I don’t know how is possible that I have heard this video so many times and it is not until today after an episode of strong suffering at night that I understand the deeper meaning of the message of Rupert Thank you!!
"The sense of separation is 10% beliefs, 90% feelings so the original I thought rises as a belief but it is later validated and substantiated at the level of our feelings, so instead of being a vulnerable vacillating thought it grows depth and substance by taking its home in the body so we don't only think I'm a separate self we feel I'm a separate self. And long enough after our beliefs in separation have been cleared up, the feelings of separation continue, and this is a very common condition in our era where the non-dual perspective is available and many people have a clear understanding at an intellectual level that there is no separate self, that the separate self is an illusion and that's not enough to put an end to suffering, to our rejection of the now and our seeking in the future or in the past for happiness, because by far the larger part of the imaginary self lives in the body as layer upon layer upon layer of feeling and as the layers go down they get subtler and more nameless to begin with; at the beginning we can say what our feelings are: I'm angry because oft his, I'm jealous because of that; but actually these layers as they go down they become nameless, formless, existential sense of lack, the fear of disappearance. If what we're discussing here is going to impact our lives, if it's going to be more than just entertaining a wonderful idea, a wonderful possibility, if it's really gonna cut the ice in our experiences, this deeper level, the felt sense of separation has to be explored. We have to clear out all levels of beliefs of separation before going at the level of the body, but there is terrific resistance in most of us to explore separation in the body. Many of us will explore our beliefs in separation 24/7 for decades, read books about it, talk about it, discuss it, but explore the feeling in the body and you find a fortress in here, and so much of our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships as an apparently separate self are designed precisely to keep these dark, difficult feelings at bay so as soon as we see them rising which we do in between the gaps in the middle of the night, in odd moments where there's nothing to do they surface, because they want to come in the light of awareness. As soon as we feel this impulse what do we do? It's the fridge, the bottle, the cigarette, the sexual encounter, [the mantras], whatever it is for each of us, anything but I don't want to feel this, and much or all of the imaginary self activity is involved in not having to fully feel these feelings and for this reason, long after we have that beautiful clear intellectual understanding of non-duality, the separate self is safe and happy in here, there is a terrific defence system in place in much of us, to be willing to go into the body, to be willing to get out of the head, to stop reading books, to stop endlessly talking and questioning, its all fine but it's a prelude to the deeper exploration; and if we don't go to that bottom of those feelings then no matter how clear the mind is, no matter how apparently free the separate self are (there's nothing there, there's nothing to do kind of mantra), these feelings will, from behind the scenes, unconsciously, dictate our thoughts, actions and feelings on behalf of the separate self, because this is where it's being controlled from, thought, and then we have a problem: the thought says there's nobody there there's no separate self yet we feel ourselves thinking and behaving and acting on behalf of the separate self, and through some convoluted act of reasoning it appropriates the advaita teachings and says oh, my obnoxious behaviour, my suffering, my unhappiness is an expression of awareness, there's nothing to do about it, there's nobody there. Bullshit. We're just fooling ourselves, the separate self has just dressed up as an enlightened self and is appropriating the advaita teachings in order again to successfully keep those deep dark uncomfortable feelings at bay, and this is a classic thing in the contemporary advaita scene --my suffering is just an expression of awareness, of course, ultimately it is, but until the whole system is free of contraction and suffering we're not entitled to say that, it would be better to be honest and recognize that despite my clear intellectual understanding, these residue of suffering are still compelling my thoughts and more importantly, my activities and my relationships. Why are there still conflicts in my relationships when I know there is no separate self? It's because I still feel that I am a separate self and you are a separate self; so here there's a crisis, are we just going to carry on the non-dual mantra there's-nobody-there-there-snothing-to-do, all my suffering is just what's happening now, or are we going to have the courage and the love to face these feelings, to allow them to come up and to stay in place, not to reject them, not to express them, but to let them fully show their face, show what they're made of. When we first hear these teachings we think oh everything should be peace and light and happiness if that's what my true nature is, I'm the turbo-bull piece, when actually life gets rougher since I'm exploring this and it's precisely because we are truly taking our stand as awareness, there's no longer any impulse, there's no longer any identity present rejecting these feelings so the lid is taken off they come up, and it feels worse. We thought meditation was supposed to be peaceful, this is tortuous, there's this wave after wave, one layers of feelings comes up and then sure enough, as soon as it's passed through there's the next one, even deeper, even darker, so it requires courage and love not to contract and say no, because there's a bottom to this well... The fear of death is one of the essential forms of the separate self, the sense of lack is another."
This is such a valuable contribution, drawing from 'real-life' experience, not theory. When I was about 20 years of age, I would read half a page of any J Krishnamurti book (I also met him) and whatever problem I had sensed would immediately disappear, not on the grounds of mood-making, but because the message was triggering the innate freedom to shine in its simplicity. We have to include the possibility that it can be as easy as that. Your report is so useful when this innate freedom is seemingly hiding. I would like to add to your report the following: Whatever layer of resistance/contraction comes up, it is not only a theoretically valid statement to say that this is an expression of awareness. It is good to trust life/awareness sorts it out. The surrendering to these layers of discomfort (as in Goenka's Vipassana), it best performed by 'trusting life'. In fact, life has already surrendered to these feelings. By trusting life to sort this out we invite life to make its surrender/unconditional acceptance obvious. This is the surrender to 'what is happening.' Radical messengers such as Tony Parsons have an incredible 'success rate', although their message lacks any of those things you have mentioned. Tony's mantra 'there is only what's happening' may be incomplete, and his rejection of the term 'awareness' may be silly, but it is remarkable what his mantra has done for many (I met him too). I also met Rupert, Francis and many others. They are beautiful flowers in life's garden. Your reference to famous old 'masters' (Buddha etc) can be another stumbling block. It is best to see the beauty in these, but not any 'specialness'. The same beauty is speaking through so many these days.
@@terefefeyssa877 the character is the thought-based self, the false self, the poor me, the victim or the hero, the one that I pretend to be, or take myself to be depending on circumstances. 🙏
@@claudelebel49 : You explained it beautifully. I wonder why we forget and identify ourselves with the false self very often. That is a bitter part of life as I see it
Surrender is what the Buddhists call burning the karmic seeds, staying into the burning rather than running away. Suffering never comes from a situation but from your thoughts about it, the resistance to what is, so wanting suffering gone is just adding more negativity.
The moths and the flame by Farid ud-Din Attar English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night To learn the truth about the candle light, And they decided one of them should go To gather news of the elusive glow. One flew till in the distance he discerned A palace window where a candle burned - And went no nearer: back again he flew To tell the others what he thought he knew. The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim, Remarking: “He knows nothing of the flame.” A moth more eager than the one before Set out and passed beyond the palace door. He hovered in the aura of the fire, A trembling blur of timorous desire, Then headed back to say how far he’d been, And how much he had undergone and seen. The mentor said: “You do not bear the signs Of one who’s fathomed how the candle shines.” Another moth flew out - his dizzy flight Turned to an ardent wooing of the light; He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance Both self and fire were mingled by his dance - The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head, His being glowed a fierce translucent red; And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze, The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays, He said: “He knows, he knows the truth we seek, That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.” To go beyond all knowledge is to find That comprehension which eludes the mind, And you can never gain the longed-for goal Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul; But should one part remain, a single hair Will drag you back and plunge you in despair - No creature’s self can be admitted here, Where all identity must disappear.
Claude LeBel That was a beautiful poem ! THANKYOU ! I am a poet, and have put my suffering into words similar to the one I just read ! THANKYOU again ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
The last part of this talk was so helpful to me. It explains so much about my experience after realisation. I'm so grateful for it. Thank you Alan and Rupert ❤ Oh sorry, I meant the part before the moths. I thought it was the end.
This teaching and practice is taking me from reaction to gratitude, gratitude for àll of the challenges and upsets which are really and truly opportunies to go deeper and see more clearly. To paraphrase Ramana Maharshi: We thank God for the good things that happen to us but neglect to thank Him for the unpleasant and painful ones and that is our only mistake. Best wishes to all 🙏♥️
This is possibly one of Rupert’s greatest, I love the challenge the man poses to him about fully embodying non-duality. It really resonated with me, I’ve had intellectual understanding and some experiential, but it doesn’t stick long-term. The sense of separation is definitely 10% belief, 90% felt in the body. Then given that fact, wouldn’t Rupert’s yoga meditations be best for investigating this felt experience of separation?
I usually put a short general meditation at the beginning but if you look for the compilations regarding the body, you will find some explorations there. There are also some available on his site,
I think that one of the best clues to recognize being aware of being aware if you lost somethig or you don t remenber the last action you ve already done, this could help you a lot.This make me realize how near or far l m from being always concious.Thank to anyone reads my simple reflexions.
