The Self Is Not Just a Place You Visit

A man asks whether, when he is trying to think about his mind, he is actually referring to his memories? Rupert replies: If we presume that there is an entity called a finite mind, then what we’re aware of in the waking state – thoughts, sensations, and perceptions – would be the top layer of that mind. But there are other aspects of our individual mind that are not available to us under normal circumstances in the waking state such as the personal unconscious that manifests in our dreams, and the memories that lie below the threshold of the waking state. Also, the collection of thoughts, sensations, ideas, memories, etc., which we think of as the individual mind is not a sealed container.

A man, whose birthday it is, says that after many years on the non-dual path, he wonders what birth he is actually celebrating today. Rupert suggests that we’re celebrating two births. One is the birth of ourself in form of a person, which enables us to have this conversation, for instance, and to enjoy friendship. If we were not born in this form, friendship would not be possible. We wouldn’t be able to listen to music, read poetry, taste strawberries or perceive the world. This precious birth as a human being is something to be celebrated. And there’s a second birth, like a rebirth, into our true nature, the resurrection of the eternal in us. But we don’t really need a special day for that.

A man relates that while he experiences a sense of freedom when he tastes the non-dual understanding, his mind also responds with nihilism and pointlessness, and all the things society encouraged him to pursue no longer seem of interest. Rupert reminds him that the way we share non-duality implies peace, joy and love. Celebration and creativity. He assures the man that it is natural for us to cease seeking fulfilment in objective experience, but that doesn’t mean we no longer go out into the world and engage in activities and relationships. We just stop doing it for the sake of securing happiness or fulfilment; rather, we do so in order to express and communicate love and understanding.

A man shares that he feels peace in the self-abidance of meditation, but soon after he opens his eyes again and takes in all that information, the peace goes away. How can he navigate this transition from self-enquiry into the world? Rupert concurs that visual perception of the world takes up so much of our attention that when contemplating our experience, we very often close our eyes. And on a retreat, we provide these special conditions that make it easier to trace our way back to our true nature. So, just experiment using the recordings of these last few contemplations we’ve done. Replay them while you are out in the world, perhaps sitting on a peaceful park bench, but keep your eyes open. Then try it again in a slightly more-demanding situation. Test it out in all sorts of difficult circumstances, till you see that everything we’ve suggested thus far is true under all circumstances. It’s already happening now.

A woman who has been exploring non-duality for more than forty years feels upset this morning. She’s been told that ‘I’ doesn’t exist, and yet she can often feel its existence, and lately it’s been overwhelming her with sadness. She’s wondering if this path is for her. Rupert asserts that there is something real in our experience that corresponds to the word ‘I’. It’s just not what we normally think it is – not our thoughts, not our feelings, not the other aspects of our experience. He walks her through a detailed self-enquiry to get her to see that all there is is ‘I am’, that which knows thoughts, feelings and the rest. And this ‘I am’ has never been hurt. You have been mistaking it as a place you are visiting rather than knowing it as what you essentially always are.

A woman who has just explored self-enquiry with Rupert, says that her depression isn’t gone with any insight from the process. Rupert affirms that didn’t say her depression would go, rather that amid the depression the bright light of awareness is shining there. It’s not a feeling; it is that which feels. Happiness or peace is not a feeling. It has an effect on the body and the mind, but that effect is not itself happiness or peace. Happiness itself is just the taste of your true nature. It is what being tastes like.

A woman shares that sometimes she can feel herself as unlimited awareness, but then it seems like her body-mind is different than something she experiences on the outside, like a tree. She asks Rupert to distinguish between unlimited, unlocated awareness and the body-mind. Which one is the ‘I am’? Rupert asks her if she understands that the words ‘I am’ refer to the experience of just being. Now, he continues, whatever it is that has the experience of being must know that experience. That which knows and can therefore say ‘I am’ is awareness. When we say, ‘I am’, it is not ‘I’ as a person we are referring to. It is ‘I’, awareness. He uses the metaphor of the moon in Turner’s watercolour to explain that the pure experience of being is awareness’s knowing of itself.

A woman says she is scared she might dissociate and ‘really get crazy’ through getting close to the experience of unlimited awareness. She doesn’t know if it’s good for her, or if, like someone who’s been in prison for a long time, she feels safer there than going out into the freedom of the world. Rupert puts her at ease by affirming that this is normal, that the self we seem to be gets accustomed to its limitations, its sorrow even, and feels safe there in the known. To come out of that feels like the death of the separate self. But while this loss of limitation can seem scary and strange, it is also beautiful.

