Awareness’s Welcoming Embrace

"I can verify most of your teachings experientially, but I struggle with why I’m in this body rather than yours. Intellectually, solipsism seems parsimonious, but my heart says it’s wrong. Is my thinking right or my experiencing wrong? Rupert says: ‘You can only verify your own experience. You can’t know for certain that I’m having thoughts. Solipsism is theoretically possible, but it’s an overwhelmingly unreasonable inference. I would suggest that the only substance present in reality is consciousness. If consciousness is the fundamental reality, then there is nothing other than consciousness with which consciousness could either be limited or divided into parts. In order to see anything, you have to see it from a single point of view. Consciousness has to localise itself as a single point of view in order to experience a world.’"

"I understand reality is one, but it sometimes appears heartless and prone to war. Where is the love, care and friendliness in consciousness? Rupert says: ‘Love is the nature of consciousness. By love, I mean the absence of otherness, the absence of separation. Kindness, friendliness, warmth, compassion are human expressions of our divine nature, namely love. In order to manifest, consciousness must divide – or at least seem to divide – itself into subject-object relationship. Creation is sacrificial. It is only from the point of view of the individual that consciousness can perceive itself in form. In doing so, it has to give up or forgo its knowledge of itself – in other words, love.’"

"Fifteen months ago, I lost my wife in a freak accident. I feel like her energy is right here in certain ways and not in others. What are your thoughts? Rupert says: ‘The energies that went into the make of that individual flow out into the broader medium of consciousness and may still exist in that medium in some form that no longer appears in our world as a body. Because of your previous proximity, you still feel the presence of your wife around you. You are feeling her real presence, but you can’t see her presence as a body any longer. Her ripples are continually converging with the outer rim of your whirlpool of being. You may feel that she’s communicating, not in words, but in a much finer way.’"

"If everything is a modulation of infinite consciousness, is there a difference between mind and matter? And what makes each of us different – the modulation itself or our bodily limitations? Rupert says: ‘It’s the perceiving faculties of the finite mind that render the activity of infinite consciousness as a finite physical universe. Your own mind imagines a world within itself, made entirely of mind. But in order to experience that world, it localises itself. When it looks at its own activity across that perceiving boundary, it doesn’t see the activity of its own mind. It sees a Caribbean beach made out of matter. The reason we’re all different is because every finite mind takes from its initial conception a completely unique trajectory.’"

"For years I’ve felt a knot in my stomach, along with dark emotions. I use techniques to dissolve it, but it keeps returning. How do I break this? Rupert says: ‘Just don’t fight it – let your experience be as it is. Awareness is what you are, not what you do. You don’t need to try. You are naturally, effortlessly aware. What is awareness’s attitude towards the sensation in your stomach? No attitude. No desire to get rid of it. Could awareness live with this sensation forever? Yes. You can be relieved of this 30-year trauma. You can be relieved of it now. Completely.’"

"Half an hour after falling asleep, I recognise something I’ve always known – that all this is actually nothing, and I’m just experiencing everything. Yet, my body will move violently, and I wake up. This has happened for 20 years. Can you explain? Rupert says: ‘The sense of separation in you is threatened by this experience. It has undergone a kind of mini death. The separate self is afraid of its own demise and is shrieking for your attention. What I would suggest is this: you go back voluntarily to your true nature, not involuntarily during sleep. As you sink back into awareness or into being, you may feel this rebellion. You take your stand. You feel yourself as the presence of awareness in which this vortex of energy, this rebellion is taking place.’"

"What is attention? Could you speak to agency as it pertains to attention, and where the drive towards this practise comes from? Rupert says: ‘Attention is the directing of awareness towards an object. The word “attention” comes from two Latin words: a meaning “to” or “towards”, and tendere meaning “to stretch”. When you cease paying attention to the content of your experience, your attention goes back to its natural state of equilibrium or peace. The free will that we all feel we have is awareness’s innate nature. The sense that we all have of free will is an echo in each of our minds of the innate freedom that is the nature of consciousness.’"

"How do we know our essential nature is peace, love and happiness? Aren’t those just known content as well? And why is it desirable to be without content – isn’t that equivalent to death? Rupert says: ‘I use words in an evocative way, not a descriptive way. Nothing I say is absolutely true, with the possible exception of ‘I am’. Why do I use the words “peace” and “happiness” and “love” to describe the nature of awareness? Because our normal condition is one of agitation, sorrow and conflict. Are you having the experience of being aware? Describe it. Is it harsh? Not harsh, not cold. Peace. That’s exactly how you find out. You go to the ordinary, intimate, familiar experience of being aware. And you taste it.’"

"What’s the significance of you saying consciousness ‘seems’ to divide itself into subject-object relationship rather than just saying it divides? Rupert says: ‘It’s a little tedious, but it’s also because I like to be as accurate as I can be with words. Consciousness seems to divide itself when you have a dream at night. Your mind forgets that it’s one thing, and it seems to divide itself into the character that you seem to become and the dreamed world. Your mind doesn’t really divide itself, but it does seem to divide itself into subject and object. The one infinite reality seems to divide itself, but it doesn’t really do so.’"

I’ve experienced elation in your presence and also when with other enlightened teachers. If transmission doesn’t occur physically, is this a projection of my mind giving meaning? Rupert says: ‘I do think transmission happens – yet only an object such as a thought or an idea can be transmitted. But being cannot be transmitted, nor need it be transmitted. Because being already is the same being. It’s more like a resonance, sympathetic resonance. It’s just that through your journey, in the proximity to someone, the quality of their being just resonates with you. It takes you back to the same place in yourself.’

"I feel called to help incarcerated people and the planet. Does this come from a true place, or is my ego trying to find meaning? Rupert says: ‘The incarcerated you help don’t yet know that they are whole, that they are at peace, that they are innocent. You know that who they truly are is already whole, and that’s the message you should take them. That is not an egoic impulse. It’s an impulse that comes through this deep sense that you share your being irrespective of what they may have done. And you want to communicate that to them. That’s a beautiful expression of this understanding in action.’"

"In meditation, I reach a threshold of mental static rather than a ‘blank canvas’. How do I get to be one with understanding rather than witnessing the static? Rupert says: ‘The experience of boredom (the static) in meditation is the last frontier of the mind. You’ve traced your way back through the layers of experience. And you’ve got to this last frontier. If you experience boredom you’re standing in your mind. You’re not standing as awareness. The Sufis refer to this as the passing away of existence and the passing away of that passing away. Just sink down deeper. Stay with the boredom. You’ll find you naturally begin to sink down into awareness. And this peaceful presence will outshine the boredom.’"