting from it, is that the realization of what we truly already are and have always been is actually much grander and beyond our wildest desires of any of the things we wished to be before, right? I mean, yeah, this true self that we truly are is again beyond our wildest imaginations when we came up with uh I want to be an artist, I want to be an architect, I want to be this or that. Even the most successful, so-called successful, right? And again, in logistical physical terms, uh, of such a career pales in comparison of what the true self is of the person who has done that or who hasn't done that. And it's the most amazing thing, and and the the grandest um truth, reality is already what we were born with, not the one that we could ever become. And so I just find that amazing. And this again is part of this understanding of the true self, that nothing that you could ever achieve could be as great as this, because this greatest thing is not achievable. And it's not achievable because you can't do it, you'll never have it. No, it's not achievable because you already have it. You cannot achieve something that already is fact and reality and is with you and is you, period. You equal the true self, and the true self equals the most amazing, grandest thing that anyone could ever think of. And so there's a lot of beauty in that. And and see for an artist to then this is what it gets me more excited, most excited, when I see artists or any kind of creative maker, designer aware of this. The things that they create when they're aware of this, uh, also in the in the realm of art and design and whatever, are the greatest things, in my opinion. I mean, how can the image of the greatest thing not be the greatest thing, right? In the world of physical. And so this understanding, this this knowledge of the true self, it is everything. And it makes everything uh in its highest form, right? Whatever we're engaged in, even if we're engaged in um uh office work, which we never think of, oh, I'm becoming something, I'm making something, this is the greatest thing I'm doing for the world. Even that and anything benefits from this understanding. And it makes everything the best possible version, scenario of that which it could be. I find that, I just find that amazing. And see, to find that amazing, to think about that or even to talk about it with you, we need nothing. We don't need any money, we don't need any achievements, we don't need any um approvals or permissions from someone else. Nothing. We need nothing. And so the grandest thing requiring the least resources, in fact, zero resources, that just blows my mind every time I think about it. It's almost like thinking about space, right? The vastness of it every time blows your mind, even though you knew about it before. And so this is an amazing thing. So I appreciate um Yeah, sorry, I didn't want to cut you off.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

No, no, I just wanted to say it's almost like you're asking what what identity do you want to have when you grow up? Because when you grow up, we kind of have these different identities. And we forget who we are, we truly are.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:23

Exactly. Yeah, what we're really saying is what fantasy would you like to chase? You know, what identity would you like to make for yourself? Yeah, like you said. And uh even though, like our previous speaker said, uh that they didn't hear this question since high school, they didn't hear it. It wasn't asked to them, but we keep asking ourselves still, don't we? Even though um no one asks, most people don't ask anymore after high school. Um we ourselves are constantly asking. 40, 50, 60, 70, 80-year-old people are asking themselves this. And they might not even realize that, well, I already have grown up, you know. And then there's the flip side, of course, of people who say, well, it is what it is at this point, nothing can change. Uh, I can't, I can never be happy, I can never find peace. That time passed. It's so funny. Both sides of this knowledge are so similar to each other, even though they think they are the complete opposite of each other, right? This this the lack of ambition because of, oh, I'm nihilistic, I have despaired, is the same as the height of ambition, saying I can achieve anything I want and I must and I have to. They're so similar, but they think they're the opposite. Only here in the middle are we really doing something different, different from bad, different from the changing, different from that which is open to physical decay and attack and all that. Now we're doing something different. Now we're seeing the timeless. Now we're seeing the immortal. Now we're seeing the non-logistical, the non-physical. This is becoming clearer and clearer and clearer. And with it grows the experience of peace. Not peace itself, because it was always there and it's perfect and it's fully there, but the vision of it, the experience of it is growing. So um thank you once again for your question and and just of for your intention, of course, that you bring here and the openness and and the insights once again. So thank you very much. And uh thank you for speaking here again, by the way. I'm moving it to the audience, but I also want to say that um you um have come here now several times, and I think I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you are seeing that that's doing something, right? Again, only in the physical, the logistical about the vision, not about peace and truth itself, but your vision of it is growing um due to being here and and opening yourself up. And that's why I recommend this to everyone. Um speaking here and and gaining insights and perhaps having a very, very, very interesting conversation is not gonna make you or I any better, the true self, but it is going to give us the vision of the true self more and more if we don't already have it. I'm not saying we don't have it, right? Okay, and I will invite our next speaker.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:31

I've been thinking about losing and gaining a lot, because it's it's something that we've established here that we're complete, right? And uh we're whole, and personally I I believe uh I am my true self and that I I'm one entity is what I want to believe, and is currently believing. So I I wondered, do I need do I lose anything, or do I gain anything, or am I simply like changing? Maybe I maybe I'm confused about something, but it makes sense to me because I don't believe that I own anything. I don't believe that I own my job, I own the money in my bank account, I own the bed that I sleep in, my phone, my body, and all of these things are just things that I get to have and experience.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:48

So when you lose something or gain something that isn't yours, are you are you actually losing something?

