Listening in Silence

In this meditation, we are present amidst whatever we experience. If I am thinking, I am present in the midst of thinking. If I am cold or tired, I am present in the midst of the experience. Whatever I am experiencing, I am. Experience always changes; ‘I am’ never changes. Every day we emphasise experience at the expense of ‘I am’. In meditation or prayer, we emphasise the ‘I am’ at the expense of whatever we are experiencing. We stay with ‘I am,’ the simple fact of being. What is the essential nature of my being before it is coloured by experience? The mind poses the question but cannot answer it. Allow being to answer silently for itself. Listening in silence to being is the essence of meditation or prayer. To pray without ceasing is to allow everything to become increasingly transparent, to allow being to shine through the multiplicity and diversity of all appearances.

Leave the mind alone. A woman who practices self-awareness says she is still aware of mental activity and anxiety and wants to know when it will end. Rupert suggests that patterns of thinking and feeling, as well as patterns in the body, have a long history –in our own life and culturally and ancestrally. Practising self-awareness does not put an end to conditioning. It takes time to realign these patterns. You are waiting and wondering when they will come to an end, but your peace is prior to these behaviours and activities. Peace is not dependent on when and how they subside. Make your goal being established in being. Perhaps we perpetuate these tendencies by trying to get rid of them.

Rupert suggests surrendering completely to love in romantic relationships in response to a question about whether relationships obscure our true nature. Is it a kind of grasping for something? Rupert suggests it is a way of giving yourself completely to God and needn't be grasped or understood.

Rupert suggests we are free of the karmic wheel in response to a woman who has been seeking for twelve years and recently prayed for a direct path. She asks how to get off the karmic wheel. Rupert acknowledged the beauty of her prayer and said that when we pray from our heart, we compel God to respond. Rupert then suggests that the karmic wheel model is given as a compassionate concession to one that feels they are a separate self. In the Direct Path, we go straight to our being and stand there as that. Being is already free of the karmic wheel; it is not subject to birth or death.

Does infinite awareness condition experience? Rupert guides a man in self-enquiry to discover the nature of his being as a way to answer this question and to understand the presumption of the finite mind that there is a reason for objective manifestation of experience and its apparent differences.

A man asks if the practice of gratitude and loving kindness, as it relates to the John Smith and King Lear analogy, is something we should do. Rupert suggests that if we feel drawn to gratitude and loving kindness practices, then do so because practising in this way doesn’t enhance the separate self. Instead, it opens the separate self to the recognition of its essential nature. In the Direct Path, we tend to go straight to our being and then gratitude and loving kindness are increasingly felt as a recognition of our being, but it is fine to practise these as a way of opening.

Rupert suggests we pause in the midst of feeling rushed and go back to connect with our being in response to a question about spiritual practices from a woman who often feels rushed. She wants to know if attending to and nurturing a sense of beauty, such as art, is a better practice than allowing and accepting the arising of difficult emotions. Rupert responds that we can do both.

A man asks if willed imagination or acting ‘as if’ to evoke a state that we can then live from is a helpful practice for both the inward and outward paths. Rupert suggests that it can be helpful on the outward-facing path where we may not yet feel that everyone and everything is the one being. With regard to turning inward, it would only be necessary to act as if we didn’t have direct access to our being if we weren’t already that. It is not necessary to act ‘as if’ we are our essential because we are that.

A woman asks about the advisability of focusing on trauma or the content of one's life experience as practised in psychotherapy. Rupert suggests that everyone has a certain degree of trauma in their life, from birth onward. However, realisation does not put an end to these thoughts and feelings in experience. Instead, this is an alignment that happens after understanding. It is not focused so much in the Vedantic teachings which tends to somewhat neglect the impact of experience on our behaviour.

Is this a spiritual emergency? A man relays his spiritual search as a result of a traumatic experience, and shares that he is experiencing very intense emotional and physical energy. He asks about what is happening to him. Rupert suggests that because of the glimpses of his true nature, the knots and tensions in body and mind are beginning to unravel. Feel that you breathe the emptiness of the space into the density of your body and then breathe out into the emptiness of the space. This is not an intellectual or rational process. As we do this and allow the sensations and feelings to be, the tensions dissipate.

A man asks for the definition of 'self-abidance' and whether it can end conflict in the world. Rupert elaborates on the term 'self-abidance' and how it relates to self-enquiry, which is a prelude to what eventually becomes self-abidance. It may not necessarily bring an end to world conflict but to a certain degree it can diminish interpersonal conflict.

