Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Rupert Spira: You Are the Happiness You Seek
5.1k Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Rupert Spira, teacher, spiritual leader, and writer, teaches us about the nature of reality and the source of lasting peace and happiness. He explains the direct path and non-dual philosophy. As well as, elaborating on his latest book, You Are The Happiness You Seek.
After spending twenty years immersed in the teachings of classical Advaita Vedanta, he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, who introduced him to the Direct Path approach whereby one may recognise the source of peace and happiness in oneself.
Rupert has written several books and holds regular meetings and retreats online, as well as in Europe and the United States. He is also a noted potter, trained in the British Studio Pottery school, with work in public and private collections. www.rupertspira.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Rupert Spira
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of the Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Coe, your host, and thank you guys for tuning in. Today we have Rupert Spira joining us. He is the acclaimed author, spiritual teacher, and leader, and podcast host. If you haven't checked him out, you can find him on YouTube. He has his own site, rupertspira.com.
00:00:47
Speaker
And he is the author of many, many books.
Exploring Non-Dualism
00:00:49
Speaker
He has been speaking to spiritual topics, specifically the non-dualist direct path. If you don't know what that is, we will start from the beginning and walk you through. If you're aware of it and you want to hear a deep dive into ways in which you can connect to your authentic self more deeply, simply with the most beautiful, articulate explanations, then this is the episode for you.
00:01:17
Speaker
His latest book, You Are the Happiness You Seek, Uncovering the Awareness of Being, can be purchased on his site on Amazon. It's truly a remarkable work and I have pored through every page.
00:01:32
Speaker
So check out today's interview, find Rupert on YouTube on his site. He has workshops and he leads all sorts of different teachings and live events. I hope you enjoy today's show and thank you guys for tuning in. Welcome to this week's episode of the art of authenticity. I'm Laura Ko, your host. And today I am joined with Rupert Spira. Thank you, Rupert, for joining us today.
00:01:59
Speaker
Thank you Laura for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you.
00:02:04
Speaker
If you haven't heard of him, I'd say run out. Check out YouTube, the books, the podcast. He is an acclaimed author, spiritual teacher, and leader around the idea of the non-dualist perspective. And Rupert, for a lot of people, I feel, who haven't come into contact with your information, you're one of those people that have described, I think, a very complicated topic.
Understanding Non-Dual Simplicity
00:02:32
Speaker
with such ease and clarity, would you mind taking our audience through this, what is the direct path and how do they connect into this non-dualist perspective that you share with the world?
00:02:48
Speaker
You're right. It can seem very complicated. In fact, it's very simple. Let me start before I respond to your question about the direct path. Let me say something about the non-dual understanding because the direct path is really the direct path to the non-dual understanding. So let's start with that. The non-dual understanding is the understanding
00:03:11
Speaker
that underlies all the great religious and spiritual traditions. Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, all the traditions. And of course it's expressed by different people in different ways depending on where and when the understanding
00:03:36
Speaker
Rose and so this has given rise to a great proliferation of teachings and methods and disciplines and practices but actually the understanding itself is very simple and the understanding that underlies all these traditions is the same because people are the same the world over essentially what it so if we were to take
00:04:00
Speaker
3,000 years of non-dual understanding, and in all the traditions, and to distill it into a single sentence, it might read something like this. Peace and happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone and everything. Ooh, that's a beautiful sentence. If you've understood that,
00:04:29
Speaker
If we've understood that, we've really understood the essence of all the great religious and spiritual teachings. That's the essence of what all of them are saying in one way or another.
00:04:45
Speaker
the teachings become complex and so many practices and disciplines develop is because we all have various objections to this statement or difficulties with it. We wonder for instance, well, if peace and happiness are my nature,
00:05:02
Speaker
or the nature of my being and my being is obviously present all the time then why don't I experience it all the time and so in response to this very legitimate objection that teaching then begins to
00:05:16
Speaker
become more elaborate and begins to elaborate pathways whereby people may discover this understanding for themselves. But the actual understanding itself is very simple. Peace and happiness are the very nature of our self or our being, and we share our being with everyone and everything. What is the direct path?
00:05:39
Speaker
The direct path, as it suggests, is the path by which we go directly to this understanding. Given that the understanding is about the nature of our being, that it is experienced as peace and happiness on the inside,
00:05:55
Speaker
and that we share our being with everyone. That's the experience we know as love, the experience of our shared being. So it's experience, just peace and happiness on the inside and love on the outside. So the direct path is the path that takes us directly to our being. Now, what do I mean by that? Let's say you joined some kind of spiritual group or went to a retreat and you were given a mantra to practice.
00:06:26
Speaker
When we practice a mantra, we're giving our attention to a sound. We're not giving our attention to our being. The sound is an object, albeit a subtle object, which is a kind of halfway stage. It takes our attention away from the 10,000 things.
00:06:50
Speaker
we were previously paying attention to, and it gives us one thing to focus on. And then in time, the mantra fades and we sink back into our being. So that would be an example of an indirect path.
00:07:05
Speaker
I'm not making any qualitative judgment about it. I'm not suggesting it's inferior. It's more of a description. On the indirect path, we give our attention to a mantra, to the breath, to the pause between breaths, to a teacher, to a light, to an image, et cetera, et cetera. In the direct path, we go directly to our being. We don't go fire.
00:07:33
Speaker
teacher or a tradition or we just go straight there. And could you lead our audience? There's so much here I want to unpack, so I'm going to just take my time. Would you lead our audience in that process? So if we don't need the mantra, the meditation, how do we go directly to that innate being?
Discovering Self-Identity
00:07:57
Speaker
So all throughout our lives we make statements such as I'm six years old or I am 27 years old or I'm 43 years old or I'm married or I am single or I'm a bus driver or I am an artist or I'm a doctor or I am
00:08:20
Speaker
sad or I am lonely or I am depressed, I am excited and so on. We're all familiar with these statements that we either speak or think about ourselves. And in each of these statements, we refer to ourself, I am. And this self is then qualified
00:08:45
Speaker
by an age, a relationship, an activity, a state of health, and so on. Now, everything that we qualify ourselves with is constantly changing. I'm not always six years old, I'm not always 27 years, I'm not always 43 years old, I'm not always married, I'm not always single, and so on. But I always am. The I am in each of these statements is the same.
