Writings

Recall your earliest memories, from when you were a baby or a young child. In these memories, so intimate and yet perhaps undefined, can you recall how you felt to be, to exist? In those earliest moments of recollection, the very dawn of your life, what are the first experiences that come to mind? When you were told you were a baby boy or girl, then a young child, when experience still felt fresh and vibrant and unknown to you. Gently give space for these memories to surface. In all these memories, meet yourself as a young child again.

Perhaps your childhood was difficult, times were very hard, and the memories are upsetting to recall. Or perhaps your childhood was a happy one. For most, there will be a mixture of the bitter and the sweet. Remember, in their recollection, these memories cannot hurt you. Meet your childhood self. Take time to acknowledge how it was to be a child. Welcome the opportunity for these memories to arise in you, and allow your attention to dwell with them, without becoming carried away by the story they tell. Embrace the self of your childhood.

Then, moving forward in time, recall when you were a youth. When you were in school, making friendships, breaking friendships, exploring the world around you, and exploring your own body. Recollect when you developed a sense of your family unit and your place within it, when you found yourself in a hierarchy of siblings or peers, or when you struggled with loneliness, and when you wanted to fit in. Remember when you said of yourself 'I'm young' and felt that this would last forever. Take your time to acknowledge yourself as a youngster and whatever memories are evoked by this acknowledgement. Remember, these memories cannot hurt you. Meet and embrace the self of your youth.

Moving forward again in time, when you were a teenager, when life became complicated, when vanity and validation fought for your attention. Remember when your self-image came into clear focus and reflected your sense of self as a social being, expanding with self-interest and interest in others. The opinions of others: how they viewed you, desired you, or disliked you, were of greater importance than your own self-worth. Remember the time you became acutely aware of growing up, and of the fact of death. Remember the first death in your family. Recollect when maturity finally developed in you. None of these memories can harm you; welcome them. Acknowledge your teenage self. Embrace the teenage self.

Moving forward again in time, recall when you entered the arena of adulthood, when the world expanded as your self-image diminished. Remember when you were first given responsibilities, when you first entered work. Remember when you first had money and a bank account, and when you were presented with options and had the power to choose the course of your life. Or, perhaps you had that power taken from you, and your life was chaotic and characterised by abuse and difficult relationships. Remember your first serious romantic relationship. Remember yourself as a young adult; newfound freedoms, new liberties, but new responsibilities. Embrace the young adult self.

Then, as a mature adult, the complexities of youth were straightened out, life became simpler but not easier. Instead, new challenges were presented to you. Perhaps you married or had children. Perhaps you had to care for a family member, or had targets and deadlines to meet. Your responsibilities increased with age. Recollect the challenges of your prime years. Perhaps you found a career which you stayed in for a long time, and progressed through, or perhaps you could never settle, and lived from day to day, hand to mouth. Recall your fully developed self-image, your fully established place in society, or outside of society. Remember how you viewed yourself, how you judged yourself, when you said of yourself, 'I'm a mature adult.' Take your time to reflect on these memories. Embrace the mature adult self.

Moving forward again in time, remember when you looked in the mirror one day and realised 'I'm getting older.' Remember when you noticed the first grey hairs, the first wrinkles. The strength of your prime began to ebb away. Recall the onset of illnesses, in yourself and those you loved. Perhaps your relationships with those closest to you, such as your children, changed as you aged; perhaps their lives took them in directions away from you. Perhaps you encountered a need for drastic change in your life. Maybe you discovered spirituality, or addiction. Recall the deaths of those closest to you, and the resolution of relationships and passing of opportunities. Remember when the branches and paths of life became closed to you, for want of time and means. Remember when you had to accept your limitations and come to terms with the mortality of your body. Take your time to allow these memories to surface. They cannot hurt you. Embrace the aging adult self.

