There is no distance between you and the Truth!

What are we doing in these meetings? What does being here in Satsang mean? First, you need to ask if there is any real distance between you and the Truth. Every time I face up this difficulty in Satsang: trying, through the words, to show that there is no distance between the Truth and you! 

After all, what is the distance between this Consciousness and the objects of which It is conscious (body, mind and world)? Is there any distance? What distance is that? Where is this distance created, produced? If you investigate this, in a simple and direct way, you will see there is no distance, this separation is not real, this Consciousness is always present, and the mind, body and world are taking place in That - they are not separate things. 

In other words, you only look through a belief, a thought’s idea about that experience happening. You never dive deep within this experience. However, if you do so, you will discover there is no one present in it; there is only the experience happening in Consciousness. In this way, the mind, the world, the body, the sensations, the emotions, the feelings, and the thoughts are happening without the illusion of separation, of duality. 

Duality means two things happening: the "consciousness" witnessing and the mind, body and world appearing independently... but this is not real! The mind is not independent, the body is not independent, the world is not independent! There is no separation, there are no two things! The thought is not independent from the thinker! In fact, the thinker is only a belief, an idea, another thought as well that does not work independently from that Witness, from that Consciousness. 

There is no thinker, thought, body and world as a separate thing, with an independent life. All this is real, but only in this Consciousness. You do not need to get rid of the thought, the mind nor body. Who would be trying to do that? Only the illusion of separation, of duality; the illusion of someone that is present as the thinker separate from the thought, the observer separate from what is observed, the one who feels separate from what is felt. 

All problems you have are on the idea there is a life of yours, a particular life happening; the idea that this life is someone's life - someone and his/her choices, desires, determination, intentions... So, whom are you fighting with? Discussing? Complaining? All your problems with others, are they problems with whom? All your problems with the world, all your problems with the mind, with the body, are they problems with whom? Is your conflict between you and your girlfriend, your wife, husband, neighbors? 

"All problems you have are on the idea there is a life of yours, a particular life happening; the idea that this life is someone's life - someone and his/her choices, desires, determination, intentions..."

You like some few ones, but do not like some others... So, whom do you like? Whom is important to you? Whom do you get along with? Notice that it is the same duality, is the same sense of someone present. "Someone present" has always friends and foes; it is the same illusion: if you have friends, you have enemies too; if you do like someone, there is someone you do not like; if you love someone, there is someone you do not love. You cannot have one thing without having the other. This is the duality, the illusion of separation! 

So, who makes you annoyed or happy? In a moment you are happy, but in just another moment you are sad, but who is making you this way? Who is this that feels happy or sad? Why he/she feels this way? Why is there something outside that makes you happy or sad? To whom does this separation exist? To whom does this duality exist? 

That is very clear, isn’t it? All this is happening in this illusion of mistaking yourself for the belief of being someone separate, controlling this moment, this experience, that is, in control of the thought, sensation, emotion, world, body, others... 

Notice that I am always pointing out to the Natural State, outside duality, outside the illusion, outside this separation between subject and object, between the observer and the object of observation. Notice that in this Silence, which is Consciousness, which is Presence, there is no separation. It only arises as a belief when you, as an entity, are separate from what is happening. It is always a belief, an idea, the illusion of someone present creating a distance - "the body and I", "the mind and I", "the world and I"... As if there were two things! 

Right here is the challenge of this work, which is to approach this realization intimately; the challenge to not separate yourself in order to not produce conflict, suffering, illusion. When you get separate, you create the conflict. To not get separate means stopping this war, the fear, the suffering. You must do this work now, in this instant, until It begins to take shape, until This begins to take Its place over there. 

Remember that you are going to the opposite direction - the illusion of separation, the illusion of the egoic mind is going to one direction and you are going to the opposite way; the egoic mind, the separatist mind, the illusory mind is going and you are coming back. You are leaving this route, this way, this hand, you are getting off this road! You are leaving the ego, duality, illusion, Maya, sleep, unconsciousness, egoic mind, person's history... You are very used to this road, to this way, and now you are taking another way: the way back… back home. 

Home here means Happiness, Freedom, Consciousness, Wisdom. Namaste!

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on February 13^th, 2017 - First published in Portuguese on September 21, 2017. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm (Local time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, please access: http://mestregualberto.com

When you search outside, you forget who You are.

In these meetings I am pointing out What I consider as the foremost thing, and it is not the talking itself. Your experience with the world of the senses, with the sensorial world, is the experience the mind knows and appreciates. You have such an education, such a bias that forces you to look at the outside world, at the world of the senses. My emphasis in these meetings is always to point out what I consider as the foremost thing: your own recognition, What you are inside; not the experience you know, but the Nature where those experiences are arising from, where they are appearing… The Nature of the experience itself, this Consciousness that You are.

Your whole existential frustration is bolstered by the orientation you have been experiencing through the senses. In other words: you are forgetting who you are and you are mistaking yourself for the experiences of the senses. All that matters to the egoic mind is the experience of the senses. So, if you observe it thoroughly, you notice you get very impressed by what you see, by what you listen to, by you touch, by what you perceive. The sensorial perception is something very important to you and is always at the service of an ego identity, of the person you believe to be. So, you are unable to see from the viewpoint of What you are. You see from the mind’s point of view; you hear, you speak, you touch, you feel from the mind´s standpoint... Here I mean this separatist mind, this egoic mind.

That is why your life lacks beauty, as it lacks depth. The person’s nature is superficial. It is the ego’s nature. No matter how pretty the things are in your surroundings, you remain shallow, considering others as people. You talk to people as if you were a person. You listen to someone as if you were “someone” too. So, all your contact with the external world is only a consequence of that internal superficiality of the egoic mind, because there is no depth, and when there is no depth, there is no Wealth, there is no Grace, there is no Beauty, there is no Truth.

It works like this: you see yourself as someone and you want to be fulfilled by others; you want to find wealth in others, depth in others, fulfillment, happiness... You want to experience love, you want to experience freedom, but always in relation to others. What do we do in these meetings called Satsang? We investigate the illusory nature of this "me" you believe to be, a fundamental thing, as it immediately frees you of expectations to attain any kind of fulfillment in the "outside world”. The ego lives in a very needy, frightened, dependent... quite unhappy way. It needs appreciation, recognition, love coming from others - always from there into here, from the outside into the inside. It is a constant search for being someone to others. This is the nature of the ego and you got to go beyond that, beyond this illusion of being this someone that has caused your life to be so superficial. The consequence to all this, to this lack of depth, is boredom, loneliness, depression, anxiety, shyness and all other forms of fear.