00:09:15
Speaker
When we say, one day, I am lonely, and the next day we say, I am in love. The two feelings are different, but it's the same self. When we say, I am six, one day and another day, I am 27, and the next day I am 43, we refer to the same self.
00:09:36
Speaker
When we say I'm married one day and I'm single the next day, we refer to the same subject. So the I am always refers to our essential self, that part of our self that never leaves us, that is consistent, that has been with us forever and will be with us forever. Everything else, the feelings, the activities, the relationships, the state of art, these are all temporary, they're not essential to us.
00:10:07
Speaker
So in the direct path, we take the thought, I am, and we don't allow it to be qualified by any experience. We take the thought, I am, and we allow that thought to take us back to our essential being.
00:10:30
Speaker
So one way to do this would be to imagine now removing from your experience everything that is not essential to you. So take your current thought. Your current thought is obviously not essential to you. Just imagine removing it, whatever you may be feeling.
00:10:55
Speaker
It's not essential to you. You're not always having that feeling. It comes, it exists for a while, and then it goes. So imagine removing that feeling. The sensation that you're currently feeling, the temperature of the air on your skin, your legs on the chair, your feet on the floor, these are temporary sensations. They weren't there 10 minutes ago, and they won't be there quite the same in 10 minutes time. So imagine removing them. Your perception of the world. Close your eyes for a minute.
00:11:25
Speaker
Your perception of the world has vanished. Open your eyes again. A new perception has appeared. No perception stays with us forever. The perceptions are intermittent. They come and they come. So take away your perceptions. Take away your sensations. Now, imagine taking away everything you can take away. What's left?
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, a sense perhaps. The awareness is what you refer to it as, yeah. Yeah, just that the raw I am, the raw being, just the raw presence before it is qualified by thoughts, feelings,
00:12:08
Speaker
and so on. And these essential qualities, it sounds like we can think of them as temporary. They're coming and going, whereas this presence is consistent. Exactly. When we say, I am cold, I am tired, I am lonely, I am an artist, I am a teacher, all those
00:12:30
Speaker
All the ways we qualify ourself are temporary. But the self that is being qualified remains consistently present throughout all experience, throughout our lives. And the analogy that I sometimes use is the screen and the image.
00:12:48
Speaker
Every image in a movie is different. But the screen, which is the background of all the images and upon which all the images play, is the same background. And that background is, by definition, colorless. It's on account of the colorlessness of the screen that all the colors in the image
00:13:15
Speaker
are able to appear. Imagine if the screen was red. Only reddish colors would be possible. But because the screen is transparent, all colors are possible. Because our being is, so to speak, transparent or devoid of qualities, sometimes said to be empty. It is for this reason that all experience can be added to it.
00:13:45
Speaker
if let's say your being was inherently sad.
00:13:51
Speaker
Only sad feelings would be possible. All the feelings you ever had would be tinged with sadness. Right. Just like all the colors on the red screen would be tinged with a red hue. But no, it's because your being is colorless that you can feel sad one day, overjoyed the next day, lonely the next day, depressed the next day, in love the next day. The whole range of feelings and indeed experiences are possible precisely because your being, the one
00:14:20
Speaker
to whom they appear or in which they appear is itself devoid of feelings, devoid of thoughts, devoid of an age, devoid of any qualities is transparent. So then, so then we use words that we use these rather clumsy words to try to not to not to describe our being because it can't be described, but rather to try to evoke it.
00:14:49
Speaker
So when I say your being is transparent or empty or silent or still, they're not really accurate words. But what I'm trying to do is to evoke that recognition. Yes, my essential
00:15:05
Speaker
Being is free of all qualities, free of all feelings. I experience sadness, but I am not myself sad. I experience loneliness, but myself, my being is never lonely. My thoughts may be agitated, but my being is free of agitation. And we sometimes describe that by saying its nature is peace. The absence of the agitation
00:15:35
Speaker
qualifies our character, characterizes our thoughts.
00:15:41
Speaker
And so this space, you sound like you're suggesting that it's like peace or like this or like that, but it's almost like when we place language on it, it's not quite sufficient. It reminds me of the T.S. Eliot poem, The Four Quartets, the still point in the turning world is actually a tattoo on my arm. Oh, lovely. I love that poem.
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, but I was so struck by the idea of him trying to place words to this space, the still point, which is neither here nor there, from or towards, but there it is.
The Power of Poetry
00:16:20
Speaker
That's exactly why we have poetry, because poems, as you well know, and of course all your readers well know, poems are not supposed to describe our experience. Their purpose is to evoke
00:16:35
Speaker
in us, the experience that the poet is having. And the poet uses words not to describe their experience. On the contrary, they realize their experience cannot be adequately squashed into these clumsy symbols, words. And yet, they're so skillful with their use of words that their words have this evocative power. And they don't describe the experience, but they take us to the experience.
00:17:03
Speaker
Right. Right. And that's how we can locate it within ourself by something within us wakes up to the knowing of what they're using. Exactly. Exactly. You can read a poem that if somebody asked you to explain it, you'd be lost for words. But when you read it, exactly as you say something
00:17:29
Speaker
wakes up inside and says, yes, I've always felt that, but I could never articulate it. But this poet has somehow managed to put words to it that's closer to the experience that I could ever come by trying to actually describe the experience. So there is this, exactly as you say, this recognition wakes up in you.
00:17:54
Speaker
And that is the purpose of the poet, to wake up this recognition in us of something that we all know but we had forgotten. If we didn't know the experience that the poet was referring to, we wouldn't understand it. The words would be gobbledygook.
00:18:14
Speaker
It is very specifically like that. You try to tell your friend, well, it's really meaningful, this art or this experience. But when you put it towards it's not quite right, but there's this innate felt knowing that you've come into something truthful. But articulation is the goal for poets or philosophers, but it's not easy to get close enough.
00:18:42
Speaker
I don't remember which Zen master it was. He said something like this. If I speak, I tell a lie. But if I remain silent, I am a coward. Beautiful. And so why a coward? Because you have to try. Because you've touched something in yourself that you know is true.