Now, closer in time, to the recent past. What challenges has life presented recently? Where have you found yourself, and what have you overcome? How have you changed? Reflect on all this. When you say to yourself, 'I'm still fighting, I'm still navigating life's challenges and opportunities,' welcome this stage of your life, too. Acknowledge this self, too. Embrace this self, too.

Finally, closer still, to today, you find yourself here either through your own effort or otherwise. Who do you find yourself as today? What self-image do you have? After the words, 'I am,' what do you say? Whatever you say, welcome it and acknowledge it, because this is your personal and human expression. This expression changes as life changes but is true for you in this moment. Therefore, meet and embrace yourself in whatever form you find here and now.

Taking time to reflect on your selfhood, from the earliest moment of your life to this moment, observe the following: The baby has gone, replaced by the child. The child has gone, replaced by the youth. The youth has gone, replaced by the teenager. The teenager has gone, replaced by the young adult. The young adult has gone, replaced by the mature adult. The mature adult has gone, replaced by the aging adult. The aging adult is here but will be gone when the body is gone. The stages of selfhood change, replacing one another, but your Self, essentially, has remained unchanged. The superimposed self-image changes as the body changes, as the mind changes, and as life changes. But that in you which does not change, the awareness in and by which this changing life is lived, is your true position and your true being. The Self in whom all these changing states of selfhood have passed does not itself pass away; the Self never transforms or passes through stages, and remains as the locus for the transformations of the body, mind, and corresponding self-image. This is a remarkable re-orientation towards your fundamental identity.

'I am,' shorn of 'I am this' and 'I am that,' is your true being. Your true being has outlived all experiences. You remain here, as ever you have, to witness the current state and stage of selfhood defined by the body and mind. Having survived every stage of life thus far, do not for one moment believe that the next stage of life, whatever it may be, will be any different. Your life will prove this.

What you are does not suffer illness or mental anguish, does not suffer from low self-esteem or a negative self-image. Your true being does not share the frailties and flaws of the body and mind. No matter how long the body lives for, and no matter what experiences may come, you have overcome all and will overcome all. What you are shines just as strongly now as when you were a baby. This is your essential nature. This is what is most true about you. Everything else about you is relatively true, true for a time, but your being is timelessly true.

That in you which endures the stages of selfhood, which is merely aware of them, which persists through the multitudes of modifications of the body and mind, is more intrinsic to what you are than all the temporary identities you've assumed over the course of your life. Everything but this true being is incidental, subject to change, increase, decrease, and loss. But your being cannot be lost. Fixed, unchanging, and beyond the range of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions; beyond all that can be perceived and known objectively, as 'this', is your most fundamental nature.

Your fundamental nature is impersonal; it is the same in me as it is in you. On this, our personalities and subjective identities are projected, and through this, our private, interior lives are lived. From the standpoint of our human and personal expression, there are both similarities and differences: differences of sex, age, class, race, religion, and tribe, but from the standpoint of being, we are one. That is how, and why, this message can be taught and understood. Our shared being, alone, is the subject matter of this book.

When you say, 'I am young, I am old, I am tired, I am weak, I'm under attack, I'm a victim, I'm happy, I'm sad,' observe: what I am seems to change, but that I am never changes. That is your unassailable dignity and majesty. That is your true power in life, yet overlooked. Your preoccupation with the shifting states of selfhood and experience, determined by the body and mind, has fostered a forgetfulness of your effortless and self-evident nature. To embrace yourself fully is to not only acknowledge and welcome the personal sense of self, which shifts and changes, and is in the very flow of life, but also to recognise, to remember, you are that in which all of life is lived. You are the inexhaustible Reality, the endless potential for all to be.

As bright and enduring as you were in the very earliest memories you can recall, you will endure, even to the last memory, even when memory itself fades. More than being this and that, you are just yourself. You are just here. Recognise: I am timelessly what I am, and in me the person lives and dies.

