Catalin hosts a podcast called Generation You, whose purpose is to have multidisciplinary conversations around the big challenges of tomorrow.
To his audience, described by Catalin as people who might have a basic understanding of mindfulness and simple spiritual practices, Rupert begins by saying that the essence of all the great spiritual traditions addresses three main questions: How may I find lasting peace and happiness? What is the nature of reality and my relationship to it? And how should we live in the world?
The answers have been encoded for millennia, but the extremity of the materialist paradigm, in which we currently find ourselves, has all but eclipsed this ancient understanding.
Rupert succinctly defines the non-dual understanding as the recognition of the existence of a single reality from which everyone and everything derive their apparently independent existence, and whose nature is consciousness, or awareness, or happiness.
Catalin responds by offering his experience of feeling at peace while hearing Rupert speak. He asks how he could expand this peace from being felt only sometimes, with some people, to being present always and with everyone.
Having been taken through a brief self-enquiry process, Catalin wonders if, in fully following this understanding, he would end up feeling no impulse to do anything anymore.
Rupert assures him that this is highly unlikely, since not only do we retain our faculties, our ability to think, feel, discern, and act, but they are enhanced, having been liberated from the tyranny of the separate self. This, in fact, releases the whole force of the universe, which is no longer bound up with negativity and resistance.
Furthermore, this can happen right now, in an instant; the understanding is always present and available if we can let go of our habitual identification with our thoughts and feelings. Then we are free, unlimited, relieved of the burden of the past, and able to pursue with love, joy and energy whatever our path in the world happens to be.
You can listen to this episode on the Rupert Spira podcast here:
https://rupertspira.libsyn.com/episode-28-catalin-matei
If you enjoyed this podcast episode, why not read about Rupert's conversation with James Stevenson