00:19:08
Speaker
But you know it's absolutely true that it's not just the sum total of the contents of your personal mind. You've touched something that's eternal, something that is true not just for you, but for everyone. And you feel compelled as a result to confess it. It's like your impersonal, your loving impersonal duty to speak it. And if you don't,
00:19:36
Speaker
You've shirked your sacred duty. Picasso said the same thing about art. He said, all art tells a lie, but it points to the truth. Right. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Because the frameworks that we have to speak to this space are always slightly inadequate to the experience of it.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yes, because if you think about our language, our language has evolved to describe the parts of experience. We talk about people, about tables, chairs, buildings. These are all fragments. But what if you want to express
00:20:25
Speaker
the whole. There isn't a language for that. And yet everything is an appearance of that. In reality, reality doesn't consist of 10,000 discrete, independently existing things. Reality is whatever it is, is one. But all our words describe the 10,000 things.
00:20:47
Speaker
So every word is a lie. If we wanted to speak the truth on this conversation, we would just sit here in silence for an hour and a half. Nothing we say is true. It's all we've got, but it's not all we've got. We have poetry, we have music, we have literature, we have silence. There are many other ways, but conversation is a very legitimate way. And we acknowledge that these words, they're clumsy, abstract symbols.
00:21:14
Speaker
But because of the meaning we have all agreed upon, we can communicate a lot with these words and we can use the words that have evolved to describe the parts to somehow evoke the experience of the whole.
00:21:32
Speaker
Beautiful. Then talk to me about authenticity. This is a show about authenticity. The people who tune in, myself included, are interested in this sense. I've interviewed hundreds of people and I hear the same thing.
00:21:47
Speaker
There's something within me that I knew that wherever I was wasn't where I needed to be and I needed to change but I didn't know where. But they're looking within themselves for that feeling of authenticity, that sense of there's something congruent with myself and the world and my life sort of reflects back what feels truest for me.
Defining Authenticity
00:22:10
Speaker
How do you think about authenticity given the way that you just spoke about the one experience of our life being the awareness? I think the more deeply we are in touch with our essential self or being, the more authentic we are.
00:22:32
Speaker
The thoughts, the feelings, the actions, the relationships that are informed by our essential being are the thoughts, feelings, actions, and relationships that express that. And that's what I would call true authenticity. So it's not
00:22:58
Speaker
a thought that just expresses an opinion. Let's take an extreme example. Let's say you developed an opinion about something that you read about in the news yesterday. That's an opinion that is so to speak on the surface of your mind. It doesn't
00:23:18
Speaker
represent your deepest love and understanding. I'm not saying it's not valid to have opinions, but if we want to think and feel and act and relate in an authentic way,
00:23:35
Speaker
Those thoughts, feelings, actions, and relationships need to be informed by our deepest sense of ourself, our deepest being. What is our deepest being? Our deepest being is the place of peace in us on the inside and on the outside. It's the being that we share with everyone.
00:24:00
Speaker
The fact of our shared being is the experience we all know as love and beauty. When we feel that we share our being with a person or an animal, we call it love. When we feel like we share our being with an object or with nature, we call it beauty. So love and beauty are like intrusions of reality into the normal
00:24:29
Speaker
way we see things in subject objects, self and other. So an authentic life would be one that is guided by this felt understanding of our deepest being. And so for people who are
00:24:55
Speaker
in a career, they're living their life and they're not feeling satisfied with their current situation. How do they start that process? Well, I think first of all, why are they not feeling satisfied? Because they feel that the work they're doing
00:25:13
Speaker
is not really an expression of their deepest self. That's right. And therefore, and we want, not an expression of our deepest self and the qualities that are inherent in ourself, if we can call them qualities, the qualities of peace, of quiet joy, love, beauty, that if we feel that the work we're doing is not an expression
00:25:40
Speaker
of these qualities that lie in the very core of ourself. We feel that our work is somehow meaningless. We think, well, what am I really contributing to humanity? I want to contribute something that is meaningful to humanity. I want to contribute something that brings peace, joy, love, justice, compassion, kindness, harmony, beauty into the world. Why? Because these are the qualities that are impersonal,
00:26:10
Speaker
innate in us. They are very intimate, but they're not qualities that come from... They're universal qualities. They're qualities that lie at the heart of everyone. They're not just our own idiosyncratic qualities. They're the core qualities that all beings share.
00:26:31
Speaker
And if we're not living from that place, we feel that in a way we're cheating ourselves and cheating the world, but we're not giving to the world of our fullest.
00:26:45
Speaker
potential. And that feels unsatisfying. So we feel that my life is meaningless. It's not contributing anything. It's not fulfilling for myself. It's superficial. It's just functional, for instance.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, because it's very interesting. Many people I've interviewed and my clients, it's like they could be doing something actually objectively meaningful,
Finding Meaningful Work and Life
00:27:12
Speaker
right? Their job perhaps as a doctor or they're doing something that one might say has value, but for them, it's not truthful to them within their essence. And so it gives them that sense, yeah.
00:27:26
Speaker
That's very true, but also the contrary is also true that someone could be doing a job which outwardly appeared to be not very significant, not contributing some great quality to humanity. You might be serving tables in a cafe or being on a till at a
00:27:51
Speaker
check out till it is supermarket, something just a very ordinary job, but still in your work and in your dealings with the customers or clients or you could be in each interaction, you could be conveying something that somehow just with a look, a smile, a word, a brief interaction could
00:28:16
Speaker
take people just momentarily to this, the deepest place in themselves. And such a person would feel that they were living a very meaningful life. And indeed, they would be living a very meaningful life. Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah. So it's not always, just as you say, you can be doing work that appears to be very significant and contributing a great deal, but you feel empty inside. Yeah. And you could also, for contributing, this apparently mean your job, but actually be communicating peace and joy to people that you come in contact with. Beautiful. And as a result, you'd feel fulfilled in your work.
00:29:02
Speaker
I love it. You have a new book. You are the happiness you seek. Yes. I love the title. While we talk about this, I mentioned to you I'm a philosophy undergrad graduate student. I love this topic. I could go on and on and on. But in a more simple way,
00:29:25
Speaker
It is so challenging for people to locate happiness, authenticity, what we're speaking about. You mentioned early in the conversation that there's all these structures in place to help people, mantras, meditations, religions, etc.
00:29:42
Speaker
Why is it so hard? Well, you know what, let me back up first. You've described happiness as this state, but I think people are confused between pleasure happiness and kind of a contented happiness. So perhaps you could first share how you define it exactly, and then why is it such a challenge for us? People aren't, Rupert, very happy in general, yeah?
