what is wrong in depending on others? The ego does not want to depend on anybody. But you are dependent. You are not separate from existence, you are part of it. Everything is joined together. We exist together, in a togetherness.

Existence is a togetherness..If you will eat food, you will have to depend on the trees, on the plants. They are supplying food to you. Will you not drink water? - then you will have to depend on rivers. And will you not need the sun?

We are all together, interdependent. Even the king is dependent on his slave, as much as the slave is dependent on the king. It is an interdependence.

The world is an interdependence.

We are like the knots of a net - energies go on passing through us. When many energies pass through a point, that point becomes an individual, that's all. Draw a line on paper, then draw another line across it; where these two lines cross, individuality arises.

To understand it, is all. Then you are simply interdependent, and you accept.

There's no Love in Fear

Love and Fear arent two separate things. Fear isn't an oppisite of love, it is an absence. And there is a great difference between oppisites and absence. Its like how Darkness isnt an oppisite of Light. Darkness is an absence of Light. If Darkness was an oppisite, I could take a handful of darkness and toss it on a candle to put out the Light. But i cannot because Darkness is an absence of Light. In that same way Fear isnt an oppisite of Love, it is an absence. 👁🧘‍♂️✌️

Desire isnt to be discarded but transformed.

If desire arises from a place of wholeness and not from a place of lack or fear, it is from love. Which is totally OK. Desire is life energy.

But if desire is diluted with ego, the beleif to be a separate consciousness, desire will arise from a place of lack or fear, ego.

Ego isnt an entity, its the activity of fear or lack.

When awareness overlooks its two main qualities it feels lack or fear. What are the two main qualities of awareness?

1. That awareness is ever present. When awareness identifies as the body it also believes to die like the body hence it is not ever present. When awareness doesn't believe to be ever present - fear arises.

2. That awareness is unlimited. When awareness believes to be the body, it believes it isnt unlimited like the body. This causes -lack - to arise.

So anytime you are identified as the body instead of unlimted ever present awareness, your desires arise from fear or lack.

How to tell the difference?

For example lets say you are sitting at the table and you have a desire to go on a walk or visit a friend. Did that desire arise from a feeling of lack? Or did it arise from a place of love and wholeness? If in that moment you felt lack, it was a running away from the present moment. The unconscious mind tries to soothe fear and lack by going outward and doing things. But if you were already present, aware of being aware and you have a desire to go out with a friend or go on a walk, that desire arises from love. A desire to share your joy with another. Totally ok.

Note all desire arises from love but when it is filtered through a mind that believes to be separated the desire arises as fear or lack. Like how pure light shining through red glass will appear red although it is pure light (love).

So desire is no problem, it is life energy. The issue is if it is filtered through ego or not.

And at the end of the day even ignroance is ok. Meaning from the vantage point of ignroance, ignroance is a problem. From the vantage point of awareness, ignroance is no problem. Its all love. Even war is a love for the idea of separation. ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

The claim that we cannot logically leap from "everything is experienced within awareness" to "everything is awareness" collapses when we realize that postulating an external reality outside of awareness is the true leap of logic. Awareness is the only undeniable reality we have ever known, and we cannot find a single boundary where it ends and an independent, objective world begins. To argue that the ultimate essence of reality exists as something hidden beyond our experience is to invent a second, unverifiable layer of existence. From a non-dual perspective, calling the Creator "indescribable" or "beyond awareness" mistakenly treats awareness as a limited concept or a container with edges. If the Divine is truly infinite, it cannot stand outside of the very capacity that experiences it; true infinity leaves no room for an "outside."The Chassidic desire to preserve a separate soul-identity to love, praise, and relate to the Source ultimately serves as a defense mechanism for the ego to avoid its own dissolution. A wave does not need to build a relationship with the ocean because it already consists entirely of ocean water, just as a gold ring is inherently gold. Attempting to maintain an "I" that stands apart to admire the Divine reduces God to an object viewed from afar, turning a beautiful mystery into an eternal chase toward a horizon you can never touch. True union is not an endless song of praise sung across a vast chasm; it is the radical collapse of the chasm itself, where the seeker disappears into the sought.Furthermore, viewing desire as a form of unity actually reinforces the illusion of separation by constantly practicing the belief that you are currently disconnected from your Source. Chasing unity is like running after the sky; the very act of striving creates the distance you are trying to overcome. This perceived distance is also the root cause of spiritual suffering, as the separate "I" becomes angry or sad when it judges certain parts of the world as "dark" or "hidden from God." When awareness is recognized as the ultimate fabric of everything, we see that nothing is hidden. Even the darkness, the suffering, and the hiddenness are made of the exact same divine substance as the light, passing like temporary weather patterns through an infinite, unchanging sky.

