How To Go Within

It is almost cliche. "Go within" "The answer lies within" "It is all within you" So exactly where is within? In the chest, the solar plexus, the 2nd or 4th chakras? Within is not a place. It is not a locality. It is a place in the dimensionless Spirit. Let GP guide you there. It is closer than you can imagine.

Transcript

And we are live.

Hello everyone.

In all of my various channels,

GP here,

I decided early this morning to just spontaneously do a meditation in the middle of the day.

And I did consult with the Enlightened World Network to see what time slots would be.

I wouldn't be stepping on somebody else's show so I could put it in here as well.

So welcome everybody.

I know nobody's been expecting me.

It's all of a sudden I didn't even give a little announcement,

You know,

Starting in 10 minutes.

As I often do during these meditations that I used to do quite a bit,

We kind of slowed down because of other demands.

I just kind of talk a little bit in the beginning while people find out I'm here.

And it gives me an opportunity to kind of do an introduction to a subject that I choose.

Well,

It kind of chooses me.

Usually I decide I'm going to do it.

I hit the button and then some idea comes as to what subject to do and the subject is how to go within.

And I get that,

You know,

Going within is such a common expression,

You know,

Happiness is within,

Peace is within,

Everything you're looking for is within.

Where the hell is within?

Right?

Are we talking here?

People do this,

Point to their chest,

Put their hand over their heart.

Is this within?

I mean,

Is the within somewhere inside all of these organs here?

Is it in here?

Is it in the neocortex?

Is it in the center there somewhere?

Where is in?

Well,

I'll guide you there during the meditation.

But in the beginning here,

While I'm waiting for people to arrive,

To discover that I'm here and may actually want to participate,

It's not a place.

The within that goes deep into our spiritual heart,

Our spiritual nature,

Is not a location.

It's not some place you can find on a map.

It's not some place inside you can find if you were to dissect the body,

You know,

Looking for the soul.

You wouldn't find it.

This heart,

The spiritual heart is really more related to this,

You know,

The idea of the heart of a matter,

The heart and soul of a thing,

Of an idea,

Of an experience.

And notice,

Even in our common experience,

Experience itself is not really localized.

It's not like a thing that you can like pierce.

It's very ephemeral.

It's not like,

It's like music,

Right?

Very ephemeral.

Music is being played.

It's notes in the air.

They're here one second,

Gone the next,

And the whole song is gone.

And the next time you may hear exactly the same song played live,

It's not going to sound the same.

It may bear little resemblance to the previous time you heard it,

And yet it's the same.

There's this heart of a matter.

Well,

Why one of the most important sutras of all time,

One of the most important religious writings of all time is the Heart Sutra in Buddhism,

Which does outline the heart of all of the Buddhist teachings,

The essence of it.

In 36 verses,

It summarizes,

It breaks down the totality of Buddha's teaching,

Which went on for 50 years,

And I believe over 45,

000 sutras,

Some of them hundreds of thousands of lines long.

And in 36,

36 stanzas,

Maybe 100 lines,

You get the entire thing in a nutshell.

So what's the heart of you?

Where's in for you?

Checking the time here to see if people enough time to arrive.

That's really the question.

When we do a meditation or any self-inquiry,

And the meditations I do are simply a different way of doing self-inquiry,

It is to discover your true nature.

And true nature is not an organ,

Even a sophisticated one in the brain.

It's not a thing that you can locate in space and time.

What's the nature of anything?

What's the nature of a dog?

Yeah,

It's intertwined with the body.

But it's like the body as a whole serves the nature of the dog.

The wagging tail,

The cocked head,

The bark,

The whimper.

It's impossible to put your finger on the heart of the issue.

And it's impossible to put your finger on the heart of you,

The actual reality of you.

Which is why in a meditation it's a way in which I can guide you to this place that you can never actually see directly.

And that sounds strange,

Doesn't it?

I mean,

I can't see myself.

