This one is about real truth and fake love

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Thank you for being here, for spending your time in the quest for truth and beauty and love, rather than frantically looking for another human being to complete you as if you are some sort of half of a whole. You could have been angry at the whole world for not providing you this wholeness and this beauty and this meaning that other people seem to be able to experience. And instead of thinking that you will never have peace, you were here actively engaging in the very process of knowing the true self and of actively letting go false beliefs. We call these meetings kinship because we cannot help but notice, actually, that the deepest mutualities and the strongest commonalities that we have in our relationships with the world, with the universe, with everything, we see that those are not based on biography or biology, meaning if we are related to someone genetically, family, or if we're biographically related, meaning we grew up in the same place, we're longtime friends, we went to school together. All that can be a very strong relationship, but what lies at the heart of it is a mutuality in ideas, and not necessarily at all a mutuality in biography or biology. And we notice many times that even though someone is our father, our mother, our brother, our sister, or our longest friend, that when we don't have those ideas, those fundamental beliefs perhaps in common, we don't feel like kin, even though we genetically, physically, or again biographically are or want to be, and vice versa, sometimes we meet perfect strangers, either in real life physically, or we open up a book and we read just a line or two, and we see wow, with this person that I've never even met before, that I still never will ever meet. I feel this kinship because it's a kinship based on ideas, and ideas don't need any physicality, they don't need any time, any location, any genes to be in common because that stuff is not in our control. We can be uh born to a certain parent at a certain time in a certain place uh in the world and be barred from many types of relations. But this relation of the deepest and highest sort, that kinship, that requires nothing. Nothing. And it recognizes each other, those can recognize each other immediately, just by the few things they say or in the way that they act. And when I say idea, I don't mean idea like um let's go to the movies together or um who to vote for or whatever. Ideas as in concepts, right? The the idea of truth, justice, love, all these kinds of things. These are the deepest and highest ideas, the highest good, as our ancient Greek philosophers call them. And that's what we find is happening here. It's a gathering of people who are, as far as we know, not biographically or biologically related at all. Yet week after week we come here and we assemble around a certain set of ideas that we commonly believe in, that we have our truest, strongest mutuality in. And that's why we're here. And so that's why we call these meetings kinship. Because everyone here is in the truest, highest, deepest sense kin. And of course, there are so many that we don't know, and as we said, we don't need to know them. That's the most beautiful thing. We don't even need to assemble here, we don't need each other, we want to do it. And why do we want to do it? Because we have that common belief and ideas, so it's a wonderful thing, and it's the proof of its own existence of this bond, this mutuality, right? So that's why we call them kinship. And um, I will invite our first speaker.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I want to uh engage in a disagreement with you, yeah. Um, or I think more politely, uh kind of like an argumentation. Um, because um yeah, uh I think we've had we've had kind of already discussions around these these topics before in terms of the kind of evoking notions of the absolute or these capitalized truths and realities. And for me, it's that's always been something a little bit irksome for me. And also that this the main motivation why I want to kind of engage in a kind of discourse around this, because what's been fascinating for me is that even though I think it is kind of like first principles kind of starting axioms perspective, I think there's perhaps uh a misalignment uh may which may or may not be there. Irrespective of that, from a practical perspective, whenever I you you offer your advice, it's been incredibly helpful for me. And so for myself, there's been a bit of a fascination how the you know the starting points are seemingly so different, but then in practice, you know, we're there's almost a you know an overlap or or more to the point, you know, the the wisdom that you're offering has been so incredibly helpful. And um, yeah, so I just kind of want to um kind of characterize, let's say, how I understand your evocation of these absolutes. So yeah, I I think what I think a good starting point would be for me to characterize how I understand these absolute terms, you know, the these the truths and the justices, uh, where it you know, perhaps what where is the the history of this, and then why I refute it, and then to c to come back to what I think has been a recent realization why actually it doesn't matter what the starting point is when you put these things into practice, is where the you know the magic happens. So, yeah, I think like I say that this notion of the absolutes is coming from Plato, and it it's it's his ontologies of these uh perfect forms. And what I think is um you know intriguing for me is what the little I've I've I've kind of dabbled so far into Plato is when it comes to his epistemology, you know, what it is to know something. I completely agree with his statements, you know, there's this kind of separation between what is intelligible and what is sensible, and you know, we make sense through our intelligence, right? There's there is this need to make forms of our senses, and then he makes this a kind of ontological step to to kind of evoke these eternal objects, these eternal truths that are out there that are from my perspective invisible, but you know what what I what I think they're there to operate is to try and provide some sort of anchor, right? To try and provide some static notion, something that we can call upon to help us try and make uh these truth statements of truth. And for me, you know, my my epistemology is that whilst we have um connection to reality, we don't have a direct connection with reality, we are we are closed off from it. And so, from in terms of what it is to know something, all our knowings have to be shrouded with uncertainty. And when it comes to trying to make statements, ontological statements, you know, things out there in the world, there is no perfect forms, they're always shrouded in ambiguity, there's there's there's fuzziness to them. And so our categories, you know, are useful, but we know often, you know, and that the the more general they are, you know, the more kind of regular that that thing is that we're we're we're encountering. And so there can be a kind of an illusion that if we're in our lifespan encountering things that don't really change much over our lifespan or over the kind of written recorded history, we might start thinking, oh, these things are eternal, that these things are timeless, but on the scheme of the scale of the universe, they're really not. You know, everything has a kind of transience to them. And so, like, you know, let's take uh a statement that I think I've heard you say uh a few times, like there is nothing uh simpler than the truth. And you know, uh what I'm what I'm hearing there now is that what what let's say why I think every element of that has some sort of error baked into it. So because of my you know my epistemology, I don't think you can make any truth statements. You can make truthy statements, yeah, there's truthiness to things, there's always ambiguity to it, but we are only really in the game of refuting false ideas, never actually accepting a true idea because we we can never accept a true idea. So already that statement has complexity because we're never in the game of accepting a truth, it's just a game of trying to you know reject false ideas. And then the the is-ness of this, you know, is in my eyes, that's an aesthetic statement. It's you know that it's like if I look outside and I go, it is raining, it's a true statement, but it's completely you know, um redundant in a sense it's not adding any extra value, it's just making a statement of things as they are. And like I said, for me that's a an aesthetic statement. And then the the simplicity of it, I think, again, because we don't have access to truths, you know, the the the simplicity is a preference, it's a choice that we're we're making, and and that preference has utility in how much it provides usefulness for yourself. So it's a pragmatic uh assertion or or a pragmatic preference in that you're like you know, I have a preference for truths that tend to simplify, and I find as a consequence my life gets simpler, my life is easier, and you know, uh thereby you know uh easier to get to get by. But I think if we were to, you know, again, this is uh hypothetical, but if we were to kind of look at the history of your life, your the history of your trajectory of learning, I'm sure there was lots of times of deep learning, there was lots of absorbing complex uh ideas and notions, and through the accruement of that, you know, you because you've got so much, such a breadth of knowledge now that yes, things are simpler, things are easier, because you've consolidated so much structural learnings about the nature of the reality that we have access to. And um so for for myself now, you know, what what I what what I think I'm in rejection of is that you know you cannot align yourself with truth, you can't act in accordance to truth. But what you can do, the thing that you know makes appearances in our awareness is beauty, and you can act beautifully. And I think if you're if you're acting you know beautifully, what it what it's getting at is that there's an art to living, there's not a a rule-based system, it's something that like requires learning, requires simplicity, requires finding peace. But at times, you know, you're gonna be in disturbances, and even in those moments, there's a way to act beautifully in those moments. And I think, at least from my perspective, there's something very pragmatic and easy to understand about that. So when I hear something like truth is simple or or to act in the concept of truth is simple, I find that an incredibly hard concept to actually understand what's the next step to do. But when it's about something aesthetic, it's that you know it there's something aligned with how make things make appearances in my awareness at my senses. That makes sense to me. So that yeah, that's my argument in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

How long have you been an intellectual?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Um yeah, from a very early age.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