Heart Awakening Closer, closer, closer still.... Come i oh Love to you by will... As moth to flame, these wings now spread... Fly i within to sacred bed... With tenderness and fire my heart awakens now at last, and truth is truly felt... Tis this surrender born of Love, All untrue thoughts now melt, And now I see with single eye, just one ONE of us there be...and from this awakening heart of mine... I know that “ I “ Am Thee ! Trisha Flynn 1997
The fear of death is something I was always very aware of.... As is the knowing how uncertain everything and everyone's live is And there is something very, very dark, and hopeless inside of my body, nowadays it comes up a lot... I thought it is because of the situation the world is in since Corona... Which seems to make things seen and expose our real character :( but it didn't occur to me that it could be the search for truth....
That was exactly what I need to hear. So wonderful and clearly. I’m so deep touched by all the words from Rupert. Thank you very much Alan for all this selected speeches! I feel a deep grace❤️🙏🏼💝
This is my favorite video of all. Thanks Alan for sharing this wonderful compilation of Rupert's video 🙏🙏🙏 If one can practice this one on every instance when we observe subtle hurt within, It would lead to a sweet and wonderful transformation. Thanks for sharing this Gem 🙏🙏🙏 If someone is on Spiritual path for sometime and well aware of core essence of all the teachings, then watching this video has a POTENTIAL TO TAKE YOU TO ENLIGHTENMENT.. I feel blessed as one friend shared this video 🙏🙏🙏
I listened to this on retreat and I honestly don't think one could pack any more succinctly imparted insight into one video. The content in this video signed and sealed my understanding ready for the felt understandimg to follow.
Many thanks for these wonderfully uplifting compilations of the teaching of Truth so skillfully unfolded by Rupert Spira. I find them so helpful to stay on track. Thanks again!
what you don't want stays because you resist it. That which you resist persists. Don't resist the negative emotions and don't clutch onto the positive ones. When you 'clutch', you take yourself from the positive emotion to one of clutching (not wanting it to end), which ironically ends your positive emotion prematurely. Let everything flow in and out of your experience, feel it, and don't judge it. Peace.
This is one of the most insightful clear & challenging pointings I have taken into not only my understanding but also my heart. Surrender, courage & love. Opened, humbled, vulnerable. Deeply touched. Grateful!
I totally get this crisis between an intellectual understanding and the persistence of self through deep seated feelings in the body. The body has a very hard time keeping up so this is an important talk on that very matter. A great and challenging question from the audience member unleashes a great response to a formidable problem. Why do I still feel separation despite this non dual understanding? This is my experience too, and so, it takes courage and love to not contract and say no to the sense of dying or lacking, whilst seeing that awareness has already said yes to it.
Try asking yourself, "Am I that, or am I that which is aware?". Or, "Am I that, or am I more than that?". If the suffering involves a relationship or encounter with another person or being, ask, "Is _____ that or is ____ more than that?"
Wow that is the talk l didn’t know i needed the most. Because i knew mentally and by past experience what i needed to do or i should say what i needed to undo to connect with inner peace, to my being. But even if i was able to let go sometimes, the same issues came back dutifully when i had to face the same situation. Thank you for the wisdom here i know i am not the only one facing this and that’s a comfort
I've noticed since I've had the realisation that we are pure awareness and have been meditating every day that I've been getting a lot of pain coming up, this must be the layers that Rupert is talking about, it feels really quite intense, best to try and feel it and be present as much as possible I guess.
Could be blocked energy! I've experienced the same thing. Try getting into your body by moving mindfully, or picture the wide open sky or ocean holding you and all of this energy, or stroke yourself as if you're moving the energy/pain around your body. And listen to lots of Rupert. You will come up with your own unique practices too. Use your imagination! 'Practice and wait for grace' says Ram Das. The universe will help you out, because you are the universe. 💜
F uuuuu c k this is the best talk . I needed this. I was pondering this for some time that this identity lives in the body and questions arose how to deal with this but no answers came. Thank you Rupert and thanks to the guy that asked this
Describes my experience presently.Wave after wave of intense dark feelings that’s been going on for months.I put the books down and spent more time allowing. It’s painful.
... one of my former teachers said: There are a lot of "enlightened" people, who have dark sides they ignore and they just love their "enlightened" part (Hameed Almaas). Hameed said: What opens the path, more than anything else: If you love the truth of anything, more than what you get from.
"There is a bottom to this well" .... good news ..... but we can drag it out for lifetimes .... that is our freedom. "But should one part remain, a single hair will drag you back and plunge you in despair. No creature self can be admitted here where all identity must disappear." Rare are those who have surrendered so totally :)
Thank you Ziccman. I appreciate you considering these questions. And it is answer I have heard before and have even proffered myself. But a simple naming of some folks who have caused positive changes in the world by resisting structures that cause suffering reveals that not a one was "fully realized". Wangari Mathai, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Malcom X, Rosa Parks, Berta Caceres, the Freedom Riders, several Afghani men whose names I forget, etc. If we prioritze our enlightenment first, over our commitment to work for a just world, we will never get to work for that just world, a world where all the forms of life can thrive, free from oppression, dispossesion, poverty, domination, invasion, etc. We will just gaze at our belly bottons while ecosystems and people are being ruined and we ignore our part in it as tax payers and citizens. The deeper truth, as Rupert and others say, is that the world and our individual body-minds are the same consciousness. So it seems an equally valid path of awakening ourselves by being fully engaged in social change that actually transforms the structures that create suffering. But he does not say that and you are not saying that so it strikes me sometimes as a bit of belly button gazing for comfortable folks. Not saying that you are cold-hearted BTW. I am sure you are kind and obviously deep.
Alan. First, thank you for your work. And, thank you for a collection on the topic of suffering. Rupert speaks of three ways of dealing with suffering (18:24 to 19:26) : the Royal way (discussed at the beginning of this collection, 1:15 to 12:25, and 18:32 to 18:58), examination of suffering itself to discover it does not truly exist); B Road #1, exploration of the suffering self through investigation (and finding there is no truly existing separate suffering self); and, B Road #2, surrender (see, e.g., 12:40 to 18:24). Surrender is also discussed in the balance of this collection following 18:24. But, I did not find any discussion of B Road #1, exploration of the suffering self through investigation. Perhaps I missed it. I believe that both of the two B Roads are discussed in the following, for those who wish to look further. Two Approaches to Suffering. Who Is the Self at the Heart of Suffering? How to stop suffering Pt.1 (Rupert Spira). How to stop suffering Pt. 2 (Rupert Spira). I know that this particular item is long already (compared to your other collections) but, if you ever edit this you may wish to include B Road #1. I personally would appreciate additional collection(s) on the topic of suffering, fear, grief and/or other afflictive emotion. Additionally their oppisite, e.g., happiness, wholeness, etc. Thank you again for your sensibility and curation. Fred
'A God that allowed suffering wouldn't be a loving God. A God that knew suffering would be a God that knew separation. A God that knew judgment, that knew good and bad couldn't possibly be a loving God... The fact that God doesn't know suffering nor care about it, is proof of his existence. Not proof of his absence'. Bravo!
It's a vicious circle. The fake identity's ('separate self') main ingredient is resistance. That resistance, by definition, doesn't know unconditional allowing. Therefore, the imagined separate self is unable to solve the issue since it constructed by the issue. If resistance tries to surrender, that surrender will be as fake as the resisting, imagined entity and this won't yield the desired outcome. There is merit in admitting that I, as the imagined entity, can't solve the issue. This hopeless admittance is surrender and reveals the ever-present solution by showing clearly that the problem doesn't exist at all, and that there is no chance that it will ever exist or that it has ever existed. This admittance is an alternative to 'facing the suffering so completely that we can truly say that suffering is welcome forever' (19:12). The separate self is not able to face suffering this way. Only the recognition that the suffering (fake) entity is not what we are can face anything so fearlessly.
Alan Neachell yes but not for awareness. It is the controlling and resisting mind and not awareness that finds it challenging. Presence awareness is always free. It is a shift in identity.
Claude LeBel It’s such a catch 22. Awareness has no problem as it doesn’t know resistance; only the separate self would contemplate HOW to maintain pure awareness... Surrender! Yes, but how... It seems the separate self will never know how as the questioner is the resistance. It leads to such frustration like scratching an itch until it’s bleeding. I’m the problem! I must disappear! But how!? ...As I fight to stay alive, so afraid to die, to let go, to burn in that flame. It seems there must come an ingredient from the side of awareness to actually aid the movement into surrender. The separate self- non existing- how can that itself make that move? Is this grace? Of myself I have no power to make this surrender happen. It’s this fine, fine line to cross, this mysterious line that somehow surrender happens. Thank you all! This fine line it, all comes down to... this illusion surrender. Surrender so completely I could allow the feeling forever- Can a non existing separate self do this?
Dietrich Lasa Great comment, very insightful, powerful. Is this your actual experience? Or in other words- did you actually cross that imaginary threshold from resistance to surrender? And in doing so, was it actually the recognition that you as the separate self are powerless? Thank you.