A man, who was attending after only having discovered Rupert a few weeks earlier, asks Rupert to comment on the meaning or purpose of creativity, especially, creating art. Rupert suggests that the purpose of art or creativity, at least in this context of exploring the non-dual understanding, is to bring the experience of the formless into form – music, painting, words, food, other objects. ‘To make a form that has the power within it to take the viewer, or the listener, or the reader, or the watcher, or the taster to the unmanifest, to the formless – that that would be, I would suggest, the highest form of art.’ What a great artist wants to do is to give you a taste of your true nature.

A man, who considers Rupert’s meditations as describing the architecture or geography of awareness, asks why this understanding doesn’t appeal to the wider world. And he asks what Rupert thinks the effects would be if this were so? Rupert responds by first pointing out the quality of relationship taking place at the event itself and suggesting it as a model for what would become the norm in society. The reason for such quality of friendship here is because all the attendees feel at the deepest level we are all one. As to how to make this understanding more available in the world, Rupert declares, he doesn’t know.

A man asks Rupert if we are the dream of the infinite consciousness? Rupert says yes, and he recalls how when he was around seven, he told his mother, ‘I think that the world is God’s dream. And our job in the world is to make that dream as pleasant a dream as possible.’ In the following half century, his ideas haven’t evolved much beyond that notion – the universe is the activity, or a ‘dream in the mind’ of infinite consciousness. Without meaning to anthropomorphise God, we might say that to look at the universe is to see the ideas and emotions of God. The ‘mental life’ of infinite being.

A man asks if his idea is correct that perfection is the consciousness that we all are, and the whole of existence, then, is the activity that is happening within that. Rupert agrees, adding, the manifest can never be ‘perfect’, because to be perfect means being whole, undivided, unblemished, untarnished – and any object is, by definition, limited to its form. The man then asks if there is anything in our experience that corresponds with perfection, to which Rupert replies, ‘Yes, just the fact of being.’

A man says that he longs to go back to the perfection of just being, but then he questions who or what actually has this longing? Rupert responds, using the ‘space in a room/infinite space of the universe’ analogy to demonstrate that longing to go back to being is like the space of a room wishing to be reunited with the vast physical space of the universe because it holds the belief it is not that space now. Who, then, is the self that longs to return? It is the self we believe ourself to be, this mixture of being plus the content of experience. What’s required is that we turn our attention around, not looking at our thoughts and feelings, but looking at our self, the fact of being. Then there’s this recognition, ‘I am already whole, perfect, complete, unblemished, inherently peaceful’, and so on.

A woman thanks Rupert for his past advice that over time has helped her overcome her being disturbed by irritating noises; they no longer bother her. She also describes how once when she came to peace inside, the noise on the outside simultaneously ceased. Rupert encourages her that she’s using the right approach, which doesn’t preclude her, if necessary, from knocking on her neighbour’s door and asking them to be quiet. He goes on to share ideas about synchronicity using the ‘Mary and Jane’ analogy.

A man asks about whether it’s reasonable, in light of non-dual understanding, to sage a room, or otherwise ‘clear it’ of its past. Rupert replies that just because the space in this room cannot be affected in any way by what takes place within it, it is still sometimes appropriate to adjust the room as a practical matter. For example, you might clear the room of chairs if you want to hold a dance there. Similarly, you may be sensitive to energies that fill a room, so you may think it necessary to clear them. In that case, clear them, even though doing so doesn’t imply that the space has been affected in any way. The purity of the space exists no matter what.

A woman, whose uncle took his own life at her mother’s house recently, asks Rupert about the nature of her feelings – are they just memories, or do they actually come from her mother’s home? Rupert invites her to consider that the world is not really a physical place but only appears so when looked at through the lens of perception. Actually, it is the activity of consciousness. Just as William Blake said: ‘for that called Body is a portion of [Mind] discerned by the five Senses’, when the body of the uncle underwent this traumatic event, it was a mental experience, it took place in the mind. But there is much more to the uncle’s mind than just the body, so it doesn’t mean it disappeared with the body. Rupert encourages her that, although there may be sadness associated with the event, that sadness exists in memory and is not a permanent aspect of the home, and it is the touching of presence, of being, that can affect the experience of the building.

A woman says that while she has spent increasing time simply being in peace, she is easily triggered in relationships. Whenever there has been a real connection, a sharing of intimacy, it eventually runs into misunderstanding, indifference, conflict, or rejection that upsets her, and she’s terrified of the impermanence of relationships. This has her staying in some relationships that don’t suit her, and most of her relationships are either unsatisfying or painful. Rupert shares with her the many variables that result in a relationship either revealing the shared being that underlies it, or exposing that it has just been a coming together of two separate egos. And, in each case, the choice of whether to remain in the relationship is an individual matter. Also, even the relationship has now become untenable, and it’s natural that we may feel sadness and grieve over the separation at the physical level, it doesn’t mean the underlying love and unity that brought us together in the first place is gone. And it does not mean it is a failure of our understanding.