So there is from knowing myself when I used to identify as an intellectual or or want to be, or that my intellect can give it enough time and me giving it enough energy, and me devoting myself enough to knowledge and information and understanding that there would be nothing that I could not understand. And of course, I was aiming for not so-called simple things, however you want to define that, it doesn't matter. I was aiming at complex things because the master intellectual is one who grasps complexity, who is a master of complexity, not of simplicity, because simple is easy to the intellectual. And the more complex things we can grasp, and then um often also you know explain to others, the more we feel that we're progressing, the more our intellect is saying you're going the right way. And at some point there came a point where there's a realization that this will never end, and that the intellect is purposefully looking for complexity, it is purposefully looking for what to apply itself to next. And this even uh goes as far as in stoicism, which uh overall I very much enjoy and very much learned a lot from. But I saw in that too, and by the way, 99% of what Stoics have written is lost, so we don't really know what Stoicism is and and where it would ultimately lead, perhaps, but um I saw that there's this never-endingness to it, that the character of a person is always evolving and that we're never done. And you know, Marcus Aurelius talks about that, Epictetus talks about that, Seneca talks about that. Um, I think even Socrates had maybe a similar notion, I'm not sure now, of this ever present working on yourself, bettering yourself. It's never done, right? And we aim at perfection, but we know we will never be perfect, and we're just trying to get as close as possible, and that's all fine. You know, the as close as possible is good enough. Um, you know, Marcus Aurelius always said, in every situation, make the best move you can, right? He never said you will ever be able to make a perfect move or anything like that. So, and in everything else, also I saw this, right? In everything, the the Christian is always trying to be as close to Jesus as possible, as godly as possible. But to ever say that they have achieved uh being like Jesus or being godlike, that's blasphemy. So, and it's in the same with other religions, other philosophies, you're aiming at perfection, but there has never been anyone who wasn't afraid to say, I am perfect now. It's always a goal, and it's always supposed to be a goal. And this is what the intellectual does too. This is what we have in common with everyone, whether we are an atheist or a very devoted so-and-so, or we are scientists, or we're a scholar, academic, whatever. We all have this in common. We're aiming at perfection, but we never want to get there. We want to be this this project forever. And this is what I'm seeing in some of the uh thoughts you're bringing forward, because we've talked about these things before, and there's always something to nuance, and there's always something to keep discussing, and there's always this uh need in in our conversations to pin things down and to define them. And uh, of course, we're never going to be satisfied with that, and this this is going to always keep going if we retain this motivation of the intellectual right, and I'm not saying that as an identity, but we're intellectualizing everything. And I also don't want you to feel as I have felt, and I assume it would be the same with many people because we our nature is the same, feel the offensiveness, you know, when I'm going against seemingly the intellectuals' way of doing things. Because if we are offended by anything I've said or anything that is said about intellectuals in general in a negative way, which is not a lot, then we can know for a fact that we have been identifying with that process, with that way of being, with that way of trying to make sense of the world or not trying to make sense of the world, right? That's another intellectual achievement to say, I'm not trying to make sense of the world anymore. Um, I'm only trying to better understand how I can never make sense of the world. Whatever it is, intellectualism will always apply itself to something. It will never say, This is a domain, I've reached a domain where my process does not work anymore. And I need to let it go and I need to do something else, or actually abstain from doing altogether in this kind of realm. But the intellect will never allow that. The intellect will always say, but what about this? What about this? Uh, you're gonna miss out, or you you're that's ignorance, and this is not how we do things, right? We understand things, we use logic and science and understanding and the mind. And we have to keep going with this. This is the whole point of life. What would you be doing if not reading books, if not um agreeing or disagreeing with certain things, and then trying to understand why you agree or why you disagree? What would you do if you didn't do this? There was a point like that in my life too, right? And this is a very offensive, very scary thing. And this is why this place is so special. We can only do that here. Anywhere else, if I walked into uh an academic setting and talked like this to the intellectuals there who will pride themselves on being an intellectual, right? There's pride in it as well, not just the intellectualism itself. On top of that, there's pride. And if you say anything against that, um, I think you even know better than me because you've been in academic settings more as well. That that's a highly, highly offensive thing. Highly, highly offensive thing. We always hear about how scientists among each other have these amazing quarrels and and very disrespectful ways of um going about each other and taking credit and all that, the pride involved and all that. That's what our identification with anything gets us, right? It's the same with the religious people. When you go in there and you know, your religion is not the only one. There's truth in the uh other religion too. That's offensive. Or uh religion is not needed at all. God does not need an intermediary. I'm not saying these things, I'm just saying um these are some of the offensive things to religious people. Same thing there. Look, we have the same nature. We think we're so different from each other. I'm an intellectual, I'm a scholar, you are a religious person, uh, or vice versa. And we think we're different, but we're all the same. We're all attached, we're all practicing attachment to something, and that attachment is killing us, it is keeping us in this endless loop. You know, we think it's a spiral upwards, right? But really it's a loop at some point, because as I always say, there's nothing wrong with the intellect, there's nothing wrong with the mind, there's nothing wrong with faith, there's nothing wrong with emotions, thoughts, anything. Even identities we have discovered are actually serving us because when we identify as the intellectual or as the religious person, we can say to uh objectively lesser things, it's not important. That cannot harm me. I have God with me. That cannot harm me, I have the scientific process on my side, and uh ignorance cannot touch me, right? So when someone says uh you're ugly, you say, I don't care, I have God. You know, I don't care, I have this tower of knowledge, and so to identify as an intellectual raises you above so many hundreds, thousands of smaller identities, right? People identify as dog owners. You can see sometimes I see people's uh uh sticker on people's cars that says Beagle Mom or whatever. That's an identity to you. Imagine identifying with your dog ownership. That's objectively a smaller identity than than the intellectual or or the son of God, right? But and that's how this, and this is how you and I are so similar, I think. Um this intellectual process, our intellect, uh devoting ourselves so much to our intellect and the power of the intellect has gotten us so so far and has kept us so so safe from so many other identities that also objectively end in actual ruin, in actual a death wish, in actual um not seeing any point in life, any meaning in life, and also not even seeing the possibility of it ever. And so we are thankful even to identity. But this this identity, however you want to define it, this this identification with the process or the intellect itself or the power of the mind, which is objectively there and true, there is a point where that needs to go. Where that needs to go because it's an endless loop. And uh you know, I heard you say so more. I also want to talk about the specific things you mentioned. This is just sort of um I just want to set this up so that we can talk on top of this because I think it will be helpful. It was helpful to me, and that's why I offer it to you, right? I can only uh suggest things that I found helpful for myself.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

And yeah, it's it's it is very true to be. So yeah, it's uh it's there's no offense, it's all just uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

No, and even if there is, like I said, that's something to be thankful for too, because uh as we discuss all the time, whenever there is offense, uh anger, resentment, fear, any kind of emotion, anything, we know that whatever triggered that, whatever emotion that is, there's something there. There's there's some identity, some identification, some attachment there that we can and only we can let go of. And as we know, uh I think we agree on that very much, every time we let go of an attachment, we vastly improve our experience of peace, right? And stillness and and understanding also. And so that's why I would say we're thankful to the emotions, to offense, to attachment as well, because it shows us that they are there. They live in our unawareness, so to speak. We're not aware of them. If we were aware of them, we would, especially intellectuals, as intellectuals, would say, What good are you to me? What use are you to me? And we would have gotten rid of it long, long ago. But we didn't because they don't live in the intellect, they live in some sort of unaware area of our experience, whatever we want to call that. But to talk specifically, you know, I keep I and I heard you say this before when we s when you said we are um we don't have access to reality, or or some other way you said that, that we are barred from it, or that we are um don't have much much, if any, insight at all. And I wanna, and I told you this before, but it's not it's not accepted, I think, in many ways, even though this is the only thing to me that one can move forward in this after that's being said, which is that but we are not apart from reality. You know, we are not looking at reality from some other place. What would that be? Are we looking at reality from reality number two, or are we looking at reality from unreality? Where are we looking from? I mean, we are part of reality, we are part of creation. You know, we often, uh, especially scientific people and also religious people, once again, do this a lot, this duality. Right? When we say the religious person says, there's God and then there's me. And the things I do, God is watching and is going to punish or reward me accordingly. And the scientific person says, Man versus nature. You know, we have meddled with nature too much, or not enough. We should do it more, whatever it is. We can cure diseases, we can care. There's this duality. But man is part of nature, and uh the creation is part of the creator. There is not this duality. Again, in my opinion, of course, this is an opinion, but I I'm I cannot see how we are people who are barred from reality. There's reality and there is us, and we cannot see it. And if it is even there, it is shrouded in something. Like where are we looking from? You know, are we not part of reality?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

And so that's I just come in on that point for that for clarity. So my my argument isn't that we're not embedded in reality, yeah. That is absolutely the case, and there is an exchange taking place. You know, we can act upon reality, and reality will make impressions of the city.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

But look, there is that duality again. You're saying there's this exchange between us and reality. Reality can act on us, and we can act on reality. This is a duality.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Well, uh I I guess in one say you could say it's a duality, but what my my other point to this is that you know we are we have a locate, we have a locale in reality. You know, we we are we have a subjective perspective on reality, and you know, but subjective, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I have to, I I don't like interrupting you at all. I just want to corner this so that we really nail it down. Um, when you say subjective, that is once again to to say this is our area of reality, it is once again to delineate, right? Especially someone who says, uh, such as yourself, and I fully agree with this, that we don't know reality. But what we are knowing is not not what we are not knowing is not separate from us. What we are not knowing is what we are. And so when we're when we're looking at reality and we say we have no access to it or we don't understand it or we don't know how it works or whatever, we see it as a duality. And I fully agree with the statements themselves, uh, but I cannot see where they are made from. And once we accept that we are not separate, we can still say those things. And in fact, um, in Hinduism and in Zen and whatever this is said all the time, we don't know the self. We cannot speak of the self, we cannot understand the self, we will never know the self, it is said. This is not me saying, but and um it is said that Brahman is Atman and Atman is Brahman, meaning the the so-called small ass self, the individual self, the personality, that's Atman. And uh Brahman is the capital S self, meaning everything, everything. And so it is saying Atman is Brahman and Brahman is Atman. And that comes closer, and language cannot take us there. This is another reason for that. Was my need to um not be so devoted to intellect to my intellect anymore, because um there's a point where knowledge stops, there's a point where language stops, but this gets close, I feel. So when we say we cannot define it, we cannot know it, we cannot um understand it, I 100% agree with that. What we are talking about when we say reality, we will never know. I I believe that. But we are talking about ourselves, right? And as soon as we say, yeah, of course I'm in reality, but um I have a subjective to for something to be subjective, it has to have its own existence within something else. But this own existence is only the exact same existence as the existence of everything else. And so when we are thinking about ourselves as as animals, uh you're absolutely correct. Of course, we are one species, and then there's another species, and and and so on and so forth, and there are different forms of life and uh forms of life that we will never even know about. But all of that is life. So when the human is trying to understand how a tree lives or how an alien species possibly could uh in some galaxy survive, yes, it is thinking about another species, but it is not thinking about anything other than its own existence, its own being. Everything takes, if you zoom out far enough, and that's the whole point, I think, of um understanding the self or getting um an alignment with how things really are, is to zoom out. Because all our disagreements, all wars, all everything, and identity, individuality, all this is based on zooming in and to see things very specifically and to not consider other things or to see other things as separate. When we zoom out all long enough, this is where we get to where all people who we consider somewhat wise or enlightened, that's what they all say. You know, Jesus said we're all brothers and sisters, and um the Father and I are one, and people take that to mean that Jesus was God. But what he's saying is the creator and the creation is one. And so when I zoom out, which the intellect doesn't allow as much because it wants to know specifics and it wants to understand every single thing, and it wants to build its understanding, and whatever it cannot build or has not built yet, or whatever, or disagrees with, that's a separate thing. But I I can't find the separation anymore, and this is what Plato is talking about. You mentioned Plato, um the whole strain of idealism, and again, this is something that people misunderstand. People think that idealism means uh the view that wants to see everything as perfect, you know, it wants the perfect of everything, the ideal of everything. No, idealism means uh the understanding that there are ideas behind physicality. There's the visible and then there's the non-visible, just as it is in reality. There are things that are visible and things that are invisible, the information, so to speak, that shows up in many physical things without information, without um again, this is language, this it's um not good enough, but the so-called blueprint, even though there's no blueprint maker, um there's the information, there's the information thinker, there's the information creator, and then there's the implementer, and all and all of this together isn't is reality. And so it's just seeing the string and not and not thinking that physicality, the world, uh, is everything that there is. That's idealism. Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

So can I ask the question there? So when you speak of the physical and the non-physical, are you not invoking a dualism of your own there?

