Jenny Beal Hi Deborah
Here is some information from Rupert about feelings. First, a transcript of some advice to someone who felt intense fluctuations of feeling ranging from divine love to deep depression. I think what he says applies equally to less extreme feelings. This advice relates to the vedantic path – the first stage of the spiritual path:
“One of the purposes of these kinds of intense fluctuations of experience from positive to negative, desirable to undesirable, is to wean us off our preferences for a particular type of experience. To wean us off our prejudices that the experiences of divine love are the real spiritual experiences and the experiences of deep depression are the really unspiritual experience. So the value of this kind of fluctuation is to push us a little bit deeper than just the relative pleasure or pain of the experience. What is common to both experiences? Because if this divine love is temporary, it is not what you really want. It may be very pleasant when it’s present, but do you want odd moments of divine love or do you want lasting peace and contentment? You want lasting peace and contentment. So if we are looking for lasting peace and contentment in an intermittent or temporary experience, even if that experience is divine love, we’re looking for it in the wrong place. We’re looking for it in some temporary form of the mind. …
You are aware of these ecstatic moments, you are aware of deep depressions, you are aware of the taste of your lunch. The experience of being aware – is it more present in one of those experiences than another? It’s like asking: Is the screen more present in a love story than in a thriller? The screen is equally present. Is the screen conditioned either positively or negatively by the quality of the drama that plays on it?
… It’s not modified in any way by the movie. The experience of being aware is like that. It’s not qualified by experience. It’s not conditioned by experience. It’s absolutely stable. In fact it is the only stable element of experience. And therefore it is the only place to look for stability, for peace. If we look for peace or fulfilment in any other place – in other words in our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our activities – we are by definition, going to be disappointed.
So this fluctuation – it betrays an investment that you still have in certain types of positive experience, rather than certain types of negative experience. And the reason that they are fluctuating is to wean you off this preference, and to encourage you, in this rather intense way, to find out that element of experience that is common to all experience. That is the place to invest your identity, your security, and your happiness.”
[5th September 2015: Holding the Understanding in our Heart Pt 1]
Rupert says, "When death ceases to be a problem, illness ceases to be a problem."
"I" is the Source of Our Longing" (great meditation on "I")
"I Am" is the Way, the Truth, and the Life
The Highest Meditation
Body-Mind..temporary modulation of awareness (teachings are not quite true.
only coming down the mountain to the separate self..)
The Movement of Grace
The Idea of God
The Dissolving Power of Art
The Painter Sees The Light
The Absolute Certainty of Awareness
The remedy for the fear of death is very simple
Meditation: A Dream in God's Infinite Mind
The Belief in a World Made of Matter
Exploring the Fear of Dissolution or Death
Non-duality and the Nature of Experience...RS and Paul Mills interview
I Never Go Anywhere
Choosing Between Beliefs and Experience
What is Music Made of?
Fear of Rejection
Ever Present (A Soft Experiential Meditation (Basic and good!)
The Direct Path
A Conversation with Rupert Spira and Dr. Sabbadini..(Rupert shines with clarity..!
Beyond Oneness (becoming one with a tree..!)
Seeing
The Nature of Consciousness (SAND, politics and love)
How to Remain as Awareness in all Situations
Is There an Outside World?
The Absolute Certainty of Awareness (the forest!)
We are the Light of Pure Knowing in all Experience (military preparation!)
Eroding Old Patterns of Feeling and Perceiving (Soaking..!)
The Direct Path
What Happens to Awareness after Death? (precipitations..)
Time and Death
Death and the Idea of Material Body (material paradigm cannot last 500 years)
Untangling Awareness from its Objects
How Do We Explore the Nature of Consciousness (2 stages, Presence and Nature of
Awareness...simplicity!..Stretch possibility)
All Experience is Filled with Luminosity and Love (beginning of end of suffering,
every object illuminated, a modulation, taste of Beloved, Cezanne)
The Language of Non-Duality is only Verbs (for Group4Understanding)
The Death of the Body (death and the "small deaths")
The Transparency of Things
Summary
The purpose of The Transparency of Things is to look clearly and simply at the nature of experience, without any attempt to change it.A series of contemplations leads us gently but directly to see that our essential nature is neither a body nor a mind. It is the conscious Presence that is aware of this current experience. As such, it is nothing that can be experienced as an object, and yet it is undeniably present.However, these contemplations go much further than this. As we take our stand knowingly as this conscious Presence that we always already are, and reconsider the objects of the body, mind, and world, we find that they do not simply appear to this Presence; they appear within it. And further exploration reveals that they do not simply appear within this Presence but as this Presence.Finally, we are led to see that it is in fact this very Presence that takes the shape of our experience from moment to moment while always remaining only itself. We see that our experience is and has only ever been one seamless totality, with no separate entities, objects, or parts anywhere to be found.