SPEAKER_06 1:11:00

I don't know. It's been something that I I I've thought about because when something isn't yours, suddenly it looks so beautiful. Um for example, I I used to work at a restaurant, and back then, you know, every day um showing up at that restaurant, the view looks so bad, it looks so grim and depressing and all of these things. But when a customer they come in, they're delighted, they're excited to be there, they're having a good time. So, how are we looking at the same thing, so drastically different? So now that I believe that nothing is mine, um everything looks so beautiful. Everything looks so like I I'm not supposed to be doing anything. Whatever I'm doing, I'm doing, whatever I'm experiencing. I'm meant to I'm meant to experience that. I'm trying to align myself with that way of thinking because a lot of the time I still get tangled up with the belief that something is mine, or the belief that oh, I need to fix something.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

Let me ask you this. Are you are you getting tangled up with the idea of needing to fix something, or are you getting tangled up with an identity which in turn believes that it needs to fix something?

SPEAKER_06 1:12:54

Huh?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:58

It's the true self getting tangled in the false self. It's you getting tangled in the not you. It is not you getting tangled in some idea or some this or that. Confusion is of the person, of the identity, not of the true self. The true self uh has no memory, the true self has no confusion, it has no desire, it has no expectation. If it has no expectation, it can have no disappointment, it can have no ecstasy, it can have no bliss, it can have no sadness, it can have none of that. All of this comes after. All of this is for the person, uh, which is not your enemy, like we discussed before, right? The person can exist, fully allowed to exist, a beautiful thing to exist. That person can do many great things, but that person is not you, right? That's all we need to understand. And so when you get confused, um, you get confused because you identify with the one who can get confused, just like you used to identify with the possessor of things which were ugly, beautiful, worth having, very valuable, or um, there were appendages to you, there were impediments, whatever the whatever the narrative you made was, right? But it was the person who owned those things that you identified with, and therefore you thought this way. And now that you're seeing the person who owns things, the person who can lose or gain things, that isn't me. And so now I can look at all these beautiful things that before I desired of possessing, and now I understand that even if I possessed them, I would not possess them. And so now I don't need to possess a beautiful house necessarily. That's that's very, very grand and beautiful in architecture. I can just look at it and say, this beauty is here, no, whether I possess it or not, whether the deed is on my name or not. So now I can see it and a landscape you really you can't really possess anyway. And even if you could possess it, you would think of it as ugly, as someone who thinks in terms of possession and non-possession and in terms of gain and loss. And uh one more thing I want to point out, I just heard you say. You said, am I the one gaining or losing, or am I just the one who's changing? If the true self cannot gain or lose, how can it change?