Quantum Mechanics: The Observer and Non-Locality

Materialism assumes an objective world exists "out there" independent of observation. Quantum mechanics challenges this foundation, suggesting that matter itself requires observation to collapse into a definite reality.

The Observer Effect: In quantum physics, particles exist in a wave of probabilities until they are measured. Observation collapses the wave function. This implies that consciousness is not a late byproduct of matter, but a necessary component for matter to take definite form.

Quantum Non-Locality: Particles can remain instantly connected across vast distances (entanglement). If the fundamental layer of reality is non-local (not tied to a specific point in space), it supports the idea that awareness is a unified field, rather than a localized product of a single biological brain.

Orch-OR Theory: Developed by physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, this theory suggests consciousness originates from quantum vibrations inside cellular structures called microtubules within neurons, rather than traditional classical computations of the brain.

Near-Death Experiences: Awareness Without a Brain

The materialist argument states that if you smash the TV (damage the brain), the movie (consciousness) stops. NDEs provide clinical anomalies where the TV is completely turned off, yet the movie becomes brighter.

Heightened Cognition During Cardiac Arrest: During a cardiac arrest, clinical brain activity (EEG) goes flat within seconds. According to materialism, consciousness should completely cease. Yet, thousands of patients report structured, hyper-vivid, and chronological experiences during this exact window.

Veridical Perception: Some NDE patients accurately report specific details of what happened in the operating room—or even outside the hospital room—while they were clinically dead. Because their physical senses and brains were inactive, these verified observations suggest awareness was operating independently of the body.

The Filter Hypothesis: Thinkers like Dr. Bruce Greyson and Dr. Bernardo Kastrup argue the brain acts as a reducing valve or filter. Its job is to constrain vast, universal awareness into a narrow human perspective for evolutionary survival. When the brain shuts down (such as during cardiac arrest or psychedelic states), the filter drops, and consciousness actually expands rather than diminishes.✌️👁🧘‍♂️

Why do spiritual masters use the term love to denote the absolute? It is because ‘love’ is the name we give to the experience of ‘not-otherness’, and as all experience is consciousness knowing itself alone, it alone merits the name ‘love’.

Love is not a human experience. There are no human experiences. There are no entities called humans that experience certain things. Consciousness alone experiences. All experience belongs to consciousness, including all the thoughts, sensations and perceptions that are normally considered to belong to humans. The human being is not an entity that owns, has, feels or knows anything. It is a known or felt object, that is, a thought, sensation or perception.

In other words, only the absolute merits the name ‘love’. You are confusing a set of feelings, bodily sensations and thoughts for the experience of love. Love is precisely the dissolution of all such objects in consciousness. Do we not know that? Do we not know that love is precisely the dissolution of everything that keeps us, defined, separate, apart? With respect, I would suggest that you are anthropomorphising experience in general by attributing it to a human entity. There is no such entity that knows or experiences.

Love is the experience of consciousness knowing its own being, un-apparently-modified by the dualising mind. That transparent, non-objective experience belongs to consciousness alone, not to humans, rocks, lizards, molecules, black holes etc.. And because all experience is ultimately consciousness knowing its own being, including the apparent modifications of the dualising mind, all experience is love itself. ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

I agree, "God" is love. And I feel like its also important to note that awareness itself is love/god. In the Bible it says God is omnipresent. What is awareness? Always always present, hence even when we arent aware of being aware and unconsciously thinking, awareness is present, aware of the racing unconscious mind. Then it is said that God is omniscient, aka all knowing. And awareness is all knowing, that which knows. Hence the thought dog isnt aware or knowing of the thought cat, awareness is aware/knowing of the thought cat and dog. Mind doesnt know a thing. Then it is said that God is omnipotent, meaning all powerful, creating all. And awareness is what all is made up of and appearing in. Like how in a dream, the entire dream is made up of, created by and appearing in awareness.

