I think there's a little part of everybody that has an inkling or a hunch or a sense that there's a mystery in the background behind this life that we haven't quite clocked and we'd love to know what's going on.
Am I right?
How many of you have never stopped to think that this,
About something like that,
Ever in your entire life?
Yeah.
In the deepest part of us there's clearly a sense that there's more to this than meets the eye.
No matter how hard we've tried to break it down into the nuts and bolts and say well this is what it is,
Honestly we have to admit that life is an extraordinary mystery.
And anyone who's,
I suppose,
Trying to rob it of that mystery and insisting on understanding what's going on I think is probably missing the juiciest part of it.
The part that makes it feel that life is really something worth getting stuck into.
You know there's an awful lot of tragedy in life,
There's a lot of things we have to do that are inconvenient,
There's a lot of hardship,
Though we are,
We have to admit,
As a group of individuals extraordinarily fortunate life isn't easy.
And yet the desire for life,
The sort of longing for it remains so strong.
Even in the face of extraordinary adversity,
There's longing for life that's there.
Why do you think it is?
If you look out there,
Everywhere you look,
Apart from where we put something,
Is life just pouring forward.
It has this extraordinary,
Inexorable unstoppable-ness about it.
And it's working through us.
We are inexpressional but we are that.
And although we haven't quite clocked,
And although we distract ourselves so desperately,
Spend most of our time really,
Really distracted from what's actually going on,
Somewhere inside of us there's a knowing,
Or a hunch or something,
That there's clearly more to this than we might expect.
When we start to meditate,
The first thing that we experience is how much we've actually put in the way.
I don't know how long it takes before we start to realise that meditation actually is an exercise in learning to get out of the way.
It's an exercise in removing what we've put between us and the experience that we're having.
And that's the noise that rattles around in your head,
That incessant,
Endless,
Dire tribe of storytelling,
Of commentary,
Of having something to say,
Comparing your experience one way or another,
That we are so fixated upon.
And that's the noise that rattles around in your head,
That comparing your experience one way or another,
That we are so fixated upon.
It's the very thing that separates us from the experience that we're having.
It's the only thing that creates the illusory sense that we are separate from what we're experiencing.
It's when that stops that the true nature of your experience will start to show itself to you.
And the mystery that you have wondered about will start to reveal itself.
Thank you.