One fundamental thing you need to realize how to feel Love independent of others, how to reach Peace independent of others, how to attain Freedom independent of others. In order to do that, you need to get rid of the mind, to abandon those images the mind produces all the time in your head on who he or she is to you. You cannot depend on it! Only then, you will begin to be serious about yourself, to enjoy Life as it is.

You need to look at what is happening at this moment, without mistaking yourself for it or getting impressed by it, without a romantic appeal to life with the belief that something or someone in the outside would provide you what you already have therein. When you search outside, you forget Who You Are. When you begin to listen to me, I “demolish” your relationships, because I want you to find Love in yourself. Only then, you can go outwardly and then date, marry, have children, friends, since nothing else can make you suffer anymore, especially boyfriends, friends, husbands, children... What you call as "my world", the story of a character you believe you are.

"You need to look at what is happening at this moment, without mistaking yourself for it or getting impressed by it, without a romantic appeal to life with the belief that something or someone in the outside would provide you what you already have therein. When you search outside, you forget Who You Are."

Is it hard to get this?

In this history lies your misery, not your happiness. First, you realize yourself and the Happiness, and then you look outwardly. This is completely different from what you have learned. You have heard phrases like "you will never be happy if you do not make others happy!" This is a lie! You are not here to make the world happy. You are here to realize there is no world and, therefore, there are no others, but You. Your liberation and happiness are the world’s liberation and the world’s happiness. However, the world and the others are not separate from You. Therefore, when you realize Happiness you realize who You are, not what others are. This way of thinking "the others and I" is totally wrong, pure duality.

The mind lives constantly connected to this imagination. This creates your dream, the dream of your life, this ego identity history, the person with a name, a father, a mother (or that had one once), with brothers, friends... The person has so many things and lives deeply entangled in the midst of everything he or she has. The person lives worried, scared, in jealousy, and strives to control, to hold and to protect things in the attempt to avoid the unhappiness of the loss.

To be someone, to see yourself as someone, is very miserable. When you see yourself as “someone”, there is always something new coming into your life, and this "new thing" gets old, so you want to replace it by something new, which later on you will wish to replace again, as it gets old too... and therefore, there is no freedom. In Satsang, I invite you to disappear, to be only What you were born to be. So, everything is already gone and curiously everything is already present! Here is a different "math": when you have nothing, you have everything. In the ego, in the mind, the “math” is different: you have everything, but you have nothing, since you do not have yourself. It is very miserable to be someone …

OK? That’s all for now! Namaste!

* Online meeting transcription, originally held on August 11, 2017. First published in Portuguese on September 19, 2017. -Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm Local Time: Brazil BRT, except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, please visit: http://mestregualberto.com

A new view about yourself

You have been living under restraint, for this is the burden of personality. You look at everything around you through that personality, which is the sense of identity created by yourself due to your imagination. You have been identifying with your daily experience, creating an identity with your professional experience, family, friends, objects (such as houses and cars), activities ... So, the sense of personality is attached to a so-called "life" based on externalities, and it is from that you have assigned this sense of identity you call "me." You consider yourself a person, so you are a personality.

The word "person" means "mask," an individual feature, and that is the restriction. You are restricted to a personal experience, so the Mystery, the Beauty and the Grace of Life are lost, because your way of seeing everything around you is always limited by personal decisions, choices and concerns. There is no Intelligence!

When you really understand the need to investigate this, you open up yourself to the opportunity of going beyond this situation of mediocrity, which is the situation that everyone is undergoing. Everybody lives that way, because they are mistaken him/herself for an image he/she does of him/herself, a belief about who he/she is. So, when you live identified with that personality, with that person, there is a huge limitation What are you doing to yourself? What are you doing when you are living within that sense of person? In Satsang, we say that you are living in the ego, living in a false identity, establishing your daily life within this condition of "personal life," in this limitation, subjection, restriction.

From the person standpoint of view, which means living within one's own concepts and beliefs, within common ideas, that is a very heavy burden, a huge burden. This is the human unhappiness, unhappiness of the ego, unhappiness of the “I,” personal unhappiness. This burden is the search for safety, the search for recognition, comfort and fulfillment, somehow. One thing that never happens, because personality never gets filled, never finds comfort or safety. The ego, however it seeks, does not know Happiness. In fact, its search is precisely by reason of this situation. The nature of the ego is non-safety, is fear, is desire.

Your work here is to investigate the Nature of the Truth about yourself, and then the fight ends. When you are free from the "person," there is no more struggle. This personality is only a mask, a false identity and, therefore, a hallucination. Notice that all that is required is a new view about yourself. This new view gives you a correct perspective about the external world, your world of relationships with people, with objects, with professional activities, or any other activity.

"Your work here is to investigate the Nature of the Truth about yourself, and then the fight ends."

It is possible to attain Liberation from this hallucination, this experiencer, this observer, this thinker, this "I," this "me" ... It is when this limitation, this restriction is totally swept away, totally destroyed, broken. When this new and real perspective, which is the right perspective, is present, there is no one else! Some call This "Awakening," or "Enlightenment" - the end of confusion, of disorder, of war, of fear.

You were born to be absolutely and unconditionally free! Something possible in this Intelligence, but impossible in this limitation, in that mistaken relationship with Life, with Yourself. The love to the Truth, to the Life is the surrender to the Real. This courage to surrender to the Real is possible when you are really "burning" for This! Truth must be the first thing in life, because That is Life! Without it, it is only illusion in this hallucination of being someone; the illusion of personality in this hallucination of the false “me.”

