We are not ready to face pain

Participant: Yesterday you told us we are not ready to face pain. What does that mean?

Mestre Gualberto: we are protected from pain since early childhood. Our parents always had an ignorant affection, having protecting us excessively. They didn't want to see us suffering. They have always protected us from physical and emotional pain. I don't know if you can understand what I mean.

If you are protected from frustration, you don't see it as natural. If you are protected from pain, you grow up with the idea you should never feel pain and therefore, you keep protecting yourself. So, you get into a psychological conditioning game. A “no” causes you a deep and painful feeling of rejection. What do you in order to avoid this feeling? This pain will not kill you, but in order to not feel it, you become a shy child, you ward off people who can hurt, offend or reject you.

So, you carry this internal movement since childhood, always trying to protect yourself from pain. The point is the more you protect yourself from pain, the more sensitive you become to it. As a result, you become a young person and later on a child-behaving adult when rejected, hurt, when no one looks at you. When no one says: "hey, how are you?", you read it suspiciously: "She or he didn't look at me, she or he doesn't like me."

If you examine it closely, the ego is a bundle, a set of bias, fears, choices, fantasies, imaginations. This is the sense of "me.” Our entire culture is shaped around this structure. You do not remain alone to observe this pain, there is always a way to escape, to not look at it. However, the ego is a false structure, a lie.

That psychological, emotional pain is not like physical, neural pain; that one is imaginary! And the more you try to escape from it, the more sensitive you become to that kind of pain. So, what about the ego? It suffers for nothing. Everything causes you pain! If someone speaks loudly to you, it causes you pain, so to protect yourself from that pain, you react to it, you reply aggressively with words or actions, all that to not feel pain, as this is forbidden.

In our culture, in the ego-identity’s culture, it is forbidden to remain with the pain and solve it alone. You have to take it out on something, you have to throw the pain back, so you don't feel it. But now you are an aggressive, violent person, full of fear and pain. The pain remains, but in a different form: as aggression, reactivity, violence. Therefore, you do not get cured of the ego, as you do not notice it. You would only have a chance to notice it if you could feel the pain alone. When you do not notice what you feel, you take it out on something unconsciously, automatically, mechanically.

Do you know what I have been telling people? Find out what Real Meditation is! I see people practicing meditation, but do you know what they do to practice meditation? They look for a quiet space, put on some soft music, breathe in a certain way, stay there for 10 minutes, half an hour, one hour. So far, so good. But when they get up, when they go home, to work or to college, their ego will be badgered there… There is the moment for Meditation! There is Meditation, and not when you are taking a deep breath - that is easy! Meditation, as a practice, is an easy thing! And what about in life, in daily life? That's the exercise! It is simple, but not easy.

To look at the pain when it arises without reacting to it: that is Meditation, to bring Consciousness to this present moment, to what is here and now. This moment is a divine call for you to know yourself, to find that child who was conditioned to not feel pain.

Participant: It seems to me there are two things: one is to feel the pain, another is to not trust the story the thought is telling about it.

Master Gualberto: Yes! Exactly! You believe the story thought creates about the pain. Pain is not the problem! Pain is like a wounded ghost who has been punched. There is no ghost! If the pain is there, ok! But, why creating a story about it? To protect yourself. Your ego reacts to easy this “inexistent pain.”

If our parents were good teachers to us, they would have taught us that: to remain alone with the pain, to not react to it like spoiled children. But they did not teach us that, they were not Realized Beings. Now, you are an adult and you found me, so we will have to fix that! A Master can provide you what society was unable to! But you need to be patient and welcome that with fully trust. That is why a living Master is important: the living Master inspires us! The Master´s Presence inspires us to trust! So, what is my job with you? To fix that!

The point here is: do not react! Be aware of that pain. Do not react to it! Is your wife nervous? No problem! Is your boyfriend stressed? Leave him alone, give him some space and look at yourself, but do not conflict! You are here to learn this, but it is “learning by unlearning.” Here, you will unlearn how to be a “person.” That’s how the Sage is born! When a person unlearns to be a "person," this one discovers the Being!