SPEAKER_05 1:15:44

I I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

So the changing nature, even that is not of the true self, it is of the person. The person can change, just like your person has changed, the person who used to identify with their possessions or their non-possessions, the person who used to see uh certain things as ugly, other things as beautiful, but mostly ugly. That one has changed. Now that person is saying, now I can see beauty. Now I don't judge so much anymore. Now I feel good much more. That one can change, and that one does change, and that one is constantly changing. We are never the person that we were. I mean, it's like the saying goes, we're not the same person as we were yesterday. I think that's technically true, but we cannot really perceive that difference. It's too small. But certainly when we think of the person who we used to be uh a year ago, right? Do you ever uh if you if you write in journal, uh you can do this, you can ever, you can go to your journal entries a year ago. And you can read it and say, Wow, I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I thought that. Now I know that this is not so. And then perhaps in a year you will go back to what you were saying a year ago, or you will believe yet another thing, or you will know even more than you did now, or things will be even clearer to you, whatever it is. But that person who is journaling, that person who is changing their mind on something, that person who is changing jobs, who is changing, who used to be so judgmental and now they're not, or uh they were making such progress in letting go of their judgments, but now they seem to be falling back into judgment again. That all of that belongs to the person and not to the true self. And um, this is what they say about the true self. The true self is changeless. The true self is the one who perceives change. You are the one who's saying this person of me used to believe everything was ugly, or now I can see that everything that I thought was ugly was because I used to believe in possession and gain and loss. And now that I don't do that anymore, this person of me can now see beauty. This change is being observed by you. It is not you who's changing. If you were truly the person who used to look at the scenery as ugly out of the restaurant, and now is the person who can see the beauty in it. If you truly let if you were truly this person that used to see it as ugly, and that person now is gone, how are you still able to talk about this person? How are you still able to talk about this opinion which is left with this person that you genuinely used to be? How do you have a memory of this? It is because you're the observer. You are observing this person changing into that person or letting go of this person, now being this person. You are the one observing this happening. You are neither the one who used to think the scenery is was ugly, nor the one who now can see its beauty. These two people and many more others are being observed by you, the true self. And that true self observes change, but cannot change, need not change. That is the one that can feel down, observes the one feeling down and feeling better, but is not the one who feels worse or better. Because emotions don't belong to it. Thoughts are not it. It observes the thoughts, it is not the thoughts, it observes the emotions, it is not the observ, um, emotions. You can see, but you are not your sight. You can smell, but you are not your your sense of smell. The sense of sight and the sense of vision, the sense of smell are going somewhere. They are presented to someone who then makes sense of them. That's you. Uh, you know, I always say, uh, you are not your sense perceptions, you are the one who makes sense of sense perceptions. And so whenever you are confused by an idea, you are not confused by an idea. You are confusing yourself with the one who can be confused by an idea. So this again comes back to the question: who's speaking right now? When we're saying, I find myself confused still sometimes by certain ideas. You've said that to yourself, I'm sure, before you said it to me, otherwise you wouldn't have brought it here. So when you say it to yourself, which is a funny way of speaking, right? Because that's not you speaking. That's something you're perceiving, but you think it's you. That's why it's possible to say, I was saying to myself. No, you were not saying to yourself. The identity with which you identified was saying something to the true self. It's because you identified with it, is that you think you the self can talk to the self that there are somehow true selves, two selves. Well, there's only one self. How can the one self talk to itself? It's an idea, uh, which is also what an identity is. It's a mental construct, it's a construction of multiple ideas, emotions, dreams, wishes, things, beliefs, whatever they are, put together, that's an identity. And that identity seems like it's it's an existing thing, it's a being, it's a person, right? And so that person can speak to the true self, and it can, but you are not that. So when we say who's speaking right now, we can ask ourselves, you know, in that sense again, um, is it the person or is it the true self? And clearly the one who is confused, now that we know the true self, or we're gaining that vision, right? What's the true self? What's the not true self? Is the true self the one who can be confused, or or is that not the true self? So now when we say who's the one speaking, well, whoever is speaking is speaking of confusion, is speaking of change, uh, is speaking of progress, is speaking of time. Okay, so we can be sure then that this is not the true self speaking, but the person speaking, which once again is not a problem. It's not a problem. We just want to make sure we correctly identify the speaker. I want to know who I'm talking to. So um this is why they say all around the world at all times, identification with the false self is the source of all misery. Identity is the source of all misery. Why? Because when we identify with the one who can be confused, who can suffer, who can um uh do well or worse in life, when we identify with that one, then we are suffering. Then we are suffering, because that one is suffering. So if I am that, then I am suffering, but I am not that. I am that without which that little successful or that uh little failing person can even exist without that, there is no existence. This thought that confuses