Oneness, Peace, Contentment, Happiness

    Everyone at some level is aware that right now, no matter how well we're doing, by whatever measure - loved & respected by family & friends, smart, well-educated, successful, healthy, attractive, financially-secure - our life as we know it & that of our loved ones, can radically change in an instant. Our fragility is partially because for many, happiness depends entirely on how well we can control our environment. But, again at some level we know that we have put our environment & ourselves into crisis. So our anxiety & stress appears to be because we cannot reliably control the basic, universal facts of life: constant change, aging, sickness & death.
    Much of this is based on the simplistic materialist model of reality - a left-hemisphere-dominant perspective - which imagines life AS IF life was nothing more than accidentally-assembled machinery, meaninglessly churning away, then inevitably breaking down, end of story. As a result, a frightening proportion of humanity are electing brutal primitive leaders who are obviously deaf, dumb & blind to essential human values of love, compassion, honesty, truth, empathy, compassion, nurturing each other. http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/09/balance.html

    BUT WHAT IF our anxiety and pervasive sense of 'lack' or 'something missing' were caused not as much by our inability to adequately control life / fear of death, but MOSTLY by the gnawing disconnect between how most of us perceive the world ("relative reality" "consensual reality") and our innate intuitive memory of "Ultimate Reality" which cannot be seen, nor adequately described. And because Ultimate Reality is far more complex than the reductionist model, many are not able to or not ready to deal with it.
    Nevertheless, throughout history, from all traditions, from every corner of the globe, shamans, mystics, saints, philosophers, poets & other deeply spiritual seekers of Truth have continued to point us toward Ultimate Reality in the only possible way - by directly experiencing it.

     In this tradition, Rupert Spira offers very clear, concise pointers to help us directly experience Ultimate Reality in his excellent 40-minute video (at the bottom of this page). His excellent talk (from the video) about how our Essential Nature is Happiness, is partially transcribed here : 

    “Could it be that the entire, what we call the universe, is an appearance within Awareness or Consciousness? After all, that is what our experience tells us.
    Could it be that each of our minds are like localizations of an infinite field of Consciousness, through the agency of which Consciousness knows itself as the world? Just as when we fall asleep at night we dream, we imagine an entire world within our own minds, and yet, we view that world from the perspective of a separate subject of experience within that world.
    Could it be that each of our minds are like dreams, in the mind of Infinite Consciousness? Or to use religious language, each of our minds are like dreams in the mind of God, through which infinite consciousness or God’s infinite being seems to divide itself into two parts: a subject that knows and an object that is known, just as we do at night when we dream.
    Our own mind divides itself into two parts: a dreamed world and a separate dreamed character, from whose point of view that world is known. In other words, the dreamed character – the character in the dream – is the agency through which our mind knows itself as the dreamed world.
    Could it be that each of our minds are like localizations through which Infinite Consciousness knows itself as the world? After all, that is in line with our experience. Is there anyone here who is currently experiencing anything other than the knowing or consciousness of your experience?

    … if we investigate like honest scientists, relying only on the evidence of experience, this knowing or consciousness is all that is ever experienced. And it is possible to explain the whole of reality on the basis of consciousness alone, without recourse to an abstract world made of matter, which nobody has ever, or could ever come in contact with.
    What are the implications of this possibility? It implies that whatever or whoever seems to be outside of ourselves, in other words all others, all objects and the world, although they may be outside of our limited, finite minds, they are not outside of the infinite field of consciousness, out of which our finite minds are made. In other words, the implications of this possibility is that everyone & everything is a modulation of a single infinite indivisible whole, seemingly separate from ourselves, seemingly made out of something other than ourselves, but in reality, an integral part of the same infinite, indivisible whole.
    In other words, although experience seems to comprise a multiplicity & diversity of objects & selves, if we look through that appearance, trusting only the evidence of experience, we find no separate objects, people, entities, selves or things. We find only our Self, not our personal (small) self – a collection of thoughts and feelings, but our Self, that true and only Self of infinite, indivisible, self-aware Being – referred to as God in the religious traditions; referred to as Consciousness in gatherings such as this; and referred to as “I” in common parlance. 