I look in the mirror,

I see myself on video.

Gee,

Gee,

You see yourself on video all the time.

Right now there's right over there on the screen next to me,

So there's me,

What I'm doing right now.

But notice I said see yourself directly.

You can't look into your own eyes.

You can't,

You know,

Your finger can't touch itself.

Your eyes can't see themselves.

You can't see your own face.

You know,

If you didn't have a face you wouldn't know it.

You couldn't know it.

So this is what it means to go within.

It means to go beyond all of the ways we normally define ourselves and end up someplace completely different,

Completely outside of that.

Where you do know yourself but it's in a very different way.

And since I got a few people here now,

I got,

Looks like 15,

At least from my count,

There may be more because I know these numbers aren't accurate.

And I will stick around for a little bit afterwards to answer some questions if anybody has any.

But let's kind of dive into the actual meat of our time together here.

So I invite you all to simply close your eyes if you can.

Obviously if you're driving a car,

Don't do that.

If you're driving your car,

I hope you're on hands-free and the phone is,

It's not a computer,

The phone is up there somewhere where you can be,

Keep full attention on the road.

But if you can,

Close your eyes.

Just kind of sit back and let your attention begin to go into the feeling of your body.

And notice when you close your eyes and just kind of relax for a second,

There's like a feeling of going within.

Just notice,

It's very subtle.

It feels like you're just kind of withdrawing attention towards,

Towards what?

Away from the external and towards the internal.

You start by just feeling your body,

Just the sheer feeling of having a body,

The kinesthetic balance,

If you will.

Just notice this flow of energy we call the body.

Notice how your mind could very well be commenting about it,

Showing you pictures of your body.

Those are all memories,

Images.

I want you to just become really conscious of is the direct experience of the body without a thought.

The mind pictures it,

But the direct experience is feeling.

It's a kind of knowing,

Isn't it?

You just know it.

It's not an intellectual knowing.

It's a direct.

You don't need to know what it looks like because it would only look like something to somebody else.

Your total experience of the body is this feeling.

Isn't that amazing?

And notice that this experience of the body is there and so are you.

And notice that relative to the attention of our world out there,

You are more inward.

You are headed within.

And notice thoughts may come and go.

And with attention really coming back to the body,

The thoughts will start losing their authority.

They won't be as important.

You just notice it.

Thoughts are there.

They're like the wind or clouds going by or trees blowing in the wind.

They don't have to stop.

You just notice that they're there and that you are at least one step removed looking at them.

A thought can't be there without you to see it.

So there's the thought.

There's all the sensations that is your body.

And then there's you.

A step removed from those.

A step more inward.

And now the same thing for emotions.

Maybe you're feeling a sense of anxiety or just an ambition,

Right,

Desire to make something happen.

Maybe there's some sadness.

Notice that all of that's there and that you are in this other place that's aware of it.

It's not that it's unimportant,

Not that it doesn't have a place,

Doesn't have to stop.

We're just noticing that there's this experience of sensation and emotion and thought and then there's you.

More in than that.

There may be even some sensations in your body that are uncomfortable.

Maybe there's some constriction somewhere or tension.

Maybe some anxiousness,

Stress even.

Okay,

Don't argue with it.

Don't judge it.

Those are all just thoughts.

Your mind may want to.

And then just sit back and notice you simply witnessing all of this,

That that witnessing of things is constantly going on and that you are the witness.

So going within means going more and more away from experience and closer and closer and closer to the experiencer,

To you.

So it's not that you are completely disengaged from all experience,

But that you're not located anywhere in space-time.

The body is,

The experience is,

All the various things that happen.

But the location of you is something far more subtle.

This is what going within means.

You start by going into the body,

But then you keep going to this place that's aware of the body,

Aware of emotions,

Aware of thoughts.

It's one step removed and you're there,

Aren't you?

Now,

This is something you're simply observing,

Isn't it?

It didn't put you into a trance.

