I don’t like calling them exercises, because that sounds too mechanical only do these loving contemplations of your experience when that seems to you the most interesting and enjoyable thing you could possibly be doing at that moment, so you do it in the same way that You look out here across the fields and you think, oh it’s so inviting I just love to go for a walk and you go for that reason. Just it’s, just the thing you’d want to be doing more than anything else. At that moment, the most interesting, the most enjoyable – that’s when to do these loving contemplations when nothing interests you more in that moment than exploring the reality of your experience. What is all we know is experience. I mean isn’t that the most extraordinary Millett miracle – that there is experience I mean walking on water – just pales into insignificance next to the fact that that is experience Wow, I mean isn’t that incredible and that experience is made of something yeah. It’s made of something. What is it made of that it can take the shape of all this. It can take the shape of this incredible diversity, and yet it’s all the same stuff called knowing or experiencing. What could that stuff be? What could be more interesting, interesting than the knowing what that stuff is? Our culture tells us that it’s made out of dead stuff called matter, and that matter gives rise to mind and mind gives rise to conch business. Does experience is the stuff out of which experience is made dead and in that that doesn’t quite make sense, because if that was true, then experience would be essentially dead and inert, but it’s. Not all experience is pervaded by the knowing of it. It is aware and alive everything we never come in contact with anything other than this totally alive. Stuff called experience and it never goes away it doesn’t start or stop. It stays the same. It’s never changing, but ever changing. What is this stuff? So when you feel that kind of interest in experience then follow it, if you find something more interesting to do than that, then do it like going to the cinema or it’s. Fine, we’ll do whatever is the most interesting thing for you at that moment. The most enjoyable interesting thing I mean spiritual life should be just. It should be like going to the best party you can imagine it should be the most enjoyable. The most interesting thing to do, and the beauty of it is that the you don’t have to put it aside a particular time or a particular place to do it. You can do it while you’re having lunch when you’re walking down the street when you’re, brushing your teeth. When you’re sitting on your chair, doing nothing, you can explore this all the time to make a practice out of it. To make a discipline out of it is, is blasphemous. Well, you know, is it it’s, it’s, so disrespectful to think that we could in turn this investigation, this exploration of our experience into a practice or a discipline. It’s, it’s, so disrespectful. I guess it comes to my mind that it feels so good when I do it that it just made sense to me to do it when I feel suffering. You know just in order to EULA keep life simple Jeremy, just do it when you feel like doing it when you’re suffering, when you’re happy when you’re in between somewhere just do it whenever you feel this is what I love to Do you don’t don’t, do it as a practice when you’re suffering in order to get rid of suffering don’t, do it for a reason just do it, because it is the most interesting thing to do for its own sake. Like, like a mad scientist studying the stuff that a particular rare species of butterflies studying a butterfly’s wing, a rare butterfly, what its wing is made out of, why it’s that fluorescent green, I mean what a crazy thing to do, but people spend Their lives doing this, it’s so beautiful just for the joy of of discovery, just it’s, not for any reason. What, when you’re and that’s, how an artist works in a sports person in the moment, they are just dancing for no reason whether that dance takes on the form of scientific exploration or creativity or whatever it is it doesn,’t matter. Just do it for no reason for no not in order to gain something at the end, just because it’s the most enjoyable most interesting thing you could do at that moment. Could every have you finished since then him? It’s just a little disappointing because I mean cuz honestly I mean uh yeah. I do feel suffering a lot less, but that happened to be the most prevalent. You know part of my daily life, and so I did want to get rid of it and okay. I wanted to use everything I could to do it so, but but but that does seem to be the promise of where this is all heading. Okay, but just just very slightly change the parameters instead of doing this in order to get rid of suffering, do it to understand suffering, yeah yeah yeah that so it’s, just you,’re still studying the same thing. You’re still exploring the same thing, changing the mindset that way, but you’re just doing it you, this phenomena is appearing called suffering. This rare this strange species of butterfly has appeared and you’re fascinated by it. Oh, you know: how do you eat? How do you reproduce? How do you go around your life? You want to study all of its habits and and but you have to be very, very careful