Qualities of Authentic Experience of Consciousness

     We have to understand that the thought about our true nature is a happy thought. Why? Because it comes from happiness itself. So it’s like a fish coming out of the water. The fish is wet. So the thought that originates in happiness, is wet with happiness. It’s a happy thought. 
     In the same way, the body that originates in happiness is a happy body from the experience of happiness. It is still pregnant, if you will, with the presence from which it emerges.
     It is not any kind of thought that has this quality. Some thoughts originate from ignorance. Some thoughts are just old thoughts that just come back to the surface. They are not fresh, creative, new thoughts. So the thoughts that are really pregnant happy thoughts are the creative thoughts of understanding, thoughts of love – because thoughts of love come from the experience of love. The thought of understanding comes from intelligence. These are the happy thoughts. 
     Typically, as a truth-seeker, to be practical, I may be driving and all of a sudden my thoughts drift to something I’ve read, something I’ve heard in satsang, and I experience as a result a joy which is causeless in fact. It’s not like being based upon a Ferrari or something tangible, it’s just the joy to be, the joy that there is being. The joy that there is being is not related to me as a person.
     You can have it in the morning – you look at the sun, you look at nature, you look at the sky, and you feel this joy. This joy is not about you – this little ant in this huge landscape. The joy of marveling at all this extraordinary being that is deploying this extraordinary scenery. And you see that when there is true joy, true happiness, there is nobody in it. It is for the sake of itself. And as soon as little me comes in and says ‘Oh oh, I am here enjoying this thing, but unfortunately I’m not always going to be here enjoying this thing’ – it poops the party.
     The ‘I’ that experiences happiness is consciousness itself. There are not two consciousnesses – one to experience consciousness, and the consciousness which is experienced. It is consciousness that experiences itself – that’s a very important point. 
     We usually experience in terms of the senses, and mostly, in fact for most of us, in terms of the sense of sight. Of course some of us experience, if you’re blind or if you’re a musician, you tend to experience a little more in terms of sounds. If you are a dog, you tend to experience in terms of scent. But we experience in terms of the senses. 
     So when we try to experience consciousness, the natural tendency is to project a look-alike of consciousness in the mind, which is a concept, which is an image – perhaps something transparent, or a mirror, or a blackboard, or a white wall or something of that sort, - or a localization in a bodily sensation. So it’s something that has some kind of a shape, some kind of a structure, even if it is a vanishing one, it still has some content. 
     The experience of consciousness is not of the mind. And we know the experience of consciousness. We have not recognized that that which we experience as happiness, of love, or beauty, or understanding, or humor for instance – all of those are in fact the experience of consciousness. They have this quality of being impersonal, of being timeless. 
     How long does it take to understand a joke? You see what I mean? Jokes that are delayed – you can spend days before you can understand it, and all of a sudden, you’re walking down the street and ‘Ahhhhh’ and you start laughing. But it didn’t take days to understand the joke. These days, they don’t count, because during those days you were not understanding the joke. The only thing that counts is the very instantaneous moment when you get it, when you get the punch line and bingo. And so it is the same here. 
     So this experience of truth, of love, of beauty – it has this timeless quality, that first appears as instantaneous, no duration, but then appears as presence, as something that is always here – you know like consciousness is always in the background so to speak. It’s always in the background, but when you look at it, it takes no time to look at it. If you ask yourself ‘How do I know that I am conscious?’ – of course consciousness is in the background, but how long does it take to realize that you are conscious? No time – it’s an experience that is instantaneous. So it is analogous in this case to the experience of truth, love, beauty, understanding, being touched by love, being touched by beauty. 
     There are things that may happen before. You look at a painting, or you listen to music, and you are taken by it, and all of a sudden you cry. Or understanding, you look at this problem, you don’t get it, you don’t get it, and then, all of a sudden (snaps his finger) bingo, that’s it. 
     To go back to the point I was making, it is important to have been informed that the experience of consciousness knowing itself is not at all like a visualization of some blank wall, or like a feeling in the body like something which is here (pointing to forehead) or something which is here (pointing to chest). No. 
     It is more like the experience of love, of happiness, of understanding. If you think about it, every time you experience love, you’re happy; every time you experience understanding, you’re happy; every time you experience beauty, you’re happy. So what these experiences have in common is happiness. And what they have in common also is that they are the experience of consciousness. 
     So the experience of consciousness is identical to the experience of happiness. That’s important because then, we are not kidding our self as a truth seeker by trying to have the experience of consciousness, trying to visualize consciousness, to see it. No, no, no – that’s not what it feels like. It feels like happiness. So if there is no happiness, it’s not consciousness. You see, that’s important. If it is dry, if it has no flavor, if it has no perfume, it is not consciousness. It is something else. It needs to have this freshness, this happiness, this quality of perfume, to be the authentic experience of consciousness."         Francis Lucille

     Rupert Spira on this topic: http://www.johnlovas.com/2016/05/awareness-of-awareness.html 

Francis Lucille, 2 hour, unedited dialogue, Temecula, CA, March 22, 2014

 

Sincerity & Urgency to Know the Truth?