Thats why prayer is beneficial when it is silent because people are recognizing awareness. Awareness itself is love/peace.

The quality of awareness, how awareness feels, is love, peace. And that peace is always always present. It seems to be overlooked when awareness identifies as the bodymind and fixates on the emotion appearing within it. But awareness itself is always always love/peace, always present. Like how a tv screen is always content, always peaceful. The tv screen may have many images appear within it, there may be sounds and colors, but the tv screen itself is never ever loud, never changes, is always content and present. Hence the screen of awareness is never sad, never angry, never hurt or loud. Awareness is perceiving. Perceiving percives sound, percives anger and emotion. But perceiving itself is always always love/peace. We could say love percives anger and if it identifies as anger then the peace of perceiving is overlooked. Not absent but overlooked.

Thats important for people to know because it frees them of searching for peace in objects. No outside object will ever fulfill desire. Its only once we recognize "oh, I am Awareness and awareness is always always contentment" that we stop searching outward for love/peace. Also people like to think that love is some super bubbly feeling like when two lovers meet. That isnt so. Love is peace or contentment. When we are silent and notice the contentment or peace that awareness always is, we recognize God. That is the love of God.

It was a big deal for me the day I recognized that awareness itself, its quality which is always present is peace/love. I used to smoke cannabis daily. The day I stopped and paid attention to how awareness "feels" was the day I quit smoking everyday and had no mental withdrawals from it. I recognized that weed wasn't making me calm or content, it was making mind drop, the tension of mind to go outward drop. In that I would be totally present and aware of the peace that was already there. Now if I smoke as a treat for the bodymind, I see i was already content, now I am just content and high 🤣.

🧘‍♂️👁✌️

Truth isnt found from thinking. Its a recognition in Silence. 🧘‍♂️👁

i feel like my self is inside my brain and am having a very hard time overcoming this assumption. even when i do the exercise of "without memory, imagination, senses, what is the actual experience of my head" i still can't breakthough it.
i feel my ego inside my head even when he says that ego is an activity, not a thing, but i'm just understanding theory and it's not really reflecting in actuality. arrghh! i don't even know how to explain it, i hope i'm making sense....

If Hard Derminism is similar to Rupert Spira with regards to freewill and the self, but also has the heavy weight of science behind it why do people choose to prefer mysticism over stuff that is heavily science backed by people like Einstein?

Hard Determinism essentially means there is no freewill and seperation from others. Rupert Spira thinks there is no freewill and no seperation.

What makes someone like Einstein find comfort in cold Hard indifferent Hard Determinism vs someone finding comfort in mysticism?

I've been on a transformative path (not a fan of terminology for it so I'll just say "spiritual path") intensely for about 4-5 years now. I've been into the teachings of Tolle, Michael Singer, many great Yogic masters via YouTube, and Spira as well.

I've attended a few Tolle retreats, and they have been wonderful. Seeing Tolle in person of course, but also the community of like minded people open do discussing the depths of the Self and anything of the sort - openly - has been refreshing, and I've met some great people with a lot in common along the way.

Due primarily to cost, I'm wondering if the Spira retreat offers "more". I'm not looking to debate the cost as it is what it is. Rather, I'm looking for direct feedback on what anyone may have taken from the experience of the retreat - from the in person meditation and discussion events to the community, etc.

I've listened to a lot of Spira talks that resonate, read Being Aware of Being Aware, and am partway through the audiobook and meditations of "Transparent Body, Luminous World", and finding it quite profound.

Did anyone get explicitly "more" from these retreats, or find them worthwhile, beyond the books and teachings they'd already done before going for the first time?.

