Okay,
So let's sit upright in our chair and I invite you to close your eyes and drop into this experience,
This very present experience of being what?
We can say a body,
That's just a word,
Thoughts,
So there's a body,
There's thoughts,
Thoughts with senses,
Sounds,
Smells and tastes,
And visual impressions.
There's a sense of touch.
And there's the impression and the idea that there is somebody experiencing all these things.
There's some kind of central observer.
Then we live our whole life with this assembly of elements.
When we go to sleep,
The observer disappears and then it breaks up again and it's there again.
We have an operation and a general anaesthetic,
It disappears and then returns as if from a very long journey.
But in the main our experience of life is this particular assembly of elements.
But what is here right now?
The main Ellavallia.
What is here right now?
What if all there is,
Is this?
What if all there is,
Is this?
What if all there is,
Is sitting?
Experience of breathing,
Sounds happening,
Thoughts happening,
Swirls of energy.
What if all of this is happening?
In fact,
All there is,
Is this happening.
There isn't anything else where.
It's just this.
And amongst that thisness,
There is the appearance that is happening to somebody,
To this observer that has a name and a history,
An autobiography,
Failures and successes,
Achievements and paths not followed.
Whole multitude of imagined realities in this one observer.
An observer that cannot possibly ever be present.
And it cannot be present simply because it doesn't exist.
And yet there is something,
A sense of I,
Of I-ness.
Sense of I am.
And I am that pulls together this camouflage of a story to hide its true nature.
So when I say,
When I ask the question,
What if all there is,
Is this?
Let that question drop in.
What if all there is,
Is this?
Is that's happening right now?
And it's not happening to anybody.
It's just happening.
That includes the appearance of it happening to somebody.
That is also happening undeniably.
But there is nobody that that is happening to.
It's just this.
What if all there is,
Is this?
What if all there is,
Is this?
So the invitation in this question,
What if all there is,
Is this?
It's a playfulness.
But it's a playfulness that invites you to relax,
To take the risk of falling into.
It's not like other questions,
Which call on us to understand or invent,
Decipher.
Its power is in its simplicity.
What if all there is,
Is this that's happening right now?
There never was,
Never will be,
Never has been anything else.
Except this that's happening now.
And it appears to be happening in time.
Time is a manifestation of thought.
And the observer is the marker of time.
Which is why it can never be in the present.
And another manifestation of this observer is the idea that we choose things.
We make decisions.
And we have to negotiate with life and there's a right way and a wrong way.
Or indeed that there's something that we have to do to get something.
If there's something lacking in us,
Then we will have to achieve,
Accomplish,
Through a series of practices.
Through hard study or accumulation of knowledge or of resources.
It's all a game the observer plays to justify its own existence.
Thank you.
I choose this over that.
I like this more than I like that.
So our identity forms.
Our preferences.
Our project or projects.
Our habits and affiliations.
And there's nothing wrong at all with that game.
That game in some ways is also divine.
It's both comic and tragic.
Because really all there really is.
I add the what if as an invitation to play with this possibility that all there is is this.
That's happening right now.
Experience of sitting.
The experience of a doer.
A doer who might be resisting this.
The mystery is that there is something aware of the doer.
There is an awareness of the observer.
Thank you.
This choice is awareness.
Which is the deepest meaning of mindfulness.
Trustless awareness.
So all this technical effort and mindfulness to retrieve our attention to the breath of the body.
It's a roundabout way.
What if all there is is this?
Is this?
Is this?
Is this?
Is this?
And of course this question what if all there is is this is devastating.
It's the last thing that the self wants to ask or to hear.
What about all my accumulated knowledge,
All my accumulated complexes,
Opinions,
Everything I own.
But deep down we know the self has always been filling a hole,
Trying to fill a hole.
Trying to assemble a case for its existence.
To justify its actions.
To justify its decisions.
If there really is no executive observer,
Then it was never,
We're never responsible.
If there is no doer,
If all there is is this.
Then who is responsible?
Who is responsible?
So I,
Rather than saying all there is is this,
I ask what if all there is is this?
Idea of the observer,
Separate observer to hear.
Because this separate I,
This observer came about when you were about six or seven or eight.
Slowly contraction develops at the heart center.
And it forms into this separate person like a fist in the chest.
Contraction of energy around this idea of a person on a journey through life.
Encountering turns this way or that,
Making choices.
Looking back along those paths,
Justifying to itself.
And it doesn't like to hear that this is just a story,
That all there ever was and all there ever will be is just this that's happening right now,
Outside of time.
So we ask it to play with a possibility,
What if?
Because it loves a little bit of drama and theater,
This observer,
Without realizing that it itself is a great piece of theater.
So when you see or feel tension in relation to this question,
What if all there is is this?
And it's not happening to anybody.
There is no separate observer.
Traveling in time,
There is just this.
If you feel a tension at the heart center,
See if you can relax,
Open that fist,
Relax that contraction into the possibility that this is all a play.
You don't have to pretend anymore.
You don't have to act.
As Krishna Murti used to say,
Non-action is the most positive action.
Understand it is unemploy tem.
What if all that is,
Is this?
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