How Do I Handle Life's Triggers

I signed up for this retreat to make peace with God. From my experience, soul feels masculine whilst God feels feminine, the womb of creation. I can only make peace with God if it’s a feminine quality. How does this relate to Meister Eckhart referring to God as masculine and soul as feminine? Rupert says: ‘It’s just a linguistic convention. Here, I’m quoting Meister Eckhart, so I use the language he used. God is neither masculine nor feminine. God has no gender. In Latin and Middle High German there was no neutral pronoun. He used ‘he’ for God and ‘she’ for the soul to express the quality of receptivity and openness. If he’d swapped them around, I would have quoted them the other way. The important thing is that God has no gender, no qualities. At the deepest level, in the ground of the soul, we are neither masculine nor feminine.’

A few of us were discussing how different languages have different precise words for deep meanings. When thought arises in language form, doesn’t language evolution affect the types of thoughts we can receive? Rupert says: ‘Yes, certainly our language shapes our thought, our view of the world. But God, reality, that which truly is could never be adequately expressed in any language, however refined. I think English is the new Sanskrit. I think it’s the best language for speaking about these matters. What we’re conveying here is not a thought, so it’s not subject to the limitations of language. Almost any language skilfully used would be able to convey this understanding. As long as you can say, “do you have the feeling of being yourself?”, you can say that in any language. What we’re speaking of here doesn’t require sophisticated language.’

When I’m very open and sensitive, as I am this week, and I go out into the world, my body often reacts with physical pain. I think I experience denser layers of experience as physical pain. Do I need to withdraw more and stabilise before going back outside? Rupert says: ‘No, you can go out into the world now. You just have to feel deeply that what you are cannot be hurt by the world. Therefore, you don’t need to defend yourself against any agitation, unless you’re in physical danger. If your physical pain is some kind of defence against agitation, it’s because you feel threatened by it. If you move through the world feeling that your being can’t be hurt by any agitation, and if your physical pain is caused by your resistance to that, it will probably diminish.’

I have a hypothesis that there’s something built in that allows the infinite to know the finite. Every living creature needs sleep and can dream. The dream world has no time and space limitations. Is this the window through which the infinite can know the finite? Rupert says: ‘The infinite knows the dreamed world through the finite mind. It doesn’t know it directly. It is your finite mind that has a dream. Infinite consciousness knows that dream through the agency of your finite mind. The infinite cannot stand apart from anything. Where would it go? So, in order to know something, the infinite must localise itself as a finite mind from whose point of view it can know a finite world. All experience takes place in subject-object relationship. The dream world is not infinite. Everything you perceive in your dream is limited, however expanded it may be.’

I’m historically Christian, and my struggle is hope for the future. I have 10 grandchildren ages 9 and under. I do well until I pick up my one-year-old and see the child’s divine being, but then later sense the future is falling apart due to climate and politics. And this destroys my peace. What do I do? Rupert says: ‘Paul, the greatest gift you can give your grandchildren is to demonstrate to them, experientially, not verbally, that peace and happiness is independent of what is taking place in the world. If nobody else conveys this understanding to your grandchildren, and if you don’t, I suspect nobody else will. So, make it your sacred duty for the rest of your life to convey this understanding to them experientially.’

Meister Eckhart talks about emptying the soul. How do we do this, and how do we move through life from that empty state? Rupert says: ‘When you fall asleep at night, nature empties your soul for you by removing your perceptions, sensations, thoughts, memories, feelings. Nature is emptying your soul of its content and leaving you in the ground of being, just pure being. In the waking state, it’s not necessary to remove the content of experience from your soul. What’s necessary is to let it go, to turn your attention away from it. You can still experience something but without giving it your attention. This emptying of the soul is something we do specifically in periods of meditation or prayer. But the real art of life is to be able to go back to life and engage in activities and relationships fully, but not lose touch with your being.’