This implies a true recognition of the Truth about yourself, the realization that there is no one present here and now in this day-to-day experience, in this so-called "daily life." This is what we call Consciousness, Presence, Being, Life as It Is, the State of pure Wisdom. You are a Sage - this is your Real identity - but a Sage does not live in suffering, because He is not in hallucination, not in a hypnotic effect, in a suggested effect, attached to a belief model. This is how human beings have been living; but not the Sage!

|*Online meeting transcription, originally held on August 3, 2018. First published in Portuguese on September 2, 2018. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm Local Time: Brazil BRT, except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, please access: http://mestregualberto.com

The matter of Guru and disciple

To be in Satsang means being open to the Truth, being ready to be a disciple. The disciple is the one who is ready to investigate and to find out the Truth about oneself. Thus, to be a disciple is to be in this position, preparing oneself to face the Truth. This preparation is a deep and meaningful requirement. This is something fundamental! I am going to talk to you a little bit about this matter of Guru and disciple.

It is interesting to mention the ego does not have this kind of attitude. The ego wants to be a Master without even knowing what being a disciple means. This explains how easy there are many new masters arising presently. This readiness to find out the Truth about yourself is a consequence of being open to look directly and to investigate life itself and its meaning. You cannot find out the meaning, but you need to investigate yourself in order to know directly, by yourself, there is no meaning at all. However, this inner question must come first and then you find out that there is no answer, but you have to find out this; an idea, a belief about it is not enough. This means being a disciple of Life, and here Life is the Guru. Life (as It is) is the Consciousness itself, the Presence itself. That is why it is a real requirement to find out how beautiful and graceful is to be a disciple.

There is an internal feeling of orientation, because the Guru is inside, and if He is inside, He can present himself externally too. When you are ready to look at life and ask the question: "What is the meaning of all of this?" you are ready to see the Guru, and thus the Guru appears and attracts you. The external Guru is this internal Guru, it is Life manifesting itself to show you, to reveal you how mysterious Life is. Therefore, it is a great blessing to be attracted by this Grace. The Guru's Presence is very important, but if you are not mature, it may take time. When the disciple is ready, which means being completely open, the Master appears. This is the role of the Guru in human shape. When you are open, you are a disciple of Life. You are in Satsang to open yourself, to investigate and to experience this Truth directly. You need this, because you are not settled in It yet. There is something inside you that feels the importance of being here. The inexplicable joy you feel of being in Satsang is a proof to this need.

The ego can never see anything else but itself, and what it sees is always an object. Only the Guru sees the Guru, and by means of this, He finds You. The Guru's Presence is instantaneous, but if you are not mature yet, it may take time for you to see Him. There is only one Guru! When you look at Him and you see a person, something objective, it means you cannot see Him and meet your Self yet. You can only see the Guru when you are not attached to this image of "person" anymore. Until then, you are not seeing the Guru, he will be just a "teacher", and, as such, it will not work out. It is important to be open, living in deep and complete innocence, sensitivity and openness; this is the beauty of this meeting. Only then, the sense of separation vanishes. Then, the Real Guru is found within you.

However, if you are still identified with the body and attached to the idea of being a person, you are not a disciple yet, you do not have a real interest in This. When you have the right feeling, the perfect surrender, the perfect openness, you are always with the Guru. When you really feel what You are, there is no separation between You and the Guru. This is not connected to the concept of time and space, of shape and names. It is not!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on July 4th, 2018. First published in Portuguese on September 4th, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Your freedom lies in not identifying with results

We are before this great wonder: life! In the nature, only the so-called “human being” is in the pursuit of an answer to life. The beauty of this meeting is the possibility of assessing the present Truth, this Mystery. Life is something that just happens, but the human beings have a huge problem, since life does not provide answers to their questions: “Why am I living?”, “Why am I breathing?”, “Why is the heart beating?”, “Why are things happening this way?” Some things may seem to be fair or unfair; others may seem good or bad; right or wrong. Why are some people good while others are bad? Why are some children  healthy born while others are sick born?

This happens to human beings and to animals, but human beings are the only one who asks questions and searches for answers. As they don't find the answer, they end up creating a very logical one, such as: “It is the cause and effect law, action and reaction”. This is very logical and therefore explains and balances everything, but the only true answer to all this is the presence of  duality. 

There is no good without evil; no health without sickness; no pleasure without pain. So we realize this applies to everything. There is no life, no existence without duality: right and wrong, positive and negative, male and female, good and bad, pleasure and pain, to be born and to die... This is easy notice! Without the pain  experience, you would never know what pleasure really is. As you experience health, you know what sickness is. As you experience life, you know what a corpse is, what a “cold body” is, breathless, dead. This is quite simple and does not require any sort of philosophy, as the mind tries to create. The mind creates “cause and effect”, “action and reaction”, God doing good and Devil doing evil.  

Not to accept the duality of life is to be in conflict and this is something created by the mind. The egoic mind creates the sense of separation between good and evil, between positive and negative, between pleasure and pain. So, it lives in a battle in the pursuit of one thing while trying to get rid of another one. The sense of separation is basically to not welcome life as it happens, acknowledging that everything happens in accordance with the Divine Will. 

There is only God doing everything! There is only God happening! There is only God present! To wish one thing and not another one is to be in conflict; it is to believe in the sense of a “me” making choices. All the human suffering lies in this idea of being a person, a separate entity, with the power to make choices. The person “decides”, “solves” and “does” things, which indeed is an illusion. There is not anybody doing absolutely anything! There is not anybody deciding absolutely anything! This is just a thought and you have believed in it for a long time. Life is just what happens.Then, for the question “Why?”, there is no answer. “From where did I come?”, “What am I doing here?”, “To where do I go?” -  There are no answers to none of this. 

"There is only God doing everything! There is only God happening! There is only God present!"

You did not come, you are not here and you are not going anywhere because you do not exist! I know this destroys  philosophy,  religion and  psychology too. I am sorry, but this is pure fantasy. A fantasy created by the thought that created a thinker to think such things. What I am saying is that the thought itself has created the illusion of a thinker, trying to unveil the mystery of life. It is pure training, proclivity, the bias you all have since your childhood, since you were raised within a culture that has bolstered this. 

So, the whole matter is the illusion of a useless “me”, since life is already happening without it! Imagination is unnecessary! Life is happening through this mechanism, through this living organism; this Presence is breathing there, making the heart beat, shaping the body, the world and all appearances. The fact is that Life expresses itself in this duality and nothing is logical, sensible or can be answered. There is no answer! 

