Hello again and welcome.
This video is called Beyond the Need to Understand.
Have you noticed how naturally the mind wants to understand?
To know what something means,
Why something has happened.
Where something is going and what it all means to you.
Understanding can feel satisfying.
The mind finds an answer,
Something it can relate to,
Something it can hold on to.
Something it can label,
Define and recognize.
And for a moment,
There can be a sense of satisfaction and completeness.
But notice what is happening.
When there is a need to understand an experience,
Attention moves towards the mind.
It becomes focused on thought and interpretation,
On finding an answer.
And so much of what we call knowing is actually the mind knowing something.
But what if pure knowing is something entirely different?
What if it is not the mind at all?
What if there is a knowing beyond the surface of thought?
Not something you think,
Not something you can explain,
Not something you can hold on to as an idea.
Simply a direct recognition of what is silently present before the mind gives anything a name.
There is seeing before the thought I am seeing.
There is hearing before the thought,
I am hearing.
There are sensations before they become claimed as my sensations.
There is life happening.
Before the mind interprets what is happening.
And perhaps this is where the need to understand can begin to soften.
Not because there is anything wrong with understanding.
Because understanding can only take us within the finite world of thought.
Thought can describe experience.
You can analyze it,
Compare it,
Explain it.
But can thought ever contain the awareness in which thought itself appears?
Sit with this.
Awareness is not another object for the mind to understand.
It is what is timelessly here,
Present,
Before understanding begins.
When there is no longer a need to understand,
What remains?
Don't look for an answer.
Simply notice.
There can be a stillness,
A quietness.
Not an absence of experience,
But an absence of the need to label what is being experienced.
A knowing without an object.
A knowing without a knower standing apart from the experience.
This knowing is not of the mind.
It is a direct recognition of the mindless,
Impersonal presence of one's being.
Allow yourself for a moment not to know or understand anything.
Not to define yourself,
Not to understand this moment,
Not to arrive at a conclusion.
Just the stillness.
Of quiet being.
Before thought,
There is awareness.
Before interpretation,
There is awareness.
Before the mind tells you what experience is.
There is already a simple knowing.
And as the need to understand falls silent.
Attention is no longer confined to the movement of thought.
Something begins to open,
Not something new.
Something that has never been absent.
Pure awareness,
Unlabeled,
Unbounded,
Without beginning or end.
There is no need to understand it.
Because it is not something you can stand outside of to know.
It is not something you are trying to become.
It is your impersonal,
Fundamental nature.
The mind understands,
Awareness recognises.
And in that recognition there is nothing to grasp.
Nothing to become,
Nothing to complete.
Only the unfolding of what has always been here.
Pure awareness,
Simply being.
