by Rupert Spira

Is it possible to live free of anxiety? Rupert is asked this common question by someone who says that they approach so many life situations with a feeling of anxiety because it feels like ”I am the one doing this” or ‘I need to get it right”. Rupert suggests that we are actually already completely free of anxiety, and that it is indeed possible to live a life free of anxiety. Rupert goes on to say that our anxious habits relax or subside during other activities such as attending a retreat. This is evidence that our being, or the presence of awareness, is emerging from the background of our experience and that our identity is shifting from ‘I, the anxious person’ to ‘I, awareness’. This clip was taken from the 7 Day In-Person Retreat at the Mercy Center: The Silence Which Beckons Us Into Ourselves which took place from October 23 – 31, 2021.

Timestamps: 00:00 Awareness Pervades Everything 1:13 Habit of Feeling Anxious 2:25 Living Without Emotional Resistance 3:00 You Are Already Free Of Anxiety 3:55 Shifting Your Identity from Anxious to Awareness

Enryu shared some teachings from the Lojong practice: Lojong was originally brought to Tibet by an Indian Buddhist teacher named Atisha. It is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and is based on a set of aphorisms formulated in the 12th century. The practice involves refining and purifying one’s motivations and attitudes. She shared an excerpt from from Norman Fischer’s book, Training in Compassion, where he discusses lojong,and how it involves working with short phrases (called “slogans”) as a way of generating bodhichitta, the heart and mind of enlightened compassion.

Though the practice is more than a millennium old, it has become popular in the West only in the last twenty years or so, and it has become very popular indeed, because it’s a practice that one can fit very well into an ordinary life, and because it works. Through the influence of Pema Chödrön, who was one of the first American Buddhist teachers to teach it extensively, the practice has moved out of its Buddhist context to affect the lives of non-Buddhists too. The 59 proverbs that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering.

One can’t pick just one…Here are some Slogans shared during our gathering:

• Don’t be so predictable — Don’t hold grudges
• Don’t malign others.
• Don’t wait in ambush — Don’t wait for others weaknesses to show to attack them.
• Don’t bring things to a painful point — Don’t humiliate others.
• Don’t transfer the ox’s load to the cow — Take responsibility for yourself.
• Don’t try to be the fastest — Don’t compete with others.
• Don’t act with a twist — Do good deeds without scheming about benefiting yourself.
• Don’t turn gods into demons — Don’t use these slogans or your spirituality to increase your self-absorption
• Don’t seek others’ pain as the limbs of your own happiness.

Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient religious philosophies and one of its broadest. Based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India, Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions.

Swami Sarvapriyananda was the featured teacher last week He is the resident minister at the Vedanta Society of New York.

The subject of “Letting go”, of renunciation is universal.

Does it mean one has to put on long black or orange or other various coloured robes and leave family behind? No!

This video is from a Q&A session where someone is asking about becoming a Sannyas or a renunciate and Swami Sarvapriyananda  responds by saying that it is about attitude of mind and inner space that lives in compassion and wisdom. Enlightenment is for everybody.

The Place In Everyone That Has Never Been Hurt | Rupert Spira

There is a place in everyone that has never been hurt and is always at peace. A woman from Kyiv in the Ukraine has been asked to speak to people experiencing intense suffering and unfair conditions, such as a war hotspot where they have no opportunity to leave. She asks how she can best support these people, even if they do not have an understanding of non-duality. Rupert responds that even in intense situations there is something in the background of our experience that remains unharmed by it. Whatever it is in each of us that is aware of our experience now, is exactly the same as that which was aware of our experience 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and that doesn’t change. So even in the intensity of experience there is a place in yourself, your being, that is free, still, silent, at peace and it lies just behind the content of experience – that is, our thoughts, feelings and perceptions. This place shines in us as the knowledge ‘I am’ and it is always present, always available. In each pause throughout the day go back to this place inside yourself, the silence of being, and touch it again. That is the peace that everyone has been looking for.

 “There is a place in the soul where you’ve never been wounded.”

Meister Eckhart

We also watched Francis Lucille on the subject of surrender, trust and the guide-post that is the path of least resistance in doing the right thing. Taking the right action from this space.

Cut the Fluff aka Ignorance! Eliminate unnecessary thoughts/actions/emotions to reveal the True Path | Francis Lucille 

Acceptance does not mean it is a Passive space. Action comes. Doing the right thing comes.
The guide post is the path of least resistance – it is experienced with an effortlessness – an ease.

This is the play of Being and Doing – Being Awareness and Doing in our current form of a human
BEING the ocean AND also experiencing the joys and enthusiasm of a dancing wave, clashing, playing, interacting with other waves.

Bowing in deep gratitude for our training together,

Supriti
🙏🌷☀

Sue’s Comments last week inspired the selection of this talk, especially her concluding remarks on “effort”.

She wrote:

Another concept that has been very helpful to me recently is the realization that meditation is truly a “practice” and must be regularly practiced to gain the benefits. The benefit does not lie in what happens during a meditation, but what happens in the rest of your life. Repeated practice changes the brain and builds the skills that will benefit one in the rest of life. At least that’s my understanding. 

I sometimes wonder what to make of my perception that so many others seem to function and thrive without engaging in all this deep work. Or maybe they and everything else in my world are just manifestations of the stories my mind is creating? And what is the purpose of having to work so hard to remember who we really are, as you put it? These are the areas where I get fuzzy in my understanding.

Who is making the “effort” is the question being asked in today’s recorded talk. Rupert Spira addresses this very succinctly.

“Effort is just what Grace (Awareness) looks like, from the point of view of the separate self….So there is no conflict between making efforts and grace. We feel the efforts we make to return to our true nature, we feel “I am taking the journey back to our true nature”. We don’t yet know that it is (Grace) reeling us in… No, the separate self does nothing. There is no separate self either to do something or not to do something…So if you feel that you need to make the effort, make the effort, but know that it is always (Awareness) that is doing.”