A thread for non-dual videos

How do you get back to your true self of pure being when the clarity and peace has gone? A man says that he can remember the clarity of the truth of his essence, but the understanding comes and goes. He asks what he can do to get back on track.

Rupert explains that clarity is the essential nature of your mind – it is the fact of being aware or awareness itself. Even in the midst of intense emotions like anxiety or depression, awareness is always transparent, open, free knowing alone, but we don't notice this because we have become lost in our activity. We give attention to thoughts or feelings and not the 'I am', so our being has been temporarily clouded or seemingly dimmed by these thoughts or feelings. That is, you, awareness, have temporarily lost yourself in your own activity of thinking and perceiving.

To come back to true nature of yourself, you have to disentangle yourself from the content of experience in which you have temporarily lost yourself. You have to trace your way back to your true self.

One way you can do this is by asking yourself: 'What is it that is aware of my depression?' This way our mind traces its way back to its essence rather than forwards to the content.

Thoughts and feelings are just conditioned patterns or habits. So create a new habit of going back to your self or your being. It will become easier and faster to find your way back to yourself the more you do it, and in time, the feelings will disappear and the clarity of awareness will shine in the foreground, rather than the background of all experience.

Am just at the point where he says, 'If I think thoughts that say I am a miserable bastard, then my experience will be of being a miserable bastard.'

His premise is that if I fill my mind with only lovely thoughts/ideas, then that is what I'll experience, if I fill my mind with ugly/not nice ideas, that will also be my experience.

Inherent of course that that is the idea that ideas/thoughts can be controlled so that only thoughts I deem to be nice/okay, are allowed to arise.

At the root of that idea is a separate, volitional person, which we both know is merely imagined.

So what one gets with that kind of idea is a reification of the personal self that seemingly is in control.

What he's missing is that IF the thought "I am a miserable bastard" is arising, there is already to some degree an experience of a miserable bastard in play. The thought didn't cause the experience......the two go hand in hand.

All that said, for someone is still seeking, fast asleep, there is value in looking AT the thoughts that are arising as often those thoughts provide insight into the machinations of mind, which also means generally being more consciously aware of what's happening in mind.

But the seeker always wants to take that angle of "if I can control thought/feelings, then I can control what manifests....what arises in experience.'

I'll listen a bit more when I have more time. Thanks for posting...good fodder for convo!

Yup. E used to draw a similarly hard, stark, uncompromising line and while many a seeker butted hard up against it, and there were clashes involved, ultimately, that unwavering, non-conceding position is now so appreciated.

As per our previous discussion, Jac O'Keefe recently posted a quote something akin to "don't take things so personally." Which while fine if the approach is 'in the dream/self help,' it really is rather odd for one supposedly speaking from the impersonal vantage point.

Some seemingly take the 'mind informing/results' of SR, and then formulate those absences that impact experience, into a sort of prescription for those not yet awake. It's a nonsense, because absent the realization/seeing through (awakening!) that equals the absence, what they are actually suggesting is that the seeker/SVP further reify themselves as existent some-ones/some-things, that CAN volitionally choose, to simply choose NOT take things personally.

If you're gonna teach self-help, stick to that lane, as you are dealing with seeker who are not yet awake, and if you're gonna talk Nonduality/Truth, stick to that lane and don't waver....

The two lanes really do not cross but many 'teachers' try to amalgamate them both into one and the result is just....well....stupid...

I appreciate you 💕