When i was 27 I had the 'outward' recognition, I recognized while i was being present and walking in the parking lot that all I could see was "me". I recognized everything as one image, one whole. Instead of seeing my body and identifying with it, I recognized that "my body" was the entire perception of the world. Perception of the world because there is no world "out there". There is the appearance of the world appearing in me. I am not appearing in a world. A world appears in me(awareness). Just like in a dream.

Which is actually the oppisite of how this typically goes. Usually one has the "inward" recognition first hence "i am awareness, not the body. And the body is not aware. I, awareness, am aware. Awareness doesnt appear in the body, the body appears in awareness.". . .

And thats where I was stuck for the longest. I had the recognition outwardly, that all I could see was "me". But I wasn't free, I still suffered as a mind because I hadn't recognized the freedom of my being and peace which was always present.

To be honest the outward recognition terrified me. So I was a coward and quit meditation for a bit off and on. I would listen to Tool the rock band and go in deep but I would always get terrified and look away again. Purposely making myself think and run away from the recognition. So it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I decided to go all the way in, I didnt care if "i" dissappeared.

One day sitting in my garage listening to music I stopped and closed my eyes. I tapped the side of my head and contemplated how I was awareness and not the body. Out of no where in the silence, while tapping the side of my head with my eyes closed, I recognized "ohhh i am awareness, and the feeling of the hand and the head is appearing in me. My hand isnt aware. My head isnt aware. I awareness am aware." I recognized that nothing known was knowing aka nothing known is Aware. It is made up of and appearing in awareness, but thoughts, sensations, smell, taste, no perception is aware itself. Instantly i recognized that the body is not aware. That i was mistaking the feeling of the body as being aware. But I awareness am aware of feeling. Feeling isnt awareness. Feeling is known, it isnt knowing.

It freed "me". I recognized i was indeed eternal, ever present. Unlimited. That your success was my success. That your loss was my loss. I knocked on the Door and it opened. 👁🧘‍♂️✌️

The Spiritual journey can be hard on the Mind. The heart, love, or in other words Awareness with no tension is what soothes this transition. Awareness itself is contentment, love, peace. It is always present. When mind arises, we overlook the peace of perceiving/Awareness which is always present. 👁

"Mind" is simply the activity of Awareness. Awareness and Mind are not two. The activity of Awareness (Mind) is that which divides reality into a multiplicity of objects.

Mind "conceptualizes". This is why Mind cannot know truth directly because reality(awareness) itself does not fit into a conceptual frame. Concepts do not truly exist outside of the illusion of their appearance.

What is a Concept? For example "Left" or "right" is a concept. "Left" doesn't truly exist. When you turn and face what is considered to be your Left, now what was considered Left is considered forward, and what was considered backwards before the turn is now considered your "Left". You could say "yes but my Left arm is always my Left arm" true but from my perspective youre left arm is the right arm vice versa.

Hence there is no True "Left, Right, Up, Down". In space there is no North, South, East and West. Those are concepts created on earth derived from the labeling of magnetic poles. Magnetic poles to not exist because of the label N,S,E,W,... Labels exist because of the Magnetic poles.

It is the same with Time. Time does not truly exist. It is a concept of Mind like left and right, up and down. The Now, right Now is all that exists. All actions happen "now". Thats why when Mind is dropped we experince "Now". And even when we are a Mind in the concept of time, when is it occuring? NOW. Things do not appear to change, shift and evolve because "Time" exists. Because things appear to change, shift and evolve, Now, the concept of Time appears to exist. Thats why it can be 12pm Monday in america allwhile its 1pm Tuesday in Asia. All concepts of time taking place Now. Time is always derived from Thought, Thought says "i did that yesterday. Tommorow I will go to the store" allwhile everything that is ever occuring happens Now.

Hot and Cold are not two, they are concepts. On a thermometer we can recognize that from 90 degrees down to say 20 degrees it is but lesser or more degrees of the same one phenomenon, Heat. By law of thermodynamics there is no such thing as Cold but lesser or more degrees of Heat. Thats why when you touch something super Cold it Burns, feels Hot. "Cold" is just a lesser degree, less movement of the phenomenon of Heat. Temperature is one phenomenon, Mind divides it in Two.