It is like undressing. You are not this outfit, just like You are not this programming that feels offended, hurt, flapped, angry at everything, afraid of everything. This is not You! So, this is unlearnable. It is like your clothes you take off. Nobody takes a bath with clothes on! In order to bathe in the waters of Wisdom, Consciousness, Truth, you need to get rid of this false “me.” Then, the Divine, your Being, shows Itself fully undressed, and It is beautiful! Your Being makes no enemies!

So, the problem is not the pain; the problem is "someone" in pain. "Someone" in pain will react. The pain itself only shows you something. If you work on it, I promise you one thing: in a short time, people will stop offending, flapping or saddening you ... It is so because none of them are flapping, bothering or saddening you, but rather your ego who is reacting to it indeed!

Notice what I said: your ego makes enemies! When you say inwardly, “I don't like him or her. What an annoying boss! What a horrible job!” This is not outside there; it's all inside you! Do you understand? The world is not your problem, but rather your ego, your mind, your interpretation, your unresolved relationship with yourself. Solve it inside there!

What I say to you here is not a concept, a belief or a theory. I am That! I live It! Do you know what that means? That is your Truth! I am not telling you to learn how to do that. I am telling you to assume That! Unlearn what you are not and stay with what You Are! Unlearn this self-image, these beliefs you have about yourself. Be undressed, take off your clothes, go to the shower, take a bath of Understanding, Intelligence, Truth, Divine Love! This is Meditation!

*Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Graz, Austria, on November 25, 2019. First published in Portuguese on September, 4, 2020. For more information about our meetings, click here.

The Heart of my Teaching

The heart of my teaching is the Vision of the Reality there are no "people" here. My approach concerns there is no "person" present. The "person" you believe to be is an imaginary "entity," only a mental concept. There are thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, but there is no "person." These phenomena are not a "person".

This imaginary concept, this belief individualizes what happens and turns simple phenomena, such as thoughts, sensations and perceptions, into problems. However, they are not problems. They just appear or come up to further disappear within that Truth, within this Consciousness, this Presence, which is You.

So, there is no such "you." This personality is just an old set of imaginations, of thoughts, of mental representations, of concepts. Your suffering arises because you think about what happens. Your emotional pain is present in this imagination of being a particular entity within the experience to whom losses and difficult situations should not happen. All of this is imagination!

People want a practice to overcome suffering, but the “sense of person” is the suffering itself! No practice can remove this! Suffering is rejection to life, the attempt to adjust what happens to the imaginary model of the "me," to the fiction of that character; it is the illusory identity resisting to the mysterious movement of life.

Life is constantly changing, always finding a new representation. It's a living thing! What is alive is under an unknown movement, always unpredictable. You are not real as you believe you are, but you exist. The question is, are you aware of who you are? Leaving aside all that imagination about what you believe to be, who are you?

Since my childhood, I had been looking for That, I just did not know by that time. You are here to find the Truth about your Real Nature, about your True Nature. This cannot happen by reading books, reflecting, having ideas, creating theories, hypotheses, studying philosophers or theological approaches. You have to be face to face with Clarity! In darkness, this is not possible, and all the mind knows is darkness. So, you can read all the books in the world, get involved with all forms of spiritual practices, change your religion, but none of that will solve the matter.

To be face to face with Clarity is to look at Yourself, and not at what others say, at what the thought says, at what the feeling says about who you are. “I'm still not good enough,” “I am still not happy enough,” “I still do not have the peace I wish,” “I still have not found the freedom I am looking for…” These are thoughts happening inside this mind’s darkness. When you are face to face with Clarity, you are beyond temporary phenomena, beyond what the mind is able to produce.

All thoughts, perceptions, sensations and emotions appear in the mind, are part of it, and the mind is within that darkness. All of this moves within the boundaries of what is temporary, but none of that is You. Therefore, You exist, but you are not as real as you believe to be. You are Real as you are, and not as the thought, the feeling and the sensation tell you are. What we name as "mind,” which is under the darkness, is simply sensation, thought, perception and emotion within this "someone’s story.”