All the beauty of life is in you, and all the tragedy of life is in you, too. You are just here. Just here. No matter what happens or what you experience, you are here. And it's here that you meet yourself and embrace the Self.

Start by gently noticing the mind. Gently noticing means to shine your attention on the mind, without changing or manipulating it. Take the mind as it is, whether it be relaxed or not, concentrated or not. If there is discomfort, gently notice it. There may be expectation or anticipation, perhaps about the results of this contemplation, or about something else; notice this too. Gently notice the stream of thoughts as it arises. There may be some mental fidgeting, some agitation, but give space to this too; let it play out in the light of your observing.

The content of your mind shares the same theatre of experience as the sensations within your body and the perceptions of your immediate environment. Notice: the sounds, sights, and smells around you are known along with the feelings and thoughts within you; you experience a seamless whole, full of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. The conception of the next thought in the mind is experienced in the same consciousness as the sound of the wind, the sight of the blue sky, the scent of incense in the room, and so on. Even though these objects are commonly understood as different from one another, they are experienced as a unity; the whole waking state is witnessed in a single, seamless diorama.

In objects you can find divisions, but in experience, you cannot. Where is the dividing line, in your experience, between the thoughts in the mind and the trees outside, between your heartbeat and birdsong, between emotions and the clouds in the sky, between your sense impressions and all the physical objects around you? Your internal, subjective world and the external world are merged in experience.

But what are you in this experience? What is your position? Are you the next prominent thought, feeling, sensation, or perception? Choose any object from this seamless whole: choose any thought in the mind, any feeling in the body, any sensation or perception from the subtlest inside the body to the grossest physical matter outside; is this you? In this entire span of waking experience, which object are you?

That which is aware of the next thought; is it a thought? Is anticipation aware of anticipation? Is confusion aware of confusion? Are thoughts of doubt, frustration, expectation, aware of themselves, or are you aware of all these different thoughts and emotions? Are the sensations of the body and perceptions of the physical world aware of themselves, or are you aware of all these sensations and perceptions?

Are you not that which is aware of all objects, no matter what the object is? Every object presented to your attention, every object gently noticed—are you not that which is merely aware of it? Being aware of the mind, aware of the body, aware of the external world, aware of the seamless entirety of your experience, which changes from moment to moment, you are aware of everything. Confirm this.

Then, inquire: are you an object inside of this waking experience, or is the waking experience appearing to, and within you? Being aware of this waking experience, is it outside of you? What are you, in which the waking world is known? Use these questions as prompts to investigate.

Whatever you come to be aware of, cannot be you. You are the awareness by which it is known. Any object, anything within this vast experience is also something you're aware of. You are aware of everything because you are awareness itself.

Whatever the mind presents to you, whatever the body presents to you, whatever is happening outside of the body, you are that awareness by which it is known, and as awareness you are not conditioned or affected by any of it.

Is awareness restless? Is awareness anticipating the next experience? Is awareness tense, stressed, anxious? Does awareness have problems? Is awareness suffering? You will find that the answer to all these questions is no. All these thoughts and feelings affect the mind but not the awareness by which the mind and its activity is known. The mind is coloured by its perceptions, by reactions, observations, judgements, and sensory information, but as awareness you remain, always, in your pure and colourless natural condition.

As awareness you are like a neutral, open space which contains the entirety of the waking state experience and its endless modifications and permutations as objects. You are the same awareness in which the dreaming state with its dream world, dream body and dream mind appears. Just as you persist, unharmed and unchanged as mere witness to the arising, presence, and disappearance of the false dream experience, so, too, do you persist in this waking state experience as mere witness, unharmed and unchanged by whatsoever appears and disappears. You transcend waking life.

As the open, neutral, space-like awareness, you are naturally peaceful, because nothing touches you, nothing changes you, and nothing harms you. Therefore, nothing in experience is rejected. The landscape of the mind may present a beautiful scene or a terrible one; it is effortlessly upheld by awareness. Again, whether a positive or negative state of mind, a positive or negative sensation in the body, or a positive or negative perception of the external world; this awareness, which is your real nature, allows everything, while remaining still, peaceful, and pure.

