Mind in Service of Awareness
- Duration: Video: 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 48 seconds / Audio: 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 48 seconds
- Recorded on: Mar 10, 2025
- Event: Seven-Day Retreat at Mercy Center, 9–16 March 2025
A man asks about Rupert’s ‘four reasons to do things’ and struggles with finding activities to pass time. Rupert explains that boredom is merely a thin veneer over the peace of true nature, appearing when the object-knowing mind projects a blank state onto the absence of objective experience, like someone seeing a wall where another sees the absence of a painting.
A man describes struggling for forty years on the Progressive Path and asks how to expedite understanding awareness. Through guided enquiry, Rupert leads them to recognise awareness as present, aware, unchanging, ever-present, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled, explaining that this direct recognition need not take years but must be revisited until it becomes established.
A woman describes a childhood trauma where she dissociated and experienced watching herself from a ‘celestial camera’ that has remained with her throughout life. Rupert explains this as consciousness separating from the content of experience due to trauma, noting that the same awareness that dissociated then is still knowing experience now, but from within rather than outside the body.
A man asks whether the mind can eventually function in service of awareness rather than being at odds with it. Rupert confirms this happens, explaining that while the mind’s functions remain limited, they cease being obscuring faculties and become creative ones, bringing aspects of love and understanding into the world, though the mind can never completely grasp or express what is unlimited.
A man explains feeling pushed onto this path of self-realisation, which now trumps everything else, asking whether he should continue working at a startup or seek more isolated conditions. Rupert recommends remaining at the startup, explaining that if peace can only be found in perfect circumstances, it is merely a brittle state of mind, whereas finding peace amidst chaotic conditions proves its impenetrable nature.
A woman asks about awareness during deep dreamless sleep and whether self-enquiry is possible in that state. Rupert explains that in deep sleep the faculties of thinking and perceiving are offline, making self-enquiry unnecessary as awareness simply shines alone, adding that we look forward to sleep not because it is annihilation but because we intuitively know the peace that lies there.
A man expresses difficulty in abiding in his true nature despite recognising it through self-enquiry. Rupert describes how the mind’s decades-old habit of attending to the content of experience creates a tide that pulls one away from being, requiring repeated effort until gradually the tide weakens and one becomes more established in true nature, encouraging patience with the process.
A man asks about the relationship between awareness and attention, particularly what decides the turning away from content. Rupert explains that attention – from Latin ‘to stretch towards’ – is like a rubber band stretched from awareness to objects, and self-enquiry is simply letting go of objects allowing attention to naturally return to its source, not an effort but a relaxing back into one’s natural state.
A woman asks how Rupert chooses what to say during meditation. Rupert explains that he arrives without prepared content, waiting for ideas to gradually arise from the collective field rather than manufacturing them beforehand, so they remain relevant to the present moment and participants rather than coming from his past conditioning.
A man asks about Rupert’s ‘four reasons to do things’ and struggles with finding activities to pass time. Rupert explains that boredom is merely a thin veneer over the peace of true nature, appearing when the object-knowing mind projects a blank state onto the absence of objective experience, like someone seeing a wall where another sees the absence of a painting.
A man describes struggling for forty years on the Progressive Path and asks how to expedite understanding awareness. Through guided enquiry, Rupert leads them to recognise awareness as present, aware, unchanging, ever-present, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled, explaining that this direct recognition need not take years but must be revisited until it becomes established.
A woman describes a childhood trauma where she dissociated and experienced watching herself from a ‘celestial camera’ that has remained with her throughout life. Rupert explains this as consciousness separating from the content of experience due to trauma, noting that the same awareness that dissociated then is still knowing experience now, but from within rather than outside the body.
A man asks whether the mind can eventually function in service of awareness rather than being at odds with it. Rupert confirms this happens, explaining that while the mind’s functions remain limited, they cease being obscuring faculties and become creative ones, bringing aspects of love and understanding into the world, though the mind can never completely grasp or express what is unlimited.
A man explains feeling pushed onto this path of self-realisation, which now trumps everything else, asking whether he should continue working at a startup or seek more isolated conditions. Rupert recommends remaining at the startup, explaining that if peace can only be found in perfect circumstances, it is merely a brittle state of mind, whereas finding peace amidst chaotic conditions proves its impenetrable nature.
A woman asks about awareness during deep dreamless sleep and whether self-enquiry is possible in that state. Rupert explains that in deep sleep the faculties of thinking and perceiving are offline, making self-enquiry unnecessary as awareness simply shines alone, adding that we look forward to sleep not because it is annihilation but because we intuitively know the peace that lies there.
A man expresses difficulty in abiding in his true nature despite recognising it through self-enquiry. Rupert describes how the mind’s decades-old habit of attending to the content of experience creates a tide that pulls one away from being, requiring repeated effort until gradually the tide weakens and one becomes more established in true nature, encouraging patience with the process.
A man asks about the relationship between awareness and attention, particularly what decides the turning away from content. Rupert explains that attention – from Latin ‘to stretch towards’ – is like a rubber band stretched from awareness to objects, and self-enquiry is simply letting go of objects allowing attention to naturally return to its source, not an effort but a relaxing back into one’s natural state.
A woman asks how Rupert chooses what to say during meditation. Rupert explains that he arrives without prepared content, waiting for ideas to gradually arise from the collective field rather than manufacturing them beforehand, so they remain relevant to the present moment and participants rather than coming from his past conditioning.