Therefore, the heart of my speech, what makes my approach alive, is the simple fact there is only Consciousness. To come across That is to come across this Clarity, facing Clarity. Get that! Thoughts pass, just like feelings and every form of perception, no matter how beautiful and pleasant they can be, while You, as Pure Consciousness, do not pass, do not change.

Recently, somebody shared with me some concerns about aging. Aging, getting sick and dying are problems to everybody. In reality, they are the most serious problems of the existence, but of the body and mind existence. These things can flap the mind and the body, but they cannot affect What You Are. The Reality of your Essential Nature entails no aging, no disease, no death, no time nor space. These problems concern only the mind, with the idea "I am the body," with the feeling "I am here" and "I am someone.”

When a sales representative visits a client to offer some product, he or she needs to be loyal to the employer’s company. When the sales rep does not represent neither the company nor the products properly, no good deal can be closed.

In business world, these are the fundamentals. In there, the mind attempts to create a representation of What You Are in this mysterious relationship with Existence, with Life. However, the mind is a terrible representative, it does not represent the company suitably.

What I am saying is that you have been buying a fake product. You are Existence, you are Life, and the mind is trying to create a representation of what You Are by making its offer. You have believed yourself to be what you are not, you are making use of a fake product offered by an inexistent company. I have been saying "person" is a fraud, and the company represented by this person is inexistent! The products the person has to offer are just as fake as the person is! That's why you suffer.

There are seven billion people on the planet, but who is interested in knowing the Truth about Oneself in the midst of all this confusion? What is Real Peace? What is Real Love? What is Real Happiness? What is Real Freedom? What is Intelligence, Wisdom, Compassion? How can you be a legal and real representative, a blessing from Life to Life, if the mind is present trying to assume the place of Reality, trying to show itself as something it is not?

You are Life! You are Consciousness! You are God! There is no suffering in What You Are! There is no conflict, ignorance, fear nor problem in What You Are! This is present only in this false representation, in this falsification.

You were born to be Happy, and not to be "someone." In this world, you have learned you were born to be "someone." Every society and culture encourage you to follow this direction: the more acknowledged you are, the more valuable and important you are for yourself and others. The society does not care if internally you feel miserable and unhappy, if you are depressed, existentially frustrated, if you do not have inner peace. All that culture and society care about yourself concerns your production.

In the ego, you learn to envy the successful ones, those who stand out externally. The society does not care about how these people feel, how they are internally. The society wants to hear the music they have to play or sing; the dance they can perform or the picture they can paint, the sculpture piece they can exhibit ... That makes them famous, successful. They are all representatives of this false company, presenting products of the illusion, selling the false as true.

People do not ask themselves “who am I?” But everyone says, “I will win, I will be famous, rich, successful, I will have a beautiful person by my side, plus some children (at least three, four or five), I will soon be surrounded by many grandchildren and soon I will also be a great-grandfather or great-grandmother.” Perhaps death will come before all those things, perhaps not. The point is everyone dies without knowing who they are, without knowing the Truth about themselves, about God, about Love, about Happiness, without knowing what they were born for.

The Natural State has nothing to do with fame, reputation, prestige, public acknowledgment, power, money, success. The Natural State is our True Nature, effortless, full of spontaneous Joy, of Freedom! To me, “natural” implies something outside the influences of the mind’s world, something effortless, spontaneous, happy, present, full Consciousness! This is original, not a copy, an imitation, a repetition.

So, when I use the expression "Natural State," I mean something like God, not a distinguished, special particularization, a projection or a representation. You cannot sell the Natural State, you cannot be Its representative to this chaotic, disorderly and confused world. In the mind, all you can be is a mind’s representative, you can only represent a fake company with products manufactured by ideas, beliefs, imaginations. The Natural State is Intelligence!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 27, 2020. First published in Portuguese on January 2nd, 2018. For further information about the meetings, click here.