00:30:10
Speaker
They wouldn't describe themselves that way, I suppose, yeah. Well, our culture has educated and encouraged us to seek happiness in objective experience, in objects, substances, activities, relationships, and so on. And I don't think any of your listeners would be listening to your podcast if
00:30:42
Speaker
their search for happiness in objective experience had succeeded. Why would they need to come to your podcast if their actions, their objects, their relationships had completely fulfilled? They wouldn't need your podcast, no. The reason people are coming to come to your podcast and my meetings and so on is precisely because our search for happiness in objective experience has let us down.
00:31:12
Speaker
It hasn't led to the lasting happiness that we seek and it's for that reason that we begin to seek alternative means and we end up coming to one of your podcasts or one of my meetings and so on.
00:31:28
Speaker
So why does our culture educate and encourage us to seek happiness in objective experience simply because we have lost this simple understanding. We've lost touch with this simple understanding that happiness lies inside us. Happiness is the nature of our being. It cannot be provided by anything outside of us.
00:31:55
Speaker
And you wouldn't describe the seeking of happiness outside of ourselves in shopping or like pleasure seeking activities. It doesn't feel quite the same as the happiness that you're describing. Pleasure is a physical experience, a sensory experience. The sun on your skin
00:32:22
Speaker
is pleasurable. Taste of strawberries and cream is pleasurable. But pleasure doesn't always equate to happiness. For instance, imagine eating too many strawberries and cream. That doesn't lead to happiness. However, there is a connection.
00:32:47
Speaker
We do notice that when we seek an object, hoping to derive happiness from it, that when we get the object, let's use strawberries and cream as an example, but it might be an intimate relationship, a better state of health, more money, and so on. Let's just use the example of strawberries and cream. It's true that when you get the object,
00:33:13
Speaker
that gives us sensory pleasure. We do also experience happiness. And as a result of this, we conflate pleasure with happiness.
00:33:24
Speaker
So why is there this connection? It's because while we're seeking the object, we are, by definition, unhappy. We're in a state of seeking. We haven't yet found the happiness we want. So we're in a state of seeking. When we acquire the object,
00:33:44
Speaker
that we're seeking in this case, the strawberries and cream. The seeking activity by definition comes to an end because we've acquired the object that we were seeking. So when the seeking activity comes to an end, the unhappiness comes to an end.
00:34:04
Speaker
And in that moment, we experience happiness. What are we experiencing in that moment? We're experiencing our being. We're tasting our being, which was always present, but it was veiled by the seeking mind. So that the acquisition of the object, the strawberries, the intimate relationship, whatever it is, the activity of the object doesn't deliver happiness. It puts an end to the activity of seeking.
00:34:31
Speaker
And at that moment, the mind collapses, and we taste our true nature of happiness. But we wrongly attribute the happiness to the object acquired, and hence this cycle of seeking happiness in objects builds up and eventually leads to, may lead to addiction.
00:34:56
Speaker
If this were not the case, Laura, there would be a different kind of happiness for every experience. There'd be a particular happiness that you feel when you have strawberries and cream, a different kind of happiness when you feel the sunlight on your skin, the different kind of happiness when you meet your intimate, but that's not the case. Happiness is always the same experience.
00:35:18
Speaker
When we were six-year-old children, when we were 16-year-old teenagers, when we were 26 and 36, whenever we experienced happiness, by whatever means it seems to have been brought about, the happiness itself is always the same experience. Why? Because we're always tasting our being, which is always the same.
00:35:43
Speaker
I'm having a moment that really landed for me. Um, this, the seeking, uh, that you're, you're spending all of that time. So, so, okay, let's say, let's say you are in search of something in your life. You'd like something. How do you spend that time without the seeking quality and that unhappiness so that you can not have these long phases without, yeah.
00:36:12
Speaker
It's still possible to have motivations in life, to have desires. It's still possible to be passionate about things. It's still possible to have desires. I'm not meaning to imply that all our desires are, by definition, destined to failure. No. Only the things that we desire for the sake of deriving happiness from them
00:36:41
Speaker
are destined sooner or later to end up in misery. But there's another source of desire. You can have a desire that comes from fulfillment, that comes from peace, that comes from love. So you can feel completely, you can feel at peace, you can feel full of love, you can feel full of enthusiasm, and your desire is a means of
00:37:08
Speaker
bringing that feeling out into the world and sharing it or expressing it or communicating it. For instance, your desire to do your podcast, I don't get the impression that your desire to
00:37:25
Speaker
To do the work you do comes from a great sense of lack and you do it in order to fill up the sentence. No, I feel it's because you have this love inside this joy and you're passionate about it and you don't want to just keep it in your heart. You want to share it with everyone. So you can still work very hard. You still have a desire. You still organize. You still plan. But this is a desire that comes from happiness.
00:37:49
Speaker
It doesn't lead towards happiness. Right. Right. And in my case, you're right. I do. I love what I do. And I'm so excited to bring that forward through the vehicles that I do exactly. Exactly. But what about the person who doesn't have the clarity yet that it's the podcast or the books or the teachings? Like in my case, I have these things that I'm bringing this love through and it's clear to me. But for somebody who's
00:38:16
Speaker
not clear, then they are in the seeking in their mind, but how would they shift that today so it's not that lack? Because I think that's a big challenge for people is to get out of that space of wanting, lacking. Right now, your view is that it's possible to not... We can't...
00:38:40
Speaker
just cut off our desire for object. If we feel this sense of lack inside and as a result we're seeking objects or substances or activities or relationships, we cannot
Transcending Desires for Inner Peace
00:38:54
Speaker
successfully just discipline the mind and say don't do that. People have tried to do this in spiritual practices and it just creates so much frustration and conflict because the impulse to seek happiness in the object or the substance is still there and you're just denying that impulse.
00:39:13
Speaker
which is like building a wall in a flowing river. It just creates so much pressure and tension and usually the river winds in the end and the wall comes tumbling down. So this is not a way of discipline. It's not a way of disciplining the mind and curtailing its desires. It's a way of understanding or even more accurately, a way of recognition. What do I mean by that?
00:39:46
Speaker
Let's do this experientially and not just philosophically. Can we go back to the little exercise we did at the beginning of the conversation where I suggested removing everything, all the layers of experience that are not essential to you, your thoughts, your feelings, sensations, perceptions. And all that remains is just being, just aware being. Now,
00:40:11
Speaker
We've already discussed and understood that we can't really describe that being, but given that, do your best. Try to use words that would most accurately describe the quality of your being after
00:40:32
Speaker
it has lost all the, all the characteristics that it derives from objective experience. What would you, what words would you use? Um, I would say space, like spaceless, timeless, um, a presence, um, um,
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's sort of everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Yes, yes. Quality to it. And there's a neutrality to this. Yes, yes. Is there any agitation in it? No. What would be the common word to express the absence? If you would, instead of describing that in the negative, how would you say that positively?
