Meditation Boredom from the media Genuine Paths Lead to the Mountaintop
A woman admits finding meditation boring, expressing preference for teachers like Rupert who achieved realisation gradually rather than through sudden transformation. Rupert clarifies it’s the mind that gets bored, not the woman’s true nature. He explains that emptiness is how being appears to the object-seeking mind, but from being’s perspective, there is fullness. Using the analogy of a painting removal, he shows how the mind sees absence of objects while being experiences the presence of itself – peace.
- Duration: 9 minutes and 12 seconds
- Recorded on: Mar 22, 2025
- Event: Seven-Day Retreat at Garrison Institute, 21–28 March 2025
A woman shares a lifetime spiritual journey beginning with profound grief at 19, followed by spontaneous experiences of joy and peace while alone in nature. These led to years in ashrams and later a ‘lull’ before reconnecting with non-dual teachings through a friend. She describes remarkable healing experiences including spontaneous reconciliation with parents and release from childhood trauma. Rupert affirms that everyone follows unique spiritual paths that eventually lead to the same destination – our essential self – and that she has arrived at the Pathless Path.
A man questions Rupert’s statement that ‘all paths lead to the mountain’, noting personal experience with spiritual paths leading to destructive outcomes. Rupert clarifies he was referring to authentic spiritual traditions, acknowledging that while individual teachers within traditions may mislead, all genuine religious and spiritual traditions originated from and ultimately lead back to one’s true nature or ‘God’s being’, though they employ different methodologies and language to guide seekers there.
A man asks about consciousness during the death transition, particularly contrasting the experience of someone familiar with their true nature versus someone who isn’t. Rupert compares being to the space in a room – never confined by the building’s walls despite appearances, and unaffected when the building is demolished. He explains that being seems to have acquired bodily limitations but is never actually confined by them. The man further enquires whether transition differs based on karma or spiritual realisation, with Rupert confirming awareness remains unchanged regardless of life experiences.
A woman first questions the distinction between awareness and mind, then asks whether pure awareness (Brahman/Shiva) needs reflected consciousness to even conceptualise ‘I am’, suggesting pure existence wouldn’t need this concept. Rupert confirms formulating ‘I am’ requires mind, but awareness itself is self-luminous like the sun – knowing itself by being itself without reflection. Using the John Smith/King Lear analogy, he explains that awareness knows itself naturally while the finite mind must practice self-enquiry to discover its true nature.
A woman admits finding meditation boring, expressing preference for teachers like Rupert who achieved realisation gradually rather than through sudden transformation. Rupert clarifies it’s the mind that gets bored, not the woman’s true nature. He explains that emptiness is how being appears to the object-seeking mind, but from being’s perspective, there is fullness. Using the analogy of a painting removal, he shows how the mind sees absence of objects while being experiences the presence of itself – peace.
A woman describes experiencing states of being ‘awake’ in true nature during meditation but repeatedly getting pulled into thought cycles, expressing weariness about the world. Rupert explains this pattern is natural after decades of attention directed outward, affirming the woman’s recognition of ‘falling asleep’ as already significant progress. He compares the process to rowing upstream – initially requiring effort to counteract habitual patterns, gradually creating new pathways that enable longer periods of stability in being before worldly engagement.
A man asks whether the Biblical creation story in Genesis might represent consciousness splitting into duality rather than historical events. Rupert acknowledges creation myths as symbolic representations of higher truths in the language of their time, but finds it requires more interpretive work to align Genesis with non-dual understanding compared to the Big Bang theory. He suggests the Big Bang can be viewed as dimensionless consciousness expanding through the finite mind, creating the appearance of time and space.
A man describes experiencing profound peace, bliss and love after initially recognising true nature, but notes this state diminished after several months. Rupert explains that initial recognition can temporarily suspend old habits, similar to early stages of a relationship. While old habits may return, they’ve been ‘mortally wounded’ by the recognition. The man’s job now is to actively realign thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships with this new understanding rather than expecting permanent effortless transformation.