I suppose this is what Christ truly represents. We, as in seperate selfs, can't resolve the issue. There is zero chance for us, not because a resentful deity in the sky, but merely of how the seperate realm functions in relationship to Awareness. Only by inviting the "Son of God", our true identity as Awareness to carry out the salvation in our place and resolve the issue that doesn't even exist for him we can partake in his existense and be who we truly are. How it's done we can never know, it's forever impossible from our perspective, but yet Masters, Saints and Buddhas are here to tell the tale. Christ did rise and so will You. It's truly remarkable. (And no, I'm not trying to push a christian narrative, just want to understand the teaching from the lense my soul is using)
This is my favorite of your compilations, Alan.... and they're all brilliant. It makes it real, brings it home, or "cuts through the ice" as Rupert says. ... the necessity of facing our sense of separation fully in order to see it for what it is, to feel it fully and not turn away... to “come out of the head and into the body”… to go to the bottom of the well of feelings, where, even there, we find that Awareness is always saying Yes. There is a poem called "The Well of Grief", by David Whyte that speaks to this so beautifully. THE WELL OF GRIEF Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering, the small round coins, thrown by those who wished for something else. ~~David Whyte
We're leaving for CA tomorrow for a retreat with R, and I shall, as always, recommend your beautiful work to friends found along the way.... and do so with great gratitude and glee! 🙆🏻♀️ Maybe one day we'll meet in person, though of course there is no separation in Love. To paraphrase that line from Rumi which Rupert loves to quote, "True friends never really meet, they're in each other all along"..❤︎.
Of course! I often think while listen to one of your compilations, how Rupert would appreciate so much the way you sort through and gather elements related to a particular vein of the teaching with such apparent love and skill. We do!
Without that last question and response, this talk would be way too philosophical/unreal/dry. I remember a talk by a Tibetan monk, who had done many many meditation practices and was good coping with pain. Then he ended up in an emergency room with some awful internal problem, and none of his practices were working. He just started jumping up and down groaning with the pain. (He was able to laugh at himself later.) I am a chaplain who's worked many years in hospitals and I think if I told someone their suffering was unreal it would be cruel. It may be a dream, but it's real in the dream. And most of us are in a dream. Yes, Ultimate reality is the goal (or the Truth with a capital T), but compassion brings illusory water to illusory thirst in illusory deserts.
Thanks for your comments. I felt it was a good overview of the options. I knew this would be challenging but for someone who has to deal with constant pain, it has certainly helped me. Remember these talks are aimed at people interested in their non dual nature. I would never say to anyone else that there is no suffering. Thanks again 🙏
This is a tough one. If you were to ask every person ever here, Have you loved or been loved? Some would say yes and some would say no. However, if you were ask all those that have had this human experience, Have you suffered or caused suffering? All of them would say, I've had that experience. Whether real or imagined, all would say, I've had that experience. How you get from that experience to, Suffering is not real, makes no sense to me. Sorry. I do understand Acceptance of suffering. Best I have done.😊
I knew when I posted this, that it would get some reactions for obvious reasons, it is very challenging. My experience, when I go to the heart of suffering, it does reveal itself as love. It's too subtle to go into here but I would suggest another listen to the whole talk. Thanks John. 🙏
Suffering is not real. It is the result of a position taken by the body-mind, a resistance. If, for example, you state that you are unhappy because of the way your mother treated you when you were a child then that would imply that you could never ever hope to be happy for the rest of your life and yet people get over this kind of thing (heal?) all of the time. Somehow, the resistance is dissolved or let go of and peace and happiness are there to greet you. All along it was a made-up story unconscious though it may have been. Your suffering was self-imposed, a creation of your own mind, a story to which we were attached and which we had inadvertently made into an identity.
This is a tremendous revelation on suffering. I find it so true what Rupert says that even after an understanding is gained the feeling of the separate self lives on in the body. That that sense “is defended, like a FORTRESS- I can relate here- this visceral protection against allowing those terrible feelings to arise. Does anyone here have experience going through this- can you remember a time when finally allowing these horrible feelings to arise. Goethe me- it would almost rather die than face these feelings. Yet I can see there is no way around it- I have to begin to allow them. It’s terrifying and was just wondering if anyone has experience with this. Thanks
It's terrifying and liberating. My experience was to try it with less severe feelings first and then to keep raising the bar. It can become almost enjoyable as we see that this really works!
Thank you so much for answering, Alan. So let’s just review the basic process so it is crystal clear: 1. Noticing the resistance and desire to escape feeling the feeling. 2. Disregard the escape and allow- open to the feeling. 3. Stay awake- present while the flow of the feeling roars. 4. Rinse and repeat Is this it? Would you add anything else?
Yes, usually we label the feeling as fear, sadness etc so drop any label and go to the raw sensation. Allow the sensation to be there without any desire to get rid of it (or keep it). In time, you can look at the disturbance and find that it has no boundaries and that you can't actually find it as a 'thing'. This is how we can also investigate the general feelings that seem to make up a physical body. Ultimately everything is a vibration of yourself.
Alan Neachell And Alan, when you say that it really works- do you mean that it really works to thin out the in-bred core of the “me”? What has happened since you have engaged in this process?
Thanks Alan🙏 just a small request. Could you post rupert's meditation audios or videos either full or in small clips in which he helps in bubbling up the feelings of separation and helps to dissolve them? This really seems to be the toughest endless job. This is where a lot of struggle happens in me. Just a request that's all. Anyways all your videos are doing this job in one or the other way
If you purchase Transparent body luminous world from Amazon, Rupert has re touched his best meditation audios on this subject. I would highly recommend them.
These are lovely teachings for comfortable people whose basic needs are met. Yes, I know there are the proverbial happy poor folks. And there is tangible and material pain in the body (ask any cancer patient or stab any enlightened person and they will scream out in pain). Now there are parents and children deliberately separated from each other because of a political agenda, etc. Plus, they were forced to migrate because of cruel and domineering foreign policies that displace them in various ways. The suggestion that their pain is simply a rejection of the acceptance of what is happening to them is ludicrous and cold. How to go deeper than this, or perhaps wider so that innocent civilians who are getting carpet bombed are included?
Beth Sanchez I understand what you feel, I guess you didn't really understood what it is about. Nothing is rejected or denied. The deep sens is every experiences is a dream. Yes the dream can be a true nightmare, yes there is injustices and victims. It's like when you go to sleep. In your dreams you can experiment lot of suffering, and it is really painful, but when you wake up you see that it was not real, but you are not rejecting or ignoring it ! You just see it was not real, and it relieves you. It is exactly same process for suffering in waking state. This aproach doesn't deny suffering, suffering IS THERE, but it is an illusion, it is not real. And this is why life and universe, in its deepest truth, is pure love and grace. The deepest truth is not a drama, drama is in the dream. The one who know that, not intellectually but by direct recognizion, like Rupert, will feel deep compassion for beings that still experiment suffering, that are still dreaming, and he will help those beings to awake, knowing that their suffering is an illusion, but not denying it !
Yes ziccman; I love Rupert and have listened to many talks. I offer a critique of the countless times in which he universalizes what is possible, saying that this is accessible to all 7 billion of us, saying that the only thing human beings really want is happiness and the only thing getting in the way of that is wanting something other than what is. Such things leave out or ignore the real tangible pain of millions of people whose happiness (I don't even agree that all human beings really are striving for happiness per se, some live for knowledge, some for justice, Indigenous people largely tend to love and want respectful relationality, many live so that their rights as human beings will not be abolished by the economy of extraction, etc.) On his retreats, where these things can be explored, there are a number of structural realities that by nature cannot include everyone and which all happen in an environmment of security and safety. That is not the reality for all 7 billion of us. What are we to do with this realization?
Also Ziccman, lets just say you are a 10 year old girl in Syria and you are playing with your friends outside. Weapons drop from the sky and you find yourself in unbearable pain because your legs has been blasted off and you cannot breathe becuase you are choking on chemicals. Ultimately, it may be all a dream (but that is speculative). In that moment however, there is a body with a nervous system and there is a story of culture and people and livlihood and it is being utterly destroyed by what seems to be sadistic forces. You simply cannot say that the problem is that this child is resisting what is happening. You would scream and cry out. You would resist. You would not want what is happening. And your happiness would not be accessible by just accepting the circumstances.
yes Alan. and i love that he says bullshit at one point. normally Rupert is very prim and it is good to see some passion in him. he suggests that it takes tremendous courage and love to go into the body and into the feelings that maintain separation. that is not my sense of things per se. i feel it takes much more courage to feel the pain and horror of the non-separate selves who are brutalized as a matter of official policy under current global power structures. i wish he or really any spiritual teacher would address that. but no one does. he uses universalisms that actually erase the particularities of experience of consciousness in the form of certain bodies and locations. keep going.
Oh, what is the information that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky have brought us far away or even totally forgotten. And also the description from the Vedas, about our instruments of the spirit, are completely forgotten or missed. That is why you get this type of conversation in which neither the master nor the student comes close to the situation about and in that human mind of ours .... Very unfortunate...