00:41:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think words like peaceful, contented. Yeah. Yeah. Aware. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any, is there any anxiety or lack or sense of lack there? Zero. Zero. Do you, do you feel that your essential being needs something?
00:41:46
Speaker
Does it feel incomplete? No. Exactly. Exactly. That experience that you're trying to describe is the experience that we call happiness, fulfillment, ease, absence of lack. So it's that simple.
00:42:08
Speaker
Once you touch your being and you realise, my being is inherently peace for all the peace and the happiness that I have previously sought out in the world, in objects, substances, activities, relationships,
00:42:23
Speaker
they are already the nature of my being. I can just go straight there, just like you. When I said, is there any lack there? This beautiful, broad smile came on your face as if you looked at me and said, are you kidding? I mean, any lack then? No, it's just
00:42:42
Speaker
It's at ease. As I said earlier, when we do get the acquired object, all that happens then is that the seeking mind comes briefly to an end. And at that moment, our true nature of peace shines.
00:42:58
Speaker
That's what we're tasting in that moment when you get the object and you feel happy. It's not the object that has created the happiness. The acquisition of the object has just laid your seeking mind to rest temporarily and allow the underlying peace to surface. In a direct path, we just go directly to that peace instead of going via the object.
00:43:28
Speaker
And so is it your belief that if people were to connect into that space more frequently and live their life as often as possible from connecting into that sense, that being state, that that's the starting place for those who are struggling? Absolutely, yes. That I think even if one were to
00:43:56
Speaker
want me to do this little exercise that we've done. Just for 10 minutes at the beginning of one's day, or the end of one's day, any time during the day, just pause, close your eyes, let go of all the thoughts feeds and just return to one's being and just rest there. Just rest in that quiet presence. Just doing that,
00:44:23
Speaker
It seems to be almost nothing. It is really nothing. We're not really doing anything. We're just resting in being as being. But doing so breaks the old habit of perpetually seeking happiness and objects. It weakens that habit. And as that habit dies down,
00:44:47
Speaker
The peace that is the nature of our being begins to emerge more and more, not just when we're sitting quietly on the sofa before we go to work in the morning, but we might be in the middle of something at work, in the middle of in between meetings or emails, and there's this spontaneous pause, not a formal period of meditation, just a spontaneous moment of pause where previously we would have reached
00:45:12
Speaker
for the fridge or for the iPhone and instead of doing that there's this pause and we feel this peace comes from the background of our experience and we just feel this causeless peace and that begins to happen more and more so our seeking activities in the world begin to die down and without our
00:45:35
Speaker
necessarily having to do anything about it. We notice that our life, to use your language to frame it in the context of the question you asked earlier, we begin to find ourselves being more authentic.
Living Authentically for Positive Responses
00:45:48
Speaker
We begin to find our lives are informed by the depths of our being and the peace and the quiet joy that lives there. And we begin to notice that
00:46:01
Speaker
We don't have to verbalize it and formulate it in the way that you and I are. We just notice that a choice, we're presented with a choice. Previously, we would have chosen A, but now there's a pause. We refer spontaneously to our deepest being, not just to our surface thoughts, and this time not. I'm going to go for B.
00:46:27
Speaker
So we begin to find that we make choices in terms of our activities, our relationships. All kinds of choices begin to be informed by what you would call a more authentic self. And the world begins to respond to this. We find the qualities of our friendships improve. Our work life seems magically to respond.
00:46:50
Speaker
to this change of heart. We suddenly find six months later, we've left the job we were doing, a friend called up, and we're now doing something that we love to do and that we always wanted to do. So there's this beautiful kind of response from the universe.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's really true when you drop into that essence and that space, it's like a whole new world seems to open up. In the seeking, you haven't seen what's available or the universe is responding. Exactly. Not because you've worked on yourself and disciplined yourself and tried it. No, just because you've just begun to sink deeper into yourself.
00:47:36
Speaker
formerly in periods of 10 minutes here or there. But then also just spontaneously you're walking, you're in the middle of a busy day at work, but you've been out for your lunch break and you're just walking back from the cafe to work. And there's this pause in five minutes, there's nothing on your mind. You don't have to be focusing on your phone calls or your emails. So there's just this relaxation in your mind. And that's when this background of peace
00:48:00
Speaker
begins to emerge and that informs the way you spend your day and your life. It informs the qualities of your relationships because you relate to people from this place.
00:48:13
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what people will say. Oh, that person feels so authentic. Exactly. Exactly. Well, what, what do they mean that they're not, they're not projecting their anxieties, their fear. They're not trying to impress you. They're not trying to look good. They're just, they're just being quiet because why, because they don't need to, that they, they, they don't need you to validate them, to prove to, to, to, to like them that their sense of theirself comes from their being.
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah. Exactly as you say, you feel the authenticity of the person and you like that person because you're not met with the fear, the anxiety, the bravado, the pretend. No, you feel this person is sincere.
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's where, yeah, our original point, like, I think too, you're the poet that speaks the truth. I think when you're in the presence of somebody who's in their truth, it wakens up that part of yourself and then you're connecting through that. But Rupert, let me just back up for a second, because I know a lot of people out there are like, okay, so when they drop back into themselves,
00:49:29
Speaker
They're like, I don't like it in here. I'm anxious. I am stressed. And you have this beautiful reframing around this idea of, I am stressed. I am anxious. I am angry. Because when we go in, there's shame. I don't like to see what's happening or it's overwhelming. So I'd prefer to look at my phone. You haven't gone back far enough. You've only gone halfway bank.
00:49:53
Speaker
OK. You've gone back to your, let me give you an analogy. Imagine an actor, John Smith, who plays the part of King Lear. And King Lear, as you know, he has three daughters. He has a terrible relationship with all of them. He's upset with them all. And there's trouble in his kingdom. He's at war with the French. So at the end of the play,
00:50:20
Speaker
John Smith is so identified with playing the part of King Lear that he forgets to revert to John Smith. So he goes backstage, plays ended, his friend comes to congratulate him, and he's still miserable because he's still upset about Cordelia and the French and everything. And the friend says to him,
00:50:41
Speaker
Why are you miserable? And he said, and then King Lear starts explaining about his trouble with his daughters and the war with a friend. His friend says, don't be silly. You're not miserable because you've forgotten who you really are. Who are you really? Go into yourself. Who are you really?
