I want to draw your attention today, here, within this meeting, in these few minutes, to something very important, very important!
There is something that has a deep meaning here. Here, I am referring to the importance of discovering what listening is. In general, we are listening without hearing. You know when you talk with a friend and, in fact, he is interested in what he has to say that he does not listen to and vice versa? Or you are so interested in saying something that you don't pay attention to what he says?
We, human beings, have this propensity, and it is very strong in each of us. We don't know how to listen. We are so interested in what we already know or what we already bring that we fail to understand what the other person has to say. So, listening requires Inner Silence. We don´t know this Inner Silence.
So, it seems to me that this is one of the great obstacles that we face here, with which we are confronted. We are communicating something to you that requires Inner Silence for Understanding. Without this Inner Silence, inside, this Understanding is impossible; if, while listening to what we have to say here, what we are saying, internally you go “I agree”; “no, I disagree”; “no, that’s not how I think”; “no, but that’s not what I read in so-and-so’s book” ...
These internal interpellations, these internal dialogues, going on inside you, prevent you from listening. This subject, in particular, requires your heart to be fully involved in order for there to be an approach. Another difficulty here is that the word has, for each of us, a different meaning. Every word in us, within each one of us, carries an emotion, a feeling and a very particular sensation.
So, when we are in front of a lecture, we are not, in fact, listening to what is being said there, because, internally, we are editing that, making cuts, accepting some things and rejecting others.
And what we accept, even so, a good part of these words, as they carry this particular background for each one of us, we interpret them as we wish, we interpret them as we want.
So, there is no such thing as this beauty of listening, this beauty of hearing, we don't know what hearing is. Another situation within this issue of listening to someone or listening to a speech like this is that, in addition, we are all the time trying to adjust everything that we hear to something that we already know and that internally we had already accepted. So, when we hear something that doesn't match that, we reject it. This way of approaching speech like this is something disastrous.
We need to learn the art of listening and experience what is being put here. If you experience it, it confirms for you whether it is real or not, but it is only through experiencing that it becomes possible and not when you are already in a judgmental, comparing, evaluating, measuring stance. This is completely contrary to beauty, to the art of listening. When you go to a lecture or when you go to a conference, when you go to a seminar, you listen and you take notes. Your intention is to put that into practice later.
Here, I want to invite you to experience while we speak. For example: is it possible to find out what listening is? Yes, and this is here and now… listening without that inner background, inside, that interprets, that judges, that compares, that clings to some words emotionally, gets upset with others… So, that emotional element and that intellectual element of comparison, judgment, evaluation, is something that really prevents us from listening.
There is an element in you that is capable of hearing without that background: that is possible when there is that Attention, that Mindfulness. As you experience each word, as well as the space between those words, in that direct experiencing, there is no such sense of “I.” It is this sense of “I” that judges, compares, evaluates, emotionally gets attached to something or emotionally rejects others while the speech is going on.
When there is this Attention to listen, and it is complete, in that instant, there is no such background. It is something similar to hearing a bird singing. There’s a bird sitting on that tree and it’s singing. You just listen, and then this background of knowledge comes in; and when it appears, you stop listening to the bird. Now you are listening to your ideas, you are listening to your past experiences, your own memory, your own knowledge. At that moment, you stopped listening to the bird. This is an example.
Stay with what you hear and what you see... but there is no background to evaluate, to judge, to compare, to make an interpretation of knowledge about that experience. It is this experiencing that is direct “hearing”: what the bird is, the colors, its appearance and its song. So, there is the look, but there is no “someone” in that look; there is hearing, but there is no “someone” in that hearing.
So, approaching these lines here… I advise you to approach it that way. Maybe you're getting in touch with everything we say here on the Channel for the first time. Perhaps you could say that it becomes very difficult because you don't have prior knowledge about it. In reality, it’s much easier for you to listen without prior knowledge, as long as you don't take what you're hearing here and compare it to what you believe you know or what you internally already know. In general, we don't do it in that way, that way of listening, we don't know how to appreciate life in that listening without “someone” listening, in that look without “someone” looking.
And here Something beyond the egoic mind, this mental consciousness, is revealed. Egoic consciousness, mental consciousness, is based on all experience, all knowledge, all remembrances, all memory acquired over all these years. This created a background. From that background, you are living your life. So, your contact with that moment is always a contact based on the past experience; that is, there is always that element of the “I,” of the ego, of that mental consciousness, to come across this instant, this present moment.