You must act as if you had fully choice, freedom and responsibility, but you must give up the illusion of believing the results come from your choice, your freedom,  your will and determination. Results will always come from the Consciousness in accordance with God's will. God is the result of everything happening! The consequences of your choice, of your will, of your determination are not under your control. Only the illusion of your determination, of your will is, as a belief, under your control. 

The time will come when it will be clear to you that there is no “you”, neither in the results of decisions, nor when you come up with them. The fact is that internal bias will define these choices. You can make the clear decision that you need to go on a strict diet because you have morbid obesity and, even though, not be able to go on a diet. This intellectual decision will not determine absolutely anything, and even if you can go on the diet, the outcome will be in accordance with the Divine Will. 

The point is that all actions take place in God. Things can happen in three ways: you may get what you want, you may not get what you want and things can happen in an unexpected way, for better or worse. All this is always determined by God, by this Consciousness, by this Divine Will. There is only this Will and there is not any “me” deciding, choosing, solving and making things happen. 

The thought passes, the desire arises, but this does not determine absolutely anything! Everything happens according to this Divine Will, and your freedom is to not identify with the results,  to not pursue pleasure, to not escape from pain, to not choose one thing over another; it is to abandon the illusion of a “me” in the control,  doing something. 

Online meeting transcription, originally held on May 23rd, 2018  - First published in Portuguese on August 24th, 2018. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm (Local Time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods. 

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The Natural State is effortless

We are together for you to realize what means to be in Satsang. I am trying to show you the importance of the Consciousness, of the mind disidentification. I am constantly saying there is nothing you afford to control, achieve or acquire. The only thing that matters in these meetings is this Consciousness, the disidentification with the mind.

You are identified with the mind. The only thing you need to figure out is how to perceive this mind's movement, and that is the key for the disidentification. "Perceiving" means "watching" yourself, but not by means of "someone watching" what happens, what goes on inside. In this very "watching", there is no "one" watching; it is a "watching" that demolishes the illusion of a "someone" within the mind.

In general, you believe you are thinking. So, there are you and the thought – this is the belief. What I am saying is that in this "watching" you discover "Stillness", the absence of the "thinker". Realize how truly fascinating this is. There is neither the thinker, nor the thought, but only the thought happening. Through this "watching", the thought´s movement loses its bolstering energy, its energy to move forward. Therefore, this "watching" or "perceiving" demolishes this thought movement, when this Stillness assumes, the Natural State of Meditation. In this "watching", there is neither the watcher nor anything to be watched; but only Stillness. This is Real Meditation, and there is no method to lead you to it. There is no system to quiet yourself; it happens naturally.

What people have been practicing out there, the so called "meditation", is no Real Meditation. To those searching for a mere meditation practice, there are plenty of them available in the market, but none of them can reveal this Natural State, nor provide Real Awakening. The reason behind is that a meditation technic or mind quieting system, will still lead you to a mere "state" and such "state" cannot be the Natural State.

Your Natural State, the Real State, is not a "state", and this such an important thing you got to understand – if you do not realize this, you will spend your next sixty years engaging in some technique or practice, but this won't reveal your Natural State. I repeat it: the Real State is not a "state", it is the Total Presence, the complete absence of this "me", of "someone". When the Real Meditation is present, "you" are not there! In this Natural State, there is no longer body mind identification; the concept "I am the body", "I am a person" is no longer embedded into yourself. All this burden and strain disappear.

The Natural State is effortless. Right now, at this very moment, there is only the "watching" without interpretations, comparisons, judgments, without any idea. In this "watching", the Natural State is revealed, the Meditation, pure Intelligence, Consciousness. Thus, there is no "one" watching and speaking, neither anybody understanding nor misunderstanding.

There is the Natural State, when you are not identified neither with the body-mind, nor with the external environment, with the world around you. This happens because the external world, the world around you, is only a perception of the five senses. That is, once disidentified with the body, you will also not identify with the external environment, that is nothing more than senses perception.

Therefore, What You are in your Natural State, cannot be found in the outside world, in any object. This cannot be caught, just like Freedom, or like Love, that you are also unable to catch; It is like Peace, that cannot be hold. You cannot fit THAT into concepts nor into thoughts or mind descriptions.

The first and foremost thing here is solely Being, is your Natural State, is Meditation. Consciousness, this body mind disidentification, is Real Meditation. No effort is required from the "person", because effort always entails accomplishments and here the matter is to relax in your Being; it is not a matter of doing something, but of giving up to do anything. This is effortless because you are THAT fundamentally and essentially! In fact, you just have to give up striving to do something in order to be "someone", in order to have something. This is very simple somehow, but it gets very difficult because you are addicted to doing and to looking for something.

Therefore, there cannot be any intention to such attention. Self-inquiry requires full attention, but not implied by a personal intention, frequently founded on desire, on fear, on the pursuit of being something, of being "someone". The matter here is this "watching", this "perceiving" that means simply to give up!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 27th, 2018. First published in Portuguese on August 27th, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Self-realization is a remembrance

It is important that everybody here recognizes this subject is not something to be learned about. Self-realization is a remembrance, but the fact is that you are not able to remember What you are without allowing yourself time to accomplish this.

Satsang basically means the joy of being "free" from "yourself", from this "me", this false "me". The problem lies in the fact that people never have time to be idle, since they are always busy and in the puisuit of further occupations; they don't free up neither time nor space for that, because their own things make them too busy. The more things they accomplish in the outside, the more they have to strive to keep them. This way, people do not free themselves time up to investigate the nature of Reality, because they avail themselves of time to service this "oneself", to maintain what the "person" has built and preferably to build further, and all this means fear, suffering, and worries.

Therefore, is the wealthiest person the one who possesses things or that one free from worries about pursuing possessions? Who has time to investigate the illusory nature of oneself? The one worried about keeping accomplishments of this "me" or that one willing to give up this "me" and all its possessions or believed possessions? I am going to reformulate the question: who is ready for Happiness? Is it the one who has possessions or that one who is investigating the nature of this illusory possessor of things? Who is truly a Sage? Is it the one searching externally for fulfillment – in things, people and goods, or that one engaging solely in the investigation of this "oneself" illusion and of how foolish is to attain things in the outside? Then, what is real ignorance and Real Wisdom?