Nothing is hidden from this Real Consciousness

Nothing is outside this Consciousness. This separation between conscious and unconscious mind is totally arbitrary. The very own mind creates an arbitrary separation concerning itself. Mind is content, be it ten years or ten million years old, but it is a single one content. Thus, whether the mind is apparent on the surface or submerged, hidden in depth, it is the same phenomenon.

There is no separation between "conscious" and "unconscious." What we call "unconscious" means the non-awareness of what is submerged, and "conscious" is what is on the surface, under awareness. But when we "look" at the mind, we observe a single one content, not hidden from this Real Consciousness.

What is hidden and what is shown is what the mind hides and shows to itself. What it hides from itself, it names as "unconscious;" what it shows to itself, it calls as "conscious." However, there is no such thing as "unconscious mind," "subconscious" and all that "blah-blah-blah." All these separations are created by the mind. Actually, there is nothing in the mind hidden from this Real Consciousness. Consciousness is self-effulgent!

Just as the Moon cannot hide itself from the Sun, the mind and its content cannot hide from Consciousness. It is so because Consciousness is where everything appears and disappears. The content of the mind is only imaginary, connected to time, without any material, substantial reality. The mind’s content, be it from ten years or ten million years ago, is all imaginary, known by this Consciousness that, by the way, ignores it as it is not Real.

By understanding this, you can ask the proper question. The question you have is: "How can I get rid of this hidden content that shows itself as a trauma or an illness?" Trauma and disease, like the body, are only imaginary appearances within time. So, the first thing to be understood is this: do not give reality to what has no reality. Trauma and disease are appearances linked to another appearance (body), and both are illusory.

The other thing is that nothing is hidden from this Consciousness and, if this is so, That is present now. So, what hinders it from “coming to light” and disappear? The strong identification with this illusion called "reality of the mind." When one trusts the sense of “me” is real, when this is validated, this remains unchanged. Only that hinders all this content from being volatilized at the light of Consciousness. That is the diagnosis and the treatment is Meditation; but Real Meditation! This present moment is important, since it can open up a door to this timeless moment, to Consciousness.

So, what is the treatment? This detached, unintended observation, not involved with what happens now. When it happens, there is no way for the experiencer, the egoic mind itself, to be structured and to remain hidden. So, all this egoic content is revealed in this present moment.

You bring nothing from this or other lives. When we deal with this matter of time, we are dealing with an illusory question, because there is no time. To Consciousness, everything is present now. So, the only thing needed here and now is to not identify with the experience. I call this as Meditation!

All this content can reveal itself and be volatilized, be burned and disappear, because it entails no reality at all, except this "reality" upheld by the illusion of the egoic mind, through the idea of an experiencer within the experience. This requires some Attention!

Are you getting this? The diagnosis was given and now the treatment is being handed: there is no experiencer here and now! Whatever is appearing in the mechanism (body-mind) is not to an experiencer. When that is accepted, there comes the room to allow the hidden to appear.

* Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Campos do Jordão city, Brazil, on September 16th, 2017. First published in Portuguese on May 13rd, 2018. For further information about our meetings, click here.

Non-Duality is the Realization of Reality

Everybody is always searching for something, and that is why you end up in meetings like this one. It is quite interesting because, at the same time you have strong ideas about who you are, you believe something special will provide you happiness, peace or the answer to that search.

If I ask the question “who are you?” to any person, it will be answered from the standpoint of the person’s history he or she believes to have. This person will end up describing what he or she has lived in the past or what he or she dreams to accomplish in the future. The person will also be able to find a story about the role he or she is playing in life as a father, a mother, as someone who has just started a business up, who is working hard to get some results… He or she will literally tell a story about the past or the future.

You, like anyone else, are not interested in what is present now. You are always interested in what happened already or in what is going to happen. You cannot tell me anything about yourself now. You do this based on an idea about the past or future project.