Here, I want to focus on the importance of the art of listening. And, here, to listen or hear is you fully and completely listening to what is there. Listening to this instant, this moment, whatever it is presenting… You listen to it without the background, without the “I.” Clearly, this requires some internal work. We are very fast, quick in judging, in comparing, in evaluating, in measuring, based on this background of conditioning, within this experience of the present moment. So, whatever is appearing, we are always judging, comparing, evaluating, accepting or rejecting.
The subject here with you is the beauty of this listening, this hearing to Life, the Totality of Life.
So, that Real Attention is effortless, it doesn't require “someone” to make any move with the experience. In other words, there is no experiencer within experience, there is no listener within listening, there is no observer in observation, there is no intervention of thought as a background of knowledge to make an interpretation of experience: this is mindfulness. This Mindfulness is something very intimate with the art of Meditation. And here, Meditation is being aware of this instant, this moment, whatever is presenting. That “I” element, the “me,” the ego, that background of inner conditioning is not there.
We don't know how to deal with life, because we want to deal with life; we don't know how to deal with problems, because we want to deal with problems. There is no “someone” to deal with problems! We don't have a solution for problems; we don't have a real escape route for problems, but that’s what we've done.
Everything that presents itself in our lives presents itself as an instant, as a moment. This moment can be challenging and, based on this internal background, this becomes a problem, because if we reject this experience because it is painful, unpleasant, is not what we expected it to be, then this becomes a problem. And for this problem, there is no solution, because this problem is present precisely because of this resistance, this way of interpreting this experience, of rejecting what is being shown here.
Life presents itself in a challenging way. Incidents happen, disasters happen, death happens, losses happen. Situations that happen to us can have a very particular and personal interpretation for us, for each one of us. This produces feelings of pain, anguish, sadness, fear. This constitutes an unsolvable problem, because what is present here, at this moment, is a resistance to this experience.
Follow what we're saying: what makes someone sad won't necessarily make someone else sad. Our experiences are very particular and our way of reading each experience is very particular to each of us. And why does this happen? Because the conditioning background in us is very personal.
So, what constitutes a problem for someone, for another does not affect, it is not a problem; the other sees it as a situation. I'll give you an example: when you lose a loved one, it’s a pain for you, but for your friend, it’s a difficult situation you're going through. But it doesn't affect him psychologically, emotionally, because he’s your friend, he doesn't have that loved one as someone very close to him, so it doesn't touch him. The problems are for us very personal, very particular, they do not reside in what happens, but in the interpretation of what happens to each one of us, in particular. This is how we interpret this experience.
What is listening? It’s approaching the experience without that psychological background, without that particular “I.” Then it is possible to deal with the situation, with the challenge, without the problem.
So, realize what we're saying: when the problem is there, there’s no solution, even if you're running away from it, which is what we've been doing. We have several escape mechanisms for problems, but notice: when you run away, you don't solve the problem. There is a temporary forgetfulness of the problem, but that shows us that the problem had no solution, only you have a personal, particular forgetfulness of that situation, of that given situation. But if it’s a problem, it’s there.
So, I'll reiterate this here again: no problem for you has a solution! You can run away from the problem or you can look for the solution to the problem, and when it seems that the solution has arrived, what has happened is that, temporarily, you have been psychologically free of that personal implication, that personal relationship with that experience. Then, apparently, the problem disappeared.
So, realize what we are saying. For problems, there is neither solution nor escape that is effective. You run away and, a while later, it comes back, it may even have a different format, but the problem is still there. So, neither the escape nor the solution. But it is possible to approach the present experience free of the problem. When you are free of the sense of “I” present in that experience, that’s when there really is no problem. It is not the escape, nor is it the solution, there is simply no problem.
So, this Mindfulness of what is happening here, in this moment, requires tremendous energy, tremendous willingness to look without the “I,” to look without the ego, to listen without the ego.
Experiencing is only possible without the ego. When there is experiencing, there is no experiencer; when there is hearing, there is no listener; when there is observing, there is no observer; when there is feeling, there is no one in that feeling. In us, it’s all mixed up – in that sense of the ego, the “I.” The illusion is you feeling it, it’s you seeing it, it’s you hearing it, it’s you experiencing it. When there is Attention, Mindfulness, what prevails is Something beyond that personal consciousness, which is mental consciousness, which is egoic consciousness.