Underneath the surface of experience, always happy beyond the superficial and fickle happiness of the mind, your real nature remains happily untouched in the depths of your being.

It is the mind which judges, the mind which is restless, dissatisfied, comparing one experience with another, one state with another, and the mind itself, with all its varied activity, is perceived from your Self; from pure neutrality, presence, and peace.

Every experience, rightly understood, whether in its totality or in its particulars, as objects, becomes a doorway to recognising yourself and your inherent happiness. Because for every thought, feeling, sensation, and perception there is awareness, and this awareness, which is yourself, is unmodified, unchanging, serene, sorrowless, and contented. Turn your attention from what you're aware of to the Self which is aware, and you will discover natural happiness. The turning of your attention will not create anything new, rather you will discover what is never new, and what has always been here.

Before, between, during, and after any experience, you are present and available for recognition. You have found real peace, real happiness, if you have found this. You do not depend upon any experience to be happy, but all experience depends upon you. The real source of happiness is always here and is never away from you, because it is you. Happiness is here. Wanting nothing, needing nothing, lacking nothing, awareness is an overflowing wellspring of endless joy.

What is natural in you is not a state, but that into which all states arise temporarily, and that into which they resolve. States are appearances, and you are their Reality. In you all states are effortlessly contained, and through your light, through the light of awareness, all states are made manifest.

What is natural in you is uncultivated. All states: waking, dream, and sleep, with their corresponding experiences, require cultivation; they require production, maintenance, effort, action, will, and time, to be—but your own being is timeless, and it is choiceless, stainless, effortless, attributeless, and birthless. Your own natural being is perfect.

What is natural in you is here, prior to this contemplation, before your self-inquiry, before you do anything, before you make any intention, before any movement through time or space, before any effort, and before any experience. That which is here without will or exertion, which cannot but be here, which is always here, is your own natural being.

What is natural in you never comes and goes. Everything else comes and goes, but you remain forever yourself. Your identity with the body and mind is tenuous; your identity is born and dies, and is discarded, like vestments, every night in sleep. In sleep you throw off all false accretions and the false identities of the waker and dreamer. Just as your clothes serve the function of providing warmth and modesty to your body, so do the body and mind serve the function of manifesting the names and forms of experience to consciousness. And just as you are not your clothes, as you persist when they are discarded and when they no longer serve their function, so are you not the body and mind, as you persist before birth, after death, and in sleep, when they no longer serve their function. You are beyond bodily life, even as life goes on.

What are you in sleep, which is not the state of sleep? This you are, even now, even as this waking world appears. This is what you have always been. As though hidden in plain sight, your true identity, your real Self, is the locus of existence, the innate, natural being in and through which your present experience, through which all experience, from the first day of your life until the last, is lived. Your real Self stands beyond life; unknown to experience, yet the fullness of presence in which all life appears, this alone is your natural being.

What is natural in you cannot be pointed to as an object, for it is the very being of the one who perceives all objects. Objects are comprised of duality, of differentiation and relationship, but you are relationless, non-dual awareness, of the very nature of pure and limitless subjectivity. And yet, there is no perception of any object, of any experience or state, without you; therefore, your natural being is undeniable. What you are can never be denied.

Natural being is what we are all seeking through the variety of experiences of every varied state, and yet it is our own Self, never to be achieved or gained through effort, and before every state and experience. This is the security for which we restlessly strive and for which we struggle to maintain tranquillity of mind, and yet it is the sure foundation, the changeless certainty, on which every motion of unstable thought depends. This is the happiness for which we chase after every fleeting pleasure, and ward off every passing pain, and yet it is ever-present, beyond all want and need. This is the peace for which we always long, and the destination for which we always search, and yet it is always, already here, in the very heart of our being, in our own true nature.