When people come here and say this is not easy, I look at them and ask: "Is your life easy?" People say this is quite difficult, but I say I consider quite hard the way they are living their lives. I consider very painful to live in suffering, with attachments, frustrations and full of desires that are never achieved – because they end up turning into new desires. To live in the ego is trully hard! To live thinking, to live worried is an overburden...

So, as I've said in the beginning, it is just a matter of remembering THIS, and not of learning about IT. You believe you are a person, you were born and you will die, and I say: You are God! You are Consciousness! Your Nature is undying, timeless, spaceless, pure Presence, pure Reality. Your Presence, the Presence of all, is the Presence of Happiness! I am saying your Presence IS Happiness, and not that Happiness will once reach you. Happiness will neither be found nor acquired – IT is You! That is why Happiness, Love, Peace, and Freedom are unattainable in the outside world; there is only frustration in the outside world.

Basically, what I mean is: abandon everything! You got to abandon everything in the outside world psychologically! You can do that! This is my invitation to you in Satsang. This time dedicated to this is tremendously necessary to Awakening. Stay with the beauty of this Awakening, of this Truth blossoming, of this supreme Freedom. Remembering THIS means you end the suffering, the illusion, the ignorance about yourself.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on February 23rd, 2018. First published in Portuguese on August 30th, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

What is Reality?

Hello everyone! Welcome to Paltalk! It is great to be together with you to investigate the Nature of the Self. What is your reality? The thought, likewise the feeling, has created a reality: the experience of this moment through thought and feeling ... The mind manages to provide a reality to this – the reality created and imagined by the mind.

The question to you is: What is Reality? There is the Reality and the "reality" created by the mind. The essence here is to realize this inquiry opportunity and to assume it as something real to your life ... It is to put all your heart into it, to avail all your energy to this great discovery of the Truth about yourself, of the Reality.

Today, I live days of Reality. I notice how distressed people are in the mind, trying to make up ways of fulfillment and of "peace and freedom", "love and happiness" provision. However, they are falling into this trap over and over, posed by the "reality" created by the mind, thereby "drying up ice" ... You can try this as far as you want, as long as you want, but the ice will never dry out. Nobody, until present time, had never been able neither to dry up ice, nor to be happy being "someone" making choices, decisions, working in their projects.

You have already attended college, gotten a fiancée or a fiancé, married, rented or bought a house, had two children or half a dozen. You have already become a businessman, you have already had a Rock band (or discovered that you have a good voice to sing and then you became the lead singer of a band), you have already become popular and now you have many fans, you travel around the world, but you are still trying to stifle this unhappiness availing yourself of drugs and other stuff.

It is not possible to dry up ice. It is not possible to be happy. Happiness is not something you achieve, you work for, work for and accomplish it. The more you look for it, the further you get away from it indeed. The "ice" is always in the outside and there is no way you can realize the Truth outside – what I meant as mind "reality". You got to go beyond the mind, beyond your personal experience.

The sense of person poses a great boundary. It is the only self-limitation. Your dreams are based on this, they are part of the mind, of this illusion of being "someone". When you move yourself, you move away from yourself, because every movement goes outwardly, to the outside. There is no movement at this moment. Therefore this is not something you achieve or attain, but that you witness at this moment as the only Reality here and now.

This is not the mind reality, because its reality lies in the space and time concept. The things created and searched by the mind lie within space. The feeling of having attained as well as the process to get there lies within time. This is the mind reality, the reality of the "me" , of this person you believe you are.

So you need time and space. That is why the mind is very ambitious – it loves having things, trying to fullfill itself with objects, friendships, relationships ... living surrounded by a large crowd. The mind behavior always turns toward this direction: huge amounts of things, people and information. It is always escaping in its limitation, always seeking to fullfill this limitation with infinite things. This movement only creates confusion, because the more things it has, the more afflicted and limited it feels.

One curious thing about the mind is that everything it touches, it gets old, thereby providing no more fullfillment and entailing the mind to replace it. Any new thing you find, like a car, a house, a boyfriend or a husband gets old a few weeks, days, hours or even minutes later. Everything the mind touches gets old outright implying on the replacement desire. At first, the mind feels excited and fulfilled, valued and complete, attempting to "dry up ice", that is, to find happiness in its things.

Whithout the mind, nothing is old nor new. Listen to this: whithout the mind, there is no place for things, no time for projects, desires or dreams. Whithout the mind, there is only the Unique, True Reality and not the mind reality (time, space, objects, accomplishments, dreams, desires). When the mind reality is not present, the Reality of this moment is this Consciousness, this Presence, this Love, this Peace, this Happiness, the Reality of Being, the Reality of God.

Is this simple or complex? You are here to find out you are Here. What I mean is the following: being here is the only Reality. Being Here Is To Be! Now is Here, beyond time and space. Beyond the mind is Here, and there is nothing beyond That. So, this is God's Realization, the Realization of Happiness.

When you are in Satsang, something happens causing the perception of time and space to vanish. It happens because you are Here. It can last maybe three clock seconds, but you do not need three seconds to realize the unique place is Here and the only Real thing is Here, where there is no sense of a "me" making choices, having desires, full of small or big stuff, and so on.

This message has this purpose: to make you realize the only Reality is here. "Here" is the place where your Being loses track of time and space... Here! We can apply any word to replace that expression, yet we are pointing out to What is spaceless and timeless... Here!

OK! See you next meeting! Namaste!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on July 21st, 2017. First published in Portuguese on September 07, 2017. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

The greatest and most outstanding challenge of your life

This is another opportunity to turn to the ever present Reality. Satsang is the opportunity to an encounter with the Grace. The word "Satsang" represents the encounter with God, the encounter with the "Sat" (Being).

Everyone is connected to the illusion, because everyone considers him/herself "someone", and he or she is paying a huge price for that. People relationships are on the basis of desire, fear, anxiety, pursuit of fulfillment in others, pursuit of recognition, of feeling loved, of being accepted, resulting in all forms of requirements and misery. This has been the price of illusion based relations – what I have called as "relationship".