RS25136 - RS25155 Mandali 7-Day “Meister Eckhart“ Retreat 07 Sept –14 Sept 2025 RS25136 - RS25155 Mandali 7-Day “Meister Eckhart“ Retreat 07 Sept –14 Sept 2025 100% 10 K187 I’ve had sparks of knowing the self, and within your sessions it’s there. But there’s a big trigger in my life that feels existential. When I go deep within, there’s no issue. But I can’t accept that I shouldn’t sort things out. Can you show me clarity in regards to this issue that drags me out of being? Rupert says: ‘When you feel yourself lost in it, you have pathways back to your being. I don’t mean you shouldn’t sort out the situation – it may be appropriate. I just mean you shouldn’t let the situation affect your being. You should deal with it from this place of peace. If this situation has this power to pull you out of yourself, then you should be delighted when it shows up in your life, because it gives you this opportunity to practise going back to your being in very stringent circumstances, not just when everything is calm and easy.’ I’ve had sparks of knowing the self, and within your sessions it’s there. But there’s a big trigger in my life that feels existential. When I go deep within, there’s no issue. But I can’t accept that I shouldn’t sort things out. Can you show me clarity in regards to this issue that drags me out of being? Rupert says: ‘When you feel yourself lost in it, you have pathways back to your being. I don’t mean you shouldn’t sort out the situation – it may be appropriate. I just mean you shouldn’t let the situation affect your being. You should deal with it from this place of peace. If this situation has this power to pull you out of yourself, then you should be delighted when it shows up in your life, because it gives you this opportunity to practise going back to your being in very stringent circumstances, not just when everything is calm and easy.’ Turn on screen reader support To enable screen reader support, press ⌘+Option+Z To learn about keyboard shortcuts, press ⌘slash

Let’s say there’s a person who has true understanding of non-dual philosophy and being aware of being aware is their ordinary experience. What kind of questions do you think that person would have? Rupert says: ‘They might well have questions about how their understanding might look in everyday life – in relation to work, their home, their friendships, their intimate relationships, how this understanding might be implemented. Someone could have recognised the unlimited nature of their own being, but they could still be uncertain as to the implications of this in their everyday life. So, there might be practical questions rather than philosophical, with the intention of living this understanding in the world.’

When I go deep into meditation and understand my being, my mind wonders: Why is there manifestation? What is the purpose of the content of experience? Rupert says: ‘It doesn’t have a purpose – it’s for no reason. If there was a purpose for manifestation, that purpose would already be something manifest. So, you would then have to ask, ‘well, what was the purpose of that purpose?’ The mind finds it very difficult to understand that the presumptions it makes about itself do not pertain to the infinite. Everything the mind does, it does for a reason. And therefore, it presumes that everything the infinite does, the infinite must also do for a reason. It’s just the mind projecting its own limitations onto consciousness. Does your being ever ask the question, why? That’s the answer to your question.’

Yesterday, you mentioned letting go of surrender and devotion. I understand, from a non-dual perspective, why we would do that, but I love praying. Rupert says: ‘Surrender and devotion describe the highest state of the separate self. But the ultimate surrender – one step further than surrendering yourself as an individual to God – is to recognise that you are not an individual being apart from God’s being. There is only God’s being, and you are that. If you like to pray and surrender, and you have devotional bhajans that you like singing, it’s absolutely fine to keep doing them . . . as long as your devotional practices and your prayers are informed by this deeper understanding.’

I have very challenging physical suffering from childhood abuse, which manifests through illness and pain. I’ve done non-dual practice and embodiment work, but the physical pain seems very real. Am I creating it? Is the narrative just mind, but the physical suffering real? Rupert says: ‘I would suggest that the physical pain is very real, but it’s being supported by your narrative. Whatever happened to you all those years ago is not happening to you now. Your mind just has to catch up. Your mind is rehearsing the old event, keeping it alive, justifying the physical pain. You have to trace your way back through all the layers until you get to a place in yourself that nobody has ever violated, that has never been hurt. That’s your real healing. It’s that recognition that will change the narrative, and the change in the narrative will have a gradual effect on your physical symptoms. You are not a wounded, traumatised person. You’re a beautiful, fresh, young being that has never been scarred.’