What I am saying is that every person lives a story created by memory, by imagination, that is, by thought. People say: “I am a businessman,” “I am a doctor,” “I am a lawyer,” or “I am a spiritual seeker.” Some people are interested in things of this world, others are interested in the things out of it, and I keep on asking: “Who are you?” It is not what you were or what you intend to be, but who are you now! It is not the story you can tell me about who you believe to be or who you want to be. I keep on asking: “Who are you now?”

It seems everyone is living like this, just with a belief, with an idea. I call this “image” as the image of who you believe to be. This “image” is the one in conflict, in trouble, unhappy, going through several ways of search. So, you may ask anyone on the street, anyone you meet, what they are looking for. They will say they are looking for popularity, power, love, acceptance, understanding, happiness in a relationship, in a marriage... People get married to be happy, but they find out they are not yet, so they start expecting the husband or wife to change. They are pretty sure that when the husband or wife changes, when he or she stops with "those things," they will be happy.

There is always that hope, the search for something, for what people call as “peace realization” or “happiness realization.” This idea of happiness and peace is based on some achievement, on some external accomplishment. Isn’t like that? “I have little money, but when I have more money, I will be ‘happy’," “In this marriage, things failed, but who knows about the next one…”

Do you follow this? Isn’t that simple? That search is based on the idea about who you believe to be, on the idea about how others and the world around you are, on the idea about what needs to be changed, set, adjusted or achieved.

Someone who sees him or herself as a spiritual person is looking for something else, something outside the world, maybe an altered state of consciousness, some kind of transformation or an Enlightenment experience. Everyone is looking for something but notice this search takes several forms. It seems people are looking for different things, but what they are ultimately looking for is actually to live without fear, without suffering, without conflict, that is, in Happiness, in Love, in Peace.

They can even ignore what they are searching for, but it is something inside, and not outside themselves. However, the mind says That is outside, and there starts everything, there starts the confusion because of the idea of future, of time, of fulfillment through external accomplishments.

So, notice that you were conditioned and programmed. You are following your parents’ lead, who followed your grandparents’ lead, who followed your great-grandparents’ lead… Everybody lives this model, this craziness! I name it as “craziness” because it actually wards you off from your very own purpose. If your purpose is Happiness and you are working under the mind’s direction and its interests, projects, longings and dreams, always connected to what is outside, you are in a crazy movement, since you are forgetting What you are or who You are now by creating an ideal future.

You want to find Happiness tomorrow, but that "tomorrow" never comes. If you do not know the Truth about yourself now, here, and you follow this crazy movement of the mind in the pursuit of external things, you are truly keeping yourself away from the real possibility of Realizing the Divine Truth, the Truth that You are, the Truth You bring within yourself, What is innate, your own Being.

So, when you long for the next moment believing it would bring you something better or greater, you are just perpetuating the continuity of the egoic mind in its old movement of desires and fears. Some are in a so-called "spiritual search" and may think they are in a better condition than others, because they are pursuing Non-Duality, non-dual Truth. However, the expression “non-dual” itself points out That, which is already present, here and now, within this experience, this moment, right now.

So, even this search for Non-Duality is still a great illusion, as This is not a goal, an objective, something to be achieved. Non-duality is the Realization of Reality, of Life as It is, as It shows itself at this moment, here and now. It is not external or in the upcoming moment. The Divine Reality is a present thing! It is not an external achievement, but rather the Realization of What is present here and now.

Only That can pose an end to this quest, break this whole fantasy that you would be happy when someone or something changes or when something external is achieved. If Reality is present, if Truth is non-dual, if there is no separation between You and Reality, then Life is perfect as It is, everything is in the right place, nothing is missing.

Then, the question arises: “But what about this conflict, all this confusion, suffering, desire, fear and search that I feel inside?” The point is you are talking about the movement of the mind, you are not talking about You. In Yourself, there is no search, but in the mind, there are thousands! There are thousands of things to be solved yet! In Yourself, there is no problem, but the mind is full of problems! In Yourself, there is no anxiety, fear, suffering, conflict of any kind, but in the mind all this is present all the time!