SPEAKER_01 33:52

No. Because um I see it more as a spectrum. And this is again just my way of visualizing something, of interpreting something, but this is this is a way that it makes sense to me. It's a spectrum. And on one hand, we have the physical, and on the other, we have the non-physical, and things sort of uh are on one side of the scale or any any part of the scale. But that scale is one, that spectrum is one, and so is reality. And we could even go as far as to say, yes, okay, there are separate things. There, there's the physical realm and the non-physical, but both of them are contained in reality, and they're not really separate at all, in the sense that they they share the most fundamental mutuality, which is that they are all uh reality, both of them. But yeah, I think of it more as a spectrum because there are there are things that are purely physical, perhaps, um, very materialistic things. And on the other hand, there are things such as let's say justice, whatever, that have no physicality to them whatsoever. The physical um one can act justly, and that's still not physical. See, a material being, a species such as myself, an animal, can act justly, and in that act it is doing something physical. So perhaps it's more in the middle of the scale, right? But it is looking up to uh when trying to decide how to act justly and what justice even is, it is looking at something that is not at all physical. So perhaps that's on this side. And of course, the body that is doing the just act or the unjust act, that's very physical. So there already we're seeing uh quite a wide range of the spectrum. And once again, this is not something to this is again where the intellect would come in and say, okay, let's draw this spectrum and let's give it points and let's see exactly where things are, and let's give it a bunch of examples and let's define all of this. This is only language, this is only a pointer. I am not literally saying that reality is a spectrum and it can be fully grasped and worked out that way. I'm not saying that. It is just a pointer, just a little demonstration, a visualization perhaps, of how there's physicality and non-physicality, and in fact, they're not separate things, and they're all one, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

It does, yeah. And I'm in absolute so this is where I always find our discussions interesting. Because when it gets into the weeds at this point, you know, I'm in absolute a hundred, there's nothing you've said there that I would disagree with at all. And I think you know, it's just I think where you know it's the fact that I'm I come from this kind of neuroscientific form or background, and there's there's there's ways that I, you know, with language carve up reality, and so it can seem dualistic in what I'm doing, but you know, I think I would go even stronger than you into say, you know, everything has you know physicality and non-physicality to it, and yeah, there is always um and so so you know, you know, I the I think what but when I'm when I'm talking about my notion of you know my evocation of how I see reality, I'm I'm you know, I am in agreement that there is a non-dual awareness, you know, all things are equal in awareness, but then there are appearances you know that are made from the outside reality, making appearances in in my awareness, and there is a separation there, you know, there is um you know something out there in the world, and there's my appearance in the world, and you know, uh they are there is similarity to them, but they're not exactly the same thing, you know. Um is where I would try and draw some distinction in that notion.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

So say that again. So so in this in this example that you gave, you would be the way you really truly are, that would be the truth, and then there's the appearance of you, like my opinions of you or what I think who you are, and then there's that. Is that the duality you're talking about?

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Well, I mean, I I would be radical in saying that there is no true thing, there's there is there is nothing that is more true than something else at this very low fundamental level of what we're talking about. You know, everything it has is shrouded, you know, my my awareness is shrouded in uncertainty, and things in the world are shrouded in ambiguity. You know, we we like to carve things up, but in reality, you know, because everything is in communion, everything's connected, you know. We we can set, you know, I can look at a tree and say that tree is you know separate from that tree, but we know you know the roots are shared, you know, there's lots of you know shared things happening amongst them, everything is connected in some sense. Uh I I I what I'm saying is is that you know that there is no anchor, there is no certitude about these things. There is it is the relational aspect to everything that makes it messy and difficult.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

But isn't the ambiguity that you have inside of you rather than in the thing itself?

SPEAKER_00 39:08

So I my my my take is that the the the game is to be ambiguity matching. So you know the the ideal, let's say, or you know, the uh from an intellectual perspective, is we you know that because of this relativistic relational aspect to everything, everything's interconnected and there is no stable static entities, it's making sure that how I my notions of the world match the ambiguity of the world. So that yeah, there's like the famous your thought experiments is like you know, when you keep adding a grain of sand, at what point do you have a pile of sand?

SPEAKER_01 39:44

And yeah, there's there's obviously no clear answer to that, but there's gonna be a discernible point where you know that's a very good example because I heard that when I was studying philosophy, and some intellectual told me about that. And uh and they wanted to wow me with that too. And it and uh well, that's what they wanted to do. I'm not saying that's what you're trying to do. That's but that's what they wanted to do. And the way it was presented to me was actually, you know, if I took a little piece of my fingernail off and threw it away, would I still be me? Yes, okay, and so keep going, like atom by atom. At one point, at what point am I not me anymore? At what point do I not exist anymore? Where's and and we can never know. That's the ambiguity. But even then, even though I didn't have the the way that this thinking of um that I have now, I I immediately just intuitively it came out of me to say, well, if we had the proper equipment, we would know exactly when. Right? I mean, this is a physical question. With the pile of sand, it's a little bit more different. That's actually, I think, a better way to put it because um that needs to be defined first, right? And that definition, in my opinion, this is a pile of sand, in your opinion it's that. And there is no, it's true, there is no objective um measure of when is a pile or not. But that too is only a mental construct. That is not how reality works. You know, just because um it is ambiguous to us when something is a pile or not, that doesn't mean that that nature, reality, even thinks of anything in that way. This is a mental human construct to um categorize things once again. Because reality is one thing. Reality is one. There is no reality one and two and three, and then we can things can go in between these. There's one reality. And reality doesn't categorize things like that. It is only our human uh want, also only for logistical purposes, by the way. This is not something that brings us uh more peace or more understanding necessarily. It's just a logistical thing. When do we call that? How can we most effectively communicate? But with the body example, with the taking one cell out at a time, I reckon that we could totally know when someone is alive anymore, someone is not, or when some when something is still a human or not, or when something still exists or not, if we just had such perfect equipment that would that would be able to go down to the cellular lever and say, this very cell, you know, at that point, if we take this out, this is the very moment, this is the very time when this organism cannot function anymore. So I think that there would totally be an answer to that if only we had the equipment for it. But whether we have the equipment or not does not mean that that reality doesn't already exist. It isn't already set up that way, that if I could take cells away one at a time, that at some point reality wouldn't kick in and say, okay, this person cannot be alive anymore. This is not a human anymore. Um, that is all set up. That is all has its functioning and it's and it's uh yeah, like I said, it's set up. That we don't know does not mean that there won't be a point when the body is not a person anymore, a very precise point, even. I just I I find that to be one of those, again, intellectual um thought experiments that work on a different system than what reality actually operates on. And here again, I am not saying that reality even operates on a system. I don't know. I'll be the first one to tell you I don't know how reality works. I am only experiencing certain things that I know are uh dependable in my frame, on my lifetime, and the way that I do things, blah, blah, blah. And so I can live according to those things. But uh I don't find that an effective tool. I th I think that is I think it's a mind. It's a mental construct. It's it's uh it's an assemblage of certain thoughts and ideas that are very human, very abstract, and um I don't think it's connected to reality at all. Do you know what I mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Uh I I know what you mean, but I I I think the there's like the the way you're kind of categorizing my notions, I think I would feel exactly the same about yours. I think you know the the for me, I I think reality is ambiguous. I think you know, and as a function of the fact that uh you know things are in continu, you know, are in a continuous spectrum, you know, that that that is uh you know the the nature of an open-ended, ever-evolving system is that it has these ambiguities baked into it. You know, that's what is what I think is and it yeah, to have variety is essential for life. You know, that is a life-creating uh necessity.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah, and here again we both need to maybe have a think if uh and I want to think about this, and we'll do this on our own time, of course, because this is something that should be unfolded. But um, is ambiguity in the observer, or is the ambiguity in reality? This is, I think, one question that we can dwell upon, and that can perhaps uh bring some insights that we can then share after again. Um but to point to that also one more thing I heard you say, and what might be what is at all possible to even discuss now, I think, is um is it not a capital T truth that reality is ambiguous?

SPEAKER_00 45:53

I uh and in part in answer to your previous question, I would say I can only answer that ambiguously because I am an observer, and observers are inherently ambiguous.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

So, why not assume that uh since we know for a fact that the observer is ambiguous, since we know that for a fact, right? Because we can experience that. Why don't we just leave it at that? Why are we going on to say that a truth, reality, whatever we want to call it, anything after that is also ambiguous? Because that we can never know. Because is it the observer that can't see, or is it reality that can't be seen in a in a non-ambiguous way? We don't know since we cannot rely on our own understanding, because we definitely have ambiguity. Why not just leave it at that? Why not just say this is where we draw the line of experience, everything that shows up in experience, and anything after that is however it is. And I don't need to know, I cannot know. And in fact, I don't, again, I don't need to know because my life, my peace, my my working knowledge of how I should conduct my life is actually not affected by that. Because things are the way they are, however they are, ambiguous, non-ambiguous, this or that. Whatever it truly is, it is that. And since I have ambiguity, I will never be able to know. So why don't why are we not leaving it at that?