00:51:00
Speaker
And he's teaching him the direct path. So King Lee goes into himself, and the first thing he encounters is a turmoil of thoughts. And he starts describing his thoughts, and his friend says to him, no, those thoughts are not who you really are. They're just, they come and they go. They're not who you essentially are. Who are you really? So then he goes a bit deeper.
00:51:22
Speaker
And that's when he meets the feelings, the anxiety, the shame, the guilt, the fear. And he says, I'm guilty. I'm ashamed. I'm anxious. I'm upset. I'm hurt. I'm angry. And then his friend says to him, no, you're not any of these things. You haven't gone all the way back to yourself. You've only gone halfway. Your feelings are not essential to go deeper. Take another step back. What's behind the feelings? The feelings are not always with you. What are you in the absence of those feelings?
00:51:51
Speaker
And then the king goes deeper and he said, well, I'm a father and a husband. And the king, no, his friend says, you haven't always been a father. You haven't always been a husband. You haven't always been a king, but you have always been yourself. What is that self? So he goes even deeper into himself than his relationships of father. And then suddenly there is this recognition. I am John Smith.
00:52:17
Speaker
And his suffering comes to an end at that moment because he's found his true self, which is free of the character of King Lear and all his troubles. So that was an analogy that answered your question. If when you go inside, you say, I don't like what's there, I find all this, it just means you haven't gone far enough back.
Shifting Language and Emotions
00:52:38
Speaker
And also you suggest changing the language, right? Instead of saying, I am anxious.
00:52:44
Speaker
you suggest not attaching the I am to the emotional state? Yes, what I would do is when we say I am anxious, the anxiety occupies 100% of the picture and the I am disappears. But what I would recommend is
00:53:07
Speaker
relaxing the focus of the attention from the anxiety and emphasizing the I am, emphasizing your being. Let's take an example. Let's say now, you had said to me, I am anxious. And I responded, OK, Laura, tell me about the anxiety. Imagine now you're anxious. Just describe the anxiety now.
00:53:34
Speaker
My heart is beating, my stomach feels a little, I have a pit in my stomach and my breathing is shallow. Perfect. And your thoughts? What are they doing? Busy racing. Okay. Okay. So you said, I am anxious. And I asked you to describe the anxiety. Now you say the same words again. I am anxious. You're describing the same feeling. Now I say to you, describe what you mean by I am.
00:54:04
Speaker
Hmm.
00:54:06
Speaker
What do you say? Yeah, the I am part only. Because you said I am anxious. There are these two elements to the experience. I and the anxiety. You've described the anxiety. Now describe the I am. Right. Well, the I am without the anxiety is that spaceless, timeless place that we talked about earlier. But when I'm using it in this language, I'm attaching myself to these physical experiences.
00:54:35
Speaker
But that's why I've separated them out. We said, I am anxious. So these two elements, I'm trying to distinguish between the two elements. So that's why I asked you, first of all, describe the anxiety. I see. And now I'm trying, I want you to describe that. Because when we feel I am anxious, it's 100% anxiety. That's all we really feel. That's right. We neglect the I am.
00:54:59
Speaker
So I'm trying now to, in the experience, I am anxious. I'm trying in an actual practical way to get you to, first of all, to describe the anxiety. That's easy. You describe the experience we all know. But now I want you to take the same experience. I am anxious. I want you to emphasize the I am and to actually make you describe it. The only reason for asking you to describe it is because you actually have to go there.
00:55:25
Speaker
Right. To say, it's peaceful. I am peaceful, I am spacious. So that's what I mean by emphasizing the I am. You say, I am depressed. So we describe the depression, it's dark, it's heavy, it's lonely. What about the I am? If you were just to describe that, it's like,
00:55:51
Speaker
It's like you see a dark image on a screen. If I would say to describe the screen, sorry, describe the image, you'd say it's dark, it's black, it's dense.
00:56:04
Speaker
Keep looking at the same image. And now I ask you, describe the screen. You say it's transparent. It's colorless. That's it. That's the I am. Right there. No matter what I place on the screen, I would still describe the screen the same way every time. The next image on the screen is a yellow image. I say, describe the image. You say, it's yellow. I ask you, describe the screen. It's transparent. It's empty.
00:56:32
Speaker
If I ask you, you say, I am depressed. You describe the depression. It's dark. It's heavy. It's dense. I ask you to describe the I am. It's transparent. It's open. It's at peace. Next day, you say, I am in love. I ask you to describe the
00:56:50
Speaker
the feeling of being in love. It's effervescent. It's bright. You describe the I am. It's exactly the same I am that you felt yesterday in the midst of the depression. It's always there, always the same, veiled by the depression, veiled by the feeling of being in love, just as the transparent screen is veiled or seems to be veiled by the black image or the yellow image.
00:57:15
Speaker
The I am is there, even in a deep depression, the I am is shining there. It's what Albert Camus, the French writer said, what he meant when he said, in the depths of winter,
00:57:36
Speaker
I finally realized that there is in me an invincible summer. It's what the German mystic Meister Eckhard said when he said, there is a place in the soul that has never been hurt. That's what he was referring to. So what is the difference between the soul and the awareness? The soul in this context, he means the mind.
00:58:02
Speaker
the solace would be the religious word for the mind, which would be the contents, which would be then, and the awareness would be the essence of the mind. So it's like saying, let's say you're looking at my image now, and there's an aspect of the image that you're looking at that is completely pristine.
00:58:30
Speaker
What is that? It's the screen. Image is not pristine, but there's one element of it, namely the transparent screen that is colorless. So the soul would be, in this context, the mind, the image, whereas the awareness, which is synonymous with being, would be the transparent screen, our essential being.
