Meditation – The laws of happiness
04/13/2024
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Transcript of the Meditation
Hello, everyone. Lovely to see you. Welcome.
A reminder that there will be a brief guided meditation which will be followed by questions, conversation.
And this meeting is recorded for the new, people. If you need the recording, please share your email with Holger, who is, attending with us here in the chat box.
So if you can invite yourself to this, place of silence within you, a quiet place within you.
And welcome your experience just as it presents itself moment by moment.
The intention is simply to welcome an effortless welcoming, a loving welcoming without an interest in attaining any state or fixing our experience or improving ourself, no intention.
Allow whatever thoughts appear to you to appear whichever way they are appearing without engaging in them.
Without trying to figure anything out.
And if you find yourself engaging in a thought, there is no need for you to judge yourself for that. Simply notice it and return to presence.
The mind may wonder, there may be thoughts appearing to you.
But as you allow the thoughts to be just as they are, there is a relaxation.
Same thing with bodily sensations: As long as you are sitting comfortably, whatever bodily sensations appear to you, if you simply give them all the space they need to appear whichever way they’re appearing to you, you will find yourself more and more relaxed, more and more at Peace.
Because peace is always available to us.
Usually, it’s in the background of mind activities.
So we invite the background of peace to come to the foreground.
And you will notice the activities of the body and of the mind, they relax, they release in that new foreground.
Everything which appears to you appears within the spaciousness of awareness, which is often overlooked.
There is a habit to focus on the senses. But here we’re inviting our self to rest as awareness, which is the space within which everything appears to you.
It is from this formless position, that form is perceived.
Every thought appears within that formlessness.
Every perception, every sensation appears within this formless awareness.
Everything which appears to you: thoughts, memories, sensations
… are a flow within you, within awareness.
Like the stream of this voice is a flow within you. You, meaning awareness.
The flow is constantly changing like the flow of a river, of a stream.
Thoughts, perceptions, sensations, constantly changing.
But awareness is changeless, like the wide open sky and the clouds flowing by, changing in shape, in size, but the wide open sky is changeless. Awareness is changeless.
Reality.
What we refer to as reality, is changeless. That in your experience, which does not come and go, the unmanifest aspect of your experience, is this awareness which we all share, which we all know as I, I perceive.
This I is awareness. The changeless aspect, the reality aspect of your experience is changeless.
And it is invisible to the senses. You can perceive the sky, you can perceive a tree in the yard, but you cannot perceive with the senses the reality which perceives, nor can you deny.
There is one reality.
Infinite thoughts, infinite perceptions, infinite forms, like the branches on the tree, branches of different size and different shape, different thickness. But there is one tree, this one essence.
And this one reality is your reality. The reality of consciousness, of awareness.
And this one reality being the one and only lacks nothing.
How could it lack anything being the only reality there is?
It’s important to not only understand the words, but to realize the experience that you are this one reality.
There is only one consciousness. We never experience any other consciousness, but this one consciousness.
And this consciousness is our reality, our essence.
You should come to the deep understanding of that, the experiential understanding, that there is no duality.
Although there are infinite perceptions, they refer to the same reality.
Although there are infinite waves on the surface of the ocean, they refer to the same ocean.
Although although there are infinite rays of sunshine, they refer to the same sun, the same light.
In your experience you are that reality.
Not the form that you perceive, not the thoughts that you perceive, not the memories that you perceive, not the bodily sensations that you perceive. The reality is that which right now in this moment perceives.
The experiential understanding of this when reality is the experience of peace and happiness.
Happiness, meaning the complete absence of the sense of lack.
The complete absence of the sense of lack.
There is a path to this understanding. There is a path to happiness, which is the path of understanding, and the path of surrender, the path of love.
The understanding is that I am not that which appears and disappears. I am the perceiving aspect. I am the knowingness. I am the awareness. I Am the nominal aspect and not the phenomenal aspect.
And the understanding that I am the creator and the perceiver in one. I conceive, create, and perceive every instant.
That which I perceive is not separate from my reality.
The world-body-mind are real as consciousness, like the waves and the currents in the ocean are real as the ocean, as water.
And the understanding that this awareness, this reality is non phenomenal, meaning it is universal.
Time and space unfold within it but it does not unfold in time and space.
When we are living of this understanding life provides us infinite opportunities to establish ourself in that understanding and to free the body from its habits of reactivity, because the body has a tendency to react as a result of many years of conditioning; we all know that.
This body can be freed from this conditioning when we live this understanding. Which is the path of stillness, presence, allowing.
In the midst of activity to realize the stillness and become familiar with the stillness in the midst of activity.
So that happiness is no longer limited to your meditation time, but is available to you throughout your life. In the midst of relationships, in the midst of work.
The body may resist out of old habits, but we do not resist the resistance of the body.
And by not resisting the resistance of the body, the resistance of the body relaxes, because it is not meeting any opposition.
Trusting being not-knowing.
Happiness means complete fulfillment in this moment. Anything that is lacking in this moment is simply a mind activity.
Mind activity may lead to the impression that there is something missing this moment, something lacking, and may get the juices flowing to seek and pursue.
So it is essential to see through this mind activity, this old habit, the old personal self habit.
The old me-habit, which is measuring, evaluating, judging, regretting, hoping.
To have an inner discrimination – Viveka – the inner discrimination between that which is nonsense and the thoughts that make sense, such as the thought it’s time for me to cook dinner, feed the body; practical thoughts, loving thoughts, contemplative thoughts, celebratory thoughts, creative thoughts, which do not have the quality of the sense of lack and fear, which do not arise from the me-belief and the me-narrative. Life presents you with many opportunities.
So there can be activity on the surface and non activity at the core.
The balance.