     “For most people … seeking the truth is not a centrality in their lives. They are not at that stage yet. They are at the stage where seeking the truth is still a hobby among other hobbies. Eventually it will become their main profession. But for the time being, it’s just a hobby. And often they kid themselves into thinking that it is the most important thing. They think it, but they don’t put their money where their mouth is, if you will. They don’t walk the walk. 
     I’m not being judgmental. It’s beautiful already to be interested. You cannot pull the plant to make them grow faster.”                                Francis Lucille

Francis Lucille - superb interview

Letting Go of Being Judgmental

Question : 
     I've been going through phases of being content and happy, but you can see that's not where I'm speaking from at the moment. I drop into phases of depression and anxiety and believing that I'm a separate self. I know that I get it, and sit in awareness, or feel that I'm that a decent amount, but how can I still end up constantly believing I'm a separate self, and how do I get out of it?

Francis Lucille :
     But you see, your question already makes the assumption that you are a separate self, believing to be a separate self.

Question : 
     How do I not believe it? When I'm in those moments, I feel so contracted and limited and judgmental that it's hard to end up in a place of inquiry.

Francis Lucille :
     Yes, because you are judging yourself for being judgmental. So you are piling up judgment upon judgment. Why judge yourself for being judgmental? Judgment happens. Just like rain happens and wind happens, judgment happens. It's a cosmic event when it happens. 
     There is nobody to judge for being judgmental. Judgmentalness happens like the flu. You don't blame yourself for getting the flu. The flu happens during flu season. And judgmentalness or judgmentality happens during judgment season.
     If we try to do something about it, it's because there is someone wanting to get rid of it and the one who wants to get rid of it is one judging himself or herself for being judgmental. Allow for it to flourish. It's like a poisonous plant in nature - it's beautiful. Look at the datura plant - beautiful, beautiful white flowers! So there is beauty also in it. Not beauty of judgment, but beauty of the whole game. 
     Also, understand that in the moment when you are being caught by being judgmental, to try to do something about it always comes from the wrong place: judging yourself for being judgmental. So that's already the beginning of freedom, because you see it - so you stop trying to do anything - it's very important.
     Do you understand, as a separate person, our powerlessness? To fully accept our powerlessness as a
separate person - there is humility in it. We have to start from this humility, this recognition of our powerlessness as a separate person. 
     It is not that attempt to get rid of the judgment that is going to take you in the right direction. It comes from hatred - hatred for yourself, hatred for being judgmental. And hate always takes us in the wrong direction. 
     Only love, love for the truth, interest. To be interested in what we truly are. But in these moments when we are judgmental, these are not the good moments. It's like when it is storm season, hurricane season, you just board your windows, and you go somewhere else. 
     To 'board your windows' means don't listen to your fear, to your desire to judge yourself, to do whatever against it. 
     To 'go somewhere else' would mean to leave the body-mind house. You are not in it. The body-mind house is in you. To leave the body-mind house means first to investigate, if you can, in this moment.
     But a true investigation is an open-ended investigation. It is an investigation that has no personal agenda in it. That's a big difference. As long as there is a personal agenda, such as in this case: 'I don't want to be judgmental any longer.' Forget about it! It is better to do nothing, than to do the stupid things this agenda will make you do.
     Open-mindedness in an investigation means I let the investigation take me where it's going to take me. I don't know ahead of time what the outcome is going to be. 

Question : 
     But how do you end up in an open-ended question from a place of fear and contraction, wanting it to be different?