SPEAKER_00 47:22

That that is my point. That that is exactly uh what my take on this on this, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

And I just completely am leaving it at that, you know, because when you say, for example, uh that truth um or that reality is ambiguous, or uh you see, again, that could be debated, I suppose, but um well, let's take this truth that there are that there are certain things that are not to be known. Is this something we can agree on?

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Is that not a capital T in terms of um universal and timeless truth?

SPEAKER_00 48:02

No, because I think it's contingent on observers like us. It's it it it's it's an internal truth to myself, and I have no idea when that truth came into existence and when it may go out of existence. So I would not call that in my for my you know intellect uh eternal. So if someone said um I can just found this point, this is why I evoke the notion of beauty here. I think you know that there's such an overlap between what things are have a sense of truthiness to them and the the appearances of truth to us, and that that makes them an aesthetic entity, you know, the fact that there are appearances in our awareness, and therefore by acting beautifully, you know, I think on average we would be uh acting in accordance with each other. You know, if you're think you're acting on the premise of truth, and I'm acting on the premise of beauty, I think because of what I think is a a truer statement of us is is that you know um we would find ourselves acting very similarly. You know, we would still want to be honest, virtuous people, because that is a beautiful way to act in this world.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Right, but if I said um there are no things that are not to be known, I know every single thing. Would that be a truth?

SPEAKER_00 49:23

There would be a false statement there, yes, absolutely. So, how can you say it's a false statement though? Um I'm saying it's a false statement from my starting assumptions. So from my internal system of starting principles, which I should, you know, to be intellectual about it, I would need to state up front what what is it that I discern how I discern something to be truth or not. You know, that that is the the basis of it. There's the subject.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

But the basis of the individual.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

And also there's a shared inheritance, right? We all we there is the fact that we all we are you know have shared, you know, to be scientific about it, we we have a shared ancestry, we have a shared DNA, there is the same selection pressures we've been subjected to, and there is utility to acting in these ways, clearly.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

And that we have a shared uh genealogy or a shared nature or or however you want to put it, that is not a universal and timeless truth.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Uh I would no, I I I still think there's so much ambiguity and variety to that.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

It can have ambiguity, but is it not universal and timeless? Is it will it not always have been the case that we have a shared genealogy? And will this not be universally true?

SPEAKER_00 50:49

I I guess I get caught up what we mean here by universal.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

So, for example, you and I have a shared genealogy. Fact, right? So someone on Mars cannot say that we do not. Someone one billion light years away cannot say that we do not. Here, they cannot say we do not. We cannot say that we do not. No anywhere that we can go in time and space. This fact cannot simply be um ignored away. So universal as in everywhere, and timeless as in every when.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

But but I I would say these are truths that are like are of the is statement, you know, the very um deflate deflationary truths. You know, we're just you know, it is raining or it is not raining. It's not there's nothing having uh in terms of in the pursuit of truth, there's nothing of of value. There is a statement of fact like you're saying, but from a But who is grudging the value?

SPEAKER_01 51:57

Me. So but when you say there is no such thing as a universal and time of truth, that is also not the authority, right? You saying that, you are necessarily saying I'm I'm saying that on an individual basis. Um we want to think if there isn't an anchor, if there isn't such a thing as truth. Because when we say there's a shared genealogy, that is fact. That is fact. And I don't think that is on an individual basis. And I don't think the truth of this statement depends on when it is said, whether in the 19th century or six trillion years from now. And I don't think it matters where it is said, in Spain or in the Andromeda Galaxy. And so to me, this is a, and we don't even need to call it truth, by the way, because truth is a judgment too, true, false, right? This is just reality. It is, right? Even the truth is sort of a judgment on it. There's an opposite to that. But in reality, there is only one mode, is. There isn't even an is not, because that wouldn't be reality. Reality is only one thing, is. And that we share, have a shared genealogy, is. And so I don't I cannot possibly conceive, and again, I know that that is not the measure at all, but as far as we can see, there is no place in the entire universe where this fact can be ignored away. Um, and there is no time in the entire existence of the universe, in the existence of time, that this fact can be ignored simply on the basis of when it is said or where it is said. And to me, that is a timeless and universal idea. Look, I'm not even saying truth anymore, because it is an idea, right? It is a it is a concept. It is me saying it is not a physical thing, so therefore it is an idea. And um, so that to me, when I say a timeless and universal idea, that could could possibly be an example to that. And this is what I mean by that, right? Because um I am not saying when I say timeless, I am not saying this will always be true. That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is it will always be true that it was so at some point. When I say right now, you and I have a shared genealogy, at what point in time will this not have been true? That truth, that idea, in that way, it is timeless. And where is a point in the entire universe out of which one can say this is um these two people don't did not ever have a shared genealogy just because it is said from that place? How can that work? So, this is my understanding of timeless and universal. This is my understanding of truth or idea. And when I say timeless and universal ideas, this is what I mean. And I think in this sense, in this sense, we can see that. In this sense, we can see timelessness and universal uh the existence, the mere existence. When I say truth, that is also because uh uh you might have heard me say before, you know, truth, reality, um everything that is real is true. Everything that is true is real. Otherwise, it would not be true, otherwise it would not be real.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

So just to cut in there, that that that's the way when you said we can see this, that is exactly why I think these things are aesthetic statements. You know, that's where the the appearances come into this. It's self-evidentary, you know, it's it's through appearances that we can see.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

No, I understand, I understand that. There are I know that there are appearances, but an appearance of what? Of uh what it is in false or true appearance, that thing does exist. If someone looks at our genealogy and looks at it wrong, they have a false appearance of it. If they look at it right somehow, they have a true appearance of it. But the appearance of what? Um that of which it is an appearance, whatever that is, I don't claim to know what it is, I don't claim to not know what it is. Whatever it is an appearance of, that thing surely exists. Right? Or I am thinking of something, and what I'm thinking of is actually a totally other thing. But that thing exists. Because the universe is, the reality is, there is something rather than nothing. Whatever that is, that I claim universally and timelessly to be, that it is there, and uh that fat is an idea. So, in that sense, I would claim that whatever reality is, whatever it is, and whatever it is not, that is reality, and that is a times and universal truth, for example. So forget about the uh everything that is real is true and true is real. Forget about that. It it stands without that because whatever I am referring to, count me completely incompetent, count me completely ignorant. Whatever I'm referring to, I have the completely wrong idea of it. But that it is whatever it is, and whatever it is, that I claim to be a timeless and universal truth, a timeless universal idea, a timeless and universal reality, existence, beingness. Um and this is uh in the true sense, you know, idealism, just just this one uh fact, so to speak, this one idea is idealism. And um I personally basing it off of that include such things as beauty, love, justice, uh truth, which is again itself, but other truths perhaps as timeless and universal things, timeless and universal ideas. This is all there is to it. And I don't even define these things. We we've talked about love before, for example. We don't define love exactly. We can say, okay, as an action, it seems to be to wish well, that seems to be according to love, in alignment with love, so to speak. Uh, but what it is, we don't know. We talk about self all the time. But what the self is, we do not know, because the self cannot see itself, so to speak. In that way, it seems reality cannot see itself because you and I are part of reality, but we're talking about reality and we can't say what it is. But we're part of reality. So it's reality talking about itself, reality not knowing about itself. And this is that beautiful connection that we have when we ask, who is God and who am I? There's there's that one connection that both questions share. Whenever we say who is God, we're talking about something that cannot be known. And whenever we talk about the self, we're talking about something that cannot be known, need not be known. Because God is God, whatever it is, and the self is the self, whatever it is. These things exist. Oh, you don't understand God. No, you don't understand God. Regardless, we are here. We are, I am, this is, however, it has come about, however, it is happening, it is occurring right now. And the self, the self is there. It is trying to understand itself, it is trying to talk another to another self, and uh things are happening or not happening, but the self is there, whatever it is, it is there. So, this this is all I say. This to me is a timeless and universal truth, a timeless and universal idea. And any any further we go, I 100% agree. Uh it cannot be known, it is ambiguous, and uh is actually part of my so-called philosophy to not go there, to not go anywhere that is not necessary. Because uh anything else, I don't need to know to be at peace, to um act according to my nature, which I measure by my experience of peace. You know, everything that is part of our nature is effortless to us. Just like the bird uh has the least effortful time in flying because it is its nature, we have the least effortful time of being at peace because peace is our nature. And so anything that does not increase or decrease my vision of peace, my experience of peace, I actively remind myself to avoid. I can engage in it as an intellectual pleasure, but uh as soon as I stress myself out, as soon as I, or as soon as I look at it in terms of this will give perhaps give me my salvation, that's when I know I'm wrong, because it cannot do that. That salvation has already happened, that peace is already there, it does not need to be earned or put together or invented altogether. It is already there, it needs to be, if anything, experienced more. It is our nature to be at peace in the state of peace. And so anything experientially that gets me there, I welcome. And anything that is irrelevant to that, I avoid in terms of this uh highest good. And so this is what I can tell you. Further, words do not go, and further, there is no there's no basis, really, right? This is this is what I believe fundamentally, and I try to not put any more mental constructs on top of it, because that's when we diverge, and that's when we get oddly specific, and that's when we see others as other. But I feel this basic sense of stemming from reality and having reality as our commonality, that we exist is our commonality, I do see that. And that I don't want to call a non-existing or um uh an in itself ambiguous thing because it is operating, it is here right now, it is functioning. Um, I don't lose consciousness half the time when I'm trying to talk to you. My vision is not coming and going. Um and um air is everywhere all the time. I don't have my air sucked out of my room randomly every few minutes. It is operating. This reality is working. Whatever its mechanism, so-called mechanisms are, again, that's just a human way of thinking about it. However it came about, wherever it's going, whatever it's doing, or if it is even working in those terms at all, I do not know. But that it is here, that I do not find ambiguous. And the only things I ever want to do, I want to base on this one thing. And am I failing at that oftentimes? Uh 100%. Am I uh having mental constructs that actually are not based on this at all? And I think I believe things and I see things that are not actually there 100%. But on the whole, I am experiencing peace and experiencing a oneness, and um can feel if I am more or less aligned with my nature as a human being, as a reasoned being. And so on the whole, I do feel this working, right? Just by again, by experience, not by too much by too much thinking or writing or anything like that. And this is all I want to base that reality is and it is perfect, and I'm not defining perfection, but simply by the fact that it is able to be, it is perfect in the sense that it is is is functional and it makes sense and it recycles in itself, and there's no waste in it, and there is no um uh poison in it to itself, it is working. And you and I have that in common, that we both are in this, whatever that is.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:22

