The Freedom Of Being Alive & Letting Everything Exist

This meditation guides you through the investigation of what it truly means to be alive and invites you to recognise yourself as the infinite awareness in which all experience takes place. You will discover the freedom of simply being and learn to let everything exist as it is, allowing resistance and suffering to naturally dissolve.

Transcript

So just bringing our attention to the listening aspect. Of your experience. The listening aspect being the if you imagine listening with your ears. We're listening with the entirety of our experience. We're not doing anything to change anything, We're not doing anything to improve anything we just being entrusted. And curious. About the nature of our experience. We could summarise the entire spectrum of suffering as mistaking what it means to be alive. Misunderstanding what it means to be alive. When we have this misunderstanding. As to what it means to be alive, We impose the limitations of those beliefs onto the experience of what we are. So if I was born with a pack of wolves, To me, Being alive means two. Hunt. It means to. Take care of the cubs. It means to kill for food. It means to bark and to howl. And if I was to Be conditioned as a human, It means that. My heart is beating, My lungs are breathing, I'm aware that I'm aware of my role in my environment, I go to work, I'm a dad, I'm a wife, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a mother, And uh being alive means that my heart is beating and that my body's in proper function and i can experience a world and when we believe that this is what it means to be alive. We encapsulate our pure identity to the limitations of those roles. Now the roles themselves and the ideas themselves are not the problem. The challenge arises when we fundamentally believe and associate and therefore act and behave in accordance to the belief that that is what it means to be alive. Now on one level that is a part of being alive. But it's. . . No more part of being alive. As it is a part of watching a movie. To look at the screen. It's something that will be done. But it doesn't mean that that is all there is to the movie. And an example that. Atmananda Krishnamananda uses is that Just because we can negate, We can say that. We can say that man isn't a beast. But that doesn't tell you anything about what it's like to be human. That doesn't give you the full spectrum of what it really means to be human. Likewise, Being alive, Living out a role, Having a family, Being a father, Mother, Wife, Husband, It isn't all there is to being alive. And suffering is entailed when we're conditioned to believe that this is all there is to being alive. So what we'll do. . . Is we will to a more or lesser degree, Depending on our conditioning, Look for moments where we can feel alive. Everyone, Whether it's a video game, Skydiving, Playing golf, Or even self-harm, Is looking for a gap. In the normal aspect of life, To experience that aliveness. In the Kashmir tradition, We call it the aesthetic rapture These are moments in our life that we feel alive. Moments in our lives essentially that we experience happiness the nature of aliveness when that which is alive shines into our experience unrestricted by resistance it looks like happiness and in most cases we we say that we feel alive So. . . When we take an approach like this, All we're doing is we're asking ourselves, What does it really mean to be alive? If we believe that being alive is limited to the temporary limited experiences which are fundamentally coming and going, Which means that on an ultimate level they don't fundamentally exist. Just like last night's dream was temporarily there, Real while it was there, But found a greater reality in the dreamer's mind, So too does everyday experience. Not fundamentally exist. Last night's dream doesn't fundamentally exist. Yesterday doesn't fundamentally exist. So we have to agree that this moment that we're in right now has a reality. It does exist. But its existence and its reality is not what it appears to be coming from. We believe that its existence and reality is derived from the body and the mind, Namely experience. And therefore we experience the limitations of that belief. So we think that being alive is as we've discussed. Experiencing being human. And what we're doing here is we're looking that actually. . . The experience of being. Is to exist. It's not to know an existence. It is to exist. Is a big difference. Most people, If you were to ask them, If they are aware, They'll tell you, Yes, I am aware, Because I experience a world. And they think that if they didn't experience a world that they wouldn't be aware. So this is extremely important to distinguish. And in the same way, We think that being alive is because I have a body and a mind and experience a world. So just notice the difference, Being alive. Doesn't mean that we experience the world, It means that we actually exist. So we start with being, Which is to exist. And then alive. To know or be aware of that existence. And we can render this truthful in our experience because If we were to ask ourselves, Am I alive? We would say yes. Without any concept, Any idea of what a body is, If we were to eradicate for this moment, Like being a newborn infant. Just experiencing. This role. Experience. And you were to ask yourself, Without any idea of what you are, Without any concepts. You would say, Yes, I am alive. And you wouldn't say I am alive because of anything else. You know primary. The primary knowledge of your experience. By anyone's experience, Is that they are alive. The next important thing. To notice. Is that this aliveness is. . . A primary knowledge. Can know if it's a primary knowledge, If it's a knowledge that we don't need the mind to reference. In other words, Do we know we are alive without a thought image perception? Do we know we are alive? Purely because we are self-aware of it. A better question to ask is. . . Do I know that I exist? What do I know? That I am away. Am I aware that I'm aware? Now notice that this knowing of our own knowing doesn't require anything in order to know it. The knowing knows itself. We don't need to reference a thought. We don't need to access a memory. It's impossible to remember awareness. Because awareness is outside of the faculties of the mind. The mind consists of thought, Image and perception, But the experience of awareness requires no thought, Image or perception. So we can notice that. Being alive. Is to know of our own existence. On a fundamental level it is to exist to be being. And alive to know of that own existence. And the fundamental quality of being alive is awareness. If being wasn't aware, We could not be aware of being. If being wasn't fundamentally aware, If existence wasn't fundamentally aware, We couldn't be aware of existence. This is why we hear in the Indian traditions Sat Chit Ananda. Sat meaning