me cannot exist without me. And so if I am truly confused, if my confusion cannot exist without me, I am I my confusion, am I the one who is confused? Or uh is that even being observed? Is that too being observed? If you can observe a little self, a little person there being offended by something, well then you are not that person who is being offended. Otherwise, you could not observe it. Right? It's just like you're seeing something. Are you the thing that you're seeing? You know, when you have vision, you look at your, do you look at a house because you think it's so beautiful? You can say, Well, I can see I'm observing a beautiful house right now. So that to me already is proof and fact that I am not the house. I mean, this makes sense when we do this in physical terms, right? Everything that we observe physically, we know we are not it. But for some reason, in the non-physical realm, where the true self dwells, right? We cannot do this. Every time a thought comes, we think we are the thought. Every time an emotion comes, we think we are the emotion. Confusion is coming in. Oh no, oh no, this is a problem for me. Who's speaking? Okay, so um, but uh I only dove into this right away because uh I I heard it and I wanted to talk about it, right? Because that is the source of this confusion, and so I wanted to directly talk about it. But what I want to say most importantly, and actually before all else, in importance, is the amazing realization and insight that you already have. I want to tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, it is over. It is over. Um in terms of you seeing truth, seeing the true self, seeing um what peace really is, where it dwells, if it's motion or stillness, if it's something that you already have, or if it's something that you need to achieve, that is all over. You you it's inevitable for you to let go of everything that has ever given you misery and that has kept you kept you, right? Who's speaking from peace? It's over because this whole realization of uh essentially in a nutshell, I think what you said uh the beautiful thing is um how can I lose something that was never mine? This is your realization, and this is uh just to talk specifically, this is all of stoicism. This is what all of stoicism is trying to make people understand, and no one, very, very few people seem to actually take that message, you know. There's so many people who say, Oh, okay, it I cannot lose anything because I am so strong, it cannot hurt me. No, it's because you don't, you it was never yours. So many times, I think Epictetus especially talks about people, gives examples of these beautiful people who say, who are informed, for example, of your your son has just died. And the person says, Is that all? And the other person says, That is all. Well, then nothing nothing uh bad happened because uh I did not lose my son, I never owned my. Son, you cannot own another human being. He was never mine. Now, does this mean this this father doesn't love the son? Never love the son? Quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. Um, you saw him as a gift, as something that he is most graciously allowed to interact with, to have in his life, but never to possess, never to take granted. And so this person clearly, evidently, has prepared themselves for the inevitable um happening that a mortal can die. Guess what? A mortal can die. A mortal is mortal. And he said, I knew my son was mortal. Should this now be a surprise to me that this something like this can happen? And so is this an uncaringness? Is this a deadness? Is this a coldness? Or is this true love, actually? Because what do we want from our so-called loved ones? Do we want them to never see this coming? That I that something possibly could happen to me, that I could become sick, that I am immortal? Do they not know this? Why are they running away from this truth? Why are they all shocked and surprised and devastated when I get sick? Have they not prepared themselves for this? Are they so reckless, right? Socrates, when he was about to uh drink the poison, he sent out all the people who were crying. Said, you know, let's get rid of these people. I mean, these are essentially ignorant people. I'm not putting words in his mouth, but um, he didn't want to be around them. He's he saw it as an ignorance. And uh the guard who was actually giving him the poison, the soldier or whatever, because he had to do that. It was his job, of course, to hand it to him. Even he started crying. And and I think that's the scene where that is explained. He says, uh, he talks to the guard and says, We sent all the women and the children out. Now you are crying, you know. And um this is what this is. This is there's no drama in this. You know, love is not love, is not drama, love is not trauma, love is not misery, love is not loss. These things below belong to hate, these things belong to ignorance, to unawareness. And so um, someone who sees this, such as yourself, in my humble opinion, uh it is inevitable for them to also see the true self, which you are already doing. It's just when you say, Ah, sometimes I get confused. Those are exactly the times when you are um losing the vision, or rather, your vision, something is obstructing it, and you're not seeing that that obstruction is not necessary. Right? That's all it is. But again, you you even being aware, sometimes I slip up, sometimes I get confused, sometimes I don't know. That's you knowing, you knowing you are seeing this, and you are bringing it here and saying, What's going on here? I want to know. I demand truth. It is my birthright. I know I can be at peace, I know I can be aligned with truth. And so what's going on here? Can you tell me? Do you have any ideas about this? This is what you're doing. And so, someone like this, how is it possible? How is it possible that truth will be somehow concealed from you or that you will suffer again? You're already seeing the beauty in this world that, and you're already knowing now that it was always there, that beauty was always there. You couldn't see it. You see that too now. So just like you are seeing that, you're also more and more seeing now. Um, wow, that too is not me. That too is something that I can observe. And if it is observable by me, it is observed by me, and anything that is observed by me is not me. And uh these things that are observed by you, one of them is confusion, one of them is change. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_06 1:32:56