Relationships have no Peace, no Freedom, no Love, no Truth. They are relations where something will always be demanded or searched, and such demanding behavior entails conflict, suffering, quite miserable things. One part always demands something of the counterpart, being this "counterpart" indeed his/her own self-insufficiency, his/her own neediness, his/her own unhappiness, his/her own misery in pursuit of something placed apparently in the outside.

The mind cannot reflect on this because it is unable to recognize its self-limitation. From the moment you get up in the morning on, you carry the sense of "person", demanding, desiring. It is essential to notice this self-limitation, to observe the mind insufficiency, to see all the distressing and conflicting movement where the mind is confined to. This is strictly required, since without it, you cannot take the leap beyond these boundaries, this suffering, this personality.

I am just portraying the movement of the "person", of the personality. The mind cannot think beyond the limitation of the personality. It is "successful" in this identification with this false "me". So when you come to Satsang, you face the greatest and most outstanding challenge of your life: to go beyond this fake life, the life of the "person", the life of this false "me", and thus to discover what means living in your true Divine Nature, in your true Self.

When you live in your Being, in your True Nature, there are no more requirements, no more desires nor fears. Thus, there is no more "requiring", but "offering". Love is this Freedom to provide, to donate. Love is wealth! Love does not beg, does not require, does not seek, does not wish. It has no longer any sign of this old egoic mind movement. You are Consciousness itself in your Being, you are Truth itself... You are God! There is no more "requiring" because there is this Totality, this Completeness. So you are completely sensitive, open... You are Free!

Only in Satsang it is possible to clearly see and perceive all this game play the ego has been getting into against itself, by means of supposed relations with others – actually, it happens to be always a relation between the ego and itself, in its incompleteness, loneliness and ignorance. You need to figure out how to go beyond this personality, beyond this false "me", dissolving that root. The oddest thing in all this is to speak of personality as if it were something real, and yet it is not.

You must undergo full and absolute Truth experience in order to trully find out this personality does not exist. This "me" is only a conditioning, a belief, a cultural and social model, a false movement of what we call "egoic mind". That personality you take for real, that "person" you believe you are is only a collection of experiences, memories, remembrances and beliefs. When you are offered this opportunity to investigate, being then able to realize this illusion, you cannot be caught anymore; this "sleep", this hypnotic state, this belief vanishes.

Some call It as Self-Realization, Awakening, Enlightenment... It is the end of illusion, of the sense of self-identity. Thus, life is present, but in its Totality, in this sensitivity and openness. There is no more that "you"!

This Silence, this Presence, this Grace, this Reality, this Natural State is called in India as "Sat-Chit-Ananda", that means, Being-Consciousness-Happiness. There are no more requirements, no more searches, no need from external things... You are Free and nothing and nobody can drag you back into unconsciousness, into the limitation.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on July 4th, 2018. First published in Portuguese on August 22nd, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

You got to go beyond the thought

Everything we know outlines what thought has been creating. So, throughout life, every contact you have is a contact with some mind creation, which is part of the mind itself. The contact with Reality or with the Truth is the contact with the Unknown.

Everything the mind can explore is a part of itself and you are too involved in this "thinking" stuff. The Unknown is this Reality presented moment by moment, but unable to be caught by the thought. Therefore, you have no means to access That through the habit of thinking, of making conclusions, of deducing, of imagining, and that is why Meditation is the foremost factor. Meditation is this break, this breach of mental representation of current happenings.

Therefore, you got to go beyond the thought. This sense of "person" you carry with you, this personality, is entirely settled in the thought, in the known and in the experiences you keep in your memory. Personality means thought! The mind cannot think beyond the personality, that embraces all your knowledge about yourself and the world around you. Here is the prison!

The mind cannot succeed without the personality, which can only exist on the basis of the thought. Therefore, thoughts ultimately represent memory. Notice how things work: thought itself is memory, and memory lays the groundwork for your personality. The mind cannot succeed without this personality, thereby resulting you are in a vicious circle, where you have the thought, that ultimately is memory, personality, mind. So, you spend your entire life within this cycle, referred by Indian Sages as "maya," the illusion. This creates this false center, this false identity, which you believe you are.

Any and all relationships you have in your life are bolstered this way: by the illusion of the known, by the illusion of memory, by the experience of this so-called "someone." Everyone around you is part of that movement. There are no "strangers," because they lay within that "knowned" boundaries, there are no "others," because "others" are embeded by that sense of the "me."

The situation may worsen when this personality projects and looks for assurance in its relationships, thereby envisioning the perfect world to live in! You got to understand this personality is delusion! "Your world" is delusion! Whenever you identify with the personality, memory, experience, knowledge, identity, these relationships, you will engage in delusion. So, now you understand that when we apply the term "ego," we mean delusion. I have been reinforcing this by saying, "You are a fraud!" Realize the value of what you call as "person": this has zero value! It has not even a negative value, but zero value!

When you give up the personality, no more pain or effort remains. When you realize how delusive this personality is, you are then working on this abandonment and you have no more reason to fight (you are constantly fighting, striving all the time to be "someone," to attain, to reach, to accomplish, to do something). I know how demotivating these words seem to you. Everybody wants to reach something, that's why people are working: they aim to change the world, to save themselves, to protect themselves, to defend themselves; they want to go somewhere ... you want to go somewhere! The mind ignores its boundaries. The ego resists its ignorance, frivolity, uselessness, confusion ... Ego only brings confusion with it! You have never done anything right because you have always been there, messing with God's business and affairs, always striving to do on your own will, as if you were a skillful present entity!

I am inviting you to engage in a new perception, a new dimension, to the Consciousness of Reality! In this new dimension, you give up this fight, this pursuit, this search for something outside yourself in worldly relations. You are pursuing peace, freedom and happiness in the world, and you want to attain it in relationships with other egos. Ego is the problem, "your ego" is the problem; others are only an expression, an extension of yourself.

When you discover the beauty of living this openness, in this new dimension, surrender and abandonment follow as a consequence. Likewise two fighters in the arena, when one of the opponents resigns, gives up the fight. When by an action of Grace, the mind realizes how unproductive, vain and stupid this fight is, naturally its functions and its desire to dream vanish! So, you can Awake!

Within this new dimension, the mind, the "person" is no longer appreciated. You have been valuing the "person" too much, but that becomes different now. So, the mind weakens and go to the "grave." It dies of hunger, because it is no longer provided for, fed by this ignorance. Then there is a chance to go beyond the personality, beyond the egoic mind. In this new dimension, there is no one, no ego, no "person".