It's not,

This is not hypnotism.

No suggestions,

No affirmations,

No visualizations,

A pure seeing.

This is actually what's here.

There's all of experience,

Even the very subtlest of experiences,

Which is the sensations of our body,

Our emotions and our thoughts,

All one step removed from you,

The witness of them.

Now,

Your mind may go,

Okay,

That's great,

But how does that help my life?

What's that about?

The more you are present with yourself as you are,

Wouldn't it make sense the more harmonious your relationship to everything would be?

And I think a good name for just this self-awareness would be presence.

You're just present,

Aren't you?

That's why Eckhart Tolle uses that so much.

I am here.

Now,

Notice something really subtle,

That when you say that word,

I am here,

Your mind will present to you a picture of you.

There'll be an image of you,

An exponent of this I.

But isn't that image of I?

Even though we may have been,

Be very fond of that self-image,

Or maybe we hate that self-image,

Isn't it just an image?

Isn't that just another thought that you are witnessing?

So,

Is any thought actually you?

Or are you always that which is one step removed from thoughts,

One step inward?

Well,

Then where would the ultimate destination of in be?

Well,

Actually,

You're there.

You can't get further in than you,

Just you.

No thoughts of you,

Not the experiential version of you,

But just you,

Pure witnessing,

Pure presence.

Simply,

I am.

But even the thought I am,

You're witnessing.

This is a place only you know.

And isn't it true that this is where you always are?

Even when we're very engaged with the world,

The stuff going on,

It's not all of that engagement always being watched from here.

Now,

As I get ready to bring us back from this little meditation,

Notice we're not actually coming back from it.

Attention didn't really have to go within,

That is,

You didn't really have to go within,

You're always here.

Attention had to simply disengage with all of the things we're normally engaged with and come more and more back to the place to which attention is always reporting.

And now,

At the end of the meditation,

We simply let attention turn back around again.

You haven't moved,

But attention now takes in the feeling of your body,

So move your body.

It takes in the thoughts,

It takes in the emotions,

And it should take a nice breath,

Just feel attention just taking all of that in again,

But you haven't moved.

And that this is always the case,

And even in the midst of chaos,

Without even a meditation,

You can simply remind yourself,

All right,

I'm always at that quiet place to which everything else appears.

And take another breath.

And when you're ready,

Open your eyes.

I am happy to answer a few questions,

Or even just entertain some comments about the experience during that time.

And what Dorte said,

It is obvious.

Once you see it,

Of course,

Everything's obvious once it's obvious,

Right?

And of course,

That's the job of the guided meditation,

Is to bring you to the place where you go,

Of course,

This is where I am.

But then,

You know,

The rubber meets,

Has to meet the road,

Because the mind is so used to thinking that you are bouncing from place to place to place.

And it's not you that's bouncing place to place to place,

It's attention that's bouncing place to place.

You're not your attention.

And you know,

There's plenty going on that attention is not aware of.

We've all had the experience of being so focused on something,

Right?

Maybe it's a movie or a book or something we're working on,

And somebody can be speaking to you,

And you don't hear them.

Right?

When you're really focused on something,

The rest of the world can completely disappear.

Magicians know that.

That's how they can do magic.

It's an illusion.

They know how to draw your attention to get it so focused on something,

With the story about it,

That they can do something over here in plain sight and you won't see it.

In plain sight and you won't see it.

It's not because it isn't there.

It's because they know the field of attention can be narrow to the point where they can trick it.

That's what magic is.

Understanding that,

We realize that no matter where attention goes,

This self,

This presence to which the attention reports receives all of it.

And it doesn't matter what it is.

It has no limits whatsoever.

And that's you because this attention can't even take in the whole of you.

It has to reduce you to an idea,

A form,

A person,

A thing,

An activity.

And even that's slight.

The whole of you,

The whole of what you do in one day couldn't be perceived all at once,

Let alone the whole of you across all eternity.