    I’m not speaking of some extraordinary experience to which only a few enlightened sages have access. Everybody knows the experience to which I am referring. The common name for it is love. When you feel you love someone, or are in love, do you not feel, to a greater or lesser extent, that you are one with that apparent other? (Oneness, Unitive Experience, Unitive Consciousness) Is that not precisely what the experience of love is – the dissolution of the sense of separation between yourself & the other. In other words, love is not a relationship. It is the collapse of relationship. It is the absence of self & other. In other words, it is the recognition of our shared being. It is the recognition of Reality.
    Why is it that everybody loves the experience of love above all else? It is because each of us, all apparently finite minds long, above all else, to be divested of their seeming separation. All the separate self truly longs for is to be divested of its sense of separation, it’s limitations.
    The experience of beauty is exactly the same experience but in relation to an object rather than to a person or an animal. When you feel the experience of beauty whilst walking in a landscape or listening to a piece of music, do you not feel to a greater or lesser extent that you merge with the music or the landscape? Is there anyone here who has not had that experience? Is there anyone here who on listening to a piece of music or walking in the landscape has not felt themselves dissolve into the music or the landscape, who has not felt the sense of separation between themselves and the object dissolve? Isn’t that why we love to walk in Nature or to listen to music?
    All the separate self truly longs for is to be divested of its sense of separation, to be relieved of the apparent limitations that seem to confine us to a cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations & perceptions, and returns us, as it were, to our Origin, our Source, or our Essence. 

    In the non-dual traditions there are these two essential pathways.
First of all the inward-facing pathway through which we investigate what we call “I,” which culminates in the recognition that the “I” that we essentially are, the Awareness that we essentially are, is without limits & is inherently peaceful.
    And then there is the outward-facing pathway in which our entire experience is realigned with this new understanding in which we not only understand but feel that everyone & everything is a modulation of our own essential infinite self-aware Being.”
    Rupert Spira, “Your Nature is Happiness” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfQSbc42Uc4 - below

RELATIONSHIP

        Our most important relationship is with our self-concept. It makes ALL the difference WHEN we can recognize & embody intimate creative Oneness with everyone & everything, Universal Consciousness or Self (pantheism / panentheism) - TRANSCENDING the common stage when we reduce our self to an accidental, meaningless, meat machine, separate from everyone & everything else, competing against everyone & everything to survive, headed for inevitable decay & decomposition (materialism).

    Below, my transcript of Helen Hamilton's valuable talk about this critical shift from concepts to integrating mature spirituality as lived experience, "Running on Empty?" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cly6vNwIUyc Within ((double brackets)) are my comments.

    “You may have found, as I did, that if you had some measure of clarity about what you actually are – that you’re indivisible, formless, that you are before birth & after death, still here, completely everywhere, omnipresent – to whatever degree you’ve seen that, it can have this effect on your relationships that they begin to, some of them for me began to become more full of friction, more problematic & challenging to navigate than ever before. In fact it was really the opposite of what I thought would happen.
    I thought I’d have this seeing, you know naively like I guess we all do, and everything in my life would magically start looking perfect in this way. But it really wasn’t like that. It was more a question of having to really apply what I’d seen about myself to my relationships. So even theoretically, we can know that in any relationship there isn’t really two. There is the one being that is expressing itself as two human beings, in whatever relationship that is, whether it's a friendship, a romantic relationship, family friendship, a boss and an employee. Whichever way it’s showing up, it will have this particular dynamic to it.
    And one of the things that wasn’t really obvious to me was that I would be asked to make a shift over in the way I functioned in my relationships from how it is as a separate being, to how it is as the Self, as the awakened condition itself, as the noumenon, the silence, whatever you want to call it. And it wasn’t obvious immediately how to do that, because even theoretically we know, or actually know that we’re not separate to this other being in the relationship. But how do we come to allow the Self to express itself fully as this relationship? The Self experiencing itself as a relationship can be an ever-deepening intimacy between yourself and this other being instead of what we tend to experience as human beings is this kind of back & forth, both of you wanting something different, and you end up making some kind of compromise. It can be a much deeper intimacy than that.