This is your own greatness, your own vastness, your own kingdom. Here you shine as secondless awareness; as fearless, boundless being.

This is home.

Exhale.

There is truly nothing greater than your own being. Nothing you can gain or be given in life can surpass your nature, for all is gotten by virtue of the gift of your Self. You are the constant context for the changeful content of each and every experience. Having enjoyed, and endured, the most beneficent and most burdensome of experiences, you arrive right back where you started: here and now, with yourself. Nothing greater can be achieved.

Therefore, take all that you have gained in life: all your spiritual successes, all your accumulated insights and material and personal progression, and offer it into the fire of your own ever-present being. Cease to take for granted, once and for all, your own magnificence. You matter most; all else can be because you are. Allow yourself, finally, to be enough. You are truly all that you need.

Spirituality can only, truly, be considered efficacious when it has freed you from all other needs. When you recognise your own inherent satisfaction and sovereignty, when you no longer rely on the ceaseless cycle of becoming and change, then and then alone can you be called a spiritual being.

Do not bring the past with you to the Self. Your past spiritual experiences, from the first to the last, are but ashes in your blazing radiance. Be unadulterated by everything that has happened until now. Be empty of everything and full of your own presence.

Don't mix yourself with any memory, previous recognition, or insight; be totally unbiased by your own prior wisdom. What happened to you, what you gained, what you learned, and what you think you know: forget it. Approach this current moment, however it may present itself to you experientially, like one reborn. See without the lens of the past. Don't hold on to anything at all. Be a virgin to all experience, as if it has never before happened. What do you stand as?

Take your stand as that which abides beyond what happens, beyond what has happened and will happen. Take your stand beyond what can be experienced, achieved, or attained through time, and you will be established as timeless, changeless awareness, perfect beyond the imperfect and insubstantial progress of relative existence, the source of all pain and desire. You will at once recognise your own boundlessness, and your recognition will come to rest with nothing but your Self. Then your seeing is unmoored from its false subjectivity, freed of the limited, finite perspective of the body and mind. Then your seeing is as it always truly is: unlimited, unparalleled being; expansion without end, and unknown to life. Your own Self.

Freed of contact with everything, stripped naked of experience and the pairs of opposites, existing in itself beyond duality; you are the bare being of all things, yet free of all things.

How were you before experience came to be? Who were you before your own birth? How will you be after all experience ends? Who will you be after your death? Be that, even now.

While seeing, be blind; while hearing, be deaf; while feeling, be numb; while speaking, be mute; while thinking, be dumb; while acting, be inert; while knowing, know nothing; in all experience, be beyond experience.

The waking state, in which these words are read, in which the entire universe of objects is experienced, and in which your personal life unfolds and ends, is as nothing.

The dreaming state, in which the mind itself projects a parallel world and personal identity, with its self-contained logic and apparent reality, is as nothing.

The sleeping state, in which waking and dreaming are temporarily absent, and in which all is relatively unknown, is as nothing.

Consciousness and all its manifestations, its play of birth, life, and death, is as nothing.

But you are everything. You alone are, beyond what appears to be. The Reality beyond experience, beyond consciousness, and beyond the world, you are the being which is beyond all becoming.

This is never to be gained, given, or attained. This is never achieved, never received, and never maintained. This is never a state to be reached, and is never to be experienced anew. This is the Reality which ever is. This is you.

Where birth begins and life ends, there your being abides.

Timeless perfection.

Your life is a series of experiences. One experience follows another, and many experiences make a day. A week, a month, a year goes by—all a series of passing experiences: some pleasant, many unpleasant, and others which you are indifferent to. There is nothing in your life, known directly or indirectly, which is outside of experience.

