Seek Fulfilment Where It Resides

Contemplate the full spectrum of your experience with affectionate but disinterested attention. Take your stand as that which contemplates your experience. Be sensitive to any vested interest that you may have in experience, any sense that something is going to happen, either in this meditation or in some future event, relationship or situation, that is finally going to make you happy or bring you peace. We do not have to wait for any particular circumstance, peaceful circumstances, in order to have this simple recognition, ‘I am essentially the presence of awareness’. It is the slightest shift of attention, but it has profound implications. It is the difference between agitation and peace, between suffering and happiness. True stability and confidence in our life is derived from this stable, ever-present background of experience, which does not derive its identity from anything in experience. The separate self who seeks happiness or fulfilment in objective experience is like the moth that seeks the flame, thinking that it can experience the flame. This is what it means to die before we die, and this is the purpose of a human life. Do not waste your precious life seeking fulfilment where it cannot be found. Seek fulfilment where it resides, in our own being.

Contemplate the full spectrum of your experience with affectionate but disinterested attention. Take your stand as that which contemplates your experience. Be sensitive to any vested interest that you may have in experience, any sense that something is going to happen, either in this meditation or in some future event, relationship or situation, that is finally going to make you happy or bring you peace. We do not have to wait for any particular circumstance, peaceful circumstances, in order to have this simple recognition, ‘I am essentially the presence of awareness’. It is the slightest shift of attention, but it has profound implications. It is the difference between agitation and peace, between suffering and happiness. True stability and confidence in our life is derived from this stable, ever-present background of experience, which does not derive its identity from anything in experience. The separate self who seeks happiness or fulfilment in objective experience is like the moth that seeks the flame, thinking that it can experience the flame. This is what it means to die before we die, and this is the purpose of a human life. Do not waste your precious life seeking fulfilment where it cannot be found. Seek fulfilment where it resides, in our own being.