    So it began to become clearer to me that I was still dividing myself from this other being, separating myself from this other being in the relationship, with what I actually wanted from them. All of my relationships when I looked, as I began to examine them, I was looking for something from that being. In all of my relationships I was looking for approval – from my parents, my siblings, my children. I wanted to feel worthy, loved, safe, valued, appreciated. These are pretty much everything that everyone is looking for.
    When I thought I was a separate being, it really worked mostly, for the most part, that I would play my role in a relationship, and the other person would play their role, we both learned what we wanted from each other, on some subconscious level. If you give me some sense of being like, I’ll make you feel safe. It’s kind of what we’re all doing with each other. If you’ll approve of me, I’ll approve of you. I’ll validate you, if you validate me. (('transactional relationship'))
    I’m not judging a class. It’s just the way our separate sense of self works. It feels incomplete. And it’s always looking for something. ((sense of 'lack,' 'emptiness')) And even in my relationship with my work, I was looking for validation. I was looking for worthiness. And you can say well everybody’s looking for something. And these mechanisms will work relatively well as a separate being, but as you begin to wake up more, you might begin to find that they’re breaking down, this trying to get something from another being. And really, we might have to relearn all of our ways of being in a relationship. ((ALSO our relationships with food / drink, digital devices, & all other distractions / addictions we use trying to escape our sense of lack / emptiness.))

    So for myself, I had to ask, what I was trying to get from this person, and maybe, what are they trying to get from me as well? So if I’m approaching a relationship, still functioning from my old way of being in this relationship, where I’m asking another being, - of course we don’t really say this verbally do we, ‘I want you to make me feel safe.’ Or, ‘Please make me feel loved.’ Or, ‘Make me feel accepted.’ Or, ‘Please like me, and then I’ll feel better about myself.’ But, whatever it is we’re seeking, we don’t really say it verbally, but our whole behaviour, our whole way of being, even the reason for the relationship can be to get something out of it. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, except it doesn’t really work does it? We’re asking people to give us something when they don’t have what we’re asking for anyway. It’s hard for someone to give us approval & recognition when they’re looking for their own sense of worthiness too. They’re looking for a sense of security from their relationships too. They’re also coming to this relationship with you with a list of things they would like to fulfill by you. And so most relationships tend to settle into this push-pull, very gentle, sometimes not so gentle tug of war – ‘I’ll give you what you want if you give me a little bit of what I want.’
    All of that began to break down in a spectacular way. Relationships that had been fairly harmonious, began to become very unharmonious, let’s just say. And it forced me to stop and take a look at what am I asking for from this being?
    And if you have a relationship that isn’t functioning so well in your life right now, you can stop and ask yourself, ‘What am I looking for from this person?’ Maybe you know what that is. And the two staple ones that everybody wants is to feel loved, to feel safe, and you can throw in worthiness into that too, and feeling valued, needed, approved of. And if you can’t quite figure it out, you could ask yourself, ‘When this relationship’s going well, how do I feel that I don’t feel when it’s not?’ Sometimes that gives us a clue. ‘If this relationship disappeared out of my life today, what would I seem to lose in that?’
    So recognizing what it was that I was looking for, it began to become clear that I was asking for something, on an energetic level, from a being that didn’t exist. They’re not separate to me, not outside of me. They are my own Self.
    The more clearly I began to see that the more this mechanism of push-pull began to really break down. So I had to find a different way to get whatever I was seeking from someone else. It really took me some time to figure out, that I had to allow this to come from the inside out.

    So I began to ask, ‘What am I looking for from this being?’ and ‘Can they really give it to me?’ ‘If they don’t have it, even if they did exist as a separate being, and there really were two beings in this relationship, could they really give it to me if they’re also running on empty, if they’re also trying to get everything they need from the outside in, from their relationships, from their work, from their parenting?’ ‘If everything that we’re doing in life is really to get us something, on some level, that we don’t feel we have, can we get it that way?’
    And as I sat with this more and more this other question began to appear, ‘Why am I so sure it’s not already here?’ So if I’m looking for safety, a feeling of security from a relationship, it must be because I don’t feel safe now. And if I don’t feel safe now, can any amount of trying to get it satisfy me? And it just felt like I was getting these scraps of what I needed, these tiny amounts, just enough to survive emotionally, but didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. And maybe you can identify with that, can recognize that in your own life.