@@alanneachell9092 Here is (to my knowledge) spoken without the refined knowledge of (and concerning) our human mind. Neither Spira nor the listener seem to have information about our 'organs of the mind' (we have 15), nor about the difference between awareness and 'waking sleep' (term of Peter Ouspensky). Once again you realize what a golden information Gurdjieff and Ouspensky have passed on, and how ignorant almost everyone is about this, including highly regarded Advaita masters. Important things are undervalued as if we were given these 'by mistake' from the Absolute. As if not everything that is created has a function. The sense of separation that is being talked about is only a matter of those who are IN SLEEP: a worldly/material or a spiritual sleep or mind-set, that doesn't matter. Both have the same veiling effect. If you know how Ouspensky teaches us to look at ourselves, you will also start looking differently at the 'separate self' that is experienced in us. This conversation ignores the fact that a human being is a temporary manifestation, with an individualized essence (Jiv-Atman), full of possibilities and limitations that are laid down IN that individualized essence (right from conception). No matter how well you study advaita, you cannot escape this during life, although its influence on our total mind can become more transparent and lets us discover the Unity behind. Because we cannot escape this, in a certain sense there is a ‘separate self’, but one that can become One withín itself, realize Unity, and hereby experience Unity with everything around him. That human spirit becomes non-polar. I mean: non-dual in experience, although this non-dual-in-experience-spirit continues to 'work' (with 15 instruments of spirit/mind) in time, and time is a dual circumstance for a human being. So Spira also follows the line of advaita with the hard-theoretical starting point about the 'separate self'. Possibly it is completely true that the feeling of a 'separate self' is an illusion in an advaita-theoretical perspective, but in practical terms it is simply a fact, at least as long as we are in this body, in time, with that individualized essence that determines all our possibilities and limitations from causality (Akasha). (Even the understanding of these words you read now, Alan Neachell, is only possible by what is given you in your individualized essence, in your ‘nature’) It is overlooked that it is simply a mega-cluster of identifications, in the sleeping (!) unconcious human mind, which is always resisting and wants to keep the 'separate self'. This is what we (should) call ‘ego’. This is how a person become 'dividual' (divided). Whoever gives up this ego-resistance completely, learns to give up all unconcious identifications, who wakes up completely, who realizes a permanently unchanging “I and Will” and is permanently in Self-consciousness (Self-Remebering), becomes a True Individual (undivided) and knows that there is no difference in Being at the ‘basis’ of all manifestations, which is non-dual. That person can therefore know himself to be connected to everything, always! Not only occasionally. That person no longer doubts (doubt comes from two, originating from the trunk 'dvaita') and has realized himself as an individual into a True Man. But a True man also has other separate characteristics as another True man. The one f.i. likes licorice, the other doesn't. :-) One should therefore think much deeper and longer and more thoroughly about what it is - what it really means, and what it is especially worth - to be in a separate human manifestation. Because of this, all those theoretical conversations, no one will really benefits when it comes to Self-realization (which they are so eager to achieve) so it is only a nice pastime to keep speculating and discussing this to your heart’s content (In satsangs, for example, from which the assumption can arise that people 'are already doing well' and 'already well going on the route to enlightment'... And the 'waking sleep', this time a spiritual sleep, stays enforced.... There are really too many of such videos that appeal to the spiritually-interested ego and thus stand in the way of actual self-realization. Result: in spite of all this neo-advaita talk, the world remains devoid of true love because people do not understand themselves (as manifestation and as In-dividu), and therefore not understand everything else ... With love!
@@anokatomichali It is important with anyone's words to know the persons overall teaching. Rupert doesn't deny anything or say that the individual self is unreal, only that it is a sense of individuality. This particular compilation has proved challenging for a few people and I'm attempting to present Rupert in the broadest form that I can. I hope you will continue to listen and take whatever is useful. 🙏💕🙏
I can understand this idea of suffering for myself but when I think of families with children who are refugees, for example, or if they are starving or without medicine does this hold true? Can we hold poverty close to ourselves and say yes, I can live with this forever. The answer must lie in the alleviation of these problems for all in a non-dualist society that does not hold with the separate self. Anyone?
Actions from an ego will always include some form of motive. So in this understanding, we work on ourselves first. When we are acting and relating from our true nature, we take care of ourselves and others as a natural movement of what we are.
No suffering, no teachings. Even Buddha acknowledged suffering. There is suffering. There is the path, there are the teaching that point to the end of suffering.
Well all my identity must desapear until my real nature stops doing whirlpools in this World , these only could be possible if we burned our body mind , maybe if l start in this life to be aware of being aware l would set me free in the infinite conciousness.What do you think ? Its important to recognize the feeling of separation as rupert says its always adopts lot of mind forms until our ideantity burns in the flame of conciusness .
I have great respect for Rupert as a teacher... but I quite honestly cannot see, how if pure consciousness, awareness is associated with a finite body, it does not experience chronic pain or any other kind of deeply unpleasant experience. I still cannot understand the reasoning behind 'awareness' not being aware of pain and suffering. And even if it is not 'real' and only maya or illusion, that doesn't in any way detract from experience itself of the pain. The experience is all any of us have and if that experience is deeply traumatising, the fact that it is not 'really' real in no way invalidates the veracity of the experience. If I sit in a top of the range roller-coaster simulator, watching a screen and being bobbed about - the experience will feel just the same as if it were 'really' happening. If I drink a glass of wine, I experience being relaxed... that experience is real and awareness, i.e. my knowing of it, is the only thing that makes it real.
Garry Bannister My understanding is that all experience is real. I have almost continuous pain but I noticed that when I drop the commentry on what it means it not only diminishes but it also looses a definite location. It seems that thought personalises that which is inherently non personal. When thought drops the idea of a person suffering it becomes clear what is meant by 'awareness doesn't suffer or know suffering. But I completely get your objection and I'll raise my next glass of wine to you and all of us with physical pain. 😊
Thank you for your reply. I think that some pain can be so unbearable that sometimes the only solution is to stop it is by ending this physical existence - be it illusory or not. My best wishes to you.
We must get used to live in both dimensions-apparent paradox.We as awareness experience suffering objectively-objective suffering is happiness and ecstasy.A small part of awareness forgets itself and thus identifies with thought and sensations and in that way creates the suffering self.The rest of awareness experience it OBJECTiVELY.
I don’t know how is possible that I have heard this video so many times and it is not until today after an episode of strong suffering at night that I understand the deeper meaning of the message of Rupert Thank you!!
ua-cam.com/video/ovakavSxkb4/v-deo.html
It is only when you are ready to receive the truth that you understand.
"The sense of separation is 10% beliefs, 90% feelings so the original I thought rises as a belief but it is later validated and substantiated at the level of our feelings, so instead of being a vulnerable vacillating thought it grows depth and substance by taking its home in the body so we don't only think I'm a separate self we feel I'm a separate self. And long enough after our beliefs in separation have been cleared up, the feelings of separation continue, and this is a very common condition in our era where the non-dual perspective is available and many people have a clear understanding at an intellectual level that there is no separate self, that the separate self is an illusion and that's not enough to put an end to suffering, to our rejection of the now and our seeking in the future or in the past for happiness, because by far the larger part of the imaginary self lives in the body as layer upon layer upon layer of feeling and as the layers go down they get subtler and more nameless to begin with; at the beginning we can say what our feelings are: I'm angry because oft his, I'm jealous because of that; but actually these layers as they go down they become nameless, formless, existential sense of lack, the fear of disappearance. If what we're discussing here is going to impact our lives, if it's going to be more than just entertaining a wonderful idea, a wonderful possibility, if it's really gonna cut the ice in our experiences, this deeper level, the felt sense of separation has to be explored. We have to clear out all levels of beliefs of separation before going at the level of the body, but there is terrific resistance in most of us to explore separation in the body. Many of us will explore our beliefs in separation 24/7 for decades, read books about it, talk about it, discuss it, but explore the feeling in the body and you find a fortress in here, and so much of our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships as an apparently separate self are designed precisely to keep these dark, difficult feelings at bay so as soon as we see them rising which we do in between the gaps in the middle of the night, in odd moments where there's nothing to do they surface, because they want to come in the light of awareness. As soon as we feel this impulse what do we do? It's the fridge, the bottle, the cigarette, the sexual encounter, [the mantras], whatever it is for each of us, anything but I don't want to feel this, and much or all of the imaginary self activity is involved in not having to fully feel these feelings and for this reason, long after we have that beautiful clear intellectual understanding of non-duality, the separate self is safe and happy in here, there is a terrific defence system in place in much of us, to be willing to go into the body, to be willing to get out of the head, to stop reading books, to stop endlessly talking and questioning, its all fine but it's a prelude to the deeper exploration; and if we don't go to that bottom of those feelings then no matter how clear the mind is, no matter how apparently free the separate self are (there's nothing there, there's nothing to do kind of mantra), these feelings will, from behind the scenes, unconsciously, dictate our thoughts, actions and feelings on behalf of the separate self, because this is where it's being controlled from, thought, and then we have a problem: the thought says there's nobody there there's no separate self yet we feel ourselves thinking and behaving and acting on behalf of the separate self, and through some convoluted act of reasoning it appropriates the advaita teachings and says oh, my obnoxious behaviour, my suffering, my unhappiness is an expression of awareness, there's nothing to do about it, there's nobody there. Bullshit. We're just fooling ourselves, the separate self has just dressed up as an enlightened self and is appropriating the advaita teachings in order again to successfully keep those deep dark uncomfortable feelings at bay, and this is a classic thing in the contemporary advaita scene --my suffering is just an expression of awareness, of course, ultimately it is, but until the whole system is free of contraction and suffering we're not entitled to say that, it would be better to be honest and recognize that despite my clear intellectual understanding, these residue of suffering are still compelling my thoughts and more importantly, my activities and my relationships. Why are there still conflicts in my relationships when I know there is no separate self? It's because I still feel that I am a separate self and you are a separate self; so here there's a crisis, are we just going to carry on the non-dual mantra there's-nobody-there-there-snothing-to-do, all my suffering is just what's happening now, or are we going to have the courage and the love to face these feelings, to allow them to come up and to stay in place, not to reject them, not to express them, but to let them fully show their face, show what they're made of. When we first hear these teachings we think oh everything should be peace and light and happiness if that's what my true nature is, I'm the turbo-bull piece, when actually life gets rougher since I'm exploring this and it's precisely because we are truly taking our stand as awareness, there's no longer any impulse, there's no longer any identity present rejecting these feelings so the lid is taken off they come up, and it feels worse. We thought meditation was supposed to be peaceful, this is tortuous, there's this wave after wave, one layers of feelings comes up and then sure enough, as soon as it's passed through there's the next one, even deeper, even darker, so it requires courage and love not to contract and say no, because there's a bottom to this well... The fear of death is one of the essential forms of the separate self, the sense of lack is another."