So, in this Mindfulness, there are no problems, there are no dilemmas, conflicts, contradictions, suffering, because the sense of “I,” of the ego, of the “me” is not particularizing the experience in order to not like it, to reject it, to suffer it... Then there is no problem.
In general, we are always particularizing the experience in order to extract something from it for self-fulfillment, for pleasure, for satisfaction, for that “me.” This is how it has happened in our lives. We are always living in the “I,” in the ego, in the “me.”
So, whatever is going on in life is for that “me,” for that “I,” for that ego. Some things are good and some things are bad, some I like and some I don't. So, we live in this like, dislike, pleasure and pain, psychologically, internally.
This is how we are living this so-called “my life.” So, this “our lives” are narrow, limited, particular, within a circle, which is the circle of the known.
The approach of Self-awareness, the approach of the Revelation of your Being, of the Reality that You are, is the approach of That which is outside the known and, therefore, outside this personal and particular vision of interpretation, of judgment, of evaluation.
The beauty of Self-realization – some call it God Realization – is that What is present here is the One Reality. That One Reality is not the person, it is the Presence, Pure Presence, Pure Consciousness; it is not the sense of “I,” it is Pure Presence, Pure Consciousness, the Reality of God, in this expression, expressing itself here and now.
So, whatever is appearing is seen within this Singularity, this Oneness, this Non-Duality, because there is no “I.” So, this approach to Mindfulness is possible when there is Self-awareness. Self-awareness is the observation of all this internal and external movement. Internally: thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, beliefs – to observe this without putting an identity present in this situation, in this experience, internally; and externally: the contact with Life as It shows itself, without a present identity particularizing that experience for this “me,” for this “I.” This is the Real, True approach of what I call Self-awareness here on the Channel.
This is not according to psychology, according to philosophy, according to books. Here, the word Self-awareness has perhaps a slightly different meaning: it is becoming aware of the Reality of “non-I.” A thought arises: there is no thinker; a feeling arises: it is a feeling, there is no one who feels; an emotion is possible without that emotional one, the sense of an “I” present, because it is a thought, a feeling, an emotion. This is a phenomenon of this mechanism, of this organism. The sense of a present “me,” a present ego, a present identity, doing something is another thing. That’s what this approach of yourself, through self-observation, shows you.
Then, self-observation is the start, it is the beginning of Self-awareness. And when there is Self-awareness, it is there because of that Mindfulness, and that Mindfulness reveals Something beyond all that, which is Meditation, which is your Natural State, free from the “I,” from the ego, from that “me.”
That’s why I invited you, right at the beginning of the speech, to follow the speech without an idea, without a belief, without a judgment, without a concept; just listen. You can see a bird without judging, without naming, without any idea, in that listening and in that looking at that bird perched on that branch.
So, you can also approach these speeches and discover what is being put here, which, of course, is Something beyond the word itself, beyond what is said here, beyond any thought that is present, beyond any feeling, sensation, or perception. Something beyond this, is the presence of Meditation.
Then, through self-investigation, you access Self-awareness; in Self-awareness this Mindfulness is revealed – we have just told you what it is. And, here, the word “Mindfulness” also has a different meaning, here within the Channel. You don't take a course of mindfulness, you don't study it with someone else, you don't learn it from books, you find out in yourself what Mindfulness is. This is the result of true Self-awareness.
Just as True Meditation is not the practice of meditation, which is so often spread – the well-known meditation or the various meditation practices. Here, Meditation is the Awareness of the Reality of What is here when the sense of “I” is not, then That which is nameless, the Reality of God, is revealed. This is Nameless, it is Indescribable! It is not a sensation, it is not an experience, it is not an “I” feeling, experiencing, it is exactly the absence of the sense of “I.” Then, this Divine Reality is revealed, the Reality of God, which is the Reality of your Being; it is when you are free in the sense of this “me,” this “I,” this “you” that thought says you are.
So, That which is present is the One Reality present in all manifestations. The Only Reality present is God or The Nameless or The Indescribable or That which is beyond time, whatever name you choose to give to That which is the Reality of your Being, which is Love, which is Peace, which is Bliss which is Freedom. OK?
This is the subject that we deal with here on this Channel. If this is something that makes sense to you, leave your “like,” subscribe to the Channel… I have always reminded you: we have online and also face-to-face meetings and retreats, where we work with you. OK?
And then, here’s the invitation and until our next meeting here!
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