The Essence Of Meditation

In this meditation, the experience of being aware is said to be the essence of meditation and prayer, and the name 'I' the divine name.

Transcript

Assez Being aware of being aware.

That is the essence of meditation.

It is the highest form of prayer.

It is described variously in the spiritual traditions as self-inquiry.

Sinking the mind into the heart,

Surrendering to God,

Focusing on the I Am,

The practice of the presence of God.

These are all simply labels that describe the same experience.

Being aware of being aware.

Each tradition gives.

It gives the experience of being aware.

A particular name that is consistent with the cultural conditioning of that tradition.

Brahman,

Shiva,

Allah,

The absolute God.

A common name for the experience of being aware.

That is shared by all traditions and all cultures of all ages is simply I.

I is the divine name.

God's name.

And is also the name of what we most intimately are.

The name of our self.

This I shines in the midst of all experience.

So the experience of being aware of being aware.

Could be described simply as our self,

Giving itself its attention.

God's infinite being resting in and as itself.

God's infinite being resting in and as itself.

But what does I have to do?

In order to go to itself.

How far does I have to travel to get to I?

If I were to ask you now to stand up and take a step towards yourself.

What would you do?

Where would you go?

Could any step you take,

Take you either closer to or further from yourself?

What does I have to do to go towards I?

What do we have to do with our awareness?

In order to be aware of being aware.

Does awareness need to rise in the form of the mind and venture outwards towards some kind of object?

That would only take it apparently away from itself.

Although in fact awareness can never go away from itself.

It takes itself with itself wherever it goes.

In being aware of being aware.

There is absolutely nothing for the mind to do.

In fact,

Being aware of being aware is the only experience there is.

That requires no activity of the mind.

As such it is the only truly effortless activity,

Sorry effortless experience.

Any effort would take us apparently away from the experience of being aware of being aware.

Even breathing and blinking require some degree of effort or activity.

Requiring no effort whatsoever.

Being aware of being aware is literally the easiest non-activity there is.

It is easier than breathing or blinking.

That is the only way to be aware of being aware.

If it seems to you that you don't have access to the experience of being aware of being aware.

The most direct way is to ask yourself the question,

Am I aware?

In order to answer that question awareness has to go to the experience of being aware.

It has to recognize that it is aware.

Awareness has to become aware of awareness.

As a result of being aware of being aware the mind rises again and answers the question,

Yes.

If you seem to have difficulty accessing the experience of being aware of being aware,

Simply ask yourself the question,

Am I aware?

But this time don't let thought answer the question.

Go to the experience of being aware and stay there.

That's it.

That is the essence of meditation.

The practice of the presence of God.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Awareness's primary experience is to know itself.

The knowing of its own being.

Or being aware of being aware.

It knows itself just by being itself.

Awareness doesn't need to rise in the form of the mind in order to know its own being.

But in order to know something apparently other than itself,

Such as a world,

Awareness needs to cease gazing at itself.

It needs to assume the form of the finite mind.

And it is only in the form of the finite mind that awareness can know something that seems to be other than itself,

Such as a world.

As such,

I would say that the finite mind is an expansion of consciousness,

An expansion of I.

It is awareness itself that freely assumes the form of the finite mind and as the finite mind takes the shape of thinking,

Sensing and perceiving and appears to itself as the mind,

The body and the world.

In other words,

Awareness freely limits itself,

Freely limits the knowing of its own infinite being.

And assumes the form of the finite mind in order to appear to itself as the world.

In other words,

The only substance present in our experience of the world is awareness itself,

Consciousness itself.

Right now there is no other substance present in your experience you consciousness you awareness,

Other than awareness itself.

What you are experiencing now and at all times is simply a modulation of your own infinite being appearing in the form of finite experience.

You awareness have never come in contact with anything other than yourself.

Now,

At this point,

Thought may object.

Hang on a minute.

When I look around,

I see a world that is obviously outside of myself and made out of something other than myself.

I can see it.

I can touch it.

I can taste it.

I can smell it.

I can hear it.

And the name that thought gives to this something other than myself is matter.

This dead,

Inert stuff that is apparently devoid of consciousness.

Take a look around you now at this world,

Supposedly made out of this dead,

Inert,

Devoid of consciousness stuff called matter.

Do you know anything of it at this moment,

Other than the experience of seeing and touching?

We see it and we touch it.

If we were to remove seeing and touching from our experience now,

What would be left of the world?

Absolutely nothing.

So if we stay very close to our experience,

All there is to the seen object or the touched object is the experience of seeing and touching.

Just check this out in your experience.

Look around you now.

Do you know anything of this room or this world other than seeing?

Let's just call it seeing for the moment.

The only substance present in the scene is seeing.

What is seeing made of?

Is there anything there other than the knowing of it?

The awareness of it?

If we were to remove knowing or awareness from the experience of seeing,

What would remain of seeing?

Absolutely nothing.

Try to separate the experience of seeing from the consciousness of it,

The knowing of it.

Can you do that?

Try to separate the seen object from the experience of seeing.

Can you do that?

So we have these three different,

Apparently different experiences.

The seen object out there made of matter.

The experience of seeing in here made of mind and the knowing of it made of consciousness.

The matter,

Mind and consciousness.