Francis Lucille :
     You first have to renounce what this frustration is telling you to do. What makes you renounce it, and board the windows and the doors in this house? It is the understanding of your powerlessness, and that whatever you are going to do is only going to make things worse. That's why I started answering your question from this vantage point. Understand that the desire to get rid of judgment, comes from judging yourself for being judgmental. Which is more judgment. So you have to stop this layer of judgment. That's the first thing to do.
     Now the second thing to do is to understand that the reason for being judgmental is that you believe yourself to be a separate person. Because it is both the separate person who is being judged for being judgmental, and it is the separate person that judges, saying, 'It is not convenient for me to be judgmental.'
     So when you see this entire process, there is an intelligence that comes into play. So that you just stop. Whatever is going to happen next, you don't know, but at least you've let go of the process, even for one millisecond. That's a moment of intelligence there because you have been somehow out of the process. But, you are not involved in this judgmental or whatever ignorant behaviour all the time. 
     We all have moments of availability, moments of interest when we think about the truth. The thought about the truth comes spontaneously to us. In these moments, we have the desire to investigate, not because we have a personal agenda, but for the sake of truth alone. And it is only in these moments that we should investigate. We shouldn't investigate with a personal result in mind. Then it's better to watch a movie, to do something stupid. We should reserve meditation investigation for these moments when we truly are interested, because then it becomes effective. And it is these moments, when we are truly interested, when we want to know without projecting what the outcome of this investigation is going to be. 
     It is these moments that in fact liberate us from being a person. Because they lead to an understanding, they lead to meditation, and they lead to moments of freedom when we experience our freedom. And later on, this freedom is experienced as peace, and then as joy. And that's how the cure takes place.
     It is not bad to recognize, to be aware of these moments when we are judgmental. What is bad is to judge ourself for being judgmental. What would be much better, would be to say, 'WOW, I just noticed that I was judgmental! I congratulate myself.' Because in this moment, when I saw it, I was out of it. I was in my true nature. Even for a split second, I was out of it. So you should congratulate yourself for having distanced yourself, even for a very short moment, having seen it. Because most people, unlike you in these moments, they are not aware of it. They are judgmental all the time, all the time. That's their modus operandi.

This youtube video is the source of the above transcript.

Blue Sky & Clouds Metaphor

Question : 
     How does it feel, from moment to moment, that you are consciousness, and that consciousness is universal?

Francis Lucille : 
     It feels like peace. It feels like the emotional state we were talking about yesterday - this sense of lack in the background that lingers, a sense of something is not right in the background, that something is missing, this sense of impending doom in the background - has been replaced with peace, but happy peace, content peace, exciting peace in that sense eager peace, enthusiastic peace, life-loving peace, absolute safety or security peace. 

Question : 
     And is it possible for that to be unwavering, despite circumstances?

Francis Lucille : 
     Yes, because it's the real background of our experience anyway. By essence, by design if you will, by nature, it is always present. So it never really disappears. It can only apparently disappear by being hidden by the emotional state that comes in front. The same way that the blue sky can be hidden by the clouds. But the clouds don't put an end to the sky. 
     Let's assume that someone has been born in Shropshire (UK), where it's always cloudy, and has never seen the blue sky. Then one day, by some extraordinary miracle, there is a tiny patch of blue in the sky that appears. And this Shropshire lad exclaims 'What a beautiful blue cloud!' And he's very happy about the 'blue cloud'. So this 'blue cloud' is happiness to him. However, he's still in ignorance of the sky - right? Because he's not understood that the sky was always there, whether the clouds were there or not. 
     So this is the position of the ignorant experiencing a moment of happiness. The experience of happiness is a true experience of happiness. However, it is not attributed to it's real cause - the blue sky, but to an alleged cause, which comes and goes. Because this hole (in the clouds), especially in Shropshire, is not going to last for too long. So at some point, especially if this Shropshire lad chooses to move to the south of France, the episodes of blue sky will become more and more frequent. And one day, he will realize that the picture has been replaced with one in which you have a sky which is mostly blue, with a few clouds there just to make the blue of the sky feel more blue. ... At some point he will realize - 'Jee, the sky is always there, behind the clouds.' Now, and perhaps that's where the metaphor comes to an end, because this metaphor cannot account for the fact that I am the blue sky. 
     Then the moment I realize that I am the blue sky, then the presence or absence of the clouds becomes irrelevant you see. Because I am in fact beyond the clouds always. Because I'm not a cloud. I'm not a blue cloud - blue cloud is a limited consciousness. The unlimited consciousness is the sky beyond. The moment I realize that I'm always, always the blue sky, I am the happiness itself, and I cannot loose it. Because the blue sky is permanent, it is the clouds that are impermanent. 
     The metaphor has its limits. Because I am both that which sees the blue sky and the blue sky which is seen. 