with the butterfly it’s very. Does you don’t want to touch it? You touch it and you’re going to destroy it because it’s. So so so you just observe it. Don’t touch it. Don’t get busy trying to change the butterfly you just you.’re studying it under all sorts of different. You study it in the daytime in the night when it’s made so around when they’re, not what it eats. What it goes towards you, you’re just interested in this phenomenon. Let’s see suffering just like a phenomenon after it is a phenomenon just explore it be interested in it. Don’t go to war with it because you don’t the suffering is already made out of resistance. By going to war with it. You are just resisting it. You are piling one resistance on top of an already existing resistance. You’re compounding the problem compounding the suffering by trying to get rid of it and that’s. Why, as we all know very well all the conventional means of getting rid of suffering don’t work they just at best temporarily alleviated, but subtly perpetuated so take your hands off suffering, explore it out of interest. What are you made of yeah? So it’s, fine, when you find yourself suffering, you think. Okay, great hear hear this. This classifies appeared again. I’m going to explore it, explore it to the level of the mind and explore it to the level of the body, both really think and feel. I want to understand this phenomenon that takes place support. It appears so often in my life seems like it.’s related to these perceptual investigations. And yes, it is you’re, like wow. When the suffering is occurring. It tends to be that there’s this kind of contract, absolute aspect and when we’re doing that breathing exercise, you realize wow. It’s, yes, exert infinite and that’s what these these contemplations, like the contemplation we did this morning, is just studying one of the butterfly’s legs. Just one party, you know. Yesterday we studied another leg or another wing. It’s. Just all studying this whole phenomenon sort of in this case the sense of separation, so puts it in perspective, but I can see why, if you purchased that exercise with the desire to get rid of something, then it would be counterproductive yet suffering. The only thing suffering cannot stand is being seen clearly. The reason for that is that at the root of suffering is an illusion. You can’t do anything to allude to an illusion, because there’s nothing there, you can’t do anything to the water in a mirror eyes. You can’t go and collect it. You can’t purify it. You can’t drink. It you can’t, you can’t do anything to it because it’s not there. The very best you can do is to go up to it and see that it’s not there that seeing relieves the desire to manage it or collect it or to so it’s like that with suffering at the heart of suffering. There is an illusion and non existent self. You can’t do anything to a non existent self. There is nothing there to do anything to seeing, which means experiential understanding clear, seeing is the best you can do and as a result, as a byproduct of that clear, seeing this suffering vanishes dissolves in time, because it in order to remain present suffering needs the illusion Of a separate self, it revolves around the illusion of a separate self. If that is truly seen to be non existent, the suffering simply cannot stand. There may be old habits in the body mind that run for some time, but those because they are no longer supported by the belief and feeling of a separate self. These old habits gradually dissipate so suffering vanishes as a byproduct of this exploration, not as its goal suffering vanishes in the same way that a headache vanishes you wake up in the morning with a headache you get to the evening, and you realize oh, my headaches gone. I don’t know when it went. I don’t know where I was when he went. I don’t know why it went. I don’t know how it went. It’s. Just you just notice. Oh, it’s, just not there anymore, that’s. How suffering disappears it’s a by product, not a goal. Its disappearance is a by product, not a goal. If you make it your goal, you perpetuate suffering. In fact, this is one of the ways the separate self perpetuates itself sometimes for decades. By trying to get rid of itself. Just feels like leaves me in a position of you, learn all these things and it seems, like you,’ll, be a nice idea to repeat them to explore them better, but truly it’s like the suffering. That reminds me that I want to practice them, but if it’s counterproductive to apply them, consider the suffering is to the mind what pain is to the body. Yeah, you put your hand in the fire. If you experience pain, the pain is not a mistake. It’s not something that’s wrong. The pain. Is there it’s, the intelligence of the body telling you take your hand out of the fire yeah, so pain is working on behalf of your well being suffering is exactly the same. At the level of the mind, it is cooperating with your desire for happiness. It’s telling you you’ve, got your hand in the fire in this case it’s telling you. You have mistaken yourself for a separate, limited awareness. Take a look. Take a look that’s. What suffering so so suffering is to the mind what pain is to the body. It’s, just a wake up. Call it’s, saying you’ve, mistaken yourself for an