So,

Yes.

And it's not as if you have to get to this place,

Oh,

I'm there now.

Right?

It's not like that.

Just the knowing that it's there begins to shift the sense of self.

So the sense of self begins to settle in into that place.

And even though your attention may be bouncing all over the place,

The whole inner state of well-being remains relatively stable,

Unperturbed.

Because it's you,

The sense I is rooted there instead of all the external activity.

This is what it means to go within and then stay there,

Abide there.

Let's see,

What else we got?

Hello Sifu,

Hello to you.

G.

P.

,

I love your voice.

Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

You all probably wouldn't believe it that there was one time I didn't like it.

I just did not like my voice.

Isn't that strange?

But I was taught,

You know,

My mother didn't want me to sing,

She didn't want anything to do with that sort of stuff.

I mean,

It was just,

I was very self-conscious about all that stuff.

So because of the way I was programmed.

And now it's like,

You know,

It's one of my best features.

I would gladly trade it for being handsome,

But you know,

You can't have everything,

Right?

Yes,

Hi G.

P.

,

Hi Facebook user,

Hi Marty.

Let's see,

Needed this today.

Good,

Good.

Hello from Tian,

Hello Tian.

Have not found the innate safety,

Calm,

Clarity through any other teacher.

Love you so much.

You're so welcome.

Well,

I guess you're in the right place then.

And eventually,

You know,

My job is to root you into it so deeply that you don't need me.

My job is to get fired.

Shuri Abaraju,

The meditation was wonderful,

Thank you.

You're welcome,

Very welcome.

Hello G.

P.

,

Just wanted to say it helped me very much when you answered my question during satsang.

I feel so happy,

Felt so happy the past days.

Oh,

So good.

Have I met any Indian yogis?

Not many,

Actually.

I've only been to India once and I met a few.

But no,

Not that many.

As a matter of fact,

The one I met was a Swami,

Which is not quite the same thing,

Although I know that the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.

So,

Two days ago I finally had the chance to book a one-on-one with you G.

P.

I checked my mail and I had a three-month bill for electricity coming unexpectedly.

Had quite a reaction to that,

Actually.

I've been so hard living on my own again to get any extra money for anything but good food and the living costs.

And for three months,

220 USD.

And I use warm water and electric sparingly.

It messed my head for two days now.

Gotta move from this place for sure,

Get some extra in some crank and do what I treasure and invest in that.

Move to the place that I just showed you.

And notice that it messed with your head.

Did it mess with you?

If you believe yourself to be the head,

Then it will mess with you.

And notice,

I'm not diminishing the fact that these things come up.

And that sometimes life just sucks mud,

Right?

Some things happen and you go,

I would much have rather that did not happen.

And that's okay.

But then you take a step back.

You let all of those reactions be there.

You don't have to fight.

Being spiritual doesn't mean,

Oh,

Everything's okay.

It's all in God's hands.

It's not a reframe,

Right?

It's not sour grapes.

It's not a psychological twist,

Right?

It's a sober recognition of this is the way things are.

Okay,

This is the way things are.

So who am I?

The way things are,

Are the way things are,

Which means the way I am is the way I am.

And I've just been educated constantly to think that the way I react and I've been trained to react and identified with to all the circumstances is actually who I am.

But notice,

When you visit the place I just showed you that all of those reactions,

However severe or intense or how comical they might be,

That you are watching them.

You are in another place.

That doesn't mean solutions don't have to be found.

Attention doesn't have to be paid.

Our best laid plans of mice and men etc.

Can be waylaid by life.

As John Lennon said,

Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.

All those things will happen,

But they don't happen to you.

They simply happen in this field of activity that is within consciousness,

But does not define consciousness.

You are always,

Are always that still place of watching.

That's where you are.

Even the most intense reactions in the nervous system are being watched by a place that doesn't react to anything.

It is absolutely rock steady.

It is unmovable.

