These meetings, in Satsang, are the greatest opportunities you have to approach What You are. Everyone lives completely in sleeping state. Freedom is not possible; Happiness is not possible when we do not know who we are. Everything the mind knows is part of the time, and thought creates time. Your whole story is what thought can report; therefore being part of time. What is part of time is not eternal, is not beyond itself. You need to find out What is beyond time. What is beyond time is your True Nature, the Source of permanent Happiness, of unconditional Freedom.
Satsang means "to encounter the Truth," and Truth is What is beyond the dream. All that everyone seeks is Happiness. The pursuit of Love is the pursuit of Happiness. The pursuit of Freedom is the pursuit of Happiness. The pursuit of Peace is the pursuit of Happiness. Peace, Love and Freedom: this is the Nature of Being, the Nature of Consciousness, your True Nature. It does not matter what you accomplish, since without the Realization of what You are, you live in misery. It does not matter if you are famous, wealthy, if you have beautiful children, a beautiful wife, a beautiful husband, if you live in a beautiful house, if you have a beach house, drive an expensive car… All of this is very comfortable and quite desirable. However, if you do not know who You are, if you still believe you are going to die, you are going to leave it all behind, you are quite miserable.
Only when you recognize your True Nature, when you recognize you were never born and cannot die, you are before Happiness, before What is Eternal, What is timeless. Truth is your Being, and That is God! God is not in heaven, in mosques, in temples, in churches. God is here and now as your Real Nature, as your own Heart. This is His temple. The only church God attends. Everything the mind has created, the huge cathedrals, the huge churches, beautiful places where sacred images are placed, means nothing to Him. The only Place where God lives, visits, all the time, from where He never leaves, is your Heart. If you do not know who You are, you do not know God. You can go to all these places, but you do not know God.
To know God is to be God! When you can see Him in Yourself, being What You are, without any separation, then you can look at everywhere and see God is everywhere; you will see all places are God's abode.
So, God lives in churches and cathedrals, but God also lives in a small house and in a cave. God is this Presence everywhere, but you can only know that, experience that, when you know Yourself, when you are apart from the mind, from the sense of separation, from the ego, from this miserable state of conflict that thought produces, creating every kind of division, every kind of enmity, since along with the sense of separation, there is conflict and war.
When you are Here, in this unique Place, that is God's Place, everything is in the right place, since there is no conflict, so there is no war, no suffering, no attachment. Your Natural State is Pure Consciousness, which is Meditation. Meditation is not what you do for a few moments when you are seated, removing thoughts from your head, and breathing in a certain way... All of this can be good for you – there are studies proving the importance of meditation practice, as it calms down, relaxes, brings physical, emotional well-being; but that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about Real Meditation, which is to be here and now, without conflict, without ego, without fear, without desire, without suffering, without choice. Meditation is God's Vision, with eyes open or closed, walking, eating, talking, reading... It has nothing to do with the body posture, but with the heart posture. It is your heart that has to be "seated," not your body.
For example, right now, even speaking, this State is Natural. This is Real Meditation, Realization, Enlightenment, Awakening. You do not separate them! If you go to a Zen Master and ask if there is any separation, the Master is very clear about it: walking is Meditation, talking is Meditation, eating is Meditation, sleeping is Meditation...
When you are identified with the egoic mind, you are not in Meditation; you are in a state of sleep, of identification with what is temporal. You are identified with thoughts, with emotions, with sensations, with this "person's story" you believe you are. Your name and all the story that comes along with that until now, none of this is You. Your mind is not You, the body is not You. All of this is borrowed – Nature has lent you all of this, and you are mistaken yourself for them.
Liberation, that is Meditation, is Wisdom. When there is Wisdom, there is no illusion. So, this identification with body and mind, and also with the world, with experiences, all of this "vanishes," since none of this is Real, none of this is Wisdom. Truth, Unconditional Freedom, Love, Consciousness, Presence: This is Wisdom! You are a Sage because God is the Sage. There is no difference between You and God!
The Bible says that God made human beings in His image and likeness. When you mistake yourself for the body, you lose this "God's image and likeness." This has nothing to do with the body! Your body was made in the image and likeness of your parents. The image of God, the likeness of God, is this Consciousness. Some call This as "Spirit." I do not use this expression since the word "spirit" in our culture is linked to the idea of identity within the body, and that is not real. There is no one inside or outside the body.
The Only Reality causing all these multiple appearances is God's Reality. There is only God! Differences are all produced by the mind. So, you see a lot of spirits, a lot of bodies, materialized and dematerialized ones, but these are all creations of the mind, they are not real. The Only Reality is What is immutable, It is Where everything appears, assumes a provisory shape and disappears. What appears and disappears is not Real. God is the Only Reality and everything is His abode. God lives in every appearance – that's the joke. It is like a movie screen. Imagine a movie screen without any film... It is not funny! God is the screen and also the images on the screen, this world and the other world, but the other world is as unreal as this one.
People ask me about this issue of death and I have been telling them that only those who are alive can die. Who assures you are alive? Who guarantees you were born? Every night you have a dream. On the first night, you dream you are married and have several children. The next night, you dream you are single and do not care about girlfriends. On the third night, you dream you are a monkey. Every night you dream about a story and a different character. There is an interesting thing about all these 3 nights or every night you dream: you never have any doubt that you are there. The story may be different, the body may be different, but the only thing you are sure about is that you are present. The "I am" does not change, but rather the stories: "I am" a gorilla, single, married, a man, a woman, a monkey, a butterfly… "I Am" points out What is Immutable.
Your only problem – and this is the cause of all the suffering, all the misery – is that you leave this "I Am," then you start crying because of the story. A son dies and you cry, the woman leaves you for another man and you cry. You mistake yourself for the story. If you are rich, you worry about losing what you think you have. If you are poor, you want to have what you think you can get. So, when you mistake yourself for the story, no matter if you have or lack something, you are always worried. When you have something, you have to keep it, to protect it. If you have a woman, you cannot let anyone take her from you, so this gives you huge worries.
Story means constant suffering, in this illusion "I am the body," in this world with the things that "I have or would like to have." You have been constantly mistaken yourself for the body. Why? Because you do not know yourself. You do not remain in this "I Am." You want something else and are not Happy. You do not rely on the Existence. You want to do it your own way. You already have too much, but you want to change what you have; you are not happy yet with what you have. Some people marry 5 times! You have a husband, you have a wife, you have something, but that is not enough, you want to change.
So, it is a pretty complicated story, it is quite unfortunate to live in this story. Notice what I am going to say: Being Happy does not require anything! You do not need anything to Be Happy, but everything you believe you have, you are afraid of losing or wishing to have is causing you a problem. I recommend you leave everything, abandon everything, be left with nothing. When I say "nothing," I mean psychologically, being poor inwardly. When you have nothing, then you are a millionaire! Is that clear? True Fullness, True Freedom, True Happiness, is in just Being, Pure Being!
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