Speaker A
Simply allow your experience to be as it is from moment to moment.
Rupert Spira guides viewers to recognize awareness as the background of all experience, like a screen behind a movie, revealing happiness as our natural state rather than something to seek.
Key Takeaways
- Awareness is the unchanging background of all experience, not a thing within it.
- Happiness is our natural condition and cannot be found in objects or events; it can only be recognized.
- Recognition of awareness requires noticing rather than effortful becoming, though initial effort may be needed.
- Thoughts and feelings can arise freely within awareness without disturbing its openness.
What the video covers
- Spira instructs listeners to allow experience to be as it is and to notice the awareness present in the background of experience.
- Awareness is compared to a screen behind a movie or the space out of which a hologram is made: intimately present with all content yet not limited by it.
- For someone lost in the content of experience, it is useful to begin by suggesting that their essential nature, pure awareness, lies behind experience.
- Recognizing this awareness is described as a matter of noticing and recognition rather than becoming or achieving something.
- The presence of awareness is open and allowing, unaffected by thoughts or feelings that arise within it.
- Happiness is described as the inherent absence of any sense of lack, the constant background of all changing experience rather than an emotion.
- Seeking happiness in objects, relationships, or events implies happiness is absent, which keeps one trapped in the search.
- Spira clarifies that appropriate responses such as saying no to injustice or abuse still arise within this open awareness and are not discouraged.
- Initially some effort may be needed to return to this openness, but over time it becomes established as our natural condition.
- Feeling diminished or aggrandized by others' words is presented as a sign of identification with experience rather than with the open awareness we are.
Chapters
- 00:00Allowing Experience as It Is
- 01:31Awareness as the Background of Experience
- 03:34The Screen and Hologram Analogies
- 07:32Recognition Rather Than Becoming
- 12:38Happiness as Our Natural Condition
- 17:20Ending the Search for Happiness
- 22:30Responding to Injustice Within Openness
- 28:20Feeling Diminished or Aggrandized by Others
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Simply notice the fact of being aware that lies so to speak in the background of experience.
Speaker A
If we allow experience to be as it is, experience leaves us to be as we are.
Speaker A
But nor is it identical with or attached to anything that takes place in experience.
Speaker A
Simply notice the fact of being aware that lies, so to speak, in the background of experience.
Speaker A
In fact, the fact of being aware or awareness itself doesn't really lie behind experience any more than a screen lies behind an image.
Speaker A
The fact of being aware is not separate from anything that takes place in experience.
Speaker A
So for one who is lost in the content of experience, it is legitimate to begin with to suggest that their essential nature of simply being aware or pure awareness lies behind experience.
Speaker A
But nor is it identical with or attached to anything that takes place in experience.
Speaker A
Something out of which the movie is made which does not appear as an object in the movie.
Speaker A
It is, as such, utterly intimate with all experience and at the same time completely free from all experience.
Speaker A
The space is utterly intimately one with the content of the hologram. But it is not qualified, conditioned or limited by it. It is free or independent.
Speaker A
In fact, the fact of being aware, or awareness itself, doesn't really lie behind experience any more than a screen lies behind an image.
Speaker A
which all experience appears intimately pervading every aspect of it. but at the same time free or independent of it.
Speaker A
But just as it is legitimate for one who is lost in the content of a movie to suggest, to begin with, that the screen lies behind it,
Speaker A
Understand, but more importantly, feel yourself as the screen-like presence of awareness behind all experience or the space-like presence of awareness within which all experience takes place.
Speaker A
so for one who is lost in the content of experience, it is legitimate to begin with to suggest that their essential nature of simply being aware, or pure awareness, lies behind experience.
Speaker A
not a matter of becoming. What is the what is the nature of this openness other than that it is present and aware?
Speaker A
In doing so, we draw attention to the fact that there is something that knows our experience which is not itself an experience.
Speaker A
for one who is lost in or identified with the content of experience. It may seem at least to begin with that some effort is required to trace our way back to this openness, our essential self.
Speaker A
Something out of which the movie is made which does not appear as an object in the movie.
Speaker A
So this back and forth between the foreground of experience and the background of ourself will to begin with require some effort.
Speaker A
It would be more accurate, but of course not completely accurate, to suggest that the fact of being aware, or the presence of awareness, is more like the space out of which a hologram is made and in which a hologram appears.
Speaker A
We begin to be established in it and as it. We begin to realize that it is our unnatural condition.
Speaker A
The space is utterly intimately one with the content of the hologram. But it is not qualified, conditioned, or limited by it. It is free or independent.
Speaker A
of thinking and feeling. This presence of awareness that we essentially are is open without resistance to all experience irrespective of its content.
Speaker A
The hologram is a temporary coloring of the space that itself has no color.
Speaker A
I do not mean to imply, of course, that it is not appropriate for a thought or an action to rise up and say no in response to say injustice or abuse or unkindness.
Speaker A
Likewise, rather than suggesting that the fact of being aware or the presence of awareness lies behind experience, it would be more accurate to suggest that it is the medium within which all experience appears, intimately pervading every aspect of it, but at the same time free or independent of it.
Speaker A
This openness could be said to be the the allowing or the welcoming of all experience in referring to it as pure allowing.
Speaker A
Just choose whichever of these two analogies not only makes sense to you intellectually but takes you to your essential nature, the fact of being aware, or the presence of awareness.