A woman who had a waking vision at age fifteen in which she viewed the earth from space and was then propelled to the earth and saw herself covering it with love, asks for insight into the vision. Rupert suggests that the meaning of the vision was to let her know that what we essentially are is the being that is the essential nature of everyone and everything. We are the love that envelopes the earth. Why did you receive it as a pictorial? Because your mind is configured that way. Keep this beautiful image of who you essentially are in your heart

In this meditation, we are present amidst whatever we experience. If I am thinking, I am present in the midst of thinking. If I am cold or tired, I am present in the midst of the experience. Whatever I am experiencing, I am. Experience always changes; ‘I am’ never changes. Every day we emphasise experience at the expense of ‘I am’. In meditation or prayer, we emphasise the ‘I am’ at the expense of whatever we are experiencing. We stay with ‘I am,’ the simple fact of being. What is the essential nature of my being before it is coloured by experience? The mind poses the question but cannot answer it. Allow being to answer silently for itself. Listening in silence to being is the essence of meditation or prayer. To pray without ceasing is to allow everything to become increasingly transparent, to allow being to shine through the multiplicity and diversity of all appearances.

Leave the mind alone. A woman who practices self-awareness says she is still aware of mental activity and anxiety and wants to know when it will end. Rupert suggests that patterns of thinking and feeling, as well as patterns in the body, have a long history –in our own life and culturally and ancestrally. Practising self-awareness does not put an end to conditioning. It takes time to realign these patterns. You are waiting and wondering when they will come to an end, but your peace is prior to these behaviours and activities. Peace is not dependent on when and how they subside. Make your goal being established in being. Perhaps we perpetuate these tendencies by trying to get rid of them.

Rupert suggests surrendering completely to love in romantic relationships in response to a question about whether relationships obscure our true nature. Is it a kind of grasping for something? Rupert suggests it is a way of giving yourself completely to God and needn't be grasped or understood.

Rupert suggests we are free of the karmic wheel in response to a woman who has been seeking for twelve years and recently prayed for a direct path. She asks how to get off the karmic wheel. Rupert acknowledged the beauty of her prayer and said that when we pray from our heart, we compel God to respond. Rupert then suggests that the karmic wheel model is given as a compassionate concession to one that feels they are a separate self. In the Direct Path, we go straight to our being and stand there as that. Being is already free of the karmic wheel; it is not subject to birth or death.

Does infinite awareness condition experience? Rupert guides a man in self-enquiry to discover the nature of his being as a way to answer this question and to understand the presumption of the finite mind that there is a reason for objective manifestation of experience and its apparent differences.

A man asks if the practice of gratitude and loving kindness, as it relates to the John Smith and King Lear analogy, is something we should do. Rupert suggests that if we feel drawn to gratitude and loving kindness practices, then do so because practising in this way doesn’t enhance the separate self. Instead, it opens the separate self to the recognition of its essential nature. In the Direct Path, we tend to go straight to our being and then gratitude and loving kindness are increasingly felt as a recognition of our being, but it is fine to practise these as a way of opening.

Rupert suggests we pause in the midst of feeling rushed and go back to connect with our being in response to a question about spiritual practices from a woman who often feels rushed. She wants to know if attending to and nurturing a sense of beauty, such as art, is a better practice than allowing and accepting the arising of difficult emotions. Rupert responds that we can do both.

A man asks if willed imagination or acting ‘as if’ to evoke a state that we can then live from is a helpful practice for both the inward and outward paths. Rupert suggests that it can be helpful on the outward-facing path where we may not yet feel that everyone and everything is the one being. With regard to turning inward, it would only be necessary to act as if we didn’t have direct access to our being if we weren’t already that. It is not necessary to act ‘as if’ we are our essential because we are that.

A woman asks about the advisability of focusing on trauma or the content of one's life experience as practised in psychotherapy. Rupert suggests that everyone has a certain degree of trauma in their life, from birth onward. However, realisation does not put an end to these thoughts and feelings in experience. Instead, this is an alignment that happens after understanding. It is not focused so much in the Vedantic teachings which tends to somewhat neglect the impact of experience on our behaviour.

Is this a spiritual emergency? A man relays his spiritual search as a result of a traumatic experience, and shares that he is experiencing very intense emotional and physical energy. He asks about what is happening to him. Rupert suggests that because of the glimpses of his true nature, the knots and tensions in body and mind are beginning to unravel. Feel that you breathe the emptiness of the space into the density of your body and then breathe out into the emptiness of the space. This is not an intellectual or rational process. As we do this and allow the sensations and feelings to be, the tensions dissipate.

A man asks for the definition of 'self-abidance' and whether it can end conflict in the world. Rupert elaborates on the term 'self-abidance' and how it relates to self-enquiry, which is a prelude to what eventually becomes self-abidance. It may not necessarily bring an end to world conflict but to a certain degree it can diminish interpersonal conflict.

A woman who had a waking vision at age fifteen in which she viewed the earth from space and was then propelled to the earth and saw herself covering it with love, asks for insight into the vision. Rupert suggests that the meaning of the vision was to let her know that what we essentially are is the being that is the essential nature of everyone and everything. We are the love that envelopes the earth. Why did you receive it as a pictorial? Because your mind is configured that way. Keep this beautiful image of who you essentially are in your heart