It is self validating,

Self luminous,

Self existent,

Without boundaries and completely unmovable by anything.

It's the ocean.

Everything else is just waves and boats bobbing and storms and crashes.

But you're the ground.

You're the ocean itself.

Just remember that.

And also,

You're not being punished.

This isn't the soul needing to learn.

I don't buy that.

You know,

There's a time you go,

Hey,

When have I learned enough?

Aren't we there yet?

Yeah that whole thing,

Oh,

It's my soul's journey and all that.

No,

The soul didn't take a journey.

The soul is infinite and eternal.

It's not going anywhere.

Experience goes through iterations for sure.

But ultimately,

The goal of all these iterations was to show you that you yourself have never been in or of any of those modulations.

You've always been the still witness.

Beautiful.

Danielle,

What's funny is that who we are isn't an experience.

And that's why we miss it because it never appears.

Oh,

What a great insight.

Yes,

You can only experience what changes.

If it doesn't change,

You don't experience it.

Right?

Let's say you're walking somewhere every day to work or something and you go through a park and there's a statue in the park.

And maybe the first couple days you walked,

Oh,

Interesting statue.

You may have even seen who it's a statue of,

Right?

But after a while,

You don't even see it.

Why?

It doesn't move.

It's very natural.

The nervous system does this very naturally,

Right?

Because if it's not moving,

It's not a threat and it's not an opportunity,

Right?

I mean,

Everything at the very base level is,

Is it going to eat me or can I eat it or mate with it?

Right?

Those are the three options that basically on that level,

It cares about,

Right?

And so as something that isn't moving isn't important and filtered out.

Something that has cannot,

Not only doesn't move,

It can't be seen.

It can't be heard,

Taste,

Touch or felt.

It is completely unknowable to the senses.

This pure presence.

That can't be known,

Can it?

It can't be experienced.

And so it can't be known as an experience.

So how is it that you know it?

Isn't this amazing to ponder?

How is it that you know you are?

That is a contemplation to take deeply to heart.

How do I know that I am without any reference other than I am?

David and Elaine,

A delightful and unexpected surprise.

How lovely.

That awareness,

Which is our true self is so obvious.

Yes.

Especially when guided to it in such a profound way.

Just need to remember this when life comes at you,

Right?

Well,

Even the you that life comes at is also being watched.

This is so,

So subtle.

The you that life is coming at,

The you that is engaged with life is itself life.

It's itself simply a modulation and this field of perception.

The Ruba,

Ruba refers to it as the shadowy image on the screen,

Shiva's screen.

A beautiful,

A beautiful metaphor.

Thanks to you.

Merck,

Millions of sense data bits every second.

Conscious attention can hold like 30.

Good vibes,

Lots of magic.

My understanding of it is 60 billion bits a second are what received by all of our senses combined and that the cognitive part of us that can actually recognize it's 60.

Kind of a feeble little,

Kind of a feeble little thing when you say it's funny.

Dorte says you are,

You are,

Are you,

Are you,

Are you are so handsome amongst,

Amongst what?

But thank you.

Thank you.

Cute.

Hey,

You're handsome and beautiful.

You're gorgeous.

Jill,

Very synchronistic day.

Nice to see you.

Oh Jill.

Hello Jill.

Good to see you.

Jill and I even have the same kind of car.

How about that?

We love our Kaunas,

Don't we Jill?

Yes.

Thank you.

Says the weakened J.

Your presence,

Your energy is healing.

Thanks for your time and love.

Oh,

Faith.

I love you.

Spontaneous so you can know the real students.

The ones who are paying attention.

Yeah,

That's right.

This is a test.

Merck,

Everything is interconnected but we can't see it with our tiny human and legs and mine can only work with contrast,

Movement,

Change,

I guess.

Yeah.

Yes.

So what is the mechanism that downsamples 60 billion to 60 asks and on?

Well,

That's the,

That is the whole range of the nervous system.