Agreed.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:22

That's the only thing, right? And and I want to base anything we ever say, ever believe in on this one thing. And there's so much that can be based on that if we think about it, right? Um, when you talk about beauty, that is what it's based on. When I talk about love, that is what it's based on. When I talk about beauty, that is what it's based on. And when I talk about truth, that is what it's based on as well. And um I think whenever you have an issue with when I talk about truth, it is because perhaps maybe sometimes I go too far or I go too much. Sideways or whatever. But uh just so you know whether I am achieving that or not, my intention is always to only base things of this one, what I see as universal, timeless, eternal reality, just the fact that we all are and what that means. And I believe we're doing the same thing. My my only suggestion as a friend to you, again, this is much more profane, this is not even as big as the things we're talking about, but uh to experiment in your life with giving the intellect less of your energy, with letting the right with letting the intellect dictate a little less of what you are what you ought to engage in with your time and with your energy, because um this intellect has proven itself, it is very competent, it is very powerful, it is very wise also, but there's a limit to it because there's a limit to me. My intellect is me, right? I'm not tapping into the intellect of all of reality, otherwise, we could we could have the answer of everything we just talked about. My intellect is me. And so it is this little thing trying to grasp itself around the entire universe of what and whatever that is, right? We don't even know what the universe is, and it's never going to be able to do that. But it keeps telling us that if we keep going, at least we have a hope, or at least we can come as close as possible to doing that. But as close as possible is still hardly anything, and our life will run out. Our life will run out in that pursuit. And so I highly favor letting the intellect do its thing up to a certain point, and that point is when it has reached the limit of itself. That's when it has done a perfect job, that's when it has fulfilled itself. But it is going to want to keep going. It is this awareness, this this the one who discerns, right? The intellect is a machine that can find out wonderful things, but the one who discerns, the one who says, This is enough, or more, please. That one needs to say, it is enough. We see enough, we know enough, we experience enough to know that peace is effortless to us. Right? Disturbance is the opposite of stillness. And stillness is so easy. Stillness. You you do nothing and you are still. To be disturbed, you have to do something rather than nothing. And so if peace is so effortless to me, then I know it is of my nature. Because nothing that is not of my nature is effortless to me, or or at least uh conducive to it. And so, if I know enough about peace to have peace, to have the vision of peace, then why go any further? In terms of trying to achieve more peace, again, as an intellectual pleasure, a little intellectual pursuit, no problem. Let us do that. Let us write thesis on it, let us write books on it, but let us not expect that we are going to be more than we are now, or be more at peace, or be more deserving of peace, right? This is what the intellect tries to take on, too. It says, I will not only write your PhD thesis for you, I will make a name for you. I will do everything that will make you be at peace. I can do that. I am the competent one, I am the mind. Let me take over everything, not just the PhD thesis, right? Everything. And that I want to uh suggest to you that you just as an experiment do a little less of. Um because as you are saying, huh?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:59

It's a habit of a lifetime, but uh yeah, it's something I've been very cognate of.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

But look how beautiful this is, what we're doing, right? And just talking and the understanding of each other in this in these mutual concepts. Again, language is failing, but it is a concept at the end of the day. And uh the peace that is in that, and and the amazingness and the beauty that is in that. But the intellect says, okay, that's all good and fine, but um, you know, I disagree with you on this. Let's talk about this. You know? And I'm not saying that's what you did today. I'm saying that's what the intellect does generally. And we feel that every day, it's never gonna stop, but we can know, aha, it's the intellect coming in, right? Coming in the view of whom that is me, not the intellect. I am not the intellect. The intellect is some one of the many things that rise in front of me, such as my thoughts, my emotions, my memory, my whatever, the events that occur in the world, but it is not me. And I don't need to fix its problems and I don't need to um engage with it all the time. I can say, not now. Or you have reached your limit. This is enough. And I just want to uh enjoy the conversation with my friend without uh the half-burning desire in the back of my mind of I need to set this straight, or I need to say this, or I need to learn this, I need to, I need to be told this. Well, what does this person think about this? You know, um, there's time for everything, but uh I feel like that would be that'd be beneficial in the in the truest sense to our nature, more conducive if we um let the intellect do the thing what it's very good at, and to not give it one inch in the thing that it's not good at at all, but it wants to do anyway, right? Yeah. Okay, so uh as always, I appreciate I appreciate this. This is very important. This is how we uh also people listening, right? I I don't usually don't go that far into what uh my beliefs are based in, and I hope you don't either, because then this is at least uh somewhat useful to you as well for you to engage with uh your beliefs or your uh process on a on a more deeper level, which is always a good thing. Because examine and re-examine, right? We examine these things at some point, that's how we came to them. Well, we must continue to re-examine because things change. And uh we always want to be at least aligned with what makes sense to us, even if we think we can't be aligned with truth at all. But uh, at least what might what makes sense to us, we want to be aligned with, right? We don't want to find beliefs that we have been keeping up for years and that it's only there because we haven't re-examined it. And if we had, we would have seen that no, actually, something else increases my experience of this mutuality and this peace that we have, right? So um thank you so much for that. Uh was there anything else?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

No, that that is uh so much. Uh and yeah, I'm just uh deeply appreciated for you and yeah, uh, you know, and your as always, your perspectives are very astute. Uh and yeah, the the intellect is yeah, um something that's led me astray many, many a time. So it was uh interesting that's what you kind of uh led in with. Um but yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:25

Thank you so much. And and I will move you back to the audience, but I also want to say uh the same goes to you. I'm I'm very grateful for you to bring these things because uh it is a challenge in the truest and and best sense to talk about these things, to re-examine and to be asked to re-examine. I mean, what a service you are um giving to yourself and to me by bringing these things up. I did I didn't even have to go into them myself. You brought them up. And you say, hey, what about this? Think about this again, re-examine this again. And so that's extremely helpful. But yeah, to to everyone listening, including myself, I want to say we have to stop being intellectuals. Because even if we are religious, we are intellectuals. There's such a thing called theology. You can go study it. You can you can become go become an intellectual even in religion, which many people say, right, uh religion is opposed to somehow uh scholarly work or intellectualism. No, not at all. Not at all. There are entire university studies on on religion, theology, and and every everything. We can be an intellectual about being an intellectual. Everything. And um again, that has its purpose. There is no enemy. There are no enemies. Try to find me one enemy, please. This can be another thing that we think about. If you can find an enemy, I'm willing to have an enemy. Okay, I'm willing to have enemies. I'm not afraid of enemies. I just when I look around, I cannot see a single enemy. That is against your peace, that is against yourself, that is against your existence. There's not a single enemy that I can see. And so if you have one, you can you can tell me. You can come up here, this is what this is for, right? But so, in that same sense, I want to say intellectualism is also not an enemy. It has brought us so far, so far, everyone here is here, at least due to in part due to intellectualism. And so we're very grateful to our intellect. We thank it very much, but it has served its purpose, and it cannot take us there where it over-eagerly says it can. So we have to think about that a little bit, and I'll take our next speaker. I'll invite our next speaker.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:03

I've been thinking about uh intention and thrill seeking and romantic relationships. Looking at all my past romantic relationships, I didn't go with at them with any bad intention, but um we end up thrill speaking in them. So my question is if we don't go with any bad intention, then why do we kill seek? And the answer that I got is that maybe we mistake a little bit here, then it has made me question is the intention bad in itself like the desire of having a romantic relationship. So my question is is the desire of having a romantic partner or partner a bad thing? Because I see people have meaningful uh relationships with their romantic partners. So I wanted to know your thoughts about this because you recently uh made an Instagram read where you um showed that all that we think of A, it falls under romantic love, but you also say that uh it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a romantic relationship, right? So, how do we discern um like what's bad uh or how should we go about having or wanting a romantic relationship or a romantic partner?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:26