00:58:59
Speaker
And do you distinguish between the authentic self, the awareness self, the soul self? Do you use these words interchangeably? Do you believe that there's... Well, I use the words awareness, consciousness, and being synonymously. I use the different words either on the context
00:59:30
Speaker
either on the language in which someone has asked the question or the context in which I'm speaking. The authentic self, I think I would use more in relationship to the character rather than the essential self of being or awareness. So if I was referring to somebody's authentic self, I would be referring to a character
00:59:56
Speaker
whose thoughts, feelings, actions, relationships were informed by their essential self. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when I, if you say, she's so authentic,
01:00:13
Speaker
I wouldn't then be referring just to pure awareness or pure being. I'd be referring to the character which expresses the qualities that are the nature of her essential being, peace, joy, intelligence.
01:00:30
Speaker
and those qualities of peace, joy, and intelligence, they express themselves in activities such as kindness, compassion, tolerance, justice, and so on. So these would be human expressions, kindness, tolerance, justice, compassion. These would be human expressions of qualities that are, you could say they were sacred qualities, they are the eternal qualities.
01:01:00
Speaker
Yeah. The qualities of being. And Rupert, you said something that changed my life. I was so grateful to hear you speak to it. So I'd love for you to share with the audience in your words, because I won't do it justice. But so much of this, so much of the philosophy spirituality world talks about the great illusion, right? That we're living in this space where we are, this isn't real, right?
01:01:27
Speaker
that sort of has this slippery slope quality into nihilism, like nothing matters, and it's really bothered me, and I heard you speak to it that it's always bothered you, because I don't want to, I mean, Laura Coe is here, she's living, she's meaningful, and I got into this thing to think with myself. You put your finger on it, the way you formulated the question, you conflate it, and I did this for 20 years, it troubled me, just like it's troubled you.
Reframing World Perception
01:01:53
Speaker
We equate something that is illusory with something that is not real. That's the mistake. So when we hear in the spiritual traditions, the world is an illusion. What we hear is the world is unreal.
01:02:11
Speaker
right something in us rebels when we hear that i mean the world is not real come on what are we doing the world is real can you honestly say you know someone someone um a parent of two young children
01:02:28
Speaker
And they claim the world is unreal. And you say that you really think the world is unreal. You don't care if your children are in pain or suffering. No, they think their children are real. Yes. So we all think the world is real. So the confusion comes from
01:02:49
Speaker
equating something that is an illusion with something that is not real. So let me try to explain the difference. Something that is an illusion is something that is real, but is not what it appears to be. Let's take the example of the image of my face that you're looking at. You appear to be looking at my face. Can I reach out your hand and touch my face?
01:03:18
Speaker
You don't find my face, but you don't find nothing. What do you touch? You touch the screen. So my face is an illusion, but like all illusions, there is a reality to it.
01:03:35
Speaker
And the reality is the screen, relatively speaking. An illusion is something that is real, but is not what it appears to be. Now, something that is not real is something that cannot even appear as an illusion. For instance, a round circle, a round square.
01:04:05
Speaker
Sure. Try to imagine now a round square. Can you even imagine an illusion of a round square? No. It cannot even appear as an illusion. It is utterly unreal. Yeah. So when in the spiritual traditions it says the world is not real,
01:04:25
Speaker
Sorry, the world is an illusion. It doesn't mean that the world is not real. The world is obviously real. It just means that it's not what it appears to be. What does it appear to be? It appears to be 10,000 discreet and independently existing things made out of something outside consciousness, namely matter. That's how it appears to be.
01:04:51
Speaker
What is it, and why does it appear like that? Because we perceive it through our five sense faculties. And the world appears to us in accordance with the limitations of the faculties through which we perceive it. What is the world really? It is the one infinite reality made out of
01:05:17
Speaker
that which ultimately cannot be named, but which we might name consciousness, spirit, love, being, and so on. So the world is only an illusion, sorry, the world is an illusion in the sense that it's real, but it's not how it appears to sense perception. In other words, when we look at the world,
01:05:44
Speaker
There is one part of the, what we're seeing is an appearance of reality. There is something real there, but it appears the way it does because of the lens through which we perceive it. It's like when you put on orange tinted glasses and you look at snow, you put on orange tinted glasses, the snow appears orange. The orange color is just an appearance.
01:06:13
Speaker
But the snow is real. So the orange snow is a mixture of the white snow, which is the nature of the snow, and the orange tint that our glasses confer on the snow. So that the orange snow is a conjunction of reality, the white snow, and our perceiving faculties, the orange glasses.
01:06:40
Speaker
And that's why William Wordsworth, he said this beautiful thing, this poem, he said, therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods and the mountains and of all that we perceive of this green world, of all the mighty world of eye and ear, both what they half create and what perceive.
01:07:02
Speaker
well pleased to recognize in nature and the language of the sense, the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart and soul of all my moral being. The important part is both what they half create, both what we half create and half perceive. We perceive reality, but we create its appearance.
01:07:30
Speaker
Yeah. And not just through our perceptive lens, but through the thoughts and the feelings. So imagine that consciousness were to put on a VR headset, virtual reality headset, and it's made of thinking and perceiving. So the glasses, the VR headset is just made of thinking and perceiving. Immediately as a result of that, reality appears
01:07:59
Speaker
as a world in time and space. The time and space are not inherent in the world. They're not inherent in reality. Reality is dimensionless consciousness.
01:08:13
Speaker
It's just that reality appears as time and space because we look at it through thinking and perceiving. Thinking confers a single dimension of time on reality and perceiving confers three dimensions of space on reality. So the world appears to be in time and space. And then because we don't realize, we think that the lenses are a clear window
01:08:41
Speaker
through which we look at reality as it is. No, we're looking through orange-tinted glasses. We're looking through glasses that are tinted with thinking and perceiving. And the world appears in time and space as a result of that. The time and space are not out there in reality.
01:08:59
Speaker
the how reality appears to a human mind. If our minds were configured differently, if the VR headset was not made of thinking and perceiving, but it was made of X-ing and Y-ing, we would perceive a completely different world. We'd be perceiving the same reality
01:09:20
Speaker
because there's only one reality, but it would appear to us in accordance with the mind through which we perceived it. So a human mind consists of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling.
01:09:38
Speaker
Surprise, surprise, the world appears to us as sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells. If our minds were made of Xing, Ying, and Zing, then the world would appear as Xs, Ys, and Zs. We'd see a completely different world. We'd be looking at the same reality, but it would appear different to us.
01:10:01
Speaker
Yep, and that's the whole proverbial tree in the forest, right? And so Rupert, this question about love, at the core of everything is love oneness.
The Essence of Love
01:10:14
Speaker
People confuse romantic love and this love. How do you describe this love that you're speaking of?