The seen,

Seeing,

Knowing.

Try to separate seeing from the seen.

It's not possible.

Try to separate knowing or consciousness from seeing.

It's not possible.

The seen,

The experience of seeing and consciousness itself are three names for the same experience.

They are not three different things.

Matter,

Mind and consciousness are not three different substances.

There is only one substance in experience.

Consciousness,

Awareness,

Knowing,

I,

God's infinite being.

It is consciousness itself that freely assumes the form of the mind and as such appears to itself as the world.

In order to freely assume the form of the mind,

Consciousness has to overlook the knowing of its own being.

So the manifestation of the world is a kind of sacrifice of consciousness.

Just like a mother sacrifices herself in order to give birth to a child.

Consciousness sacrifices itself in order to give birth to the world.

It has to overlook the knowing of its own being.

It has to forget itself.

Although consciousness actually gives birth to the world inside itself.

It forgets this and seems to become a self in the world.

Like a spider.

Before she spins her web,

The web is within her.

As soon as she spins her web,

She becomes a spider in the web.

She no longer experiences the web inside herself.

She experiences herself inside the web.

In the same way,

Consciousness gives birth to the world from within itself.

But as soon as the world appears,

It seems to become a self in the world.

That is the separate self.

The self that seems to live inside the world.

And the separate self looks out at the world around itself and says it is made out of something other than myself.

It is separate from myself.

The name we give to that sub,

The name the separate self gives to that substance is matter,

Not me.

So it is infinite consciousness itself.

That freely forgoes or forgets or overlooks the knowing of its own infinite being.

And rises as the finite mind in order to bring the world into apparent existence.

That finds itself as a self in that world.

If that apparently separate self asks itself the question,

What am I really?

What is the nature of the knowing with which I know the outside world?

The separate self or finite mind begins a journey in which it returns to itself,

Returns to its essential nature.

It re-knows,

Recognizes itself again as infinite consciousness.

And then when it looks back at the apparently outside world,

It realizes that the outside world is an expansion of itself.

A modulation of itself.

No other substance ever comes into existence.

Existence means to stand out from ex-sisterae.

Nothing truly stands out from consciousness.

The landscape in the movie only seems to come into existence.

But the movie never stands out from the screen.

It is just the screen modulating itself in the form of the movie.

And no thing,

No self,

No object,

No other,

No world ever comes into existence.

It never has its own independently existing reality.

The world borrows its apparent existence from God's infinite being.

Just as the landscape in the movie borrows its existence from the screen.

So those are the two ways of exploring our experience.

We can go inwards and explore the nature of the self,

The nature of I.

Or we can go outwards and explore the experience of seeing,

Hearing,

Touching,

Tasting and smelling.

If we go inwards we find ever-present consciousness.

If we go outwards we find infinite being.

These are the two traces of God in experience,

Consciousness and existence.

These are the two hints,

The traces of God's infinite being that pervade all experience.

If we explore the I or if we explore the world,

These two explorations seem to begin with to take us into opposite directions.

But if we take either exploration far enough we end up at the same,

With the same revelation.

Consciousness that seems to be on the inside and existence that seems to be on the outside are identical.

They are not two things,

Consciousness and existence,

The self and the world,

I and other.

They are the same,

That is the great revelation.

Reviews

Outstanding non duality practice- inward looking and transformative. Grounding and simple.

Brilliant. Rupert finds great analogies and metaphors to express and explore the inexpressible everpresent reality our own true nature. I listened to this track before but today I re-cognized more of what it is trying to convey. Thanks 🙏

I have listened to Rupert twice now and am realising that the depth of this meditation needs to be listened to again and again so that I can burrow into the deep learning that it holds. Thank you Rupert. 🙏

Self-existent, self-revealing, self-evident Consciousness overlooks itself, and appear to manifest itself as the world....thank you Rupert, you reveal in your own unique style that resonates with me...lucid and profound. Om Soham Hamsah Om

Profound wisdom from one who is aware and has a gift for transmitting these teachings.

As a novice I found this meditation very deep and a challenge to follow. I found it opened my mind to a new understanding and realisation. Thankyou Rupert.

That was wonderful! I will listen again for sure. I "stumbled upon" Rupert just yesterday and am very glad.😊

Interesting to listen to Rupert, I wasn't fully in (interruption in the garden) so I am going to relisten to it...

I have yet to see clearer pointing out instructions of our true nature. ✨

Thankful, yes. Thank you

Reconnecting with I am.

I have really enjoy Ruperts two meditations on Insight Timer. Both reveal the existence of consciousness, or my way into the practice is through exploring Sunyata Beautiful practice. Thank you so much Rupert

Feeling grateful for the guidance

Essential being, knowledge, put into 39 minutes of this infinity.

Wonderful to make room in the mind.

I, me, the separate self, matter. Ultra-abstract, like slow motion Ram Dass.

Provocative and interesting. Gives me pause for thought of what is consciousness. Thank you.

Good talk with silence pauses. A lesson on consciousness.

It is more of a talk than a meditation, but there are silent, meditative pauses. I found myself to compelled to jot down some notes. I am so fascinated by the concepts and want to explore them more. ✨🙏🏻✨

Nice, thank you