This is such a valuable contribution, drawing from 'real-life' experience, not theory. When I was about 20 years of age, I would read half a page of any J Krishnamurti book (I also met him) and whatever problem I had sensed would immediately disappear, not on the grounds of mood-making, but because the message was triggering the innate freedom to shine in its simplicity. We have to include the possibility that it can be as easy as that. Your report is so useful when this innate freedom is seemingly hiding. I would like to add to your report the following: Whatever layer of resistance/contraction comes up, it is not only a theoretically valid statement to say that this is an expression of awareness. It is good to trust life/awareness sorts it out. The surrendering to these layers of discomfort (as in Goenka's Vipassana), it best performed by 'trusting life'. In fact, life has already surrendered to these feelings. By trusting life to sort this out we invite life to make its surrender/unconditional acceptance obvious. This is the surrender to 'what is happening.' Radical messengers such as Tony Parsons have an incredible 'success rate', although their message lacks any of those things you have mentioned. Tony's mantra 'there is only what's happening' may be incomplete, and his rejection of the term 'awareness' may be silly, but it is remarkable what his mantra has done for many (I met him too). I also met Rupert, Francis and many others. They are beautiful flowers in life's garden. Your reference to famous old 'masters' (Buddha etc) can be another stumbling block. It is best to see the beauty in these, but not any 'specialness'. The same beauty is speaking through so many these days.
thank you very helpful
@@nameeralaraji1223 My pleasure.
Very good. Thank you.
Pheonix Rises at 22'50"
"Suffering is only as real as the self that thought imagins us to be."
Suffering is for the 'character' only.
There is no suffering for awareness.
🙏🙂
Claude: " Character "?
Explain
@@terefefeyssa877 the character is the thought-based self, the false self, the poor me, the victim or the hero, the one that I pretend to be, or take myself to be depending on circumstances. 🙏
@@claudelebel49 : You explained it beautifully. I wonder why we forget and identify ourselves with the false self very often.
That is a bitter part of life as I see it
Surrender is what the Buddhists call burning the karmic seeds, staying into the burning rather than running away. Suffering never comes from a situation but from your thoughts about it, the resistance to what is, so wanting suffering gone is just adding more negativity.
Wonderful 🙏
It’s truth reduced me to tears 💛
Thank you....exactly what I needed to hear....there is no sufferer...only awareness
Thank You very much for sharing this Beauty... With Love 🌷
This is the path of the courageous. As we see more clearly the rage of the separate self seems to increase and get louder. Thank you for this
The moths and the flame
by Farid ud-Din Attar
English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis
Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night
To learn the truth about the candle light,
And they decided one of them should go
To gather news of the elusive glow.
One flew till in the distance he discerned
A palace window where a candle burned -
And went no nearer: back again he flew
To tell the others what he thought he knew.
The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim,
Remarking: “He knows nothing of the flame.”
A moth more eager than the one before
Set out and passed beyond the palace door.
He hovered in the aura of the fire,
A trembling blur of timorous desire,
Then headed back to say how far he’d been,
And how much he had undergone and seen.
The mentor said: “You do not bear the signs
Of one who’s fathomed how the candle shines.”
Another moth flew out - his dizzy flight
Turned to an ardent wooing of the light;
He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance
Both self and fire were mingled by his dance -
The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head,
His being glowed a fierce translucent red;
And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze,
The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays,
He said: “He knows, he knows the truth we seek,
That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.”
To go beyond all knowledge is to find
That comprehension which eludes the mind,
And you can never gain the longed-for goal
Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul;
But should one part remain, a single hair
Will drag you back and plunge you in despair -
No creature’s self can be admitted here,
Where all identity must disappear.
Claude LeBel Sorry I just heard Rupert recite it.
Alan Neachell
No problem. All I had to do was get serious :)
Claude LeBel
That was a beautiful poem ! THANKYOU ! I am a poet, and have put my suffering into words similar to the one I just read ! THANKYOU again ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
IHey us zmxlx
Nanking
Beautiful , thank you for sharing .....
wonderful talk, and what a poem! so apt, so gorgeous!
Thank you Alan, another jewel
De los mejores vídeos de Rupert que he visto, y son muchos. Muchas gracias.
The last part of this talk was so helpful to me. It explains so much about my experience after realisation. I'm so grateful for it. Thank you Alan and Rupert ❤
Oh sorry, I meant the part before the moths. I thought it was the end.
This teaching and practice is taking me from reaction to gratitude, gratitude for àll of the challenges and upsets which are really and truly opportunies to go deeper and see more clearly.
To paraphrase Ramana Maharshi: We thank God for the good things that happen to us but neglect to thank Him for the unpleasant and painful ones and that is our only mistake.
Best wishes to all 🙏♥️
Wow amazing! I've seen so many Rupert's talks, this one is so clear and complete, thank you
this is very, very clear!
🙏
Wow! This was a super good discussion - Both the questioner and Rupert were in top form and it was extremely helpful.
This is possibly one of Rupert’s greatest, I love the challenge the man poses to him about fully embodying non-duality. It really resonated with me, I’ve had intellectual understanding and some experiential, but it doesn’t stick long-term. The sense of separation is definitely 10% belief, 90% felt in the body. Then given that fact, wouldn’t Rupert’s yoga meditations be best for investigating this felt experience of separation?
I usually put a short general meditation at the beginning but if you look for the compilations regarding the body, you will find some explorations there.
There are also some available on his site,
I think that one of the best clues to recognize being aware of being aware if you lost somethig or you don t remenber the last action you ve already done, this could help you a lot.This make me realize how near or far l m from being always concious.Thank to anyone reads my simple reflexions.
Thank you for sharing this with me. 🤝
This was awesome 💫🤗🧡
I’ve listened to this a few times and it still astounds me! Rupert at his finest! Thank you💙🙏🏼💙🙏🏼💙
It's the most listened to compilation. 🙏💕
Heart Awakening
Closer, closer, closer still....
Come i oh Love to you by will...
As moth to flame, these wings now spread...
Fly i within to sacred bed...
With tenderness and fire my heart awakens now at last, and truth is truly felt...
Tis this surrender born of Love,
All untrue thoughts now melt,
And now I see with single eye, just one ONE of us there be...and from this awakening heart of mine...
I know that “ I “ Am Thee !
Trisha Flynn 1997
Beautiful!
Alan Neachell
Thank you !
so profoundly deep and empowering 🙏
Thank you, Rupert, through your teaching, the universal Intelligence speaks to me.... I could not hold back my tears for such love and wisdom
Thank you, Alan. ♥️
thank your for uploading this
Thank spira for your love and dedication helping us to understand deeper and go deeper
The fear of death is something I was always very aware of.... As is the knowing how uncertain everything and everyone's live is
And there is something very, very dark, and hopeless inside of my body, nowadays it comes up a lot... I thought it is because of the situation the world is in since Corona... Which seems to make things seen and expose our real character :( but it didn't occur to me that it could be the search for truth....
Hvala, Alane!
That was exactly what I need to hear. So wonderful and clearly. I’m so deep touched by all the words from Rupert. Thank you very much Alan for all this selected speeches! I feel a deep grace❤️🙏🏼💝
I highly thank and appreciate spira for such beautiful and deep presentation
Excellent video
Explaining the subtle mechanics of what suffering is and how to see the reality of suffering
Hence the value of a teacher 👍😀
Thankyou. Profound words
Just brilliant thank you.