A man asks whether non-dual realisation involves dissolving the subjective perceiver into objective appearances. Rupert affirms this understanding but reverses the formulation – the recognition of ‘what is’ (being) dissolves the apparent distinction between subject and object. He uses the screen/movie analogy, explaining that from being’s perspective, there are no individual entities, just as from the screen’s perspective, there’s just screen, not multiple characters. The man explores further questions about sense perception’s role in the appearance of finitude.
A woman struggles with accepting the line ‘I am the love in hatred’ from Rupert’s book A Meditation on I Am, finding hatred’s personal and collective destructiveness difficult to reconcile. Rupert clarifies there is no hatred in reality itself – only love, which is the absence of otherness or separation. What appears as hatred is simply love filtered through the thick belief in separation. He emphasises the importance of recognising that those expressing hatred are fundamentally love but don’t know it, and that our responsibility is to see beyond behaviour to their essential nature.
A woman questions whether objects like tables are aware, noting a growing recognition of the indivisibility of reality. Rupert patiently uses thoughts as a teaching example: thoughts appear in consciousness and are made of consciousness but aren’t themselves conscious. Similarly, tables appear in and are made of consciousness without being conscious entities. He emphasises there is no actual ‘table’ in reality – it’s merely how consciousness appears from a localised viewpoint – and distinguishes this understanding from panpsychism.
A woman describes experiences in both formless meditation and waking consciousness of awareness knowing itself in a reflexive, non-dual manner. Rupert uses the analogy of infinite consciousness putting on a ‘VR headset’ of thinking and perceiving, thereby refracting itself into time, space and apparent separation. He clarifies that when we see through the illusion of sense perception to the one reality appearing as multiplicity – seeing ‘God’s face in everything’ – we’re recognising everything as consciousness without implying everything is conscious.
A woman questions Rupert’s statement that ‘there’s no form in meditation’, asking about sensations. Rupert invites her to explore what remains when all thoughts, sensations, and perceptions are removed from experience. She acknowledges pure awareness remains, without time or space. She then asks about Rupert’s meditation guidance that ‘you cannot be what you might become’, seeking clarification. Rupert explains that whatever we might become in the future cannot be who we truly are now – our being can only be what is presently true.
A man notes that while body sensations increasingly feel less like ‘me’, memories still convincingly create a sense of separate selfhood and continuity. Rupert explains that while the man correctly infers continuity from memory, it’s not personal identity that memory validates but consciousness itself. Memory confirms not a separate self but the consciousness in which both current and past experiences appear – like travelling between rooms in the same space. He adds that the mind superimposes time onto consciousness, which itself exists eternally in the now.
A woman shares a lifetime spiritual journey beginning with profound grief at 19, followed by spontaneous experiences of joy and peace while alone in nature. These led to years in ashrams and later a ‘lull’ before reconnecting with non-dual teachings through a friend. She describes remarkable healing experiences including spontaneous reconciliation with parents and release from childhood trauma. Rupert affirms that everyone follows unique spiritual paths that eventually lead to the same destination – our essential self – and that she has arrived at the Pathless Path.
A man questions Rupert’s statement that ‘all paths lead to the mountain’, noting personal experience with spiritual paths leading to destructive outcomes. Rupert clarifies he was referring to authentic spiritual traditions, acknowledging that while individual teachers within traditions may mislead, all genuine religious and spiritual traditions originated from and ultimately lead back to one’s true nature or ‘God’s being’, though they employ different methodologies and language to guide seekers there.
A man asks about consciousness during the death transition, particularly contrasting the experience of someone familiar with their true nature versus someone who isn’t. Rupert compares being to the space in a room – never confined by the building’s walls despite appearances, and unaffected when the building is demolished. He explains that being seems to have acquired bodily limitations but is never actually confined by them. The man further enquires whether transition differs based on karma or spiritual realisation, with Rupert confirming awareness remains unchanged regardless of life experiences.
A woman first questions the distinction between awareness and mind, then asks whether pure awareness (Brahman/Shiva) needs reflected consciousness to even conceptualise ‘I am’, suggesting pure existence wouldn’t need this concept. Rupert confirms formulating ‘I am’ requires mind, but awareness itself is self-luminous like the sun – knowing itself by being itself without reflection. Using the John Smith/King Lear analogy, he explains that awareness knows itself naturally while the finite mind must practice self-enquiry to discover its true nature.