object for a limited self. Have another look use it basically saying when you take a look at you,’re not doing it to get rid of just doing it, to see what you’re doing it in order to look at the separate self that you have mistaken yourself for in That moment you are thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate self, so you are now looking at the separate self on whose behalf you are thinking feeling and acting it’s like you, spend your life preparing jars to collect the water in a mirage. You’re suffering, tells you go and have a look in the mirror, go and have a look at this water. You are spending your entire life, organizing and planning around what you, what’s going to happen when you go up to the Mirage and see the water isn’t there. What’s going to happen to your your water jar business? You’re just going to lose interest in it. You’re just going to stop manufacturing. Yeah there’s no water there to collect you just forget it and move on so such suffering is saying: go up to the Mirage, see that there is no water there go into your experience, see that there is no separate self there and that seeing will Will take care of everything else and then, if you want you can engage, which I know you do want to. You can engage in these loving contemplations, which is a kind of cooperation with the dismantling of the water jar business. It’s a way of going up to the Mirage right. No, no, it’s, it’s, it’s. It’s post, going up to the Mirage. It’s, a post, enlightenment sadness, but enlightenment is seeing what we are. The dismantling of the water jar business is a post enlightenment sadhna, it’s what we do after the recognition of our true nature and it’s just a gentle, loving cooperation at the level of the body with what we have already understood it. It’s, we’re, just helping the body feel itself in a way that is consistent with our new understanding. Honestly, maybe I have an experience, the enlightenment. Well it in practice. Here we work on both going back to the very beginning of our of our week. Here we work on both the path of exclusion and the path of inclusion. At the same time, we rearrange all over the map, so don’t don’t worry. If this extraordinary event called enlightenment, doesn’t seem to have taken place. Remember enlightenment is not an event. It doesn’t take place. The mind is not party to it: it’s not present when this non event occurs. It knows nothing of it. So don’t worry about that. Just keep exploring what you truly are. Am i a separate, limited awareness, or is the awareness that I know myself to be totally open, unlimited and ever present, because the belief and the feeling that what I am comes and goes and is limited and therefore lacking? That is at the heart that belief and feeling that single belief and feeling is at the heart of all your suffering. That’s, the only thing in suffering that needs to be explored, not the whole paraphernalia of whatever it is, that seems to be causing the suffering, because if you explore each of the causes in turn, it’s just endless money, work relationships, I mean it Goes on forever, but it’s all all these different colors different facets of suffering. They. It all hinges on one thing: the belief that what I am the I that is knowing my thoughts and hearing these words right now. The awareness that I know myself to be shares the limits and the destiny of the body mind that’s it. That is with that belief. We seem to shrink into a separate self and all our suffering is dependent upon that and feeling alone. So once that’s clear you become very you become naturally one pointed you see that all your suffering is just based on one thing, so all your disparate energies are now gathered together in that one direction. What am i truly? You even forget about suffering, because your your you’re dealing with what’s at the heart of it. You you forget about the paraphernalia of suffering. Who is this one, this self that is suffering? Who is this one? On whose behalf I spend my life? Thinking and feeling acting and relating, I spent my life serving this self. Who is it I’ve never seen it. Where are you come out? I want to make your acquaintance. Show me what you’re made of the analogy I give you may have heard it before. Sometimes it’s of a servant who’s been living in this big old house serving an old man, all his life and the old man is extremely demanding and unreasonable and the servant. You know he’s up at five o’clock every morning. Cleaning issues making his fire doing his breakfast etc. He spends his whole life from morning tonight serving this old man, and yet he never actually sees the old man. The old man is a bit of a recluse and he lives in his bedroom and he just gets met. The old man just has a root. Sorry, the servant has a routine. He just goes through his routine um. He begins to get curious. He goes to the pub every now and then on a rare day off and his friends tell him, you know you should you should go and you know you should go and talk to the old man. You should go and see him if he’s so unreasonable. So eventually you go back and you pluck up courage. You go and knock on the door. You want to to discuss your your work with him and he doesn’t answer. You think, oh that’s, typically he just