It did. Um to me I feel like this can be fully understood. Um and every time I come here each week I get closer to to that. Um this person of me as opposed to is getting closer to that. I can't I can't wait for one day I can just simplify it enough that I am confident in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:34

Who's speaking right now?

SPEAKER_06 1:33:40

Uh I think it I think the person of me is speaking right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:45

I can't wait for this to become simple to me, for me to finally understand this. The true self already is this, right? And you're seeing that too now. So, yes, you're right, it is the person still speaking in these instances. But you even um seeing that, whether it's because it's pointed out to you, or you yourself are starting to see it, it doesn't matter. Uh, that already is everything. So the more you see it, the subtleness is gonna become obvious to you. And the more it becomes obvious to you, well, the simpler it's gonna become to you because only simple things are obvious to us. It's so obvious, right? And so, uh, but again, I'm talking to the person right now, you have nothing to worry about, okay? You are gonna see this. And uh talking to the true self right now. Well, I need to say nothing to the true self. The true self already knows that they are already this, right? And so um, I also want to ask you the question of the fortnight. What will you be when you grow up? Perhaps someone who has this simple simplicity and this understanding, as you just said, but um yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:57

Um what will I be when I grow up? Um when I heard when I first saw this question, it it kind of caught me caught me off guard a little bit because it's a question that I've I've been seeing, um which is a bit different from the other questions of the fortnight. But somehow when I saw it in the question of the fortnight, I I saw it in a different lens, I guess. So then I I started questioning what what will I be? It used to be so simple, this question. It used to be so straightforward. Oh, I want to be this, I want to be that but now I I I don't know. And I don't think that I care to know. Uh I feel like that's it's not if I don't know it, I don't need to know it. I guess is where I'm coming from. So I just kinda I just want to enjoy the present until until I'm old. Yeah, that that's that's my answer.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:31

Beautiful. Thank you so much for that answer. And I think you're you're absolutely right. There is a uh there's an unknowing that doesn't need to be known. Because again, the true self, whatever it is, see, we can't even say what it really is. We often say, okay, it's uh it's has something to do with awareness, and it's of course a being, right? But what is that? You know, what is awareness? What is being? We don't know. And uh, but clearly we don't need to know because that which we are, whatever that is, is full and it's complete, and it's right here, and it doesn't need anything, it cannot possess anything, but it can certainly um experience beauty and appreciate beauty, and it can dwell and it can do whatever it wants, and everything's fine. And it there's a stillness to it. Right. And so, yeah, you don't need to know everything. And um, in fact, the people, I always say this, right? The people who know themselves the most are the ones who know themselves the least. Because they might say, Okay, I'm a son of God, right? I'm a religious person, I'm 42 years old, I'm from Norway, I'm uh and they give you this long list of what they are. I'm a father, I'm a grandfather, um, I'm an I'm a retired architect, I'm a cancer survivor. I mean, they'll give you 200 things and they say, that's me. That's me. And uh, I mean, what would you say to them, right? You would say, Oh my gosh, um, how do I tell this person they're not their age, they're not their name, they're not even their body, they don't have any possessions, right? And so the people who have the longest list, the most accurate perhaps even the definition, are the ones, um, just like we all were at some point, the ones who know about the self the least, actually. So the emptier you get, the fuller you get, the less you know yourself, the more you know yourself. It's sort of that paradoxical sounding, although not really a paradox type of thing, right? And so, yeah, what what can we say? That was a I think that was a beautiful answer. And your question and the uh conversation you gave to us was even more beautiful than that. Um, and I I thank you very much for that. And like I said, uh, this is it's becoming an inevitability for you. And this is just my person saying this because what I say absolutely does not matter. Truth is truth, whatever it is. This is only my um what I think is my insight on it, my access to it, right? But um Thank you, thank you so much in terms of just seeing being able to communicate with so many people and seeing where certain things go, to me, it's an inevitability to you. And so um stay with it, keep doing what you're doing, right? And it's it can only be beautiful. Truth, as we always say, has never harmed you, it cannot harm you. And so, whatever truth tells you this needs to go, or this was never you, or this is not real, whatever it says, right? It's all welcome. It cannot hurt you. And so, thank you so much for for speaking here. I'm gonna put you back to the audience for now. Um wonderful. Thank you so much. And I will take one more speaker. I'm already over time technically, but I'll I'll do one more and then I'm sorry, the next two, the remaining two speakers we have. As I always say, please put your request in first next time, so that I can get to you first. Um, and I appreciate that. And hello. Hi, Atesh. Hi.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:18