A woman admits finding meditation boring, expressing preference for teachers like Rupert who achieved realisation gradually rather than through sudden transformation. Rupert clarifies it’s the mind that gets bored, not the woman’s true nature. He explains that emptiness is how being appears to the object-seeking mind, but from being’s perspective, there is fullness. Using the analogy of a painting removal, he shows how the mind sees absence of objects while being experiences the presence of itself – peace.
A woman describes experiencing states of being ‘awake’ in true nature during meditation but repeatedly getting pulled into thought cycles, expressing weariness about the world. Rupert explains this pattern is natural after decades of attention directed outward, affirming the woman’s recognition of ‘falling asleep’ as already significant progress. He compares the process to rowing upstream – initially requiring effort to counteract habitual patterns, gradually creating new pathways that enable longer periods of stability in being before worldly engagement.
A man asks whether the Biblical creation story in Genesis might represent consciousness splitting into duality rather than historical events. Rupert acknowledges creation myths as symbolic representations of higher truths in the language of their time, but finds it requires more interpretive work to align Genesis with non-dual understanding compared to the Big Bang theory. He suggests the Big Bang can be viewed as dimensionless consciousness expanding through the finite mind, creating the appearance of time and space.
A man describes experiencing profound peace, bliss and love after initially recognising true nature, but notes this state diminished after several months. Rupert explains that initial recognition can temporarily suspend old habits, similar to early stages of a relationship. While old habits may return, they’ve been ‘mortally wounded’ by the recognition. The man’s job now is to actively realign thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships with this new understanding rather than expecting permanent effortless transformation.
A man asks whether non-dual realisation involves dissolving the subjective perceiver into objective appearances. Rupert affirms this understanding but reverses the formulation – the recognition of ‘what is’ (being) dissolves the apparent distinction between subject and object. He uses the screen/movie analogy, explaining that from being’s perspective, there are no individual entities, just as from the screen’s perspective, there’s just screen, not multiple characters. The man explores further questions about sense perception’s role in the appearance of finitude.
A woman struggles with accepting the line ‘I am the love in hatred’ from Rupert’s book A Meditation on I Am, finding hatred’s personal and collective destructiveness difficult to reconcile. Rupert clarifies there is no hatred in reality itself – only love, which is the absence of otherness or separation. What appears as hatred is simply love filtered through the thick belief in separation. He emphasises the importance of recognising that those expressing hatred are fundamentally love but don’t know it, and that our responsibility is to see beyond behaviour to their essential nature.
A woman questions whether objects like tables are aware, noting a growing recognition of the indivisibility of reality. Rupert patiently uses thoughts as a teaching example: thoughts appear in consciousness and are made of consciousness but aren’t themselves conscious. Similarly, tables appear in and are made of consciousness without being conscious entities. He emphasises there is no actual ‘table’ in reality – it’s merely how consciousness appears from a localised viewpoint – and distinguishes this understanding from panpsychism.
A woman describes experiences in both formless meditation and waking consciousness of awareness knowing itself in a reflexive, non-dual manner. Rupert uses the analogy of infinite consciousness putting on a ‘VR headset’ of thinking and perceiving, thereby refracting itself into time, space and apparent separation. He clarifies that when we see through the illusion of sense perception to the one reality appearing as multiplicity – seeing ‘God’s face in everything’ – we’re recognising everything as consciousness without implying everything is conscious.
A woman questions Rupert’s statement that ‘there’s no form in meditation’, asking about sensations. Rupert invites her to explore what remains when all thoughts, sensations, and perceptions are removed from experience. She acknowledges pure awareness remains, without time or space. She then asks about Rupert’s meditation guidance that ‘you cannot be what you might become’, seeking clarification. Rupert explains that whatever we might become in the future cannot be who we truly are now – our being can only be what is presently true.
A man notes that while body sensations increasingly feel less like ‘me’, memories still convincingly create a sense of separate selfhood and continuity. Rupert explains that while the man correctly infers continuity from memory, it’s not personal identity that memory validates but consciousness itself. Memory confirms not a separate self but the consciousness in which both current and past experiences appear – like travelling between rooms in the same space. He adds that the mind superimposes time onto consciousness, which itself exists eternally in the now.