doesn’t want to talk to me, but then, the next day you pluck up courage. Again, you knock on the door. He does not. You know hang into it again to open, so you open the door and you just peek in anything, oh that’s funny. I can’t see him and then the next day you have a bit more courage. You open the door a bit more and you put your head rounded on it and you know he’s not there. So then you get a bit bolder you go in and and you look around anything odd, it’s funny he’s. Just not here you look in his bathroom, you think he must be he’s. Not there. You look in his cupboards. He’s, not there you looking to draw you, you explore the whole room and you realize this man that I’ve been serving. All my life, this tyrannical man, on whose behalf I have been laboring, it’s, not there. He was never there. The separate self is like that. We spend our lives, thinking feeling acting and relating on behalf of a self that is not there so that’s what we do here. We explore the bedroom first, the bedroom, then the bathroom then the cupboards, then the drawers we look everywhere and the more we look that the greater our confidence grows in, knowing that he’s not there. Now it doesn’t necessarily happen at one moment. Okay, now I’ve discovered that it’s not there. There is just a growing confidence day by day. It may come in one moment, but it usually doesn’t it’s just this confidence. This conviction grows in you. He’s not there and in proportion to that conviction. Your thoughts, feelings activities and relationships begin to to change accordingly, in direct proportion to your conviction that the old man is not there, you may never be able to say at that moment, I discovered he wasn’t there, it’s not necessary. Most people can’t say that I’m, not sure. If I put a question, I wanted to say something about like that meditation experience. So what I noticed I noticed is a well like, like an expansion, kind of which feels very, very freeing very liberating, but there’s just a lot of space and then, at the same time the body is going mad. It’s like a kind of site, all that all the sort of physical, our eggs are coming up even more strongly. Normally they go after about ten minutes, but it’s. It was like they were like in full in in Technicolor kind of yeah, particularly my rib cage, which I’ve been noticing more and more and more and it’s sort of sometimes feel like I,’m wearing a corset, and so that was like It was sort of almost like. I am yes at the same time, this is mist expansion, so there’s a kind of Wonder and beauty in that and at the same time, within that it’s like there’s a like, I feel a fight going on that’s. All and I recognize that the conditioning in the body I can feel I could name that as wanting to kind of win, if you like – and I’ve, never felt so clearly the cut that the meeting of those two it’s, like they’re Kind of locked – almost yes, I want you know. I come back here and also I’m feeling yeah tears of sadness. For this apparent illusion and at home, were my. I feel a kind of frustration. It’s like it’s. Almost it’s, sort of the analogy of like being in this tightly held prison, something crying you know, let me out and that’s, that’s is how it how it appears. I’m grateful for the such clarity in the the fight because it it yeah it brings more more more clarity in the in this is kind of the struggle that I experienced yet and something about there is something I can do and there’s nothing. I can do again, it feels yes, yes, if you kids at this process, if we can call it, the processes is working perfectly in you. It’s, just you. You describe this expansion and that this morning,’s meditation was just one way of approaching this expanded view of experience and when we begin to really feel and live in this expansion, all the old habits with which we used to contract into a separate self. I’ll reveal they begin to rebel most of the time. Normally we’re, not we don’t notice them because it’s just our normal state. This contracted state has just become the norm, so it feels natural normal. It doesn’t cause any problem. It does cause trouble from time to time, but we’ve kind of pro kama dated this contracted state and we live more or less harmoniously with it. Then we take this more expanded view and suddenly, all these all these habits of being contracted, which we previously didn’t notice, now begin to come up in in rebellion because they’re being challenged by this new way of feeling and perceiving, and in fact They’re being exposed, so sometimes we feel. Oh, there are all these new resistances coming up that they’re, not really new resistances, they’re, just they’re ancient resistances of which we were previously unaware. So it’s very good. This, the revealing of this rebellion in the body and, as you say there is a kind of fight going on between them, which one are you going to be. Where are you going to? The old contracted state of the body has become kind of familiar. It.’s we’ve made our peace with it, where we’re used to it, and yet now we’re being invited into something which is actually far more expensive, but far more truly in line with what we what we want and yet, as you Say there is some nostalgia for the old if it fit for the old pair of shoes that you’re about