I’m a therapist wrestling with how liberating this understanding feels, yet there’s also a nihilistic side emerging. When you say there’s no purpose for infinite consciousness manifesting, it leads me to wonder: if a client asked why not just kill themselves to liberate into being, what would I say? There seems to be both death and liberation required in letting go of the separate self. Rupert says: ‘Did I ever say it doesn’t matter? At the level of our everyday lives, it does matter. For the separate self that we seem to be, there is a purpose. Their primary purpose is to recognise who they truly are. Their secondary purpose would be to express the implications of that recognition in the world. If we are suffering, built into the experience of suffering is the impulse to seek relief from it. There’s no guarantee that ending your life will put an end to your mind. If you want to find peace, you have to go to your being. Being is inherently free of suffering. Suffering exists in your mind. The best thing you could give your patients is the recognition that their being is free of sorrow. Yes, there is a death or dissolution of the apparently temporary finite self, and with it, the feelings that rely on it. The feeling of sorrow, shame or guilt can only arise if there’s a self for them to be attached to. So, if that self is seen to be an illusion, then all its train of feelings dissolve with it.’

Ten years ago, I had an awakening, but you told me then that work still has to be done either before or after. After going through what seemed like a dark night of the soul, I now feel joy overflowing in meditation. Was the dark night necessary to embody understanding? Would trauma processes help my therapy clients embody wisdom? Rupert says: ‘It’s not that the body isn’t ready. It’s just that the body has yet to catch up with your new understanding. It’s quite common. Sometimes our understanding informs our thoughts, but it doesn’t sink into our hearts. It takes time for this understanding to penetrate the whole psychophysical organism. Don’t encourage them to dive deeper into their pain. Encourage them to dive deeper into their being. Upgrade your therapy practice. Align it with this new understanding.’

My mother died recently, and I continue experiencing grief. But when grief grips me, who within me is experiencing these emotions? Does awareness have capacity for suffering? If I step back into awareness, does that impact the grief’s intensity? Rupert says: ‘Awareness – awareness has a capacity to experience suffering through the agency of a finite mind. If you step back into awareness and taste its nature, you realise it’s inherently free of suffering. That recognition will have an impact on the suffering in your life. Your grief about your mother is really your love for your mother. It’s a sorrow pervaded by love.’

When I consider your analogy about the screen and the movie that appears on it, it feels contradictory – the screen doesn’t mind about the movie content, but what in me makes decisions about being aware or focusing attention? From the mind’s perspective there might be free will, but from being there’s no need or will. It feels like everything is already written. Rupert says: ‘It’s your mind that makes the decisions. It’s not already written. God is a jazz musician, not a classical musician. All there is to the mind is awareness. So attention is a focusing of awareness. And meditation or prayer is a defocusing of awareness, a letting go. Eventually, it’s our decision to let go as a mind, as a separate self, and then we go back to I am. But this decision is practically a process in the mind.’

There was a talk about the last step being God’s step, similar to a saying in A Course in Miracles: ‘God takes the last step.’ Can you speak about this? And what is grace? Rupert says: ‘God doesn’t just do the last step. God also does the first step and all the steps in between. God’s infinite being veils itself with its own activity. And then it attracts itself back to itself. There is a wound in the heart of that separate self, the wound of separation. The longing that that apparently separate self has for happiness or enlightenment is not really anything the separate self does. It is the gravitational force that God’s infinite being exerts on its own contracted form, drawing it back into itself. So, grace is operating on us all the time – it’s the continual gravitational pull of God’s infinite being on the temporary finite self that we seem to be.’

Last time I attended a retreat, it felt like I was bathing in being, but now it’s the opposite – maximum mental volume competing with Meister Eckhart. These meditations feel like utter failure. Can you speak about the retreat process? Rupert says: ‘It could be that some old tendencies in you are being provoked by this atmosphere and the meditations. Don’t worry about it. Don’t think of these as retreats. We call them “gatherings in being” now. We don’t really retreat here. There’s equally a celebratory feeling about what we do here. So, it’s both a retreat and a celebration. You’re in the river with all of us, we’re all going in the same direction. Don’t give yourself a hard time.’