Whenever you believe you are a person, you will feel unsafe, seeking reassurance in relationships. When you give up the illusion of the desire to be a person, you stop seeking reassurance in relationships, thus, you welcome the fact existence is complete without "you" and assurance poses no issue at all. You are beyond reassurance and the lack of it; you are beyond duality!

We are here to walk you through all the directions, all the paths and trails you have been building, everything the mind has been crafting over the course of time. So, the question is, "Who am I?" Only when you explore all these directions and when you thoroughly abandon the memory, the personality, the mind with its relationships in the pursuit of assurance, only by doing so, the mind is able to acknowledge its boundaries and to give up, allowing this new dimension to arise.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 8th, 2018. First published in Portuguese on July 11th, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Real Meditation happens when attention flourishes

To not observe the mechanics of the mind is unconsciousness. Being caught by torpor, by ecstasy, by bliss is still a barrier. Self Realization is the Natural State of Mindfulness, without any effort or impediment to the activities, such as speaking, eating, walking... In the ego, you experience temporary silence, peace and ecstasy, and you can mistake this for Realization; this has been happening frequently. You can mistake these states for Realization and believe you have achieved the goal.

If during meditation practice, you do not get upset with anything, and out of the meditation practice, something still annoys you, so this is not Real Meditation. Body relaxing and quietness of mind do not represent Real Meditation. The practice quiets the mind for a while, but later the mind gets annoyed again. If something annoys you and you say: “I am not meditating at this moment,” it is an evidence that your practice is not the Real Meditation. This is very usual presently. Meditation practice is spreading out, since it relaxes the muscles, it restarts the nervous system, it regulates blood pressure and it entails great physical wellness. This is what people known as meditation.

I apply the word “meditation” in a different way. I apply it as the Natural State of not being identified with the sense of the “me” and this can only happen naturally. Meditation, in the way I mean, happens without effort, practice, physical posture or guidance. If you can be led to the state of meditation, you achieve the state aimed by the one leading you. Nevertheless, a state achieved through guidance cannot be natural, and therefore it vanishes.

This is like being guided by the sunlight. While the light is shining, you see the path, but if a lunar eclipse gets in and the sunlight does not appear anymore, you've got to stop, because there will be no more light. Meditation is the awakening of this internal light. No external movement, as an external light, can provide you Meditation. The practice is something like that – the external light may be the music, the breath, someone with a soft voice guiding you... The Real Meditation is your Natural State, a Light independent from any external situation, practice, exercise or guidance. It is the blooming of effortless Attention, naturally born when the movement of the false “me” is observed and disappears.

Therefore, Meditation is here and now; no matter if you are eating, walking, lying down, relaxing or sleeping. Nothing prevents or facilitates your Natural State. If you believe you have achieved the Natural State after ten, fifteen minutes, or half an hour of meditation practice, just because you are relaxed and in peace, without any conflict, you are wrong.

Your Natural State is present when your wife is complaining about something; when your child is crying, asking for something and screaming insistently; when the soccer team you are for is getting thrashed; when you have just gotten a traffic fine; or when there is a traffic jam and you have an appointment to arrive on time. Your Natural State is there! If you get internally annoyed at such circumstances, even after having meditated so much, then it is a sign that you do not need the practice. If when you are practicing you are different from when you face unpleasant situations, what you call “meditation practice” is just really a practice, but it has nothing to do with Real Meditation.

Meditation is you in your Natural State, when the sense of the experiencer is not present being personal. It is just like this when the toddler cries, screams, calling you; when you are watching a soccer game where one team is winning and the other one losing; when you are stuck in the traffic jam, all cars are also stuck and you cannot fly away in a helicopter hovering over all the other cars ahead; when the wife is yelling and so on. When you are not present as an experiencer in the experience, it does not matter what is happening, what the body is doing or not, what is happening outside or inside this “body-mind” mechanism, no changes take place, because there is no more the sense of winning and losing, of self-importance, there is no desire and fear. When That, timeless and nameless, is present, then you do have Meditation.

"Meditation is you in your Natural State, when the sense of the experiencer is not present being personal."

Meditation is Self-realization, the Realization of God. States that come in and go away, like silence, peace, joy and ecstasy are only experiences. Therefore, it is essential you discover Meditation in your daily life, when you speak with your wife or child, while watching a movie on TV or at the cinema, or when watching a soccer game. That is, you need to observe how personal you are in your daily life, what kind of requirements you have inside there when things happen or do not happen, and how this “me” has desires. It is necessary to observe this movement of the “me” to “catch it” at the moment it arises.

This "me" requires enormous efficiency to be "caught" when it wants to be sad, when it intends to show anger, when it feels depressed, euphoric or when it moves up from joy down to sadness in less than thirty seconds. You got to observe how fickle, how “bipolar” this “me” is, and how it lives in duality. You got to observe it! You got to “catch it” at that very moment, without letting it escape! You got to just observe it and let it go – give up this “me,” abandon it. This is Meditation!

This is absolutely effortless! Since you have been living your entire life “sleeping,” a huge amount of energy is required; devotion to the Truth is required. It may seem like the greatest effort in the world! The ego has always been acting inside you automatically and in an unconscious way. So, to avail of this energy to this Attention may seem the greatest effort in the world for an addicted ego, for a present false “me”, reacting, feeling, suffering, experiencing.

Even so, I keep saying: no effort! Just Consciousness, Attention... no choices, decisions and beliefs. It does not matter if the soccer team you are for is getting trashed; there is no “someone” there. This is Meditation. This can be started observing the thoughts and the beliefs it brings with, telling you that you have a soccer team, that you are part of this or that ideological movement, that you are someone for or against something. Then, thought starts being watched moment by moment, at every moment. Notice this has nothing to do with a specific moment within a specific practice.

At first you may feel you need a huge effort, but this is the unique Real Practice, which is actually not a practice, since it is not a mechanical thing and therefore you cannot get used to it. Consciousness is the presence of the end of the automatism, while every practice leads you to the automatism. Once the automatism puts down its roots in "practicing meditation," then it is easy for you to access that "state." Remember this is not the Natural State, but now, you have the practice, the automatism, so it is easy for you. You ended up being hypnotized by the automatism, by the unconsciousness, and therefore you will live in this practice for a thousand and two hundred years; your ego will not be moved away, because you will remain unconscious.