All the various kinds of filters layer upon layer of stuff including our beliefs,

Our assumptions.

They do it,

Right?

All sorts of things contribute to it and you can play with it and find out.

Just one time when I was living in New York City,

Which is admittedly a concentrated place,

You know,

I didn't own a TV.

I still have.

I don't own a TV for 25 years.

Maybe more now.

Yeah.

I don't pay much attention to the media because for the most part it's basically,

You know,

Stories,

Propaganda and advertising.

And I heard this fact that the average person receives 3000 commercial messages a day and I thought,

Wow,

That's a lot.

So I thought I'd put it to a test and I lived on like 21st and 6th Avenue and this little grocery store I would go to is like,

Was like four blocks away,

Two long blocks,

Two short blocks,

Four blocks away.

10 minute walk,

Right?

Or thereabouts.

And I was in the store and I thought,

Okay,

I'm going to try something out and I'm going to,

I'm going to consciously try to look for every commercial message I can find on my four block walk home.

But by the time I got home,

I'd counted a hundred.

It's like,

Wow.

They were there.

I hadn't seen them.

Right now in New York City,

Obviously there's a concentration there.

So it's not going to be the same if you,

You know,

If you live out somewhere rural,

It's going to be a very different experience,

But a hundred for somebody who doesn't watch any media.

I mean,

It's like,

It really made me recognize two things.

Number one,

Just how we're inundated with stuff that we simply don't see.

We don't,

We filter it out,

But yet it's getting,

You know,

It's being picked up and processed to a certain point and then thrown away.

And the other is that I could actually instruct the nervous system to show me things that previously hadn't done.

And this is the really,

One of the nature of,

Of,

Of shifting our belief patterns,

Questioning our assumptions,

Because our assumptions are just prescribed filters.

They tell the nervous system,

This is true,

This is false.

So anything that will support the truth and amplify it,

You can let that in.

Anything that's false,

You diminish that.

Call it cognitive bias.

Right?

So you can have somebody,

You know,

Who's a,

A white supremacist and you can show them all the evidence in the world that it's false.

There is no difference,

Absolutely none,

No evidence whatsoever.

And yet it will be completely,

It will be completely denied,

Right?

Because it contradicts it.

They won't even hear it,

Won't even get in.

Right?

And of course they won't even look for it.

And they'll look for everything that confirms their position.

This is the way it works.

And to understand that is really,

Wow,

Interesting.

We can,

We can take control over it,

But boy,

It really makes you recognize that we have to really look at what we believe to be true,

Especially what we believe to be true about ourselves.

Because that's determining the whole quality of your life.

So,

Oh,

Dorte says,

I see,

Handsome among everything else that you are.

Excuse me for my English.

Thank you,

Dorte.

That's very sweet.

Very,

Very sweet.

Is it not our beliefs?

Yes,

Han.

Yeah,

I guess you put that in there as I was going,

Beginning to go off on my little diatribe there.

So,

Alrighty.

This was nice.

This was really nice.

Thank you all.

I hope,

I hope that was really useful to you.

I love this.

This is,

This is kind of the way I like to do things very spontaneously and just kind of jump in there without any real plan.

You know,

The more time goes on,

The less I like to plan,

Although I do have to do some.

Daniel says,

Just notice sometimes my mind gets nuts and tries to intellectualize who I am,

But hey,

That too comes and goes,

Doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

Isn't that amazing?

No matter how intense it is,

It's going to be gone.

There's a chant in Buddhism,

All is impermanent,

All is without a self.

Supposedly there's angels and animals and heavenly musicians and even the wind itself chants that to people in transition or between lives just ready,

That are ready to wake up.

There's this beautiful chant in the wind that's just,

All is impermanent,

All is without a self.

All is impermanent,

All is without a self.

Thank you all,

Thank you all,

Thank you all.

This is wonderful.

Namaste,

Blessings to you all.

Namaste.