Yeah, thank you for that question. The way I see it, right? This is just what I offer, my suggestions, and and we as always do whatever with them that that the receiver wants to do. Um it is once again, as it is with so so many things, if not everything, and this is the truth I want to keep coming back to. There's a difference between the logistical and the non-logistical, between the physical and the non-physical. A romantic relationship is a physical thing. It is something that a human being um it's a relation that a human being has with another human being, as a human being, not as an orb of light uh floating in the realm of concepts, right? It's a human being doing that with another human being. Otherwise, it would not be possible, right? A romantic relationship would not be possible without um the physical body, the physical action, the events that occur in two people's lives. And so there's nothing wrong with a romantic relationship depending on the intention. So when we seek a romantic relationship or any kind of relationship or any kind of object or anything at all in this life, uh, with hopes that it will make us a better human being, that it will free us, that it will give meaning to our lives, that it will finally make us worthy of being alive, worth of worth taking up any kind of space in this world, this romantic relationship or this thing, this person is going to give me all of that. Then this is hate. This is a hateful act. Because to expect something of someone else is to say, you owe it to me. Enemies owe each other things. He has my land, I will take it. He owes it to me. This is what enemies do, friends don't owe each other. And um it is also entirely unreasonable. Unreasonableness is a feature of hate because what you cannot do for yourself, you expect someone else to do for you. It's insane. And I don't mean that in an emotional way. I mean it is not sane, it is not a sane way of doing things. The other person does not owe you peace, the other person does not owe you meaning in your life, the other person does not and cannot make you into a person that finally sees the beauty in this world that was always there. Or do you expect them to create beauty in this world that wasn't there before, also on top of all the other things that they're supposed to do? And of course, someone who attracts, or rather, someone who is looking for someone like that in this with this intention is only going to attract someone else who has the same intention? How can a person who expects peace and worth and meaning in life from the other person, how is that person ever going to attract someone who understands that these things cannot be given by someone else? That they are not responsible of giving them to you. How could you ever attract someone in any sense of the word with thinking like this? So you're only going to attract someone like yourself. And then you're going to be in a relationship where both people are expecting to be made whole by the other person. Two have people trying to make each other whole. It's the blind leading the blind. And uh that, if it wasn't hate to begin with, and it was, turns to hate immediately. You were supposed to do this. You presented yourself as something that I can now see you are not. And then we take that just because we expected that, and our insane expectation was never going to come true, and it is not coming true. Then we say, You stabbed me in the back. You seemed like someone who can give me peace, who can make me worthy of anything, and you failed to deliver. You deceived me. You deceived yourself. And so this is hate. But if a human being knows no one else can save me, no one else can give me peace. No one else can see, make me see the beauty that is already in this world, and I fail to see it. Uh, no one else can make me feel, make me live in the present, understand that the here and now is all there is, and that everything else is an illusion, in the sense that, oh, the past was better, and I keep trying to escape in the past. That was another thing we just talked about, uh, escapism. Another person cannot make you stop uh trying to escape the present moment all the time because you are either overwhelmed or bored by it. Another person's not going to be able to stop doing that. You have to do that for yourself. And once you do that for yourself, and this is entirely not only possible, but can only be done by you, you're gonna have peace and you're gonna truly have love because you're not gonna expect things from other people that are impossible. Love is not to expect impossible things from other people, love is to know what others can do for one and what can what they cannot. And to not expect, to not put expectations and um a sort of uh you're trying to have the other person be God, you know. If someone else was able to give you peace, it would be God. If someone else could make you worthy of heaven or an afterlife or whatever it is, it would be God, it would not be another person. So you're literally demanding of them to be a God, and so this cannot be shown to you by another person, or rather, it cannot be implemented, it can be pointed to like hopefully I am now, but it cannot be implemented by another person, so don't expect that. But if a person has this understanding that this is not to be expected from other people, that other people are not gods, and so we should not walk around with expectations as if we can find a God for us who can turn our entire life around, then we will know that this is not possible, and that will bring us the realization that all the answers, all that which we were seeking from someone else is actually inside of us. Someone else is not holding peace for me, and I just need to go find that person and then receive the peace. No, if peace is possible at all, it is possible because it is already inside of me. Or it is with me. I am with it, however you want to think about it. It is the vision of peace that we are lacking, not peace itself. It is the vision of meaning in this world that we are lacking, not the meaning itself. And someone who sees this, who knows this, who understands this, who lives according to this, will not seek someone else for any of this. They will seek them for logistical purposes. And when I say logistical purposes, I don't want to demean that at all. We are human beings, we are physical also. And so there is a great, again, physical, logistical value in being with another aware person. But again, this does not have to be a so-called romantic relationship. Any relationship, such as the one uh everyone here has with each other, right here, right now, is the same thing. It is one, hopefully, aware person communing with another aware person. Whether they are of the compatible genders and so, and they're physically attracted to each other, so they decide to get married, or they are, let's say, of the same sex and uh very different ages, and so they decide to be friends, or they are mentors, or they are uh whatever, whatever particular physical form that relationship takes, it is all the same. It is all of kinship. Without kinship, we are not interested in anyone as a romantic partner, as a friend, as a mentor, as a family relationship, nothing, nothing. We're not interested in them at all. And so this kinship is everywhere, but it is not needed. Because, again, you do not need someone else for your peace. You do not need someone else for you to become aware of who you truly are and what this world truly is. That you are not your thoughts, that you are not your emotions, that you are not uh the appearance that you give off to the world, and that others are not the appearance that they give off, uh, knowingly or unknowingly, that you are not um your career, that you are not your past, that you are not your trauma, that you are not your future ambitions, goals, desires, or worries. So when two people of this understanding come together, they will come together romantically because they say, Well, uh, I want to, I would like to start a family. That seems like to the right thing to do with the resources I have, with the time I have. And I always wanted to have children, and I just think that will be very fulfilling. And so I need another human being to do that with. And of course, I want this other human being to be of love, of truth, of justice, of this understanding. And uh, otherwise, this is not gonna be a good relationship. They're gonna expect me to somehow make them a peaceful, fulfilled person, and I cannot do that. And so that relationship would just fall apart. And what kind of children would we raise with this understanding anyway? So naturally, you're gonna look at for someone else who has this kind of awareness. And two people who have this awareness will say, we'll shake hands and they'll say, Let's do this. This is a beautiful thing to do. And we will be partners and we'll support each other and we'll we'll do all of that, right? Or again, we'll be friends, we'll do this, or we'll work together, we'll make a certain product or a certain service to the community with this awareness, with this understanding. And so all human relations need to be based on this understanding. And any human relationship that is not based on this understanding, that expects anything from other people in this so-called spiritual, non-physical, non-logistical realm to be made better there. If you are expecting this from another person, that is hate. That is not love.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:15

So this understanding is to think uh logistical things in the logistical realm and like the spiritual things in the spiritual realm, and not to expect the logistical things to fulfill our spiritual world, right? Do I understand it correctly, what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:33

Yes, when you are when you are seeking a relationship and you are seeking to be made better spiritually, a more peaceful person, a more aware person, you are approaching it with the wrong intention. Because that cannot be done by someone else for you. It can only be done by you for you. But if you are seeking a relationship for logistical purposes, like I said, whether this is a marriage or a friendship or a partnership at work, um, and you know not to expect non-logistical things from logistical things, and vice versa, then it'll be fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:16

Right? And it's so easy to yeah, and it's so easy to bring the relationship into the non-logistical realm, you know, because society teaches us all that nonsense about how family is everything, you know, children are everything, family comes first, blah blah blah. But uh yeah, I think this distinction, having this distribution is really helpful and can bring a lot of peace. It's like having some, you know. You can have a and if you have the car, if you buy the car, then you have to maintain it.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:48

But that doesn't mean that you know we can expect us to get fulfilled just because we have this model of fire that yeah, and it's and you're so right, uh, it is fed to us, right? And again, uh no ill intent here. I'm not saying the people are evil who make us believe in this false uh notion of love, that another human being can somehow exalt us into heaven, literally, right? Some some people say that. Uh, this is not with malicious intent. This is just something that is repeated and it happens. And uh it's funny, you know. We if our car is dirty and we go to the car wash, we don't expect the car wash people to clean our soul. We don't expect them to make us better human beings that are more honest, have more integrity, uh, are truly loving to other people, are are wishing well and see the beauty in the world. We don't expect any of it. But for some reason, when we're starting to uh look for a partner to start a family, we're expecting all of that. We're expecting them to be gods. This is another human being, just like yourself, who hopefully uh wants a wants a family also. And so this is a partnership that you're coming together uh to fulfill this logistical goal. Again, logistical is nothing profane. I'm not demeaning it in any way at all. If something is occurring in the physical realm, it is logistical. Right. And um uh truth, integrity, uh beauty, all these things are are not uh physical. They can have physical manifestations. We can see beauty in something physical, we can see a non-physical thing and a physical thing, but uh we cannot think that um the one realm can affect the other. Somehow make the make the one more worthy, right? I give you a certain amount of money, now you are uh a human being that is able to see beauty in the world and be more loving to other people. Does that is that is that a reasonable expectation? But that's exactly what we what we are looking for in the friend or the romantic partner or in anything really with another human being. We're trying to make them gods. And so it's just not in accordance with reality, right? This is not we can go try. So many people do. So many people do, and they and it falls flat and the relationship falls apart. Uh again, it was never there to begin with in truth, but uh it falls apart very quickly, and then they say, Ah, this well, this person deceived me. This person uh seemed like something they were actually not, so it's just the wrong person. So I just need to go find the right person, and they can never uh test out, so to speak, the eight billion people. And so they go from one uh after another, and then they think they just keep getting the wrong ones. No, your intention is wrong. You're looking for a God among humans, and um think this is a reasonable expectation, so you keep trying eight billion times, you're gonna try, but you're gonna run out of life, of course, before you can do that. And so it starts with us, it ends with us, as with everything else. Intention is everything. And um I hope that makes more sense. In the truest and best form, it is a logistical thing what we're doing. It is a physical thing we're doing. So we need to be conscious of not expecting non-physical things from physical things, from um uh non-logistical things from logistical things. It is not going to work out, it has never once worked out.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:48

And and how about uh, because you say intention is everything, so I just wanted to ask this. Um what if we know that our intention is not right, but we are going to get a thrill out of it? So let's just do it, like there are I I see a lot of people, I mean, some of my friends, not friends, but people I know, they tell me that they didn't have any um connection with the other person in terms of ideas, you know, but for physical pleasures and everything else, they pursue that relationship. So, how does that um puts us at a disadvantage? Like, how does that relate? Yeah, uh, how does how does it put us at a disadvantage in the spiritual realm?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:39