to throw out. So there can be a bit of a back and forth between the two and the body will sometimes you can actually feel it in a very physical way, particularly for instance this morning, when we were imagining breathing in the space behind the body, it’s much More difficult than in front of the body, and you can feel yourself going there behind the body and then almost like a spring, pulling you back through habit into being localized. So sometimes it seems that you actually have to make a bit of an effort. Although it is, in fact, the natural state to live in this expanded openness because of the habit of contracting, we think that it’s natural to be contracted and therefore, to begin with, we feel that we have to make a natural effort to go into the Space, it’s not really a new effort. It’s. It’s. Like an analogy. I give sometimes when you, if you clench your fist like this and you hold it for a long time. You forget that you’re holding it. You think it’s natural and then, when somebody says open your hand, what you actually have to do is relax an effort, but you’re not aware of that. You feel you have to make a new effort to open the hand it’s, not a new effort. It’s the relaxation of an old effort that you were no longer aware of so that’s, what we’re doing it’s like a relaxation of the it feels like a new effort, sometimes gosh. I have to try to move into this space, but actually it’s, not it’s, just the relaxation of tensions and contractions that we weren’t even aware of because we’ve become so used to them. I think I find it when I, when I’m here, enjoy you’re leading us. I find it relatively easy to. Yes, I also noticed that when I wake up in the mornings – I I feel you know in a kind of similar space, yet there’s almost the kind of that moment. I get out of bed something something shifts yes and then I was walking yesterday evening and and that’s, when I notice I’m it’s very familiar it’s, like I’m, not really walking. I’m kind of going somewhere. Yes, there’s a again there,’s a it’s very much very, very located in this area. The solar plexus webpage that there’s a pushing yes that’s it a straining of the nails. Do anything yeah, like kind of yeah, mind of a horse exactly this is the same image came to me. A horse is just pulling on you, but when that’s a perfect example, you know the exercise. We did the exploration we did yesterday when we were hearing and hearing the sound at a distance and seeing the flower and kind of slightly straining to go out towards it and then taking our stand as a way and so allowing the object to come to us. You can do that when you’re walking. You feel this just this straining and there now, even when you’re going for a walk in nature, you feel you’re, just you’re, always in the coming you always just just outside the now. We’re just straining for the now to become the next moment, and so you can experiment with this. While you’re, walking just walk and feel this and then feel what it’s like to be totally 100 in the now, with no sense of the negative grasping for the next moment of needing the next moment to replace the current feel. The quality of your walking how it changes yeah I mean I, why do I slow down an hour? Yes, it sometimes literally means you slow down, but even if it is no slowing down, there’s a kind of relaxation of a very slight tension in the body and that tension is the separate self. This subtle rejection of the now straining at the edge of the now wanting it to become the next now, in other words, we live in becoming rather than being, and this becoming it can be very subtle. Just just this. Just this straining at the edge of the now wanting it to become the next moment. I also notice it when I’m cleaning my teeth that’s very obvious – that I actually want to be somewhere else. Yes and I’m just a name that just agreeing or presence and relaxation yes, you see, awareness is never straining at the now a Wen’s is just a wide open. Yes to the now totally lazy, just not the slightest impulse to avoid the now. It’s only earth either thought and feeling made self that is pushing at the now wanting it to become the next moment that the separate self lives on the edge of the now in that becoming right on the edge of the now wanting the next. Now to happen, that is the separate self that’s all it’s made out of its mad and when we spend we spend our lives there at that, in that becoming in in a state of perpetual becoming we never become what we want to become It’s always just more or becoming what we want to become is the being that is already there. Yes, it’s, it’s really mad. What we, what we are straining towards is what is already present prior to the straining in this just being present, which is what awareness is being present being present open, aware you, but inert in your experience was the process fun in any way. Oh, yes, yes, great! Fun reason I ask is, when you describing to Jeremy the process of looking in the bedroom. Looking the drawers it makes me think it’s. Potentially it’s a bit of a game and my own experience of it is I take you. Take it very. Very seriously and boy it’s going to be so much easier or more enjoyable. If it’s, if we do treat it like a game or a bit of fun. Yes, you can comment on that. When