existence. Chit meaning consciousness and bliss meaning happiness. That is the essence of being alive. Now the third step in the Sat-Chit-Ananda process, Or in this translation, The being alive experience, Is the being, To exist, The alive, To know we exist And there's a third step. That third step is recognizing the nature of that existence or recognising the reality of that existence. And that's where happiness comes from, The third step in that analogy, Which is considered bliss in India. In the UK, We call it happiness. Or peace. It's not an exotic state, It's just a peaceful a peaceful joy. And we notice that we can be in this peace by just being alive. We don't have to do anything. It's the effortless approach, The direct approach. Obviously it requires understanding. You couldn't just tell anyone on the street to be alive and you'll be in peace and happiness because there needs to be context. Now the unconditional aspect. To this peace, This happiness. Is derived from knowing whether this aliveness is limited or finite. We know that aliveness is consciousness knowing itself. So what we can do is ask ourselves the question, Is this pure unconditioned knowing of myself. Which is pure consciousness. Pure consciousness. You can imagine is like a never-ending infinite knowing of itself, Pure knowing, Knowing, Knowing, Knowing, Recurring. Is my awareness. Limited. If it was limited. What would it mean for it to be limited? For it to be limited. It would have to be able to be an object. The only thing that can be limited is an object. The only thing that could be contained. Is an object. We know that anything objective has a beginning, A middle, And an end. There's a quote I love, That if it has a beginning and an end. It probably isn't here in the middle either. When we go to this awareness aspect of our experience, We can see that it itself is aware of all objective experience and isn't itself a product of experience. It doesn't have a size or a shape. Doesn't have a color. It doesn't have a beginning, A middle or an end. But experiences the colorful beginning, Middle, End of all objective experience. Unidentifiable as an objective experience. It is. All welcoming. It doesn't reject anything. It's a perpetual, It's in a perpetual state of acceptance. A perpetual state of welcoming. When we recognize ourselves to be this awareness, Which is the perpetual state of welcoming, We could call it the ultimate forgiveness. It's the forgiving everything that takes place to take place as it is. It's like signing a contract that says, Do whatever you want. You are free to exist as you are. You can be whatever you want to be. It's a perpetual loving, Infinite forgiveness, Not forgiving a wrongdoing, Not saying, Hey, This is something you've done wrong and I accept you. The ultimate forgiveness, Which is that there was never anything wrong. There is only infinite innocence for everything to take place. Simply as it is. Notice this awareness even accepts resistance. To feel the sense of lack, To feel boredom, In order to have that experience, There must be some infinitely peaceful and inherently free background in which the resistance takes place. For there to be suffering, There must be inherently something free of suffering in order to be aware of the suffering taking place. When we, I wouldn't say identify, But when we recognize ourself to be that awareness. We are in this inherently accepting mode of the resistance or the suffering. And as that pure knowing Because we are being the freedom in which the suffering takes place, The suffering can resolve. The resistance can dissipate. Because now there's nothing holding on. The suffering only perpetuates if we are resisting the suffering, If we want to get rid of it. If we want to remove the suffering or remove the boredom, Since the boredom or the lack or the suffering is already made of resistance, The desire to get rid of it only perpetuates the resistance, Therefore perpetuating the suffering. Even if we try to accept it, For what cause? We try to accept our suffering, We try to accept our boredom or our sense of lack. For what cause? It would only be to try and get rid of it. So notice that we cannot accept our suffering, We cannot accept this sense of lack. We can only be that in which it is already accepted. And in that recognition, The resistance is freed. It's given. Think of the ultimate forgiveness. You've given it, You've given the suffering the ultimate freedom to exist. That's what we call love. To fully accept something for what it is, To not want to change it, To not want to get rid of it, Just to completely surrender and allow it the freedom to exist. When we notice that's our nature, Our inherent nature, And we be that, For one, There's going to be no resistance to the suffering. And when there's no resistance to the suffering, There is no suffering of it. Suffering is resistance. So in that openness, The suppressed feeling is able to resolve itself. And because we are welcoming, We're not suffering. You cannot welcome and suffer at the same time. You're either suffering or you're welcoming. So in that recognition, You're freed from the suffering. Now the emotion, The suffering, Or the lack or the resistance is able to un. . . I'm valid. It's able to open. Notice we haven't tried to accept anything. We've simply come to this natural experience of being alive, Which is the knowing of ourself, Pure existing. Recognize the inherent openness, The inherent freedom in the sense of that which is containing all things. And then we let that light of understanding shine into the content of our experience. We can go there very simply. We simply ask ourselves, Outside of this meditation, What does it mean to be alive? Break down what that statement means to be alive. Well, It means to be to exist. And it means then to know or be aware of that existence. Is that existence free or is that existence limited? If it's limited, It's limited and enveloped in the experience. In other words, It is not aware fully of the experience that takes place, Therefore suffers the experience that takes place. If it isn't limited. You are aware of the experience takes place, Therefore inherently free from the experience that takes place. So when we are being alive in the knowing of ourself and we know that that self isn't limited then our experience shines with the experience of being alive, That aliveness. Is statements like life is suffering. Suffering is inevitable. Yes, Suffering is inevitable. Suffering is a part of life, If you have mistaken what it means to be alive. So we can always use this question as an anchor point to help us navigate and explore the nature of our experience. So we can check the beliefs that we have against the simple question, What does it mean to be alive? If it means I am limited, I will suffer. If it means I am infinite, I will not suffer. And then we can inquire into either or, As and when we see fit. Thank you.