The mind is bombarding you with mistaken notions, with beliefs, making you believe in things, making you believe in this division between good and evil, between truth and illusion, between sadness and joy, between peace and war. The mind is producing this conflict, this duality, and you have lived within this, this is what you have trusted in. It became your model of life. What you call as "life" concerns a story you tell about who you believe to be within that model..

*Online meeting transcription originally held on August 5th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on September 19th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

Self-knowledge: The Recognition of the Real Self

Satsang shows us the importance of devotion and self-knowledge. Self-knowledge does not mean the knowledge of the “me,” of this false “self.” We apply this word "self-knowledge" to refer to True Knowledge, to the recognition of the Real Self, which is the Being. And this "True Knowledge" is the unknown. This is what enables us to achieve this Completeness, this Ultimate Truth about ourselves.

So, this path of self-inquiry, this journey, implies a total rejection to the illusion of the egoic mind, to all our usual mental activity, even the noblest ones. You need to abandon this illusion. The egoic mind is pure illusion. This is what you are in this meeting for.

Those who have fully realized how fruitless is this search for Happiness, for Truth, for God's Blessing and Grace within this mental world, within this world of duality, can undertake on this returning journey, can turn back to the Source through self-inquiry and devotion, and so find out the Heart is the place where the Truth is settled. You realize That within yourself, going beyond the mind, beyond the illusion of this false “me.” Then, Meditation becomes full comprehension of this devotion and surrender to the Truth; and you can slowly undertake on this return, this journey to discover yourself, to discover What You are, the Truth About Yourself. When you find out how counterproductive is this pursuit for the Truth in this dual world, you are ready for that moment.

The world of names, forms, images and appearances is part of this dream. This is the known world, the mind-thought’s world. And the egoic mind, in its dreams, moves within this world. In India, they call it as Avydia, that means ignorance: when the egoic mind assumes names and forms, separating itself from Reality as an entity, as someone present here and now. This is illusion, ignorance, Avydia. Your entire vision of the world is Avydia; the specific view of a separate entity. You are not before Reality; you are mistaking yourself for the mind, and so your entire vision is based on duality, separation.

Thought has no truth whatsoever. Thought is only imagination of names and forms, within what is known. If this illusory identity is not certain that Happiness, Peace and Freedom are not to be found outside, illusion will persist. Truth lies in what is unknown and not in what is known. All your desires are limited by what is known. You must know the need for ceasing what is known.This is the information provided to you in this meeting: to know you need to know nothing, absolutely anything!

This is the paradox of the Truth. You are full of knowledge, full of known things and therefore full of desires. If you are not fully convinced that such Happiness is not to be found in the world of objects, how will Liberation become available for you to reach it, to realize it?

This perfect Happiness, this complete Freedom, this total Love is the nature of the true Self, the nature of the Being. So, your only truthful desire is for Real Happiness. To yearn for Happiness is quite a truthful thing. Every person wishes Happiness, and there is no problem in that; this is what everyone honestly seeks, although not being aware of it. The problem lies in the search for this desire in objects, in the experience of the mind itself, in what is known.

Therefore, all desires are a yearning for the Self. However, when this quest is headed for objects, it concerns the egoic mind, and that is the problem, because it concerns duality, the illusion of separation. For this reason, it is of fundamental importance to understand the real nature of the desire. So, desire can end when the mind returns to the Source. This way, the mind leaves behind objects, dream, illusion, duality. Avydia ends and then you are back home.

The truth of the desire is the search for God, the search for the Truth, the search for the true Self. When it is headed for the objects, the egoic sense, the sense of duality, the separatist mind appears. Everyone desires and seeks Happiness. The pursuit of Happiness is born of this desire for self-encounter. Even those who claim themselves as not God believers are searching for Happiness, and therefore, for God, for Themselves, yearning for the Truth.