Thank you. Uh thank you for taking my uh my call here, I guess. Of course. Um I wanted to um just ask you to talk a little bit about reason. Uh it it keeps coming up, well, it it obviously keeps coming up in in this realm. You speak about it a lot. And I I I wanted to try to understand it. You know, my understanding is that it allows us to examine, you know, clarity and action. Um, it also helps us to not get consumed by what's happening. And just this week I was reading some Epictetus talking about reason as the faculty that can both um that can take both itself and everything else as an object of study. I don't I don't get that. And I just wonder, is it I just I'm looking for clarity, I guess. Is it common sense? I I want to try to uh uh start start being more conscious of using reason as it because I can be emotional in in life, right? So I understand it's kind of the opposite of emotion. Um and so I I don't have I I'm looking for clarity on you expanding on on reason.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:36

Of course, yeah, yeah. And thank you very much for your question. Reason is the guide of awareness, right? And um, we always say the true self is awareness, as best as we can put it. It is not unawareness, right? Because you are aware of speaking to me, you are aware of the thoughts you're having about reason and about other things, you're aware of your emotions, you're aware of the effects of emotions, whatever. You are aware, aware, aware, aware. You are not unaware. Of course, there are things that you're unaware of, but you're unaware of the things that you're unaware of. Meaning your spirit, your essence, um, your true self, your existence here is awareness. It's consciousness, right? When we don't exist, we are not conscious. When we do exist, we are consciousness, and so um consciousness, awareness then goes on to say, okay, how may I apply myself? Events are occurring, things are happening. How do I discern right from wrong? How do I discern good from bad, real from unreal, all these things that we need to do and do? And so it's looking for a guide. A guide, not like a master, right? But a guide more like if we went to the mountains, we would ask a local person to guide us through certain ways. And we would ask, what do you think? You know, what way should we go? What time should we start doing this? But they wouldn't be our master. We would consult them, but then this awareness inside would uh decide if that's um what way to go. So guide in that sense. And reason is that guide. Reason is simply uh the truth that remains when emotions are absent because emotion is of unawareness, it's of the nature of unawareness. And I want to you know qualify that. When we are angry, for example, we go unaware, we say, I was beside myself, I didn't know what I was doing. I can't believe I did that, right? Um, for example, our our friend Seneca also says uh anger is temporary madness. Madness, madness as an insanity, right? Temporary though. As long as we are angry, we are insane. And it's so true. I mean, look at any road rage person, look at any resentment we have, we always go unaware. We do actions. Here's another uh thing people say he was like, he was possessed by the devil. I can't but he never acted like that before, right? So we are having anger be our guide. Or um, you know, of course, hate, uh, jealousy, envy, all these kinds of uh emotions. That can be your guide, or reason can be your guide. And and reason is simply the absence of emotion, and emotion is the absence of awareness, and so we are seeing these two sides, and it's and it's your decision as the awareness, as the one that can discern, that can do anything, make a decision, which one you want to go with, right? And this is the difference, as we sometimes point out, between judgment and discernment. The Bible talks a lot about that, right? So judgment is something bad, something wrong. Judgment is when we are playing God, essentially, when we say, This is good, this is bad, and anyone who does something bad, I get to condemn. I have righteous anger over them. I am better than them. They don't deserve food or drink or this or that, they don't deserve freedom. I will take it from them, and and it gets us into the worst kind of behaviors, into the worst kind of actions. All human atrocities have been committed in anger and have been committed with judgment. But discernment is the unemotional realization of what is good and right, unemotional. Meaning, if I I can have anger, I can have envy, I can have all of these things as long as I aware of I'm aware of them, and I can then say, if I took anger out of this, you know, if I took envy out of this, if I took all my resentment out of this, would I still have the motivation to go and do this, whatever anger tells me to do, or whatever I am um uh, whatever I feel like I need to do when I am so emotional. Do I still have enough motivation left to do this? No, I don't. If that's the case, no, I don't. Aha. Then I know that I am with reason now. Or rather, that my actions before were uh guided by emotion, by unawareness, not by logic, not by reason. And I don't want to say that logic and reason is the same thing always, but it often is. And uh so simply the absence of everything, all those things that make us go unaware, all those things that we have experienced the destructive effects of so many times before. Reason is uh the absence of all of that, which brought those, which brought those effects on. So um, when we know what love truly is, right? That love is not an emotion, that love is a state of being, and that state of being is peace, and that love as an action is to wish well, then for example, we have we uh are cleared to have reason. So the only thing that stands in the way of reason is our false beliefs, our false belief that love is an emotion and that love needs to be fought for, and that anyone who betrays our love is our enemy and we need to go kill them. That's a false belief, right? So when the mind is allowed with reason to work, uh it can see what love truly is, what truth truly is, what justice really is, just that justice is not revenge, that forgiveness does not let anyone off the hook, but it simply takes away this hatred inside of us so that we can then with reason, in fact, act out the situation and deliver true justice. All of these false beliefs falling away allows reason to take over, truth to take over, and um emotion to become more and more obvious, and thereby also become a guide. Because every time, in a good way though, every time I am angry now, now that I know what anger really is, I can see uh-huh, there's an identity there, there's a false belief there, because there's nothing in the world that can offend me, the true self. Nothing is a problem to me. Oh, this person has said this about me. Okay, whom is that a problem for? Does that make me a better or worse person than I really am? No, it doesn't. Okay, so why am I angry? So clearly I was identifying with something that I am not. I was identifying with my reputation, I was identifying with being popular, and this lie that this person is telling is, of course, um impeding me in that. But the one with the reputation, the one with the who wishes to be popular or to repair. Remain popular, that is not the true self. And so in this way, even we are thankful to anger. When we are reasonable, we can even be thankful for anger. We can use everything to our advantage. And uh there are probably better ways of talking about anger directly. But um this is sort of what it made me think of this instance. If you would ask me next week, I would probably get a different answer. Uh, but intuitively, right? Not maybe so scientifically, my explanation, certainly not, but intuitively, this is what reason is to me. It is um one of the guides that we can choose, and it is a guide that is everything that can exist in the absence of emotion. If something can exist in the presence, or rather depends on its existence on the emotions, then it is not of reason. And so reason is simply the awareness, um, looking at something and discerning it to be of itself conducive to itself of awareness or of unawareness. And that's just sort of a process of things again becoming more obvious, right? Uh go with anger. You say, it I have righteous anger, I have a right to be angry with this person. Okay. Then go do everything that anger tells you. Everything. Double down on it and see what happens. Only be aware, observe, observe what happens. If you like what happens next time anger comes, trust it ten times more. Why not? But if you did not like what happened when you gave yourself to anger, then do it less and less and less. And it is simply this you know, every time you do less what anger says and you get a better result, that's when you know you are going towards reason. It's as simple as that. And at some point, reason itself becomes visible and you say, okay, this is it. And this is what I'm going to fully commit myself to because the process of going the opposite way has shown me all the things that I don't want. And so it's a process.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:43

Yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:44

But no, but you are the awareness. You are the one, you are not your emotions. So everything that is conducive to awareness, to that which you are, um, is already yours. Right. So what we work on here are just false beliefs. We're not working on um ourselves, our true self becoming better or worse. We cannot do that. I cannot make yourself be better or worse, and you cannot do that for me. What we can do is exchange insights for those false beliefs that we all have to fall away so that our vision is less obstructed or even not at all obstructed. And so when we say, I am never at peace, uh, it is not you who's never at peace, but it is uh your vision that is obscured, your vision of peace that is obscured. Obscured by what? False belief. That false belief is I need to be angry about this, for example, one of the many false beliefs. I need to be angry about this. Uh, why do you need to be angry about this? Well, anger gives me motivation. I mean, this thing that angers me clearly is wrong objectively. Everyone says so. And so I see that anger gives me the fire, it burns and it makes me want to do things. And um so anger is good because it gives me motivation. This is what I hear a lot from so many people. And then I ask, can reason not do that? Can reason not give you motivation? Does reason not know what is right and wrong and what needs to be done? And then they say, Oh, yeah, I get, I guess, I guess it could. And so this is why we say, every single thing that you can do with anger, you can do without anger. But no one ever told us that. No one ever told us that. And so naturally we didn't know and we believed the one thing that we were told, and that everyone's been telling us. Who are we to know better, right? And so we never considered this, but this awareness that you are, which is to the core of reason, as soon as it hears this, as soon as it hears, well, can't you do that with reason as well? What name one thing that you can do with anger that you cannot do without anger? I've asked this to hundreds of people. I have yet to receive a response. Or rather, a response other than, well, nothing. But no one's ever asked us this. No one's ever asked us this. And so this is why we come here to be asked this, among other things, right? And to be challenged. Yeah. This is not a place for people who get offended because this is offensive. This anger that we've given ourselves to for so long, most of our lives, if not all of our lives. That all of a sudden is the worst guide, and I've been doing this wrong my whole life, that is so offensive. But to the person who has committed themselves to truth, to um to finally being at peace, will not be offended by this. So this is the the biggest so-called achievement one can already have is to drop the offense. And so you even asking, you know, what is reason? I want, I want to get away from all the things that have been so destructive in my life. And I can see they're inside of me, it's not other people doing this to me, it's inside of me. So who else than me to take them out and or to do something about this? You doing that already is pure reason. It's pure reason. Because emotion would just say, Well, this is just how it is. This is life, life is suffering. No, so many people say life is suffering. This is uh what it is what it is. That's just life. I mean, we're uh but this is so irrational, this is so unreasonable. Because if we say, What do you mean, how do you know that? I say, well, I don't know, but you know, that's what people said. Is that a reasonable argument? No, it's not. But behind most such arguments is that. Well, that's what everyone says, isn't it? Or uh, well, if it wasn't like that, then you know, Adam wouldn't have been banished from the from the garden. Yeah, you hear stuff like that, right? And it's like, but give me reason, give me uh again, I don't want to say reason is logic, but often it is logic. That is not logical. You might be religious, you might fully, you might be a Christian and fully believe that. That's absolutely fine, but give me something on top of that too. Give me something for the mind too. Um, if it's truth, it will make sense intuitively as well as um reasonably, right? Logically. And it that's why everything we say here, if it doesn't make sense reasonably, I want to know about it. And so we can talk about it. But this is essentially everything we say here is based on reason. This is why Epic T this is going on and on about reason, reason, and reason. And it's true, reason is the only thing that can examine everything as well as itself, because um, like he also says, I think in that very passage, he says, for example, grammar. Grammar will tell you what words to use, how to spell them, and how to write them. And uh, and this is necessary for you for you to write a letter to your friend, but grammar is not going to tell you if you should write a letter to your friend, if this is the right thing for you to do right now. But reason will tell you that. Reason will tell you uh what is grammatically correct, as well as if this is the right thing to do, as well as if your intention in doing so is correct, as well as all I mean, everything. And so that's why he says that about reason, and it's true. And um, you could say the same thing about philosophy. Philosophy is the only study that can study everything as well as itself. Right. And so why? Because philosophy is based on reason, so it's really all the same. And and of course, it is based on reason because awareness is of the nature of reason, and here we come back to the true self. See, everything connects, right? Our activity of philosophy, our reasoning ability, as well as our true self at the core of everything, all is connected in that sense. Um, but emotion is not of the nature of awareness, for example. And again, uh emotion is not an enemy. Emotion does not need to be suppressed, cannot be suppressed, and need not be suppressed. It only needs to be known what it is. What is this? If I take emotion as my guide, what happens? Is that effective or ineffective? Is it productive or destructive? That's what reason can tell you. Um, but again, you don't need emotion for reason. Just the very fact that reason can deliberate on emotion means that it does not need emotion, meaning you don't need emotion, meaning your guide, if your guide does not need emotion, you don't need emotion. So give yourself to the guide that is not offended by others. Give yourself to the guide that does not need others' permission or approval or to be highly regarded or whatever. Reason doesn't need any of these things. Emotion needs all of these things. Emotion needs to feel good, emotion needs to feel important, emotion needs to be celebrated, emotion needs to be acknowledged and praised and all these things, doesn't it? And uh emotion is expectation, and expectation is disappointment. So we're seeing the two different sides. Again, this is not the enemy camp and this is a friendly camp. It's just a it's just a discernment of what is conducive to awareness, which is my nature, and what is not conducive to awareness, which is my nature. So why would I let something in that is not of my nature? So now we're sort of approaching, right? What is reason? Why should we give ourselves to it? Why should we adopt it as a guide, not as a master, but as a guide? And um why judgment is of emotion and why discernment is of reason, and how it does that. So we're now approaching these things, right? But I just want to fundamentally say to you, you you already have reason, you already are of reason. Your very nature is that which shares the same nature of reason. And um, everything that has ever made sense to you has made sense to you because you are a reasonable uh being. And so all we need to do is not get more reason. You do not lack reason, okay? What you might lack uh the definition of reason. You might ask people for definition, you might say, I'm confused about how it may be defined. Okay, fine. But we're only trying to define something which you already fully possess. And so um, once again, it is not that we lack reason, it is that we lack a certain vision. Right? And I also always say, even the vision is fully there, even the vision is fully there. It is completely working, it's just obstructed. Obstructed by what? Once again, false beliefs. And the false beliefs are um uh detected and let go of with the guide of reason, which you already have, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, this is all a circle, right? Wherever we enter, we always come back around to the same thing. And so you're already there. The the voice that tells you you're confused, you don't know, you're so emotional, you make mistakes, blah, blah, blah. That can keep talking. This is not a problem to you. This is the most important thing to take away, I think, from everything everyone has said here. Nothing is a problem. There is no such thing as a problem. Let those thoughts, emotions come up. It is not a failure of yours to feel an emotion. It is not a failure of yours to have a thought that you really don't want to have anymore. It's just not a good thought. Okay, fine. But the fact that it comes up is not a problem to you. It is not a failure of yours. And if these thoughts uh start coming less and less, that is not a success of yours. Okay, it's just not a problem to you. Let those things come. You have peace even though they are there. These things do not need to go away for you to have peace. You already are of peace. You're sitting right in the middle of it. Your entire being is beauty. I mean, you are the light of this world. Because your awareness, awareness is the light, unawareness is darkness. So by being simply that which is awareness, your very nature, you are already the light of this world. The light just needs to see that it is the light, that everything that is lit up around itself, that the that that light which lights those things up comes from it. The light that lights up your problems, your so-called uh so-called problems, your emotions, your thoughts, everything that is an issue for you, everything that is a loss, all these things are lit up, are being seen with the light that comes from you, that emanates from you. These things cannot be observed, be aware of, be conscious of without consciousness awareness itself. This is what you're emanating. But because what you are emanating is some that some of those things are ugly, you think you are the ugliness or the ugliness that you are uh illuminating is a concern to you, it's a problem for you. It somehow makes you lesser. It does not. And uh reason is simply that which shows you these things. Uh, but again, even reason cannot change the way things already are. You are the light of this world. Uh those those things that you think you lack, you do not lack. The ugliness is not you, the ugliness is not a problem to you. It is not risk your responsibility to fix anything because you are perfect. And so, like I always say, um we do not lack peace, we lack the vision of it. And so when you come here, uh you work on your vision, you do not work on yourself, you already are what you are, and that what you are is at peace, is peace, is aware, is awareness, and um nothing, and I mean nothing, can make it worse or better. You know, two perfect circles. One of them is a very large perfect circle, the other one is a smaller perfect circle. The smaller perfect uh circle is not less round, less perfectly round than the bigger one. But for some reason, we look at a bigger circle and say, ah, that's more perfect. No, it's not, they're both perfectly round. A bigger circle, um, the size of the circle does not make it more perfect. Right. And so this is this is that vision we're talking about, to see this, to know this, which you already do, actually. It's just a a reminder. And uh, if you allow this, this vision is just gonna grow. Right? Because again, it's a vision of what is already there. So maybe we're looking through a small hole, and that hole is gonna get larger, whatever analogy you'd like. Um, but it's gonna happen, it's inevitable. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:14