A man asks whether, when he is trying to think about his mind, he is actually referring to his memories? Rupert replies: If we presume that there is an entity called a finite mind, then what we’re aware of in the waking state – thoughts, sensations, and perceptions – would be the top layer of that mind. But there are other aspects of our individual mind that are not available to us under normal circumstances in the waking state such as the personal unconscious that manifests in our dreams, and the memories that lie below the threshold of the waking state. Also, the collection of thoughts, sensations, ideas, memories, etc., which we think of as the individual mind is not a sealed container.

A man, whose birthday it is, says that after many years on the non-dual path, he wonders what birth he is actually celebrating today. Rupert suggests that we’re celebrating two births. One is the birth of ourself in form of a person, which enables us to have this conversation, for instance, and to enjoy friendship. If we were not born in this form, friendship would not be possible. We wouldn’t be able to listen to music, read poetry, taste strawberries or perceive the world. This precious birth as a human being is something to be celebrated. And there’s a second birth, like a rebirth, into our true nature, the resurrection of the eternal in us. But we don’t really need a special day for that.

A man relates that while he experiences a sense of freedom when he tastes the non-dual understanding, his mind also responds with nihilism and pointlessness, and all the things society encouraged him to pursue no longer seem of interest. Rupert reminds him that the way we share non-duality implies peace, joy and love. Celebration and creativity. He assures the man that it is natural for us to cease seeking fulfilment in objective experience, but that doesn’t mean we no longer go out into the world and engage in activities and relationships. We just stop doing it for the sake of securing happiness or fulfilment; rather, we do so in order to express and communicate love and understanding.

A man shares that he feels peace in the self-abidance of meditation, but soon after he opens his eyes again and takes in all that information, the peace goes away. How can he navigate this transition from self-enquiry into the world? Rupert concurs that visual perception of the world takes up so much of our attention that when contemplating our experience, we very often close our eyes. And on a retreat, we provide these special conditions that make it easier to trace our way back to our true nature. So, just experiment using the recordings of these last few contemplations we’ve done. Replay them while you are out in the world, perhaps sitting on a peaceful park bench, but keep your eyes open. Then try it again in a slightly more-demanding situation. Test it out in all sorts of difficult circumstances, till you see that everything we’ve suggested thus far is true under all circumstances. It’s already happening now.

A woman who has been exploring non-duality for more than forty years feels upset this morning. She’s been told that ‘I’ doesn’t exist, and yet she can often feel its existence, and lately it’s been overwhelming her with sadness. She’s wondering if this path is for her. Rupert asserts that there is something real in our experience that corresponds to the word ‘I’. It’s just not what we normally think it is – not our thoughts, not our feelings, not the other aspects of our experience. He walks her through a detailed self-enquiry to get her to see that all there is is ‘I am’, that which knows thoughts, feelings and the rest. And this ‘I am’ has never been hurt. You have been mistaking it as a place you are visiting rather than knowing it as what you essentially always are.

A woman who has just explored self-enquiry with Rupert, says that her depression isn’t gone with any insight from the process. Rupert affirms that didn’t say her depression would go, rather that amid the depression the bright light of awareness is shining there. It’s not a feeling; it is that which feels. Happiness or peace is not a feeling. It has an effect on the body and the mind, but that effect is not itself happiness or peace. Happiness itself is just the taste of your true nature. It is what being tastes like.

A woman shares that sometimes she can feel herself as unlimited awareness, but then it seems like her body-mind is different than something she experiences on the outside, like a tree. She asks Rupert to distinguish between unlimited, unlocated awareness and the body-mind. Which one is the ‘I am’? Rupert asks her if she understands that the words ‘I am’ refer to the experience of just being. Now, he continues, whatever it is that has the experience of being must know that experience. That which knows and can therefore say ‘I am’ is awareness. When we say, ‘I am’, it is not ‘I’ as a person we are referring to. It is ‘I’, awareness. He uses the metaphor of the moon in Turner’s watercolour to explain that the pure experience of being is awareness’s knowing of itself.

A woman says she is scared she might dissociate and ‘really get crazy’ through getting close to the experience of unlimited awareness. She doesn’t know if it’s good for her, or if, like someone who’s been in prison for a long time, she feels safer there than going out into the freedom of the world. Rupert puts her at ease by affirming that this is normal, that the self we seem to be gets accustomed to its limitations, its sorrow even, and feels safe there in the known. To come out of that feels like the death of the separate self. But while this loss of limitation can seem scary and strange, it is also beautiful.