I say it was, it was fun. I was a very serious earnest disciplined young man, so it was, it was bit like Jeremy, so it was let’s say enjoyable rather than fun. Fun would be a bit would have been a bit too much for me in the early days, but it was enjoyable and interesting. It was so it’s. True, I didn’t really treat it like a a game in the sense that I couldn’t care less about it. Its outcome, I’m just playing cards with a friend he wasn’t that kind of a game because it was, I was passionately interested it’s more, like it’s more, like I’m learning to play a musical instrument, you do it Because it’s it’s, joyful it’s, so the pups fit is just the joy of playing music. So in that sense it’s, it’s the most beautiful light. Hearted thing you can do, but nevertheless, on the way there are certain things that you have to do like pay very careful attention to your fingers on the relaxation in your fingers or to a difficult configuration of notes or something. So that requires a little bit of attention and focus, and you don’t do it in. Oh, I couldn’t care less kind of attitude. You know that you think I really want to learn. Why is this change just these change from these? Why’s it’s so difficult! It’s, because there’s tension in my fingers. I I want to learn to relax my fingers, and so you do these exercises and things it’s. It’s. Enjoyable! It’s! Interesting! It’s, but it’s, not it’s, not the funniness. Are I couldn’t get us whether this? No I care, I want my fingers to be relaxed or you have an equivalent in sports or whatever. So it’s, the purpose of it is is yes in this case that the joy of music – but there may be some sometimes when there’s an intense focus, it may appear to be very serious from the outside, but inside your light, hearted about it, Because it’s so interesting, it’s so enjoyable. Somebody else from the outside will say: oh he’s so disciplined from the inside it doesn’t feel like discipline. It feels like love. You’re, you’re doing, and in this case you’re trying to train your body to do something you want it to do and it’s struggling a little bit because it’s a bit afraid and therefore it’s tense. So you’re just helping it to perform in the way that you know to be the way you know it has to be in order to play the music it’s so in the inside. Yes, it may be intense, it may be serious, but it’s very loving from the outside. You say: oh he practices for hours. He’s disciplined it’s, not that it’s, not a disciplined that’s. Why? I don’t use the word practicing or exercises or discipline because they’ve got connotations. They’ve acquired connotations that that make us feel they’re somehow there to confront our natural inclinations. No, this should go with your natural inclinations that’s. Why I said earlier to Jeremy, it should be what you what you love to do now, what you love to do sometimes requires you to be serious. It’s: okay, not not serious, in a heavy way, it can be light and enjoyable and loving and sometimes serious, for you was a light. Hearted stare from the start. No, no, in my case it took a while to get light. Hearted I was rather earnest and and to be given with it the light heartedness came. It came in time, but I I misunderstood the spiritual process early on and made it unnecessarily heavy. It’s not necessary and it really wasn’t until I met my teacher that I realized that it was an enjoyable process and in particular, when you see what was really fun for me was my artwork, because I I loved beauty, I loved truth as Well, but they were in two different camps. There was truth over here. That was what I did in my the inviter school and on my cushion and reading Ramana Maharshi in my bedroom and then was my love of beauty, and they were. I felt a little apologetic about my love of beauty because it involved the senses. You know what what I see and what I hear and what I touch and in the classical advice tradition the world is, is considered to be a little bit dangerous and you want to you don’t want to go there, so I felt a little apologetic Of my love of form and beauty, and it wasn’t until I met my teacher that I realized that these two loves for love of truth than the love of beauty are the same thing and that’s that released a huge amount of misunderstanding. For me, it was like taking the taking the lid off for me and then, from from that moment on, when these two worlds came together, my whole approach to spirituality became much more playful and and particularly because we were doing all these experience, exercises explorations that we’ve been doing here, exploring where does hearing take place? Where does seeing tape is well? What is hearing made out of what is touching all these things? It was so I was right there because I had spent a knife seeing and making, and so I had all this all the tools were already there and now all those tools that I just used in my work when now being applied, I had been doing these Higher sensing sizes, what what you used to call high sensing these exploring the tactile sense, exploring sounds exploring sides. I’d been doing it without knowing it. When I used to go to museums and look at pieces and in my studio I have been doing it, but now I was being given a context and it was being elaborated. So it