Well, thrill seeking thrill seeking is escape is escapism, right? When we're seeking thrills, we're saying one of two things or both. We're saying the present moment is not exciting enough, it is not good enough, it needs enhancement, and so we go look for that enhancement, and that enhancement is a thrill. Only thrills can enhance, of course, not really, but only a thrill can enhance the present moment, or it is um, it is uh a seeking of if I do this now, in the future I will have some massive payoff. So either way, it's delaying oneself, right? Because either you are saying, I am incomplete, I am bad, I am wrong, I am broken. But if I engage in this thing that seems, that feels so good, if I just keep doing that, perhaps one day this will complete me, this will make me whole. So thrill seeking happens for one or both of these reasons. Uh, either we're looking for it uh completing us in the future, but right now we're broken and we we're delaying happiness, we're delaying peace, we're saying it is not possible right now, maybe in the future, right? And so we engage in it like that, and that's a romantic relationship for sure. Uh we say, I'm broken, I am miserable, I am unworthy, but perhaps if I am with this person long enough, if I say what they do, if I do everything they want, if I make them happy, perhaps they will bestow their happiness, their peace on me as well. And then perhaps in the future, some point in the future, I can become all, I can become complete. So that's one reason to engage in a relationship, right? And the second one is like you mentioned, just the distraction, an escape. You're saying, I am lonely. Loneliness is not real, by the way. But uh, I am lonely, I am nothing, I'm miserable, and what can I do? And frantically we just look for someone, anyone, to distract ourselves. And again, this can be a friendship or anything like that. It doesn't necessarily be romantic, but that's what we do. So it's an escape. It's uh it's delaying oneself, delaying one's happiness, one's peace.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:09

This makes so much sense. Thank you, Athes.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:12

Yeah. Well, thank you for the question. That's uh we talk about it every now and then, but it's important. We have to adhere it a lot because, as you said, we are going against a lot of conditioning, uh, a lot of things we see in the movies and music and books, and literally everywhere there's this misunderstanding of love. And it's fatal. Fatal in every sense of the word, physically and in every way. So um I want to ask you if you would like to answer. You don't have to, but I'm gonna ask you, and then you can decide if you want to answer or not. I want to ask you the question of the fortnight because this is the last week to be able to respond to it. Uh, the question of the fortnight is what will you be when you grow up?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:57

Um when I was a child, I really a lot of people asked me this question, and I gave various uh responses in terms of career and everything. But um now when we talk about uh and we try to understand more about the true self. I feel that true self, uh our real self, it doesn't have an age, um, it is timeless, so there's absolutely nothing to do, uh nothing to grow up to in terms of ideas. We know what we need to know. Um but to answer your question, I would like to be more in sync with myself, with my true self. And every time I slip into another space or another habits, I would like to bring myself back to uh my true self and to remember that you know and the observer, neither the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:46

So listen to yourself when you're saying that. I don't want to interrupt you, but it's important because I don't want to let it go. You said I want to bring myself back to my true self. How many people are there inside of you?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:05

There is only one, but you know, I want to listen on the clouds in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:13

The what in your mind the clouds in my mind, the clouds, the clouds in your mind. But do you see that you are the sky and not the clouds? Oh yeah, right, because the sky is always there. I I I sometimes get a little frustrated as a person, not the true self, the person, the person of me, the identity gets a little frustrated in the winter when it's just so cloudy that you can't even see the sky. And I get so frustrated because I know that when you go up in a plane and it's raining and it's completely cloudy, when you go above the clouds, it's perfect sunshine. Right? And so I say, ah, it's always there. Technically, it's always sunny. It's just that in this place that I am, the few, the few square miles, there's a cover of clouds on it. So that's why I get to not have sunshine and warmth, and I get frustrated. But so it is with the true self. The sun is always there, the the blue sky is always there. Uh, but a cloud, which is a local phenomenon, a local phenomenon, can cover up part or all of the blue sky and the sun. And so are you the one who sits under the cloud? Or are you the sky and the cloud and the surface and every single thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:51

I'm the sky, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:53

Yeah, you are the sky. And everything there. Yeah, you're the sky. So a cloud can come and pass. It does nothing to the sky, it does nothing. It's a local phenomenon. That the sky is is the is the globe uh above you. Right? And it is always clear. Or rather, it can be clear or unclear, but it is always there. You are always that. A cloud cannot disturb you, but the sky is not the sky is not disturbed by the cloud. The little human who is on the surface looking up at the sky is disturbed by the cloud. But you are not that little one, you are the sky. And so when you say you want to, you you are a little frustrated, or it is your future goal to uh bring yourself back to your true self, you are talking about the little human who's sitting in the park looking up, trying and wanting to be the sky. I want to be above the clouds more. I wish I could afford to get on a plane and to go somewhere else. You are not that. You are the sky. And so even the thought, the mental construct of I'm clouded right now, I'm down right now, I'm not doing so well right now. That is identification with something other than the true self. But who is identifying themselves as something other than the true self? It is the true self. Whatever you are doing, whatever you are correctly or wrongly believing that you are, you are doing with the true self, whatever that true self is. But we know that the true self is not the cloud. We know that the true self is not the thoughts, you are not your thoughts, you are not your emotions. The emotion can come, it's allowed to come. Is it a failure? It is a is it a failure to the true self that it is feeling angry?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:02

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:03

Uh-huh. So why feel angry or disturbed or envious or ambitious or depressed or whatever, and uh call it a problem?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:20

Because when we are in that state, like when we forget what our true nature is, um it's not a problem, but I think uh discerning that this is not us kind of helps us to go back to our true self. We don't have to go back, but you know, but helps us remember what we truly are.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:39