Speaker A
This allowing openness is never disturbed or agitated by anything that takes place in experience.
Speaker A
Understand, but more importantly, feel yourself as the screen-like presence of awareness behind all experience, or the space-like presence of awareness within which all experience takes place.
Speaker A
We are free to identify ourselves with these disturbing thoughts and agitated feelings. or to know and feel ourselves as this completely allowing openness.
Speaker A
Understand and feel yourself to be this transparency, this openness, this aware emptiness.
Speaker A
We will feel diminished or argandized by things that people say to us or about us.
Speaker A
Notice that it is not necessary to do anything to become this transparency, this openness, this aware emptiness. It is just a matter of noticing, a matter of recognition, not a matter of becoming.
Speaker A
We simply remain as this inherently peaceful presence. This allowing or welcoming presence does not need anything from experience.
Speaker A
What is the nature of this openness other than that it is present and aware?
Speaker A
This inherent absence of the sense of lack is the experience we know as joy or happiness.
Speaker A
It is the constant factor in all changing experience. It does not need to be manufactured or maintained.
Speaker A
Happiness is not simply one of numerous emotions that alternate one another in our experience.
Speaker A
For one who is lost in or identified with the content of experience, it may seem, at least to begin with, that some effort is required to trace our way back to this openness, our essential self.
Speaker A
It is not an emotion. It is the background of all feelings. That everpresent background may seem to be obscured by our feelings.
Speaker A
And then, through force of habit, we will lose ourselves again in the content of experience.
Speaker A
It is only when we wrongly imagine that happiness is a temporary feeling that we believe that it comes and goes.
Speaker A
So this back and forth between the foreground of experience and the background of ourselves will, to begin with, require some effort.
Speaker A
If we are seeking happiness, we by definition feel that happiness is not present now and that it may be present in the future.
Speaker A
But in time it becomes clear that this transparency, this openness, is what we are. It is not a place in ourselves that we visit from time to time.
Speaker A
To search for lasting happiness is a misnomer. Happiness cannot be found. It can only be recognized.
Speaker A
We begin to be established in it and as it. We begin to realize that it is our natural condition.
Speaker A
If we are searching for happiness or searching for enlightenment which is the same thing.
Speaker A
And by the same token, we realize that to be lost in or identified with the content of experience, which previously seemed to be our natural condition or our natural state, is now seen to require a subtle effort or activity of thinking and feeling.
Speaker A
If any experience still holds the promise of happiness or indeed the promise of disappointment, this again betrays is the fact that our happiness is still invested in objects, substances, activities events relationships etc.
Speaker A
This presence of awareness that we essentially are is open, without resistance, to all experience, irrespective of its content.
Speaker A
And as seeking comes to an end, the everpresent background of happiness shines. But it would be a mistake to attribute the happiness to the object, the substance, or the relationship.
Speaker A
It says yes, so to speak, indiscriminately to all experience, just as the space of a room indiscriminately allows all kinds of objects and activities to exist and take place within it.
Speaker A
I read um a story recently of um 93 year old woman whose husband of 60 years had recently died.
Speaker A
I do not mean to imply, of course, that it is not appropriate for a thought or an action to rise up and say no in response to, say, injustice or abuse or unkindness.
Speaker A
And as they were getting into the lift, the elderly woman said to the nurse, "I love it." "What?" replied the nurse.
Speaker A
But this no, this response of thought or action to an event, arises in the universal yes of awareness, in the unconditional and indiscriminate openness that we essentially are.
Speaker A
Her happiness was prior to experience. It was not dependent upon experience. Liberate objective experience from the impossible task of producing happiness for you.
Speaker A
This openness could be said to be the allowing or the welcoming of all experience. In referring to it as pure allowing, we avoid the danger of objectifying or reifying it as some kind of subtle object or state.
Speaker A
Happiness is our nature. It is not a feeling. When our search for happiness in objective experience comes to an end and our nature of happiness shines, there may be a corresponding relaxation in the body or expansion in the mind. And these will be pleasant
Speaker A
This allowing openness is never disturbed or agitated by anything that takes place in experience.
Speaker A
These side effects will inevitably cease if we equate them with the experience of happiness. We will think that happiness has vanished.
Speaker A
Disturbing thoughts may arise in experience. Agitated feelings may arise, but they arise in this aware openness.
Speaker A
Do not expect the world to bring you happiness. Bring your happiness to the world.
Speaker A
We are free to identify ourselves with these disturbing thoughts and agitated feelings, or to know and feel ourselves as this completely allowing openness.
Speaker A
qualities. And if other thoughts and feelings arise or you find yourself engaged in other activities and relationships that do not arise on behalf of this openness and its qualities, then rather than pursuing them, investigate them.
Speaker A
If we identify ourselves with every passing thought and feeling, we will be easily hurt or upset.
Speaker A
This guided contemplation will come to an end. But our inherent openness, this allowing welcoming presence never comes to an end.
Speaker A
We will feel diminished or aggrandized by things that people say to us or about us.
Speaker A
So that this presence flows out from the inside of us and communicates itself, shares itself, celebrates itself in all of our activities and relationships.
Topics:meditationawarenesshappinessnon-dualityRupert Spiraconsciousnessself-inquirymindfulnesspresenceguided meditation