Yeah. Thank you. That's helpful. That's a really thorough review. Thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:20

And you know, keep asking. I mean, I I very much welcome it. There's no uh expectation here of any kind next week. You can come and say, you know, I thought about what you said last week, and that still doesn't make sense to me, but I know perhaps why it doesn't make sense. But what about this? Right? And then we'll continue that. Um, and I don't do this for other people, I do this for myself. If you come here and say this didn't make sense, then I know for a fact that I I have I don't have the vision of making it sense to someone else, right? And so then we can talk about it so that we can say, ah, I see that's why this was unclear. And uh that actually makes me see that I didn't quite understand it either. It's whatever comes out of it is going to be truth, and truth has never hurt us, right? So I ask you um for your for the favor of you coming back and asking this again if this didn't quite make sense, or you know what, it did make sense. And then I thought about it some more, and I had this realization, I want to share that. That would that's a huge gift that you can give to someone else, right? And again, you don't have to, you have no obligation whatsoever to do that. But um, if you ever feel at all compelled to, I just want you to know that you are very much welcome to do so. Okay. But no expectation.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:43

Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:45

Thank you. Great, thank you. I will move you back to the audience with great gratitude. Thank you very much. That's a very important question. What is even reason? Right? And we should be able to talk about it in general terms and somewhat objectively also, but um at the end of the day, just like those concepts of truth, justice, love, we need to have a personal connection, our own direct connection to these things. And we need to define them for ourselves, not in senseless terms or in very verbose terms, but just in a way where we can say, I can see it. I can see it and I feel it, and it feels right, and it works for me. It shows up in my experience. I can see beauty now, I can see truth more now. It just works for me. Okay. So in that way. And these are, as always, just suggestions for you to take some part of, all of, nothing of, but it makes you think of something. Whatever it does for you, it's all great. It's all great. And it's all to your advantage, so to speak. And uh, once again, this uh has been beautiful. Thank you so much. I do want to encourage everyone here who's listening and who has the ears to listen to this to not get lost in these things. Okay, this is a this is a beautiful place. It's a place of kind, like-minded, generous, very, very lovely people, but even that can be a distraction. Even that can be a distraction. But at the at the end of the day, um it must be you with you, doing things for you and by yourself, not relying on other people, not needing other people, certainly not using other people as a distraction. Um and this is perhaps one of the trickiest traps because we'll say, okay, this is a place of beautiful people, like-minded people, this is philosophy, this is truth, this is love, this is an assemblage of aware human beings. So, how can this be a distraction? I mean, come on, I should I can spend as much time as I want here. No, that too can be a distraction from the work of life, from awareness, from stillness, from peace, because we're trying to enhance the present moment. The present moment's not good enough for us. And so let me go to Discord and let me talk to some like-minded people about philosophy. That too is an escape. That too is a distraction. And so the last thing I want this place to be is to be a distraction and or an escape for you. This is a place to come to with awareness. I have something to share, or I have a question, and I'm here as part of my work of life and my exploration. But first and foremost, I know I do not need this place. And first and foremost, I know that my work, so called, uh, needs to take place inside of me by myself with myself. And that others cannot. Save me. Others cannot make me better. Okay. I just want to say that because sometimes I see conversations on here that first of all nothing to do with philosophy, which is entirely fine. There's a place and time for that too. Everything is intention and not outcome. Everything is intention. It all depends on with what intention is that being done. But sometimes even the right conversation can be wrong. It can be a distraction. So all I'm saying is what I'm saying with everything at all times in different ways. Be aware. Be conscious of what you're doing right now, and most importantly, why you are doing it. What is my intention in clicking the Discord app? Is my intention to distract myself? In which case it is wrong. Is my intention to actively pursue something which I'm reading, journaling, thinking about, okay, then it is right. See, the same action can be right or wrong. And so always keep a watch on your intention as long as you do so, nothing can happen to you. Nothing can happen to you. But that must be done. That must be done. It's not not negotiable. If you lose awareness of your awareness, if you lose consciousness of your consciousness, of the true self, what you are really doing, and to what end you are doing, whatever you are doing, if you lose that, you are an unawareness. And that's okay. You can always come back, and you do always come back. Right? So that too is okay. That too is not an enemy. That too is not, oh no, I've slipped into unawareness again. I failed. No, you haven't failed. It's not a failure. And to be aware is not a success. But of course, since our nature is that of awareness, we don't want to spend any time in unawareness. As little as possible, right? So the last thing I want this place to be is another way of becoming or continuing to be unaware. That's not the point. That um defeats the purpose, as they say. And so keep a watch on yourself, right? And we're always ready here to uh, if you'd like, to remind you that you are being unaware right now, but again, we don't rely on that as well. This is all just a gaining of a vision.