Good morning.
So we're going to drop straight in.
About 15 minutes and I've got a question from last week.
Say something about it and see if there's anything anybody wants to comment or ask this week.
Friday's a little different.
So how far do you have to go to be here?
That's not a trick question.
Literally.
What do you have to do?
These are not questions for you to answer.
They're rhetorical.
Just go there.
Just see for yourself and just feel into the body.
Just feel into what we find here.
Nothing to work out.
So we're just feeling into this sense of presence.
You just joined us.
There's nothing else you need to do.
Sense of presence includes sounds.
All the sensations happening.
There's no need to name them,
Label them.
Just feel them.
And feel the breath if you wish.
What's going on?
Don't dwell on anything.
Oh I was lost blah blah blah.
No,
Not a problem.
Relax into this sense of presence.
It's an ocean.
Where's the attention right now?
Just checking that you're not striving forward,
Racing to get somewhere,
A complete and utter waste of time.
This moment is what we have.
Feel it.
It's all here.
This sense of presence begins to come alive for us.
Realize it's home.
We need to spend time here.
Okay so if anybody does have a question.
I was asked a question last week about how to remember about this.
I'm paraphrasing now because it's a week ago.
And really you just have to keep doing it.
It will be remembered just like anything.
The more we do it,
The more it's remembered.
You know your true nature,
Your intuitive nature,
Your intuition,
This sense of presence,
It's all the same thing,
Just different words for it.
And it's not some mysterious spiritual wuha thing.
It's not.
I wouldn't be interested.
It's what's already here.
We just miss it.
That's what becomes alive.
It's already alive.
It's just a matter of speaking.
Words are limited here.
But they just give you an eye,
Their pointers,
The signposts.
So just keep practicing.
Don't worry about anything.
If you're practicing,
If you're doing,
Spending time,
Resting in presence,
Feeling into that,
Being interested in that,
Not as a concept.
Conceptualization is censorship.
It censors everything.
Yet it's a wonderful tool.
There are two aspects to our experience.
One is what's actually happening.
So right now there are sounds,
There's hearing,
There's sensations of the body,
There may be thoughts,
There's images of seeing.
And so that's the actuality of the moment.
But where did our attention go?
It goes to what the mind says about what's happening.
I like it,
I don't like it.
And it interprets.
It's an interpreter.
It's like watching a football game or a game of tennis.
When you're paying attention,
You're listening to the commentary.
You could turn the commentary off,
The interpretation off,
And the game would still carry on.
We spend 90% of our time listening to the commentary,
The interpretation of mind.
That's why,
As we grow out of infancy and adolescence,
And by the time we're teenagers,
Life becomes dull.
It's because we've moved out of this aliveness,
This sense of presence,
And mind has taken over.
Mind has become dominant.
So no longer do we experience life and its radiance,
And its immediacy,
And its vibrancy.
We experience via the mind what the mind is saying.
We're listening to this.
And if there's a tragedy,
Life,
That's it.
But we don't quite get it,
Because everyone's doing it.
Doctors are doing it,
Psychologists are doing it,
Presidents are doing it,
Prime ministers are doing it,
The next door neighbour's doing it,
That little two-year-old's not doing it,
The dog's not doing it.
The dog's just alive.
That's what we're looking for.
It's already here.
It's just we've wrapped it all up in cling film.
Cling film is the conceptualisation,
The naming,
And the claiming,
And the labelling.
So the problem of thought,
And thought's a wonderful tool,
But I'm not talking about that,
The problem of thought,
In the way I'm talking about it,
Cannot be resolved by more thought.
I can't do it.
You won't do it,
You'll never do it.
It's done by coming back to presence,
This beingness.
Because this is always happening,
The interpretation is intermittent,
I mean it's quite constant,
But your immediate experience is absolutely constant.
When you're not present,
Stop being present.
Be more present.
This is what the Buddha was pointing to,
Different words of course.
You come across the terms samsara and nirvana,
Samsara is the interpretation,
Samsara is mind,
Nirvana is presence,
Your true nature.
They're not different places,
Not different eons.
Heaven and hell are the same.
And coming along here and other places,
Not just here,
Something in us wakes up,
Beginning to wake up,
Hang on,
Something's not quite right here.
You don't have to work all this out,
That's being part of the problem,
There's too much mind.
You don't do the heavy lifting,
Let presence do it,
Let awareness do the heavy lifting,
That's what transforms us.
Just keep out the way.
It's the most beautiful of journeys once you start to orient to it.
So here,
Oh I was already here,
I'm already here,
Feel into that.
Chogyam Trungpa,
A great Tibetan teacher,
Lived in the UK in America,
Wonderful.
Wrote over 70 books,
That's particularly relevant,
But when he came,
He distilled it all down,
All you need to do is feel.
But feel without the labelling,
The naming,
Just feel,
Let it be unknown.
Mind wants to pin things like a butterfly,
That's a red admiral,
Then it's dead.
Mind knows what it is,
It doesn't,
The label is useful.
Okay,
Thank you guys,
Have a good weekend and we shall see you next week.
Bye-bye,
Bye-bye.