Attention & Awareness of Awareness

     “When we are asked the question, ‘Am I aware?’, in order to answer the question from experience, our attention has to go to the experience of being aware. So our attention removes itself from any object – from the door, from the sensation, from the thought – and it looks for the experience of being aware. But it can’t find it. Because attention can only be directed towards an object. So the attention vacillates for a moment between objects, looking for the experience of ‘being aware.’ Whether it goes outwards or inwards, it cannot find the experience of being aware. Anything it focuses itself on is not the experience of being aware, it is what we are aware of. So the attention vacillates for a moment, and then it begins to subside. It sinks back, and it goes back, and back, and back, and back, until it reaches its source, at which point it ceases to be attention. 
     Because attention can only stand by being directed towards an object. Without an object to be directed towards, the attention cannot stand. It falls, or collapses back into its source. And at some point, is revealed as pure consciousness – that is, consciousness without an object. We can define attention as consciousness directed towards an object. 
     In the absence of an object, upon which to focus our attention, attention cannot stand, and it falls back, through lack of support, into its source. It is a non-process, a non-practice. 
     The rising of attention is an activity. The sinking back of attention is the cessation of that activity. It’s often called meditation and it seems to be an effort that we have to make. It’s not an effort that we have to make, it is the cessation of a previous effort which we didn’t realize that we were making. So this non-practice of sinking the attention into its source is in Sanskrit called atma vichara, which for many years has been misleadingly translated as ‘self-inquiry’. Because when people hear ‘self-inquiry’ – what is an inquiry? An inquiry is an activity of the mind, directed towards an object. So when we hear practice self-inquiry, the first thing we all think - and I thought this for many years – is that self-inquiry is an activity of the mind searching for the ‘I’. And then of course the question arises ‘which I’ and ‘where is the I’ and we’re all aware of the confusions that have arisen around which I are we inquiring into, and what is the process of inquiry? Atma vichara is better translated, not as self-inquiry, but self-abidence or self-resting. 
     In Ouspensky’s tradition it is referred to as self-remembering. Again, that was, in most cases misunderstood because it’s only possible to remember something with objective qualities. That was not what was meant in that tradition, but it was misunderstood. So again, the mind went off in search of a self it was supposed to be remembering. No, it’s a non-objective remembrance of our eternal nature - its recognition, its re-knowing of itself.
     Why is it called a recognition? It’s because previously, the attention or awareness or consciousness rises in the form of attention in order to know something other than itself. When consciousness knows something other than itself – such as an object, or person or world, or thought – it, as it were, turns its back on itself. It ceases gazing at itself, rises in the form of the finite mind or attention, and in the form of the finite mind or attention, it can look away from itself and this apparent looking away from itself involves the forgetting or overlooking of itself and this is in the spiritual tradition what is called the primal ignorance – the ignoring of the reality of consciousness. 
      So when attention sinks back into its source, it doesn’t know something new, it recognizes something which it’s always known, but seemed to overlook because of the exclusive focus of its attention on objects."

Rupert Spira

https://batgap.com/rupert-spira-2nd-interview/

Emptiness

     "Emptiness teachings demonstrate that the 'I,' as well as everything else, lacks inherent existence. The notion of lacking inherent existence has several senses. 
     In one sense, empty things lack essence, which means that there is no intrinsic quality that makes a thing what it is.
     In another sense, empty things lack independence, which means that a thing does not exist on its own, apart from conditions, relations or cognition. 
     A great deal of what one studies in the emptiness teachings demonstrates the relations between these two senses, and heightens one's sensitivity to their ramifications. 


     When you meditate on emptiness, what you actually look for is inherent existence. Instead of finding inherent existence, you will find the lack of inherent existence. This lack itself is emptiness."                                                  Greg Goode

http://www.heartofnow.com/files/emptiness.html

Awareness of Awareness

     "The point of sitting in meditation is only to find the meditator. The more you look, the more you will be convinced that he cannot be found... Fundamentally, you are nothing, but you are not aware of this and project energy in seeking what you are... When, by self-inquiry, you find out that the meditator does not exist, all activity becomes pointless and you come to a state of non-attaining, an openness to the unknowable."        Jean Klein

       Andrew Rawlinson. “The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions.” Open Court, Chicago, Illinois, 1997. http://www.nonduality.com/klein.htm
 

Rupert Spira's exceptionally clear explanation of Awareness of Awareness