A man, who was attending after only having discovered Rupert a few weeks earlier, asks Rupert to comment on the meaning or purpose of creativity, especially, creating art. Rupert suggests that the purpose of art or creativity, at least in this context of exploring the non-dual understanding, is to bring the experience of the formless into form – music, painting, words, food, other objects. ‘To make a form that has the power within it to take the viewer, or the listener, or the reader, or the watcher, or the taster to the unmanifest, to the formless – that that would be, I would suggest, the highest form of art.’ What a great artist wants to do is to give you a taste of your true nature.

A man, who considers Rupert’s meditations as describing the architecture or geography of awareness, asks why this understanding doesn’t appeal to the wider world. And he asks what Rupert thinks the effects would be if this were so? Rupert responds by first pointing out the quality of relationship taking place at the event itself and suggesting it as a model for what would become the norm in society. The reason for such quality of friendship here is because all the attendees feel at the deepest level we are all one. As to how to make this understanding more available in the world, Rupert declares, he doesn’t know.

A man asks Rupert if we are the dream of the infinite consciousness? Rupert says yes, and he recalls how when he was around seven, he told his mother, ‘I think that the world is God’s dream. And our job in the world is to make that dream as pleasant a dream as possible.’ In the following half century, his ideas haven’t evolved much beyond that notion – the universe is the activity, or a ‘dream in the mind’ of infinite consciousness. Without meaning to anthropomorphise God, we might say that to look at the universe is to see the ideas and emotions of God. The ‘mental life’ of infinite being.

A man asks if his idea is correct that perfection is the consciousness that we all are, and the whole of existence, then, is the activity that is happening within that. Rupert agrees, adding, the manifest can never be ‘perfect’, because to be perfect means being whole, undivided, unblemished, untarnished – and any object is, by definition, limited to its form. The man then asks if there is anything in our experience that corresponds with perfection, to which Rupert replies, ‘Yes, just the fact of being.’

A man says that he longs to go back to the perfection of just being, but then he questions who or what actually has this longing? Rupert responds, using the ‘space in a room/infinite space of the universe’ analogy to demonstrate that longing to go back to being is like the space of a room wishing to be reunited with the vast physical space of the universe because it holds the belief it is not that space now. Who, then, is the self that longs to return? It is the self we believe ourself to be, this mixture of being plus the content of experience. What’s required is that we turn our attention around, not looking at our thoughts and feelings, but looking at our self, the fact of being. Then there’s this recognition, ‘I am already whole, perfect, complete, unblemished, inherently peaceful’, and so on.

A woman thanks Rupert for his past advice that over time has helped her overcome her being disturbed by irritating noises; they no longer bother her. She also describes how once when she came to peace inside, the noise on the outside simultaneously ceased. Rupert encourages her that she’s using the right approach, which doesn’t preclude her, if necessary, from knocking on her neighbour’s door and asking them to be quiet. He goes on to share ideas about synchronicity using the ‘Mary and Jane’ analogy.

A man asks about whether it’s reasonable, in light of non-dual understanding, to sage a room, or otherwise ‘clear it’ of its past. Rupert replies that just because the space in this room cannot be affected in any way by what takes place within it, it is still sometimes appropriate to adjust the room as a practical matter. For example, you might clear the room of chairs if you want to hold a dance there. Similarly, you may be sensitive to energies that fill a room, so you may think it necessary to clear them. In that case, clear them, even though doing so doesn’t imply that the space has been affected in any way. The purity of the space exists no matter what.

A woman, whose uncle took his own life at her mother’s house recently, asks Rupert about the nature of her feelings – are they just memories, or do they actually come from her mother’s home? Rupert invites her to consider that the world is not really a physical place but only appears so when looked at through the lens of perception. Actually, it is the activity of consciousness. Just as William Blake said: ‘for that called Body is a portion of [Mind] discerned by the five Senses’, when the body of the uncle underwent this traumatic event, it was a mental experience, it took place in the mind. But there is much more to the uncle’s mind than just the body, so it doesn’t mean it disappeared with the body. Rupert encourages her that, although there may be sadness associated with the event, that sadness exists in memory and is not a permanent aspect of the home, and it is the touching of presence, of being, that can affect the experience of the building.

A woman says that while she has spent increasing time simply being in peace, she is easily triggered in relationships. Whenever there has been a real connection, a sharing of intimacy, it eventually runs into misunderstanding, indifference, conflict, or rejection that upsets her, and she’s terrified of the impermanence of relationships. This has her staying in some relationships that don’t suit her, and most of her relationships are either unsatisfying or painful. Rupert shares with her the many variables that result in a relationship either revealing the shared being that underlies it, or exposing that it has just been a coming together of two separate egos. And, in each case, the choice of whether to remain in the relationship is an individual matter. Also, even the relationship has now become untenable, and it’s natural that we may feel sadness and grieve over the separation at the physical level, it doesn’t mean the underlying love and unity that brought us together in the first place is gone. And it does not mean it is a failure of our understanding.