Trask Trinder 🙏
This is my favorite video of all. Thanks Alan for sharing this wonderful compilation of Rupert's video 🙏🙏🙏
If one can practice this one on every instance when we observe subtle hurt within, It would lead to a sweet and wonderful transformation. Thanks for sharing this Gem 🙏🙏🙏
If someone is on Spiritual path for sometime and well aware of core essence of all the teachings, then watching this video has a POTENTIAL TO TAKE YOU TO ENLIGHTENMENT.. I feel blessed as one friend shared this video 🙏🙏🙏
Good video. I really liked the poem.
might be the best teaching of his ive heard
I listened to this on retreat and I honestly don't think one could pack any more succinctly imparted insight into one video. The content in this video signed and sealed my understanding ready for the felt understandimg to follow.
Wonderful 🙏
Many thanks for these wonderfully uplifting compilations of the teaching of Truth so skillfully unfolded by Rupert Spira. I find them so helpful to stay on track. Thanks again!
Thanks Catherine 🙏
I don’t like what is present stays as body sensation for a long time but what I like is present stays as a sensation for a short time.
what you don't want stays because you resist it. That which you resist persists. Don't resist the negative emotions and don't clutch onto the positive ones. When you 'clutch', you take yourself from the positive emotion to one of clutching (not wanting it to end), which ironically ends your positive emotion prematurely. Let everything flow in and out of your experience, feel it, and don't judge it. Peace.
What a revelation there is if one can go to the depth of where these words take us! Thank you so much 🙏
This is one of the most insightful clear & challenging pointings I have taken into not only my understanding but also my heart. Surrender, courage & love. Opened, humbled, vulnerable. Deeply touched. Grateful!
I totally get this crisis between an intellectual understanding and the persistence of self through deep seated feelings in the body. The body has a very hard time keeping up so this is an important talk on that very matter. A great and challenging question from the audience member unleashes a great response to a formidable problem. Why do I still feel separation despite this non dual understanding? This is my experience too, and so, it takes courage and love to not contract and say no to the sense of dying or lacking, whilst seeing that awareness has already said yes to it.
And that Sufi poem at the end is an absolute killer.
Try asking yourself, "Am I that, or am I that which is aware?". Or, "Am I that, or am I more than that?". If the suffering involves a relationship or encounter with another person or being, ask, "Is _____ that or is ____ more than that?"
Wow that is the talk l didn’t know i needed the most. Because i knew mentally and by past experience what i needed to do or i should say what i needed to undo to connect with inner peace, to my being. But even if i was able to let go sometimes, the same issues came back dutifully when i had to face the same situation. Thank you for the wisdom here i know i am not the only one facing this and that’s a comfort
Marc-Antoine Perreault Thanks, and yes we're all in this together 💕
Alan Neachell it doesn’t feel this way with my surrounding so yes it alleviate the heart :)
Marc-Antoine Perreault sagha or community at this time in our understanding seems important.
Yes and Rupert Spira is a delight for big thinkers. Grasping for understanding even if it means having our head knocking on the wall for truth :)
I've noticed since I've had the realisation that we are pure awareness and have been meditating every day that I've been getting a lot of pain coming up, this must be the layers that Rupert
is talking about, it feels really quite intense, best to try and feel it and be present as much as possible I guess.
Could be blocked energy! I've experienced the same thing. Try getting into your body by moving mindfully, or picture the wide open sky or ocean holding you and all of this energy, or stroke yourself as if you're moving the energy/pain around your body. And listen to lots of Rupert. You will come up with your own unique practices too. Use your imagination! 'Practice and wait for grace' says Ram Das. The universe will help you out, because you are the universe. 💜
F uuuuu c k this is the best talk . I needed this. I was pondering this for some time that this identity lives in the body and questions arose how to deal with this but no answers came. Thank you Rupert and thanks to the guy that asked this
Wonderful, thank you 🙏
Wahwah AhaAha wonderful Chamatkaric VISHMAYPURNA thanksgretitude dhanyabad dhanyabadDhanyabadDhanyabad Rupertspra
the poem is so beautiful 🙏 Thankyou💗
ua-cam.com/video/ovakavSxkb4/v-deo.html
thank you ... a gift
Describes my experience presently.Wave after wave of intense dark feelings that’s been going on for months.I put the books down and spent more time allowing. It’s painful.
There is no suffering, there is no mountain, there is no flower, there is no path.
... one of my former teachers said: There are a lot of "enlightened" people, who have dark sides they ignore and they just love their "enlightened" part (Hameed Almaas). Hameed said: What opens the path, more than anything else: If you love the truth of anything, more than what you get from.
"There is a bottom to this well" .... good news ..... but we can drag it out for lifetimes .... that is our freedom.
"But should one part remain, a single hair will drag you back and plunge you in despair. No creature self can be admitted here where all identity must disappear."
Rare are those who have surrendered so totally :)
Claude LeBel Google....Sufi moth poem.,. It comes easily
@@alanneachell9092 thank you alan
Thanks Alan l ve got books from amazon , l didn t know that there were books edited by Rupert I m very happy
Ana Rita Di Martino 🙏
Fantastic
This is one of the best videos on the internet. I return to it every so often. Thank you Alan, thank you Rupert.
Thank you 🙏
Hi Alan, just thought I'd say hi from Australia. Thanks for compilation xx
Hi Marianne 💕
My god this stuff is good .
a deep gratitude
Thank you Ziccman. I appreciate you considering these questions. And it is answer I have heard before and have even proffered myself. But a simple naming of some folks who have caused positive changes in the world by resisting structures that cause suffering reveals that not a one was "fully realized". Wangari Mathai, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Malcom X, Rosa Parks, Berta Caceres, the Freedom Riders, several Afghani men whose names I forget, etc.
If we prioritze our enlightenment first, over our commitment to work for a just world, we will never get to work for that just world, a world where all the forms of life can thrive, free from oppression, dispossesion, poverty, domination, invasion, etc. We will just gaze at our belly bottons while ecosystems and people are being ruined and we ignore our part in it as tax payers and citizens.
The deeper truth, as Rupert and others say, is that the world and our individual body-minds are the same consciousness. So it seems an equally valid path of awakening ourselves by being fully engaged in social change that actually transforms the structures that create suffering. But he does not say that and you are not saying that so it strikes me sometimes as a bit of belly button gazing for comfortable folks.
Not saying that you are cold-hearted BTW. I am sure you are kind and obviously deep.
Alan. First, thank you for your work. And, thank you for a collection on the topic of suffering.
Rupert speaks of three ways of dealing with suffering (18:24 to 19:26) : the Royal way (discussed at the beginning of this collection, 1:15 to 12:25, and 18:32 to 18:58), examination of suffering itself to discover it does not truly exist); B Road #1, exploration of the suffering self through investigation (and finding there is no truly existing separate suffering self); and, B Road #2, surrender (see, e.g., 12:40 to 18:24). Surrender is also discussed in the balance of this collection following 18:24. But, I did not find any discussion of B Road #1, exploration of the suffering self through investigation. Perhaps I missed it. I believe that both of the two B Roads are discussed in the following, for those who wish to look further. Two Approaches to Suffering. Who Is the Self at the Heart of Suffering? How to stop suffering Pt.1 (Rupert Spira). How to stop suffering Pt. 2 (Rupert Spira).
I know that this particular item is long already (compared to your other collections) but, if you ever edit this you may wish to include B Road #1.
I personally would appreciate additional collection(s) on the topic of suffering, fear, grief and/or other afflictive emotion. Additionally their oppisite, e.g., happiness, wholeness, etc.
Thank you again for your sensibility and curation.
Fred
I will put another compilation on suffering soon 🙏 Thanks for your comments.
Thank you, Alan.
'A God that allowed suffering wouldn't be a loving God. A God that knew suffering would be a God that knew separation. A God that knew judgment, that knew good and bad couldn't possibly be a loving God... The fact that God doesn't know suffering nor care about it, is proof of his existence. Not proof of his absence'. Bravo!
Thank you !!
Ilke 💕
It's a vicious circle. The fake identity's ('separate self') main ingredient is resistance. That resistance, by definition, doesn't know unconditional allowing. Therefore, the imagined separate self is unable to solve the issue since it constructed by the issue. If resistance tries to surrender, that surrender will be as fake as the resisting, imagined entity and this won't yield the desired outcome. There is merit in admitting that I, as the imagined entity, can't solve the issue. This hopeless admittance is surrender and reveals the ever-present solution by showing clearly that the problem doesn't exist at all, and that there is no chance that it will ever exist or that it has ever existed. This admittance is an alternative to 'facing the suffering so completely that we can truly say that suffering is welcome forever' (19:12). The separate self is not able to face suffering this way. Only the recognition that the suffering (fake) entity is not what we are can face anything so fearlessly.
Dietrich Lasa It's very challenging
Alan Neachell yes but not for awareness. It is the controlling and resisting mind and not awareness that finds it challenging. Presence awareness is always free. It is a shift in identity.
Claude LeBel
It’s such a catch 22. Awareness has no problem as it doesn’t know resistance; only the separate self would contemplate HOW to maintain pure awareness...
Surrender! Yes, but how...
It seems the separate self will never know how as the questioner is the resistance. It leads to such frustration like scratching an itch until it’s bleeding.
I’m the problem! I must disappear! But how!? ...As I fight to stay alive, so afraid to die, to let go, to burn in that flame.