But look, this is the thing, you are not going back. You are already where you are going back. You are not making yourself more peace either by having a relationship or by getting out of a relationship, right? You are not giving yourself more peace, you are seeing more of the peace that you have. And I'm not saying you have to get in or out of a relationship to see more peace. No, that seeing can and should and must be done at any point, no matter what is going on, no matter if it's cloudy or uh a stressful period at work, or you're sick, or your dog is sick. This is always there. This is always uh uh present. Peace is always present for you. There can be a cloud on it, but does the cloud diminish peace? Does peace say I am harmed by this cloud? It does not. Does peace say I am uh harmed by this stressful period in life? No, that is not my life, it says. It is your life to the little person, right? But you are not the little person. You are not the one who goes to work and comes back. You are not the one who gets in or out of a relationship. You are not the one who realizes that they had the wrong intentions or the right intentions. You are not that one. You are the awareness, you are the existence, the being, the I am essence that can do these things. It is an activity of yours to feel like this or that, or this or that, or to do this or to do that. It is an activity of yours. It is not you, and it does not make you worse or better. You cannot make yourself better like this either. And when you're feeling happy, when you're feeling things are finally going my way, at least for a little while. That is not a success. That is not good for you. The true self is uh the one who observes the change, it is not the change. Right, it observes that which changes, it itself does not change, it observes that which gets better or worse or more difficult or less difficult, but it is not that which is more or less difficult. And so whenever you have a thought, whenever you think you are saying something, ask yourself this who's speaking right now? When you say, Oh, you know, I just I've let go of so many things. I I know my career doesn't define me anymore. I know the opinions of other people don't define me. They cannot make me better or worse. It has nothing to do with me. They are just responding to an illusion, to an appearance. I know all these things. I now I was caught up in them for so long, but now I finally know them. And now all I want is to just be more in alignment with the true self. I want to go back to my true self. That's all I want now. Who's speaking right now? And you will see, well, the true self cannot go back to the true self. So the one who's trying to go back to the true self must necessarily not be the true self. And so once again, you're saying, aha, I've caught it again. I've caught it again. This is a false identity. Well, it is an identity, period. And so, am I the identity? No, of course not. And so, uh-huh so this too can go. This too can go. This too I do not need. Because we're speaking of time. We're saying in the future, this is my goal, this is what I want to reach, this is what I achieve, this is what I want to need to overcome to achieve that. All of this is of uh the false self. The false self needs time, the false self needs to overcome a hurdle, otherwise, it cannot achieve itself. This is the false self. What is there for the true self to achieve in itself? What desire does the true self have that it needs to go get and it needs to achieve it, or it needs to be permitted to do so? This is all uh person talk. This is the person of you, the person of you talking, not you. But if you keep asking yourself who is speaking right now, identify yourself. Show me your ID. Who's speaking right now? If it's the true self, it will be able to show you a valid ID. If it's an imposter, it will have a no ID or a fake ID, which you can easily see. It's not good at making the real ID. It doesn't know what it is. Can only guess. Right. So it's making these guesses, it's it's saying, uh, this person is a religious person. I'm gonna give them the fear of God. I'm gonna say, I am God. God is speaking to you right now, you are a sinner. And uh give to charity, go show up uh at church or in the mosque or in the Synagogue, impress everyone, and you may be worthy of my salvation that I can bestow upon you. The ego will take the form of God and talk like this. To the scholar, to the academic, it will say, You are still very ignorant. And you must complete this course and this course, and you must become smarter than this particular peer. This one already has their PhD. What are you still doing? Et cetera, et cetera. And so that one will assume the scholar's voice. And one who has let go of both the false idea of religion and the false idea of the intellectual. Even that one still will be visited by the truth seeker. The truth seeker will come in and say, I am you. Aren't you a truth seeker? And you say, Yeah, of course. I love truth. I want to be aligned with truth. I want to know more about truth. I want to live in accordance with truth. And so we'll say, okay, so then you must become a kinder person. You must become a more loving person. You must become a wiser person. You must read books. You must do this and do that and do that. And you must be more aligned with your true self. You must find yourself, you must complete yourself. You are the truth seeker. And now we are seeing, wow, even the truth seeker, I am not. The true self is not. Because how can truth seek itself? It already is itself. So if I am the truth seeker, and it is true, at some point I am the truth seeker, at some point it is good for me to identify as the truth speaker. That's why the truth seeker, uh, because as I said before, even to identities, we are grateful. Because instead of the truth seeker, I could have been the religious person who is uh looking at the pastor and seeing, oh, are they are they watching me praying? Okay, good. I'm gonna pray extra hard. Instead of doing that, at least we were saying, okay, it is neither uh in other people's opinions nor in religion itself. Religion is a ladder, is can be very valuable, but it is not the thing itself. Philosophy is also not the thing itself. It is just a pointer, a helpful guide, perhaps at some point, but it is none of these things. Um, it is truth itself that I'm looking for. And so that's very, very helpful. But at some point we come and see, uh, even the truth seeker is an identity, because it is seeking something that it already has. It is seeking peace when it already has it, it is seeking its own nature when its own nature is already its own nature. And so if you are still troubled by the cloud and the sky, try being troubled and seeing that it is not a problem to you. Let let it come in. Look, this is not the gauge. The gauge is not to say, uh, I'm having way fewer bad so-called emotions, I'm having way fewer bad thoughts. So uh, I'm progressing. I'm successful in becoming the true self. That is not a success. Let the emotions come, let the thoughts come and say, This is not a problem to me. I am seeing anger arise in me, or confusion, or envy, or sadness, or frustration, whatever it is, or I'm disappointed, and say, So I'm still here, I'm still fully complete, I lack nothing. And this cloud remembered it. Uh once you know it, once you see this, you cannot help but remember it. Because now uh remember when you used to think that anger was your problem and that you had to go fix or battle or fight or uh destroy whatever it was that was angering you. And now you are just seeing that anger is just an emotion that is information, and it says, uh-huh. If you're angry about this, that means you have some sort of attachment in this area. Right? And so now you're seeing it as that. Now you're seeing it as a helpful indicator of the fact that there's some kind of attachment, which I now can go and shine the light of awareness on and thereby deal with it. So just like you can see that now, and but you used to not be able to see that. Now you're gonna more and more see that the true self does not talk of becoming, the true self does not talk of problems, the true self does not envy because what is it envying? The true self does not seek peace because it already has peace. So how to remind how to remember this is how it like I told you, every time you have any kind of thought, anything, someone is speaking in your head. Say, who is speaking right now? Ah, I've done it again. I've what I wanted to stop doing this. This is not right. I don't want to lie anymore. It just makes it for a complicated life, and I want a simple, easy, good life, but I've lied again. Who's speaking right now? Well, of course, it's it's the person who is trying to become more honest because it wants a simpler life. That's the one who's talking. And that's okay. Right? It's okay. Of course, you want a simpler life, but again, that's a logistical issue. It's not a non-logistical, it's not a spiritual, it's not going to make you a better being, it's not going to make you more existing. You already are fully here and you are a full being. So it is this person speaking. So this is a logistical issue. So, oh, okay, now I see I don't need to be angry about this or ashamed about this or regretting anything. I say, okay, I just need to observe what happened there in this situation. Oh, I was caught off guard. Ah, I see. So that's what momentarily, almost intuitively made me lie instead of tell the truth because I've been doing it for so long. It's but it's a behavior for so long. It's difficult to counteract, but that's going to come with time. Who's speaking now? The true self. The true self is the one who knows this. The true self is the one of wisdom. The true self is the one who tells you this too is not a problem for you. And um uh give it kindness, give it patience. And this logistical matter will work on it, we'll get there. It's okay. The person will get the person there. But this is all the true self out of completion, out of peace, out of wholeness, who is speaking here. So that's the true self. See? So whenever you hear someone speaking, ask who's speaking right now. And if they are speaking of time, if they are speaking of becoming, if they are speaking of lack, of desire, of anger, of envy, of jealousy, of disappointment, of expectation, then you can know 100% that it is not the true self speaking. And that too is not a problem. It's like, oh no, I've again spoken as the not true self. I identify with the false self. Stupid me. That too is not the true self. Who's speaking now? You can say. Well, I'm talking about stupidity. Once again, I'm talking about lack. Once again, I'm talking about problems of having made a mistake. So, uh huh, that true, that too is not the true self. And it can go, it can have a hundred more layers if it wishes to. It is not a problem. This will be seen, this will be recognized, this will be observed. And the more it is seen, the more it is recognized, the more it is observed, um, naturally, less and less it will be realized that this is not a problem. And and naturally it will, it will subside, right? Because uh if you keep sticking the wrong key into the lock, you can say, okay, it is not this key, you know, and you go get the right one. And now more and more you can, okay, I'm already holding the wrong key, this is not gonna work, I'm gonna go right to the other one. It is just like with anything else, right? This is just uh another behavior, another habit that needs to be seen. And to identify with the false self, with the not you, is is again just yet another activity of yours. It is not you. And so it is a habit. And so, just like any other logistical thing, it needs to be observed until it becomes obvious. If you keep doing it, then that means it just hasn't become obvious to you yet. And that's okay. This is the process. And uh, but it but if you keep observing, if you keep aware, this is why we keep talking about awareness. If you're unaware, you're just gonna keep doing it and you're gonna be unaware that you keep doing it. But if you become aware, you can become aware of the fact that you keep doing it. And even then you can keep doing it until you until it you are not only aware, but it is obvious to you that you are that this is wrong. Uh, it's not of your nature, it's it's false. And so naturally it's gonna fall off of you. Because um what is observed becomes obvious. What becomes obvious becomes simple, and what becomes simple becomes effortless. What becomes effortless is simply done, and um nothing else is needed. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 2:00:13

Yeah, so people think as if every time there are thoughts and emotions like who is waiting through this, maybe that will help.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:21

Yeah, yeah. Who's speaking right now? You know, practice awareness. This this is what I'm saying, awareness is everything. If you are aware, you are aware. Only if you are unaware, do these things. All crime is committed in unawareness. All ignorance is done in unawareness, all mistakes are done in unawareness, otherwise, we wouldn't call it a mistake. We would have done it consciously and and properly, and we would have said this is the right thing to do. But it was a mistake. I didn't see that at the time. I was ignorant, I was unaware. And so uh you only need to observe, you do not need to know better. This is the problem we always have. We always need to, we feel like we need to have the solution to a problem before fixing the problem. No, all you need to do is observe, and as you are observing, you are seeing things go wrong, and you're watching the whole process from start to finish, and you say, uh-huh, this is where the complication comes in, this is where the issue comes in, this is where the conflict is. I can see that now. And uh, since I see it, I can now think about okay, so how can I make it so that this conflict doesn't occur again? And that will change depending on what it is, right? That's the part where um uh things can be different, but the process is always the same, where the awareness is always the same. Awareness is of the true self. As long as it was awareness, then nothing can happen to you. Okay. So I'm glad the question of the Fortnite did its job there and it and it caught the false self. Caught it. It was it went right into the trap, and we closed the trap on it, and so now that's gone. That's gone. You may keep doing it, who knows? I'm not saying it's gonna stop, or I'm not gonna, I'm also not saying it's gonna continue. I'm not saying anything. It may continue for a while, but now uh it's it's being seen, it's being observed. Hey, here you go, doing it again, you know. And uh at some point you're gonna say, Well, I just have no interest in this anymore. And when you don't have an interest in it anymore, it's just not gonna happen anymore. And so that's a beautiful thing. So I appreciate that. Thank you for um asking a question and thank you for answering this. I hope this did not only uh catch uh an identity of yours or part of the false self, whatever you want to call it, of yours, but of some other people who are listening to. And this was a very helpful reminder for me as well, because this is how the false self always gets us. We're aspiring for something objectively, genuinely great. But we never ask ourselves who is the one aspiring, and is the one who's aspiring uh really does it really need this, or is this a confusion? Is this a silly thing? And so we aspire to become the true self. Imagine that the person who I already am is trying to aspire um to itself. That doesn't make any sense, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:03:38

Yeah, yeah, this thing that you told, like a part of me wants to do this, a part of me wants to do that. How many parts are there inside us? It was it was so enlightening.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:48

Yeah, this is the same thing. This is the same thing. Those those parts are not really parts of you, they are mental constructs that are external, completely external, have nothing to do with us, which we go into, right? The the one true self is giving it being by identifying with it. You know, if you I if you put on a mask and you say, This is my face now, it's still a mask, it's still an external thing, it's still not part of your body at all, but it will be identified as part of your body. And so, oh no, you scratched my face. Right? Whereas before, when it's a separate object, no, you scratched the mask. That's a pity, you know, or whatever, I don't care. It's totally different, uh, different, you know, nothing changes about what is actually the case. But because we're identifying with something that we're not, all of a sudden it becomes personal. Isn't that what identifying with something is that it becomes personal? And so people who identify with the kind of car they drive, if I scratch their car, they're gonna feel the scratch on their own soul, so to speak. They're gonna be offended by that, they're gonna be hurt by that. They literally say, You hurt me by your actions. You know, I care about my car so much, and you just you you put a scratch in it. That hurt me so much that you did that. It's so silly. It's people identifying with uh inanimate objects, but we don't see them as inanimate objects. So, and when I say silly, this is something we all do. It is silly. I want to call it out. Um, but we all do it. I'm probably gonna hang up this call and then uh in two hours do something just as silly or even sillier, right? But um, I'm also at the same time constantly observing things that I used to not observe that are silly, and so I'm seeing more and more of what the true self is not, right? And the more I see it, the more my experience of peace is increased. Is the true self changing? Is am I having more peace? No, the true self is exactly what it always was, and peace was always just as much there as it always was. I am just seeing it more. It's a vision, and that's why I say we do not lack anything. If we do lack something, it is the vision that of the fact that we lack nothing. So, and again, this is just a seeing, this is just like any other habit. Uh, it can be encouraged, it can be things can be conducive to it, and so that's what we're trying to do here. Um, but it's gonna happen if you're dedicated to this, if you are that truth seeker in many senses, um, then this is the work, the so-called work. Again, there is actually no work. But this is the work, if we want to talk in those terms. Okay. So thank you very much for once again for bringing everything you brought here. It's very, very helpful. Great reminders and great um showcasing of of things that are going on within all of us. So thank you very much for that. I'm gonna move you back to the audience for now. Very grateful to that. Thank you so much. Thank you also to everyone so far with the openness and honesty that we brought here. I want to introduce the next question of the Fortnite to you, which is this um what does it mean to empty yourself of yourself? What does it mean to empty yourself of yourself?