(bell chiming) - If possible make sure that you're not disturbed while we're here. And just give this time to yourself. Because really meditation in a wider sense just means being with yourself. And everybody should
take time out everyday, even if it's only 10 minutes, to be with themselves. Now you may ask am I not always with myself? Throughout the day? And you might even say I'd rather get away from myself and my usual preoccupations, worries, anxieties, fears. So what does it mean when
I say being with yourself? I don't refer to your usual sense of self, which I call the surface self, that's to do with all
the thinking that goes through your mind throughout the day,
emotions you experience, all the things that happen in your life. Your memories of who you are. In every human being there
is a deeper dimension to who they are. And getting in touch with
that deeper dimension within themselves, that's really what meditation is. And if you've never accessed a deeper dimension in yourself you'll always feel that
something really vital is missing in your life. Even though you may have
achieved many things, on what I call the surface reality, the surface level of your life. Maybe you can, you have recognition, maybe you have wealth, you
can buy whatever you like. And yet, you will notice there's something that seems is still missing, a certain underlying
dissatisfaction or discontent. It may not be there all the time, but it always resurfaces. And many people, I've
met quite a few people who have achieved fame and fortune, and they all told me that after a while, after the initial elation of being suddenly wealthy or famous, recognized as important by the world, and soon the old discontent came back. And a sense of insufficiency. All to do with fear. So no matter what you achieve on the surface level of life, if you haven't found the deeper dimension to who you are, your life is not really fulfilled. And there's so much frustration. The frustration that people
continuously experience in life is not really to do with the imperfection on the
outer level of their life, because on the outer level
things can never be perfect, or never perfect for very long. Things come and go, you lose here, you gain something there,
you lose something here. So the dissatisfaction is not realizing that there is something deeper within you. That is more truly who you are than whatever happens on
the surface of your life. That really is the spiritual dimension. And the deeper self also connects you with the underlying deeper dimension of the universe. Because just like you what we see in this world,
the universe, the world, whatever you call it, it's
on the surface of reality. Under that, and the great
teachers and philosophers since ancient times have
said that, realized it, there is an unseen
dimension underneath that. There is a universal intelligence underneath all the
phenomenon that we experience through the senses. And you are one with that
universal intelligence. And the way to connect with
that universal intelligence that underlies all the manifold, manifestations of life, that continuously unfold
around you, it's miraculous, underlying all that
there is an intelligence, we can call it, there are
other names we can use to talk about it, but it's only in you that you can find it, you
can't find it out there. But once you find it in yourself
you recognize it out there. You can sense that that intelligence, or that consciousness, is in everything. So how, how do you connect with, the deeper level within yourself? It's deeper than thinking,
so you can't get there through thinking about it. It's deeper than the emotions. And yet it's always there. It's always there. And it's not that it's
totally hidden from you, it's that the thinking, the thoughts, the emotions, and the sense perceptions, draw all your attention to themselves so people are kind of hypnotized by those things, especially thoughts, so they no longer can sense the dimension of depths,
because every thought really demands your attention, and you go, you follow
it with your attention. (windy whistling)
(windy whistling) And then leads to another
thought, and another. So every thought is a voice in your head, and you think some things, and you go and you think that's your life. All the thoughts that come and
talk to you about who you are and what other people, who they are. And continuously your
attention is being drawn into that mind activity,
and emotions go with it. And that's the usual
surface sense of self. And it's, it's frustrating
if there's nothing else, everybody has it, has that
surface sense of self, of course, but if there's nothing else
in your life except that, then your life is shallow. And the spiritual dimension is missing. So here we are, because we want to find the dimension of depth within ourselves, and it's already here. We just need to become aware of it; how? Well that's what traditionally
what meditation methods are for, but here I'd
like to suggest to you to just investigate, without actually using
any technique as such, just investigate with your attention, what it means to be yourself. On the most essential level, what does it feel like to be yourself? What is that sense of self? Can you get a taste or a glimpse of that sense of self without
thinking about yourself? How is it possible that you
can even think about yourself and about your life, and all the things that make up your life? What makes that thinking possible? What is the pre-requisite for being able to think? You need to be conscious. If you're not conscious, you can't think. But usually this consciousness is completely absorbed by thinking, and that is what keeps
you on the surface level of reality and yourself. So you only know yourself as defined by your mind. You then have an image of who you are, and really that is what ego
means, in the way we use it. You then have a mental
image, you have a self talk, and you think that's who you are; me. But there is a more fundamental sense of self, underneath all that. And that is your simple sense of presence. So I'm inviting you now to sense that there is more to you than all your thinking. What does it feel like without the thinking to be yourself? What is left when you're not thinking? But you're not falling asleep? Let's see if we can create a little gap in the stream of thinking, to some extent me talking
to you already does that. So if there's a little gap
in the stream of thinking, like now, you go (light whistling) and there is a moment of no thought. But something is there. A sense of presence, or
aliveness, whatever you call it. And so can you sense now at this moment that inherent deeper sense of alive presence? That has nothing to do with your personal history. It has nothing to do with the past, it has nothing to do with the future. It has nothing to do with
your situation in life. Or your name. Or your background. It's beyond all that. So another way of putting it, can you sense that presence? You can't define it, it
has no content, it's just space. Spacious presence. And then you know, in that you know, that you are alive without having to tell
yourself that you're alive. Because the fact that you're
alive is self evident. Because you are conscious. And to say you are conscious is, even that is not absolutely correct, because in essence it's not that you are conscious, but you are consciousness. That strange thing, or no thing, that's the essence of who you are. And sensing yourself as that consciousness also frees you, liberates you, from being completely trapped in your personal sense of self. 'Cause that's still there, on the surface. But now, you can sense that you are actually deeper than that. Now you may notice, that as I speak to you, there are little gaps between words or sentences. Now these gaps are not there to hypnotize you. Because we are here to
dehypnotize you from being totally trapped in your thoughts, and deriving your sense of who
you are from your thinking. It's to bring you to that presence. Pure presence, that's so refreshing, and so revitalizing, to sense yourself as that pure presence. And so, these little gaps in between words or sentences as I speak are very important because you may notice that in those gaps you are not thinking. In those gaps, for example now, you are just present. And that's wonderfully liberating to sense yourself as that presence. Now you may find, occasionally, your mind may come in and say something. It might even feel threatened by this. And there may even be one,
or two, or three of you, who couldn't stand it any longer and they are no longer with us here. But if you're still here, and you can sense that
what I'm saying points to something very important, and you can sense the reality of what I'm talking about, you may have noticed the spiritual dimension does not require belief, because it's to do with experiencing. Knowing directly not believing in something. (water crashing)
