If we intend to approach the Truth, if we intend to have this Truth unfolding – I mean the Divine Truth, the Truth of God – if there is this longing within each of us, this longing within each of us, if it is true that we are internally burning for this, if there is a search for God, if this is authentic, genuine, true, then I want, in these minutes that we are going to have together here, to work with you on this.
After all, how does this become possible? How this Truth – not belief – becomes possible. We're even going to start talking about it here, about this belief issue. We have a belief in God, a belief given to us. We have been taught since childhood in our culture to believe in God. Unless you were born in a country where you were not shown this idea, which is the idea of God (as in communist countries), but if you were born in a country where you were shown – here, for example, in Brazil and in several other countries, this has been presented to us since childhood – so, we have a belief, the belief in God. But, along with this belief in God, we have several other beliefs from the culture that we received, from society, from the world that we received.
Can we free our minds from beliefs? That’s the question. Is the mind free, the mind entirely free of all forms of belief, possible? The education we received, the upbringing we received, everything that has been shown to us throughout this entire period of life, of all these years of life that we have had, this has made us people who believe in some things and do not believe in others.
But what are beliefs? Belief is an intellectual thing; it is the result of propaganda. We need to find out for ourselves if we can get our minds free of this propaganda, this merely intellectual formulation, these images that culture has given us. An approach to Divine Truth, which is the Truth of your Being, which is the Reality of God, is not something within belief. Within belief, we have religion with its dogmas, its rituals, its ceremonies, the various practices, and we submit ourselves to all of this for the sake of propaganda, for the sake of belief.
The Truth of God, the Truth of your Being, the Divine Truth, that Supreme Reality, It is independent, It is free. So, it’s not about not believing in God, as in communist countries, or believing in God, as in non-communist countries; it is not a matter of believing or disbelieving, it is a present, experiential Reality, a direct understanding. This direct understanding becomes possible when the mind finds this freedom to no longer hold this or that form of belief, this or that form of idea or concept. Everything that the egoic mind in us has done – and the egoic mind, that mind as we know, within each of us, is the result of culture, of society, of a world – all the mind has done is to produce illusions and to hold onto beliefs and disbeliefs as well. Here, we are working with you to end the illusion of that mind, which is the conditioned mind, which is the credulous mind – it believes in disbelief or it believes in belief.
The conditioned mind is attached to a pattern of behavior, a model of existence, a model of life, within a centering that is the “I,” the ego. So, the person as you see yourself, the person you believe yourself to be, the person you consider yourself to be, carries that conditioned mind. Our minds are trapped in this system, this pattern, this social, cultural, humanist conditioning. So, we carry in our minds every form of conditioning. We have the conditioning of the human race, we have the conditioning of the culture, the conditioning of politics, the conditioning of religion, the conditioning of philosophy, the conditioning of spirituality, and all of this has caused our intellects to be as they are today: trapped, conditioned, already programmed.
Thus, we are always producing and sustaining illusions of all kinds, so there is no such Freedom, we do not have a free mind, a clear, lucid, new mind, a quiet, silent intellect. Our intellect is conditioned, our mind is conditioned, as people we are programmed to speak in a certain way, to feel in a certain way. So, there is nothing new present here and now, because this mind is old, it is the result of thousands and thousands of years of conditioning. This is the “I” pattern, the ego pattern.
It doesn't matter what you've already achieved in this life, when you look at yourself, you realize that all we have in this life is a life full of fear. We are even afraid to lose those achievements. So, fear is something present. No matter what kind of life you have at the moment, what kind of comfortable situation you are living, there is always fear within us, the fear of losing what we have achieved, the fear of growing old, the fear of dying, the fear of being deceived, the fear of being betrayed, the fear of being abandoned; we have the fear of the past, therefore we have different forms of fear, the fear of the future. Fear, for example, is something constant in our lives, so we always have goals to reach to feel more secure, but in that very movement of achieving there is a constant fear of not getting it, of not achieving it, so we feel like insecure creatures, terrified.
We do have moments of satisfaction, fulfillment, peace, joy, and happiness, but we use these expressions “joy,” “peace,” “happiness” in a way that everyone uses. Our “peace” comes and goes, our “joy” is something that comes and goes, our “happiness” is a thing of the moment, at the moment we are happy, the next moment we can be sad. So, within that “I,” that ego, we are always in this inconstancy, in this variation of internal states. We feel good now, but the next moment we are not so good. Things happen and our internal states are varying, they are changing. This is the condition of the “I,” of the ego.
Looking at the truth of what we are, verifying the Truth of our Being, becoming aware of a Reality outside the “I,” outside the ego: this is to realize God, true Happiness, true Peace, true Love, true Freedom, in this life. This is not Something known within the world.
Look at the people around you, they are still full of fears, conflicts, and contradictions. We are in a very complicated, very delicate situation, we live in contradiction. For example, we want something and at the same time we don't want that; we want, but we know that what we want can harm us and even so the desire is still present. So, there is a wanting and a not wanting; intellectually I realize the danger of doing that, of getting that, of achieving that, and yet there is this inner urge of desire. This is conflict, this is contradiction.
Internally, we live as creatures in contradiction. We think one thing and want another; or we want something and we are thinking about the harm that this could cause us. So, we say something, feel something else and do something else. In the ego we live in these states of contradiction, and it doesn't matter how much we've studied, the culture, the living standard we have or the quality of life we've already achieved, we know that all of this can collapse, all of this can disappear. So, fear is present and we cannot deny it. We know that with death, for example, everything disappears. And we are getting old, so we are afraid of old age, we are afraid of illness. This condition of life, if it is clear to each of us that there must be something else outside of this, outside of this life, outside of this pattern common to all, if this is already clear, a speech like this makes a lot of sense to you. We need to realize the Truth of God, we need to realize the Truth of our Being, our Real Happiness. So, this meeting has that purpose.