It seems there must come an ingredient from the side of awareness to actually aid the movement into surrender. The separate self- non existing- how can that itself make that move?
Is this grace?
Of myself I have no power to make this surrender happen.
It’s this fine, fine line to cross, this mysterious line that somehow surrender happens.
Thank you all!
This fine line it, all comes down to... this illusion surrender.
Surrender so completely I could allow the feeling forever- Can a non existing separate self do this?
Dietrich Lasa
Great comment, very insightful, powerful.
Is this your actual experience?
Or in other words- did you actually cross that imaginary threshold from resistance to surrender? And in doing so, was it actually the recognition that you as the separate self are powerless?
Thank you.
I suppose this is what Christ truly represents. We, as in seperate selfs, can't resolve the issue. There is zero chance for us, not because a resentful deity in the sky, but merely of how the seperate realm functions in relationship to Awareness.
Only by inviting the "Son of God", our true identity as Awareness to carry out the salvation in our place and resolve the issue that doesn't even exist for him we can partake in his existense and be who we truly are. How it's done we can never know, it's forever impossible from our perspective, but yet Masters, Saints and Buddhas are here to tell the tale. Christ did rise and so will You.
It's truly remarkable. (And no, I'm not trying to push a christian narrative, just want to understand the teaching from the lense my soul is using)
Thank You 🙏
Whoa!
OH thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you alan..
Still full of wonder. 🌹
💕😊
This is my favorite of your compilations, Alan.... and they're all brilliant. It makes it real, brings it home, or "cuts through the ice" as Rupert says. ... the necessity of facing our sense of separation fully in order to see it for what it is, to feel it fully and not turn away... to “come out of the head and into the body”… to go to the bottom of the well of feelings, where, even there, we find that Awareness is always saying Yes. There is a poem called "The Well of Grief", by David Whyte that speaks to this so beautifully.
THE WELL OF GRIEF
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief,
turning down through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe,
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering,
the small round coins,
thrown by those who wished for something else.
~~David Whyte
Beautiful 💕
We're leaving for CA tomorrow for a retreat with R, and I shall, as always, recommend your beautiful work to friends found along the way.... and do so with great gratitude and glee! 🙆🏻♀️
Maybe one day we'll meet in person, though of course there is no separation in Love. To paraphrase that line from Rumi which Rupert loves to quote, "True friends never really meet, they're in each other all along"..❤︎.
Happy journey 💕
Please say hello to Rupert for me.
Of course! I often think while listen to one of your compilations, how Rupert would appreciate so much the way you sort through and gather elements related to a particular vein of the teaching with such apparent love and skill. We do!
🙏❤🕉 Thanks !
Open our selves and say; I welcome it....to face it completely...welcome forever....yes, Thank you Rupert
Without that last question and response, this talk would be way too philosophical/unreal/dry. I remember a talk by a Tibetan monk, who had done many many meditation practices and was good coping with pain. Then he ended up in an emergency room with some awful internal problem, and none of his practices were working. He just started jumping up and down groaning with the pain. (He was able to laugh at himself later.) I am a chaplain who's worked many years in hospitals and I think if I told someone their suffering was unreal it would be cruel. It may be a dream, but it's real in the dream. And most of us are in a dream. Yes, Ultimate reality is the goal (or the Truth with a capital T), but compassion brings illusory water to illusory thirst in illusory deserts.
Thanks for your comments. I felt it was a good overview of the options. I knew this would be challenging but for someone who has to deal with constant pain, it has certainly helped me. Remember these talks are aimed at people interested in their non dual nature. I would never say to anyone else that there is no suffering. Thanks again 🙏
Very helpful Alan. Thank you. Imprints of circumstances are difficult to eradicate completely.
Situation may be over long time ago but present now as a thought.
What we believe ist deeply rooted in ourselves. It won't suffice to just think in a new way.
Correct
This is a tough one. If you were to ask every person ever here, Have you loved or been loved? Some would say yes and some would say no. However, if you were ask all those that have had this human experience, Have you suffered or caused suffering? All of them would say, I've had that experience. Whether real or imagined, all would say, I've had that experience. How you get from that experience to, Suffering is not real, makes no sense to me. Sorry.
I do understand Acceptance of suffering. Best I have done.😊
I knew when I posted this, that it would get some reactions for obvious reasons, it is very challenging. My experience, when I go to the heart of suffering, it does reveal itself as love. It's too subtle to go into here but I would suggest another listen to the whole talk.
Thanks John. 🙏
Incredible once again! Whats the sublime music piece though? Thanks in advance Alan🙏🏻
Ludovico Einaudi - Samba
For those who were wondering!🙏🏻
i love hearing him cuss lmao iconic ♥️
I apologize for complaining about the music.
Thanks, you're welcome to comment about anything here 🙏❣️
Love to hear Rupert fired up in this one!
Suffering is not real. It is the result of a position taken by the body-mind, a resistance. If, for example, you state that you are unhappy because of the way your mother treated you when you were a child then that would imply that you could never ever hope to be happy for the rest of your life and yet people get over this kind of thing (heal?) all of the time. Somehow, the resistance is dissolved or let go of and peace and happiness are there to greet you. All along it was a made-up story unconscious though it may have been. Your suffering was self-imposed, a creation of your own mind, a story to which we were attached and which we had inadvertently made into an identity.
This is a tremendous revelation on suffering. I find it so true what Rupert says that even after an understanding is gained the feeling of the separate self lives on in the body. That that sense
“is defended, like a FORTRESS- I can relate here- this visceral protection against allowing those terrible feelings to arise.
Does anyone here have experience going through this- can you remember a time when finally allowing these horrible feelings to arise.
Goethe me- it would almost rather die than face these feelings. Yet I can see there is no way around it- I have to begin to allow them. It’s terrifying and was just wondering if anyone has experience with this. Thanks
It's terrifying and liberating. My experience was to try it with less severe feelings first and then to keep raising the bar. It can become almost enjoyable as we see that this really works!
Thank you so much for answering, Alan.
So let’s just review the basic process so it is crystal clear:
1. Noticing the resistance and desire to escape feeling the feeling.
2. Disregard the escape and allow- open to the feeling.
3. Stay awake- present while the flow of the feeling roars.
4. Rinse and repeat
Is this it? Would you add anything else?
Yes, usually we label the feeling as fear, sadness etc so drop any label and go to the raw sensation.
Allow the sensation to be there without any desire to get rid of it (or keep it).
In time, you can look at the disturbance and find that it has no boundaries and that you can't actually find it as a 'thing'.
This is how we can also investigate the general feelings that seem to make up a physical body.
Ultimately everything is a vibration of yourself.
You're assessment was very good 😊
Alan Neachell
And Alan, when you say that it really works- do you mean that it really works to thin out the in-bred core of the “me”?
What has happened since you have engaged in this process?
Thanks Alan🙏 just a small request. Could you post rupert's meditation audios or videos either full or in small clips in which he helps in bubbling up the feelings of separation and helps to dissolve them? This really seems to be the toughest endless job. This is where a lot of struggle happens in me. Just a request that's all. Anyways all your videos are doing this job in one or the other way
If you purchase Transparent body luminous world from Amazon, Rupert has re touched his best meditation audios on this subject. I would highly recommend them.
I can only really share general topics here so everyone gets something
Alan Neachell thank you so much for the information. I'll surely buy. Thanks a lot 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
rafia aziz 🙏
Alan Neachell ok no problem the information you gave is sufficient 👍
Suffering is the i-don‘t-like-it-thought
Thanku Alan for ur wonderful videos...but I request u to put captions in English so that ppl like me (non English ppl)....can read
These are lovely teachings for comfortable people whose basic needs are met. Yes, I know there are the proverbial happy poor folks. And there is tangible and material pain in the body (ask any cancer patient or stab any enlightened person and they will scream out in pain). Now there are parents and children deliberately separated from each other because of a political agenda, etc. Plus, they were forced to migrate because of cruel and domineering foreign policies that displace them in various ways. The suggestion that their pain is simply a rejection of the acceptance of what is happening to them is ludicrous and cold. How to go deeper than this, or perhaps wider so that innocent civilians who are getting carpet bombed are included?
Beth Sanchez I totally understand your comments. May I ask you if you listened to the whole compilation?
Beth Sanchez I understand what you feel, I guess you didn't really understood what it is about. Nothing is rejected or denied. The deep sens is every experiences is a dream. Yes the dream can be a true nightmare, yes there is injustices and victims. It's like when you go to sleep. In your dreams you can experiment lot of suffering, and it is really painful, but when you wake up you see that it was not real, but you are not rejecting or ignoring it ! You just see it was not real, and it relieves you. It is exactly same process for suffering in waking state. This aproach doesn't deny suffering, suffering IS THERE, but it is an illusion, it is not real. And this is why life and universe, in its deepest truth, is pure love and grace. The deepest truth is not a drama, drama is in the dream.
The one who know that, not intellectually but by direct recognizion, like Rupert, will feel deep compassion for beings that still experiment suffering, that are still dreaming, and he will help those beings to awake, knowing that their suffering is an illusion, but not denying it !
Yes ziccman; I love Rupert and have listened to many talks.