01:10:21
Speaker
Remember, right at the very beginning, Laura, I suggested the non-dual understanding could be formulated in this simple way. Peace and happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone and everything. So the second part of the statement, we share our being with everyone and everything. That's what love is.
01:10:42
Speaker
But when you love someone, don't you feel that you are one with them? Isn't that what love is? That's right. We appear to be two different people, but we feel this love. What we're really saying is that our thoughts are different, our feelings are different, our bodies are different, but at the deepest level, we feel connected, more than connected. We feel we're the same being. We may not formulate it like that, but that's what the experience of love is.
01:11:10
Speaker
Well, I'm tapping into the awareness within myself and you are within yourself and we're meeting each other through this sort of space of deepest
01:11:25
Speaker
Exactly. So we're exchanging thoughts and words now. But actually, as a result of this exchange, there's this feeling of connection between us. Now, imagine if we had had this conversation with absolutely no feeling of connection between us. It was just a functional conversation. We would not have been able to have this
01:11:55
Speaker
conversation. And likewise, your listeners, hopefully through the conversation, they feel deeply connected to us. We feel that we're sharing something. What we're really sharing is our being. And the words are the means by which we are able to recognize our shared being. And is this what we go back to at death? We go back to this universal love?
01:12:22
Speaker
We could say that we go back to it as a concession to the belief that in life we left it. Actually, even in life, we were never really anything other than that.
01:12:42
Speaker
when the walls in your home, the home that you're sitting in in Chicago, now when the walls are taken down in 50 years time, will the space in your room suddenly go back to the one universal space? No, it was only ever that space. It never ceased being that. Yeah, that's a brilliant metaphor. You have the most brilliant metaphor.
01:13:10
Speaker
It seems to be enclosed by and to share the limitations of the four walls of your room. But if you were to take a sample of the space in your room...
01:13:21
Speaker
and the sample of the space outside, and the sample of the space in my room in Oxford, they'd all be the same. You take a sample of your being now, and you take a sample of my being now, and you take a sample of the being of all the people who are listening. You take a sample of all the beings who are not listening, the saints and the sinners and everyone.
01:13:43
Speaker
They take the sample of their being. It's always the same. It's the same being. There's only one being. That's love. The recognition that we share our being is love. In other words, love is the nature of reality. And when we feel love, that feeling is an intervention of reality into our normal dualistic way.
01:14:10
Speaker
of thinking and feeling. Normally we think it's me and you, I and them. Love collapses that sense of me and you and it's the revelation of our shared being. So then romantic love, why is there a specifically unique experience with one individual where
01:14:32
Speaker
Because due to the conditioning of our minds and bodies, some people that we meet have the capacity to affect the dissolution of the sense of separation more effectively than other people.
01:14:54
Speaker
Oh, it's beautiful. But then, as a result of that, we then fall in love with a person. That's when all the trouble starts. It's not really the person that we were in love with. What we love is the recognition of our shared being. It can be celebrated between two people.
01:15:16
Speaker
It can be expressed between two people, but love is not a relationship between two people. Love is the collapse of relationship between two people and the revelation of their shared being.
01:15:31
Speaker
And relationships would, there would be far less conflict in the relationship if we realized that just the being we love, the being that we feel one with, not the person. The person is there to celebrate.
01:15:48
Speaker
that shared being, and there are all sorts of different ways of celebrating this shared being in different types of relationship. You celebrate with your parents in one way, with your children in another way, with your neighbors another way, with a stranger another way, and with your intimate partner another way, but they're all, however we express it in these different ways, they're all ways of sharing and expressing the same shared being.
01:16:16
Speaker
beautiful, so we're coming to a close ice I would love for you to speak about enlightenment because There's a lot of views out there in spirituality around Getting to this place and I've been talking for an hour and a half about enlightenment You're absolutely right and I
01:16:47
Speaker
Like, Mr. Ruby, we're supposed to get outside of everything to be enlightened, right? And I know we've been talking about that.
01:16:55
Speaker
Enlightenment, I believe this for years, that enlightenment was some extraordinary experience. You imagine the best experience you can have as a human being. Enlightenment is something bigger and better than that. And then if you meditate hard enough or practice or discipline yourself or deny yourself, you'll eventually, if you're very lucky, you might have that experience. That's a complete misconception.
01:17:20
Speaker
Right. And then when you get there, nothing will bother you and you're going to be free of all like, yeah. Enlightenment is simply the recognition of the nature of our being. That's easier to get to.
01:17:36
Speaker
That's easier to get to. We've been there. We've touched it many times. When I suggested earlier, imagine removing all the layers of experience that are not essential to you. What's left? You said presence, space. And the next question was, that's not yet enlightenment. You've just gone back to your being. The next question was,
01:18:04
Speaker
tell me about your being, what's the nature of your being? And you paused and you said, spacious, peace at ease, fulfilled, that's enlightenment. Recognition that peace is the nature of your being and that you share your being with everyone and everything. In other words, enlightenment is not an extraordinary experience.
01:18:29
Speaker
In fact, it's not really an experience. It's just the recognition of the nature of the being that we always are, but which we usually overlook in favor of the content of experience. That's it.
01:18:46
Speaker
Beautiful. Rupert, you're a gift. I am so grateful to have you on the show, to have you in the world, and to share your views with all of us. Your new book, You Are the Happiness You Seek, uncovering the awareness of being.
Exploring More with Rupert Spira
01:19:02
Speaker
Obviously, we've talked about that idea throughout the show. If people are looking for you, Rupert Spira, is there any other sites or anywhere else they can find you?
01:19:13
Speaker
YouTube is the obvious place to go. I've got lots of videos there. And my website, all the information about meetings and events and books and everything is there. And I'm also making an app at the moment. And so I'll let you know when it comes out. There'll be an app of these short 10-minute meditations. I'll let you know when that comes out.
01:19:39
Speaker
Beautiful, and we'll have it on our website. If you haven't somehow bumped into Rupert, just the podcast, the YouTube channels, there's meditations. I mean, we've barely scratched the surface. I've taken your retreats, your weekend workshops are beautiful. So thank you again. Anybody out there who's listening, please run over and...
01:20:02
Speaker
Check out his informational, change your life. And I deeply appreciate you sharing with us today. Thank you so much. I deeply appreciate you asking me to join you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. You're welcome.