By discovering the Truth of what goes on inside each one of us, we can go beyond that. By finding out what happens to us, how we've been functioning, what that mind is, what it’s been projecting, how it’s been moving, we can go beyond all that. Is contact with the Divine Reality possible, with the Reality of God, with the Truth of your Being, with What we truly are? This is something possible and present when this society, when this world, when this culture, when all of this is psychologically expurgated from each one of us, then the work of Self-Awareness – and here the work of Self-Awareness is the recognition of the illusion of that movement which this conditioned mind has produced.
Therefore, this contact with the truth of Self-Awareness, this approach to Self-Awareness is what reveals the truth about all of this to you. The truth about that conditioning of the mind shows you the nature and structure of that conditioned mind that is within that program, within that model. The direct understanding of this, the direct revelation of this, the direct realization of this, is this psychological deconditioning, this deprogramming of the ego, of the “I,” of this false identity. That’s the end of that mind that is always producing all kinds of illusions, clinging to all kinds of illusions, all formulations that are merely intellectual, as beliefs are, always giving us an illusory sense of identity here and now, present, separate from life, separate from the other, separate from existence, and separate from God.
Then, only when the mind is purged from all this conditioning content, when all this conditioning dissolves, when all this disappears due to an approach to Self-Awareness, when this sense of “I” is seen creating the illusion of separation, when we become aware that a present thought, a present feeling, an image that arises, the language we use, the way we express ourselves, act, gesture, when we become aware of all this movement, we can become aware of that sense of an “I” that is conditioned, programmed, that is mechanically proceeding in this or that way.
This approach is Self-Awareness. In this approach, the illusion of this “I” is revealed and, therefore, the sense of separation. So, that’s when the mind can go through a transformation, through a change. There is a deconditioning of the mind itself. Something new arises, a new mind, a free mind, an unconditioned mind. We become aware of a Reality outside the mind, outside the “I,” outside the ego, outside this so-called “human culture.” Then, there is a Reality showing itself. It is no longer a belief, a concept. It is no longer a movement of dogmas, rituals, ceremonies, esoteric, so-called “mystical or religious” practices. Now we have the presence of a Religious Life, not a religious “I,” a religious ego, a religious person. Here I refer to a Religious Life, to the presence of Being, which is this Real Consciousness, to the Divine Truth of each one of us, which is the Truth of God. It is no longer a concept, a theory. It is the Reality of God.
So, if you are the one who is working on this in this life, in this existence, if you have already realized that everything we call “life” does not make the slightest sense without this Realization of God, without the Awakening of Consciousness, without this Spiritual Enlightenment, that is our subject here. If you have already realized that a life without the Truth of your Being makes no sense at all, this is our meeting here, this is our purpose here, this is our aim here, we are looking at this.
This meeting has this aim, to investigate ourselves, to look at ourselves, to become aware of the Divine Truth, the Truth of Being and, therefore, Happiness. That requires an end to that conditioned mind, an end to that mind that is constantly creating illusions, sustaining illusions, for example, the illusion of happiness, of happiness in personal achievement. When the wedding happens, when the children are born, when that dream house happens, when something that thought itself imagines in the future comes true, all this is part of that program of a conditioned mind creating illusions. All this needs to end. If this is still very much alive within you, this doesn't make the slightest sense, a talk like that.
This psychological conditioning, this cerebral, mental conditioning – not only cerebral but also mental –, which is the human conditioning, of this sense of “I,” has made us such creatures occupied only in this quest or pursuit of these so-called “external achievements”; or at most, in an idea of an internal achievement that thought itself still projects, too, when we connect to this or that organized religion with its dogmas, rituals, beliefs, and there we settle down and spend thirty, forty, fifty years with those beliefs, then we have an “I,” a religious ego. In fact, what is present is a conditioned ego, still trapped in a mind pattern within this illusion programming, projecting illusions: self-improvement, spiritualization or the Truth of God being found, the direct revelation after a long process of a so-called evolution “spiritual.” So, there are all kinds of beliefs about that, “how I should behave,” “what I should do here in life so that after death I can be in a better place.” There are all kinds of concepts, beliefs, ideas, and imaginations, and all of this is still part of the projection of the “I,” of the very ego, the own ego-identity.
Here we are addressing the end of the ego, the end of the “I,” the end of ego-identity and therefore the end of this illusion. The Reality of your Being, which is the Reality of God, is here and now. A life in Love is here and now, in Freedom is here and now, in this Intelligence is now and here, in this Compassion is here and now. A life free of suffering, free of that sense of egoism, of egocentrism, is here and now. So, the Truth of God no longer shows itself as a set of concepts, ideals, futuristic purposes, it is now revealing itself, the Divine Truth.
That’s our work here with you. Through the Truth of the revelation of Self-Awareness, an approach to the Truth of True Meditation here and now in a practical, experiential way, a State of Being is revealed to you, which is the Being of God. This is the end of the separation between “you and the other,” between “you and life.” That is the true Realization of Happiness, of Love, of Truth, it is the Revelation of the Truth of your Being, it is the Revelation of the Truth of God. OK?
This is the subject here in the channel. If this is something that makes sense to you, please, leave your “like” and subscribe to the channel. I want to remind you: we have our WhatsApp link here in the first comment. We have weekend online meetings, you can join the WhatsApp group and get to know about these online meetings. In addition, we have face-to-face meetings and also retreats. If this is something that makes sense to you, here’s the invitation and we'll see you. Thanks for the meeting and until next time!
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