I offer a critique of the countless times in which he universalizes what is possible, saying that this is accessible to all 7 billion of us, saying that the only thing human beings really want is happiness and the only thing getting in the way of that is wanting something other than what is. Such things leave out or ignore the real tangible pain of millions of people whose happiness (I don't even agree that all human beings really are striving for happiness per se, some live for knowledge, some for justice, Indigenous people largely tend to love and want respectful relationality, many live so that their rights as human beings will not be abolished by the economy of extraction, etc.)
On his retreats, where these things can be explored, there are a number of structural realities that by nature cannot include everyone and which all happen in an environmment of security and safety. That is not the reality for all 7 billion of us. What are we to do with this realization?
Also Ziccman, lets just say you are a 10 year old girl in Syria and you are playing with your friends outside. Weapons drop from the sky and you find yourself in unbearable pain because your legs has been blasted off and you cannot breathe becuase you are choking on chemicals. Ultimately, it may be all a dream (but that is speculative). In that moment however, there is a body with a nervous system and there is a story of culture and people and livlihood and it is being utterly destroyed by what seems to be sadistic forces.
You simply cannot say that the problem is that this child is resisting what is happening. You would scream and cry out. You would resist. You would not want what is happening. And your happiness would not be accessible by just accepting the circumstances.
yes Alan. and i love that he says bullshit at one point. normally Rupert is very prim and it is good to see some passion in him. he suggests that it takes tremendous courage and love to go into the body and into the feelings that maintain separation. that is not my sense of things per se. i feel it takes much more courage to feel the pain and horror of the non-separate selves who are brutalized as a matter of official policy under current global power structures. i wish he or really any spiritual teacher would address that. but no one does. he uses universalisms that actually erase the particularities of experience of consciousness in the form of certain bodies and locations. keep going.
Oh, what is the information that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky have brought us far away or even totally forgotten. And also the description from the Vedas, about our instruments of the spirit, are completely forgotten or missed. That is why you get this type of conversation in which neither the master nor the student comes close to the situation about and in that human mind of ours .... Very unfortunate...
Thanks for your comments. I'm not fully understanding what you mean. Can you say it another way?
@@alanneachell9092
Here is (to my knowledge) spoken without the refined knowledge of (and concerning) our human mind. Neither Spira nor the listener seem to have information about our 'organs of the mind' (we have 15), nor about the difference between awareness and 'waking sleep' (term of Peter Ouspensky). Once again you realize what a golden information Gurdjieff and Ouspensky have passed on, and how ignorant almost everyone is about this, including highly regarded Advaita masters.
Important things are undervalued as if we were given these 'by mistake' from the Absolute. As if not everything that is created has a function.
The sense of separation that is being talked about is only a matter of those who are IN SLEEP: a worldly/material or a spiritual sleep or mind-set, that doesn't matter. Both have the same veiling effect.
If you know how Ouspensky teaches us to look at ourselves, you will also start looking differently at the 'separate self' that is experienced in us. This conversation ignores the fact that a human being is a temporary manifestation, with an individualized essence (Jiv-Atman), full of possibilities and limitations that are laid down IN that individualized essence (right from conception). No matter how well you study advaita, you cannot escape this during life, although its influence on our total mind can become more transparent and lets us discover the Unity behind. Because we cannot escape this, in a certain sense there is a ‘separate self’, but one that can become One withín itself, realize Unity, and hereby experience Unity with everything around him. That human spirit becomes non-polar. I mean: non-dual in experience, although this non-dual-in-experience-spirit continues to 'work' (with 15 instruments of spirit/mind) in time, and time is a dual circumstance for a human being.
So Spira also follows the line of advaita with the hard-theoretical starting point about the 'separate self'. Possibly it is completely true that the feeling of a 'separate self' is an illusion in an advaita-theoretical perspective, but in practical terms it is simply a fact, at least as long as we are in this body, in time, with that individualized essence that determines all our possibilities and limitations from causality (Akasha). (Even the understanding of these words you read now, Alan Neachell, is only possible by what is given you in your individualized essence, in your ‘nature’)
It is overlooked that it is simply a mega-cluster of identifications, in the sleeping (!) unconcious human mind, which is always resisting and wants to keep the 'separate self'. This is what we (should) call ‘ego’. This is how a person become 'dividual' (divided).
Whoever gives up this ego-resistance completely, learns to give up all unconcious identifications, who wakes up completely, who realizes a permanently unchanging “I and Will” and is permanently in Self-consciousness (Self-Remebering), becomes a True Individual (undivided) and knows that there is no difference in Being at the ‘basis’ of all manifestations, which is non-dual. That person can therefore know himself to be connected to everything, always! Not only occasionally. That person no longer doubts (doubt comes from two, originating from the trunk 'dvaita') and has realized himself as an individual into a True Man. But a True man also has other separate characteristics as another True man. The one f.i. likes licorice, the other doesn't. :-)
One should therefore think much deeper and longer and more thoroughly about what it is - what it really means, and what it is especially worth - to be in a separate human manifestation. Because of this, all those theoretical conversations, no one will really benefits when it comes to Self-realization (which they are so eager to achieve) so it is only a nice pastime to keep speculating and discussing this to your heart’s content (In satsangs, for example, from which the assumption can arise that people 'are already doing well' and 'already well going on the route to enlightment'... And the 'waking sleep', this time a spiritual sleep, stays enforced....
There are really too many of such videos that appeal to the spiritually-interested ego and thus stand in the way of actual self-realization.
Result: in spite of all this neo-advaita talk, the world remains devoid of true love because people do not understand themselves (as manifestation and as In-dividu), and therefore not understand everything else ...
With love!
@@anokatomichali It is important with anyone's words to know the persons overall teaching. Rupert doesn't deny anything or say that the individual self is unreal, only that it is a sense of individuality. This particular compilation has proved challenging for a few people and I'm attempting to present Rupert in the broadest form that I can. I hope you will continue to listen and take whatever is useful. 🙏💕🙏
@@alanneachell9092 I will, absolutely ♥
Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu
Beautiful music... Inbetween.. Any leads to the source?
Amazing. Wondering where I can get the script....
I don't have a script but I can send you the MP3. I would need your email. Find me on Facebook if you want to. 🙏💕
I can understand this idea of suffering for myself but when I think of families with children who are refugees, for example, or if they are starving or without medicine does this hold true? Can we hold poverty close to ourselves and say yes, I can live with this forever. The answer must lie in the alleviation of these problems for all in a non-dualist society that does not hold with the separate self. Anyone?
Actions from an ego will always include some form of motive. So in this understanding, we work on ourselves first.
When we are acting and relating from our true nature, we take care of ourselves and others as a natural movement of what we are.
@@alanneachell9092 oh thank you so much!
No suffering, no teachings. Even Buddha acknowledged suffering. There is suffering. There is the path, there are the teaching that point to the end of suffering.
Yes, there is apparent suffering
12:58: the 2 B-paths
Beautiful
Beautiful
The real merging point of vipasyana meditation and who am I meditation.
Well all my identity must desapear until my real nature stops doing whirlpools in this World , these only could be possible if we burned our body mind , maybe if l start in this life to be aware of being aware l would set me free in the infinite conciousness.What do you think ? Its important to recognize the feeling of separation as rupert says its always adopts lot of mind forms until our ideantity burns in the flame of conciusness .
Ana Rita Di Martino hi ana...self enquiry is swift in dissolving identity, i think. 🌷
I have great respect for Rupert as a teacher... but I quite honestly cannot see, how if pure consciousness, awareness is associated with a finite body, it does not experience chronic pain or any other kind of deeply unpleasant experience. I still cannot understand the reasoning behind 'awareness' not being aware of pain and suffering. And even if it is not 'real' and only maya or illusion, that doesn't in any way detract from experience itself of the pain. The experience is all any of us have and if that experience is deeply traumatising, the fact that it is not 'really' real in no way invalidates the veracity of the experience. If I sit in a top of the range roller-coaster simulator, watching a screen and being bobbed about - the experience will feel just the same as if it were 'really' happening. If I drink a glass of wine, I experience being relaxed... that experience is real and awareness, i.e. my knowing of it, is the only thing that makes it real.
Garry Bannister My understanding is that all experience is real. I have almost continuous pain but I noticed that when I drop the commentry on what it means it not only diminishes but it also looses a definite location. It seems that thought personalises that which is inherently non personal. When thought drops the idea of a person suffering it becomes clear what is meant by 'awareness doesn't suffer or know suffering.
But I completely get your objection and I'll raise my next glass of wine to you and all of us with physical pain. 😊
Thank you for your reply. I think that some pain can be so unbearable that sometimes the only solution is to stop it is by ending this physical existence - be it illusory or not. My best wishes to you.
Garry Bannister 🙏
We must get used to live in both dimensions-apparent paradox.We as awareness experience suffering objectively-objective suffering is happiness and ecstasy.A small part of awareness forgets itself and thus identifies with thought and sensations and in that way creates the suffering self.The rest of awareness experience it OBJECTiVELY.
I feel pain because there are nerves and a sensibility; but how IS it different when we have no resistance whatsoever?