    To this question, ‘Why am I sure it’s not here?’ began to become really important. Whatever it is I’m looking for, why am I so certain that it’s not here? Why have I spent my entire life trying to get it from the outside in? This is really quite shocking, quite fundamentally shocking for me, the realization that for my entire life … I never really experienced the true unfolding of a relationship, because my behaviour & everything was aimed at trying to please people so that I got what I needed from them.
    And we can be doing this in any relationship, any at all. People even try to do it with their spiritual teacher. It goes right across the board. Right from when we were children, looking for certain things from our parents, siblings, our friends at school, and on and on it goes. I’m looking for something from our education. When I get my education, then I’ll feel a way that I don’t feel now. When I get the right job, when I have a family, when I get a car, and on and on it goes, and then eventually, when I wake up I’ll feel this way. When I realize the Self, I’ll feel this way that I don’t feel now. Again, it’s all based on this assumption that what I want isn’t here right now. I began to see clearer that if I assume something is missing from my experience in this moment, because my body and mind aren’t experiencing that right now, I assume it’s missing. But maybe my body and mind aren’t experiencing that right now because I’m assuming it’s missing, not the other way around.

    So I began to question, ‘What happens when I start from the recognition it must be already here?’ Can I turn my relationships inside out? Can I allow what I want to flow from inside out? What’s it like, when I come to my relationships, feeling already fulfilled, worthy, safe? What’s that experience like as a human being? And what does it do to the other person in the relationship when I do that? When there’s more than enough for myself and for the next person in the relationship? Whatever it is they’re looking for from me, they can have in abundant supply. They can have as much as they want because there’s an endless supply here. It began to transform everything, everything!

    First of all, my relationship with myself – what is it like when I don’t need anything from myself; when I’m not demanding anything from myself; when I’m not withholding approval & love from myself until I reach some stage or something happens; I’m not withholding it at all; when I just allow it to come from the inside? What is that like?
    You know confidence & kindness to yourself, and love, and the simple recognition that there is no good reason ever to withhold love & approval from yourself. If you don’t like yourself, how is the rest of the world going to like you? If all of this is a mirror of you, if you are everywhere, and you don’t like yourself, you won’t give yourself love, it’s going to be very hard for anyone else to show how much they already love you. And even if they do, you somehow won’t be able to accept it or receive it or even see it. It will be momentarily seen, and then kind of blocked from memory. So what are you looking for? And is it true it’s not already here? And what happens when you walk into a room with another being and this push-pull tug-of-war collapses, because you don’t need anything from them? Maybe for the first time ever, you don’t need anything.
    It could be as simple as switching to this question, ‘Why am I sure it’s not here?’ My whole life I’ve run on this assumption that it’s not here, that I have to get it. Can that be true for you, the infinite being, the Self if you are omnipresent, infinitely powerful? Then is it really true that you are lacking anything in this moment?

    We have all experienced not having enough approval, recognition, worthiness, safety, security. Maybe it’s this simple assumption that it’s not here. And what happens if you start from now, with this question, ‘Why am I so sure it’s not here?’ And, ‘Can I be a source of it?’ rather than trying to get it from other beings, which makes them on some level, unconsciously, energetically, stand back from me, and need to defend themselves against my asking somehow on some level, because they don’t have enough of what we’re trying to get from them anyway. ((MORE about becoming the source of love: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=source+of+love))

    What happens when I become abundantly flowing with this love in my energy, kind of silently saying, ‘Have all that you need, take all that you need,' because the more you take, the more is given, the more is supplied. And this simple thing, just changed every single relationship that I had. And it allowed me to just be with somebody for the first time, to really meet someone for the first time. You know even sitting with spiritual teachers, watching satsangs, things like that, I never really met them because I was so desperately trying to get something from them the whole time, as I’m sure we all are. But finally, to rest as the infinite source of everything, where it’s coming from. You are where it’s coming from, and pouring out into the world, showering everyone that you meet. And it changes your entire existence.

