Being Is Overlooked Because It Is Ordinary

A man shares a poem with Rupert.

A woman who was attacked and raped twenty-six years ago, but who knew that she was whole, still finds herself in the role of victim and finds it to be in conflict with her non-dual understanding. Rupert suggests we have to be careful with whom we speak of certain aspects of non-duality. Start with where your audience is in their understanding and make your way back until you meet resistance. At that point, the conversation is over. The non-dual understanding is fluid and can change according to circumstance. Insisting on the non-dual perspective or language is not fluid.

A man asks how he might cooperate with what is unfolding. He asks, 'How am I limiting this moment?' Rupert says that the first step is to recognise that our being is ever present, unlimited and shared. The second step is the colonising of our experience, which is to align our activities on the outside with the understanding on the inside.

A woman refers to a friend who has been traumatised and identifies with that trauma, and wonders if the divine self is separate from the separate self. Rupert responds that we are unique, but our essential being is shared. The ultimate healing for our unique childhood trauma and wounding is to get to the true self that lies behind it. Also, a friend may identify as a victim, but you don't need to identify her that way as such, but do not verbalise this perspective, only respond that way from your heart.

A woman, who works with people with clinical depression, asks what Rupert meant when he said that the ego can co-opt the teaching. Rupert suggests that one has to have a reasonably well-established ego to investigate these matters because the implications are powerful. When one has a fragile sense of self in a dysfunctional way it can further destabilise one instead of leading to understanding.

A man mentions the phrase, 'You alone are' and asks if aloneness is different from loneliness. Rupert suggests that aloneness is of the separate self, who feels entirely alone and cut off from everyone and everything. 'You alone are' is the statement that all is one, is connected, is oneness. There is no other, nothing other than it.

A woman asks how not to drown in others' suffering. Rupert suggests that we don’t in the same way that we don’t drown in our own suffering. The current doesn't harm the ocean. The emotion doesn’t harm our being. If we are not drowned in our own emotions, then we don’t get lost in the suffering of those we emphasise with.

A woman shares her way of dealing with depression or a heavy heart, and asks how to know when she is really in her being because it is so ordinary. Rupert suggests that she is right, awareness is the most ordinary thing.

A woman says she has been practising doing things with awareness, like being aware when doing other things. Rupert responds that in the early stages it is in the background. In time, it remains in the midst of all activities and experience and pervades the foreground. There can be some vacillation.

A woman asks for clarification around Rupert's comment to stop meditating, since we're meditating every morning during the retreat. Rupert responds that it is a response that was intended to be taken lightly and in context, which was to encourage everyone to just be.