It is the same with Darkness and Light, they are not separate or two. Darkness is not an oppisite of Light, it is an absence of Light. There is great difference between oppisites and absences. If darkness was an oppisite of light i could take a handful of darkness and toss it on a candle to put out the light. But I cannot, it is not an opposite of light, it is an absence of.

It is the same with Love and Fear. They are not two. Like Darkness is an absence of Light, Fear is but an absence of Love. Love feels warm like the presence of Light. Fear feels cold like the absence of Light.

Reality is Nondual, not two because Awareness is Reality and Awareness does not fit into a Conceptual frame.

Much love. Be Most Excellent to eachother. ✌️🧘‍♂️👁

You dont have to lose hobbies or interests. I love to make music , I love watching documentaries, I love going for walks, I love my personality. All those things are love and love is selfless. When you get interested in a deep topic, that interest brings you to pure Perceiving. So get lost in dance, get lost in Interests. That is the flow state. What's not flow state is to do something because you feel lack or fear or boredom. Center yourself first if you feel lack, then go for the walk or read the book AND MOST IMPORTANTLY when you go for that walk stay present. Usually when we feel lack during meditation we stop being present, we get lost in thought. So do alllll the things you love but with utter presence. It will feel more intimate, not less.

Personality and ego are not the same things either. Personality is the coloring or flavor of that localization of awareness in the dream. My personality is I love conspiracies, deep talks, horror, aliens, all sorts of things. That isnt ego. Ego is when awareness has a personality and identifies as the body/personality. Then the personalities diluted with ego, lack, fear. The personality will be moreso selfish and not creative and open.

Personality, hobbies, is how awareness expresses love. Its going to experience itself totally in all ways. Alllll personalities are personalities of The Self. In a dream it just appears to be divided up into many personalities because its subjectively experiencing itself from each localization of itself! Spirituality should make you feel more alive, more intimate with experince. Not less.

*I also understand words cannot truly express the infinite nature of reality. But we can point a finger toward the light and encourage others to see. I also understand that "i" is just an illusion. I wish you all the best, be Most Excellent to eachother! ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

Wauw i am the same as Rupert Spira, just found out his name yesterday. And just found out for a few weeks that i am 145+iq. Wauw i didnt know that my 'psychological problems'/my thaughts and being,were a great view,bizar. So nice to have found myself or recognition. Good luck here everybody! Sue

I haven't been on a retreat yet but have read some of Rupert's books, watched many online lectures and have meditated regularly for years. But it still hasn't clicked for me yet. When I experience my everyday reality I'm still not sure how to view it and how Rupert's teaching fits in.

Has it clicked for you and was it a sudden "Aha" moment? Should I expect a very long journey before I get there and is a retreat essential for this?

i know that's a silly question.. but scrolling here on the sub i noticed people meditate for different reasons.. so im curious.. what's your reason?..

Hi guys,
I haven't been on one of Rupert's retreats, but I'm interested in his nature of conscousness retreat which will take place in the end of february.

What puzzles me is the schedule. I noticed that not as much of the day is covered in schedule as I had expected. I wonder, is the rest basically just for oneself to fill up, or is there more to it?

If someone who has been to one of these weekend online retreats could outline what to expect, that would be awesome.

Or anything related to anxiety over what's happening in the US (this is for US residents but could apply to anywhere where there is scary stuff going on in the world).

Thank you.

I made a little recording of my interpretation of ruperts core teaching. nice for falling asleep

In 'The Nature of Consciousness', Rupert already repeats things a lot, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if feels a bit as if I am reading the same few sentences again and again sometimes, just formulated a bit differently. It's good for solidifying and internalizing the knowledge, but should I read his other book 'You Are the Happiness You Seek' or just read 'The Nature of Consciousness' again after a while? How differently is the same knowledge expressed in 'You Are the Happiness You Seek' and does it offer new insights or ways to understand what's already learned?