The Real Meditation happens when the Attention flourishes, and not as a result of mechanical practice. The Attention is a result of the natural flourishing of your Being, which is never sat, walking, awake or asleep. That is why Meditation is natural, just like Awakening, Enlightening. Now you understand why all the Sages say you are already This and, therefore, no effort or practice is required. However, notice what I am saying: the real effort is to find out that no effort is needed; that is, this is the right effort. Otherwise, you will remain in this hypnotic state for a thousand and two hundred years; you will become an expert, a great specialist in the practice of meditation.

Here is the Meditation, independent from your body posture and your psyche. If there is no identification with the internal movement of the mind nor with the body, and you are full “Consciousness”, we do not talk about This anymore, we do not need to talk about Meditation anymore – You are Meditation! You are Consciousness, Peace, Freedom, Happiness! You are Christ, Buddha! Remain there, in you Natural State, eating, sleeping, speaking, working, doing business. Remain free from the experiencer, who has his or her demands, beliefs and states. Remain there each moment, night and day, awake or sleeping, because they are moments of Consciousness, they are not “your moments.” This is Meditation.

Then, remember this: “you” are not present, and if this is true, there is no desire, no fear, no conflict and no problem. Remain there! Work toward this direction; do not wait for Enlightenment to happen one day. Get out of here and do not create more problems for yourself by believing in thoughts, in sensations and in experiences in your favor or against you. There is not this "you," but the Life with its mysterious movement. This is Meditation, the Natural State. Do not wait for Enlightenment for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Assume now an attitude of an Enlightened; not the belief of being "enlightened" because they are different things. You may believe you are enlightened, you may even announce your name as the "latest enlightened" in human history, like automobile companies launching a new car each year, there is also the newest "enlightened" in Brazil, or in Americas, or in Europe. Do not fall into it!

It is one thing to be in the Natural Enlightenment State; but to believe you are enlightened willing to tell everyone, calling this "made-up story" as Satsang, is quite another. Therefore assume you are not the person you believe to be, work to this disidentification here and now. If this Natural State is really awakening there, you become natural; preferably silent... You turn to be more silent. Becoming more talkative is a clear sign you are still not seeing anything at all, and the blinder you are, the more talkative you become. You change this inner attitude here and now, and not for the next 40 or 50 years! You leave the "sleep" state, you stop relying on thoughts and feelings, you stop attaching to these things and you stop affirming yourself as a "person" all the time. You do it here and now! This is the right effort, the right Meditation, the right attitude. This is how you discover What You Are!

Presencial meeting transcription, originally held in João Pessoa city, Brazil, on May, 2018.
First published in Portuguese on August 6, 2018
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The Presence of Grace in the form of the Guru

In Satsang, you are meeting Yourself, the Truth. The presence of God, of Grace is a mysterious, unknown movement. There is a very clear difference between the written word and the one coming out from the Guru's lips. In the Western world, we plod along to accept the importance and the value of the Presence, of Grace, in the form of the Guru.

We should never underestimate the Presence of God, which is this Presence of Grace, when it takes the form of a Master. The Guru does not need to have exactly a human form. This Guru, who is Grace, God, can assume any form. Realize that the Guru is this Presence within you, but you are not aware of That. It is the Presence of God, but the Presence of God "sleeping." Then, there comes a time when a prayer gets into your heart making this God's Presence to truly awaken. It is when the external Guru assumes a human or non-human form entailing the awakening of the inner Guru.

God is always present, but His presence does not necessarily means He "awakened;" It does not mean He is "awaken." Therefore, you are Christ, you are Buddha, but a "sleeping" Christ, a "sleeping" Buddha. So God assumes a form – human or otherwise – and in His Grace implies the awakening of the inner Guru; God comes to awaken God, Christ comes to awaken Christ, Buddha comes to awaken Buddha! This is the Mystery, something very paradoxical, because God does not sleep! He is never unaware of Himself! Never try to get these words into a precise model, as something perfectly logical, because it is not. Truth is not logical; it is only the Truth!

Therefore, when the Guru comes, it is God coming in His Grace, in the form of the Guru. When the Guru talks to you about the Truth, you certainly hear these words, but they disappear; no reference about this talking remains, but only the Guru himself, and here lies the Mystery.

The Guru is beyond words, so the Guru remains and the words disappear. The Guru is important, but the words are not. So, if you are unsure, you approach the Guru one more time, a certain number of times, and each time the Guru speaks, the same Truth is pointed out through different words. Thus, you understand it and it results profoundly evident that THAT does not comes out from words, but from the Presence of the Guru, from the Presence of Grace.

I got to tell you this, because you can read an entire library about it, thousands and thousands of books, discuss it, talk about it, and even write about it, but that is of no use, because there is no Truth in words. The Truth is in the Presence of Grace! The Wise One is this Realized Self, which is Grace, which is the Guru. It is clear there is something else connected to the Guru's words, something above a teacher's speech, or the words of a book, there is something that gets more deeply into the heart of the disciple.

So, That makes the Miracle, the transformation, which we can call Real Experience, because That is the Truth viking out from the lips of the Sage – Krishnamurti awakening Krishnamurti, Ramana awakening Ramana, Jesus awakening Jesus ... It is the same simple and natural Truth of the Unique Self, of the Unique Consciousness.

It is different than when you read it in a book or when you listen to teachers, no matter how spiritual they are and how deeper their experiences were. They are not the Truth yet. That is, a "person" cannot provide you THIS.

There is a quotation of a Realized Being, a Wise One, called Sri Anandamayi Ma: "Once the Guru has accepted a disciple, He or She will never leave the disciple until the goal is attained." When you hear the word of the Guru, the word of the Grace, of the Truth, even the first time you are before Him or Her, your ego moves away temporarily and you envise the Truth – this is the Mystery, a powerful action of Grace! You should never forget there is no difference between You and the Guru. So, for the first time, you can undergo the Real Experience.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on July 4, 2018. First published in Portuguese on August 19, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.