    What would your family relationships be like, even with your romantic partner, if you didn’t even need them to tell you that they loved you - if you just loved being in love with them, and they felt so completely loved by you, that neither of you needed anything from each other at all, and it was simply about being with each other? And what if all of your relationships were like this? When you came into a relationship already full, what would that feel like?
    Maybe you can get a taste of it where you are that wellspring, that infinite supply, and everybody around you then begins to feel that you’re no longer asking constantly for their energy – please give me this. And they’re no longer defensive then in their energy because they don’t have to guard their limited resources of what you’re trying to get. Of course none of those are doing this consciously, it’s just the ((‘transactional’)) way we’ve been taught to function in relationships, thinking we’re a separate being, cut off from the source of all good things like this.
    So what are you looking for and why are you sure it’s not here? Just because you aren’t experiencing it in this moment, doesn’t mean it’s absent. What happens if you challenge that assumption? Can you really get it from somebody else anyway? Has that ever really worked in a consistent way? For me it was like driving to the nearest petrol station and putting just a pound ($2) of petrol in my car, just enough to get it over the red line, and then I’d drive to the next petrol station, do the same thing, and the same thing, the same thing, just running on empty the whole time.
    Instead, coming out into the world with a full tank, and you can never take anything out of it without immediately being replenished. Apart from the obvious benefits of that, you feel alive, passionate, fulfilled, complete, worthy, loved & loving, compassionate, all of that. ((Such 'heart openings' last longer & longer, and can endure greater & greater challenges)) People begin to recognize that they’re safe with you then, because you’re not demanding anything. You might be the only person they know that isn’t asking anything from them, and they can finally relax. Maybe for the first time in a very long time they can finally relax. They might not even know why, they just feel kind of nice when they’re with you somehow. It’s one of the best things about awakening, being able to turn your relationships from trying to get everything from the outside, into being the inside out source and supply.

    That line in the Bible, ‘God so loved the world that he sent his only son …’ – this is it in action, isn’t it? This is it in action. You want to intuitively pour this love and this infinite supply out to everyone you meet. What would happen if just everyone here now in this meeting did this, and each of us inspired one person to do it, to fill themselves up so full, to not tolerate any idea that there can be anything missing from your experience right now? Identifying what you’re lacking right now, and demanding to see that it’s already here. Staying with that, until your body and your mind begin to experience it. But first, if we’re asking for love, I’m sure it must be here right now. I’m determined to allow it to come from the inside out. First, you’ll notice that just as a sense of relaxation in the body. It might be very subtle at first. Because you stay with this over two or three days, you begin to feel very, very different. And everything around you begins to change as well, because every human being can sense everyone’s aura energy. They might not know they’re doing that. When they touch upon something or someone that is so radiantly full, they know it somehow. It’s like a drink of water after you’ve been dying of thirst. It’s like a warm fire when you’re freezing.
    Just this simple thing allowed me to integrate, to live this. And I really hope I’m inspiring you."
    Helen Hamilton: "Running on Empty?" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cly6vNwIUyc

 

    “what I have discovered after many decades of religious practice (is) that the religious life isn’t about truth as much as it is about relationship. Or that, perhaps, truth and relationship are one and the same. ...
     We all need time to sink back deep into the soul and try to remember who we actually are.” Norman Fischer. “When You Greet Me I Bow. Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen.” Shambhala, 2021. 

    “By giving up our attachments in life, we open ourselves up to more opportunities, more spontaneity, and more chances to cultivate deeper connections with others.” Lama Tsomo

 

        "The thoughts change
         but not you.
         Let go of the passing thoughts and
         hold on to the unchanging Self."         Sri Ramana Maharshi

"We are all connected 

in a great cosmic web of being. 

Our individual actions and choices 

have a ripple effect on the whole."

Jean Houston

 

 

Helen Hamilton: "Running on Empty?"