There is only God everywhere, God searching for Himself. When God searches for Himself, the game begins.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on November 15th, 2017 on Paltalk app - First published in Portuguese on January 2nd, 2018. For further information about the meetings, :click here.

My recommendation is the art of Meditation!

You need to go beyond the mind, and then you will be free from the illusion of duality, which maintains this conflicting separation inside yourself, this constant fight in the pursuit of something, to get rid of pain through pleasure, to get rid of evil through good, to get rid of error through non-error, to get rid of death through life.

This duality, this division, this separation is a fiction, produced by thought. The mind inside yourself is producing that. It is not the Truth about Yourself, it is the “truth” about the mind. While you mistake yourself for the mind, this will be your “truth,” although not being your Truth. You will see this as true as it is all you know.

My recommendation is the art of Meditation! Meditation begins through the disidentification from this model, breaking this bias, this psychological bias for continuity. Few people are willing This! This means absolute and unconditional Freedom, but the “person” is not interested in That. Your “sense of person” is interested in achievements, in acquiring, in achieving a new thing. So, this movement towards the upcoming moment is constantly happening – a false illusory movement, of pure psychological imagination. But if you are interested in Freedom, It needs to be real, and It is real only when unconditional. All of this needs to disappear! All this appreciation for the story of the character you believe you are needs to disappear!

An actor playing a role in a play will need to give up that character later. There, in that role, in that scenic representation, he or she is a very useful character. But the actor is not that character! After that scene, he or she needs to give up the character, otherwise it will be a serious trouble! If the actor keeps on mistaking him or herself for the character represented on stage, if he or she “takes it to home,” it will be a problem since he or she will not be able to adjust the character to the so-called “real life.” This is very simple to understand!

Actually, you still do not really understand this, although it seems to be understanding what I am pointing out here. The truth is you are also just a character and you take it with you everywhere. You mistake yourself for it when you say you are a teacher, a mother, a father, a lawyer, a businessman, a military man, a doctor. You are constantly mistaking yourself for this character and forgetting the Truth about who You are.

Then, what we call as “ego-identity” is the story of this character you believe you are. For example, these thoughts going on your head concern that character, they have nothing to do with what You are. You have no thoughts. You are pure Consciousness! You have no history to share, no memories to remember, no imaginations to create a psychological future for yourself, because you are Consciousness!

Consciousness is the “actor” and the character is this false identity with friends, enemies, happy, unhappy, with desires to fulfill and fear of losing things. So, the character’s life is a drama. Sometimes a thriller, at other times a comedy or a romance (this thing we name as “love” in relationships), and all of this is so unsatisfactory, so incomplete, so conflicting because the mind is behind this project, frequently idealizing something better than what is happening now, here, in this experience, in these relationships. Therefore, drama and conflict are always present.

So, no matter how hard you try, whatever you do will still be within this drama, it will be part of it, of this project engendered by this false identity you believe to be. In fact, you cannot say who you are because you are mistaking yourself for all this drama, for this whole project of the “person,” of the character.

You have a work ahead of you. Do not worry; you have a lifetime to do it! Some people here will have another five, fifty or seventy years ahead... This is the time you have, and your job is to realize That, to verify This, to become aware of That! You were born just for That! You were not born to play and get involved in this drama. This drama is part of the character’s story, and your real purpose is to find out the Truth beyond that.

Most people die as "people." They are born as "people" and die as "people." They are born within a drama because birth is a great drama indeed; it is the first drama of all - it is not easy to be born! Everyone is born in confusion, in some sort of situation, and then life goes on in that drama. You are here to discover something beyond that birth!

The point is that the character is born within this drama, within this confusion. Your Divine Nature, your Essential Nature does not know that birth. That is a story the mind is telling you about who you are, and you start to believe it as soon as this drama begins. In the first few months, you already start to believe in all that, and some spend their entire lives only identified with this story, with this character, living this drama. Therefore, the vast majority is born, grows up, becomes an adult and then dies... but the illusion goes further!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on August 5th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on September 26th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.