was that I was so enthusiastic about it. It was so exciting to to know to go to experience whatever experience was and to and to explore it, so it changed at a certain time for me when I really connected it. With my experience when it was no longer just a mental discipline, when I could really involve all of my experience together and everything came together as part of the same exploration, it became exciting. He used the word playful, which seems really point, maybe better than game. Yes, playful, I I remember very early on in California with Francis he was doing a probably the second or third retreat I had been on. He was doing a medic doing making up these kind of contemplations like like. We did today, something like that. So I would immediately go off and start making up my own. I just immediately started creating my own kinds of experiments and and then I would come in the meeting in the evening and and say I I’ve just been making up. I want to make sure that I’m on on the right track, and so then I would explain the contemplations that I was making up for myself and I wanted to check out that it was. I was in the right track and he just said: yeah yeah, absolutely that that’s it that’s the way to go just be creative, make up your own own experiments and, and then the next morning in meditation. He actually said he said okay this morning we’ll, do the Ruppert meditation and then he used the meditation that I had made up the day before and this was it was so sweet of him because it was like it was like him saying to me. Yeah that this is this is the way I let you know that you’re doing, keep going like that be creative. I’m just giving you samples you don’t have to you. Don’t have to think okay. What what did we do? In that expiration yesterday I’ve got to go through exactly I’m, just giving you a taste to give you lots of different ideas of the way to explore experience, but everyone’s. Experience is slightly different, so you might have a tendency towards you. Can you can go there? You make up your own, so, yes, it was playful, it was creative enjoyable. In that sense it was. It was fun. It was interesting. It was what I wanted to do with my time and then I would go on retreats and over the years, like it’s happening here, the same people would be showing up on retreats, sometimes new people, and sometimes people that came so there was this nice Sense of kind of family in, in the best sense of the word, a kind of community without any expectations, without any rules without any demands without expectations. We there was this loose community of friends that we just meet from time to time and this feeling of friendship. This beautiful quality of friendship that that takes place in gatherings like this, because where no one’s here to prove anything or defend anything. So we all meet very innocently and openly – and I noticed this lovely quality of friendships and I used to be a recluse in I spent 25 years as a recluse in my studio you know never going and suddenly I find I had all these beautiful friends all Over the world and – and that was it was so nice to go on on retreats and to be together with friends and then to come home and to keep exploring all this, and so yes, it was enjoyable, creative, playful, fun, enthusiastic interesting. I mean the old ideas that spiritual life is it kind of thoughts, your natural inclinations and and your it takes everything you really want to do away from you and then sits you down on a mat and where you have to wrap at a mantra and discipline. Your mind and discipline, your body and you you know I hear of retreats where nobody’s, not only the thing that they don’t talk to each other. You’re not even allowed to look at each other. In the eye I mean, for God,’s sake. How are you going to discover that you’re one with someone if you’re not able to look at them in the eye, I mean what could be more separating and isolating than that. I’m, not I don’t put that conne commenting in context in a particular context. I understand that a silent retreat is beautiful and has its benefits. I can’t quite see the lack of eye contact thing, but I guess in a certain context it may also have its benefits, so I don’t mean to criticize that out of context, but it’s, not the approach we we take here. It’s, it’s, it’s, not a disciplined approach. It’s a loving approach. In fact, true discipline is a movement of love. So the answer is yes: if that’s, what you mean by fun, it was fun, and it still is, it still is fun. It still is enjoyable because we hang out together here as friends. What we do here is is so much more than just guided meditations and conversations what we do it spills out into our into our meals. I mean there’s, nothing more delightful and no waking up this morning and everyone’s having breakfast on the grass talking and because of this quality of friendship, I mean most of us. Didn’t know each other two days ago, three days ago, and already there’s a quality of friendship that sometimes takes years to develop, and that is that that is a the flowering of this understanding. It’s, one area in which it flowers in the quality of our friendships. Thank you. You

As found on YouTube

https://www.easycash4ads.com/cap.aspx?i=money&ref=yoseskba64z