Except you. What underlies each experience? What is present with each experience? You are. Catch hold of that 'you.' What is it? What is found when you look for yourself? Do you find an idea? A person? An emotion? A perception? All of these are changeful objects in and of themselves. They cannot be you, intrinsically. There is something in you which perceives even the subtlest thoughts and feelings as they come and go, something which makes all these objectifiable, or knowable. There is something in you which knows the life-long series of experience as it happens and survives it.

That something is awareness. Life is a series of experiences within awareness. This awareness is your continuous sense of identity. It is what remains with you through all the changing objects of experience, even as your personality changes. There is a changeful factor to each experience, and a changeless factor. The changeful is the content of the experience: the pleasant or unpleasant object, the state of mind, emotion, bodily condition, and so on. The changeless factor, the continuous context, is the awareness through which the content, or its absence, is perceived.

You are attached to the changing objects, and so you overlook the changeless awareness, which is always here. As a result of this, you fabricate an identity with the objects, such as the body and mind, and think you are a person, an individual separate from awareness, separate from your real being. It's just a mistake. Awareness is not away from you, not a state to be reached or found anew. It is yourself, present always, regardless of what is here. Awareness shines in all its purity along with each experience because it is the very means by which you know it. It doesn't matter if there is pain, confusion, distracting or distressing thoughts and ideas, raging emotions, or illness. You are aware of all these, and their absence. Your knowing never goes away. There is no occasion, no experience or state which you can talk about without the knowing of it. This knowing and your being are one and the same: pure awareness.

How to realise this pure awareness? Your identity, your stand as awareness, is affirmed in and through every experience. Don't pay any heed to the object portion of experience, and what remains, which is not an object, is yourself. Simply cease to overlook your true position.

If there is a thought, an emotion, a memory, a perception, or sensation, however pleasant or painful, see: to what does it arise? To myself, to 'I.' What is 'I'? Awareness, simple being: your continuous, steadfast nature, which never goes anywhere, never changes, and is never hurt. You are self-evident, undeniable awareness.

You know yourself intuitively in every moment, but you superimpose the objects of which you are aware onto yourself, and then feel as though you are those objects, exclusively. Which objects? A thought, a feeling, a memory, a perception, attention, and so on. You take each object, and conflate it, through thought, with yourself, but you are the very one which is aware of it, and aware of the conflation, even. A mistake doesn't change what you are. A mistake doesn't change Reality.

The waking state with all its attendant attachments, pain, and identity is obliterated every night in sleep. Your being remains. A dream body and dream world are in turn superimposed onto consciousness during the dream state. Your being remains. The dream state is dissolved by a new waking state, or the so-called blank of dreamless sleep. Your being remains. Repeat this thousands of times over a lifetime. Your being remains as fresh and constant now as ever it has. It will never change, even as everything else changes, inescapably. All else has only apparent reality, but your being is what is real. Discovering this will free you.

Everything else will go, degrade, disconnect, age, weaken, be lost, be forgotten, or die. Your being remains. You cannot change the destiny of the body and mind. You will lose them, as you lose them every night in sleep. You will lose them through disease, through decline, through dementia, through neglect, through accident, and, finally, through death. All your relationships will one day end. All your transactions with the world and others will end. The business you build up will eventually fall or else be passed to somebody else. Nothing is yours forever—neither the body, the mind, property, or relationships—you have to lose them sooner or later. This is a fact taken for granted. You cling to these objects, these experiences, as if they were reliable and unchanging. But nothing is reliable or unchanging in the realm of experience. It is like searching for water in a desert. There is no lasting satisfaction in these things, only a futile search which ends when life ends. This is the destiny of the body and mind. Life itself teaches us all this.

You can only do and achieve what is within your ability to do and achieve. Don't make unfair demands of yourself, and be content with what happens. If there is happiness, then rejoice, and enjoy it while it lasts. If there is sadness, know that it will pass. If there is pain, manage it the best way you can. You can only manage life and its sufferings; you cannot cure it. In every moment, with the birth of one experience, the last experience is irretrievably destroyed.

Life is terminal. Therefore, be beyond life, even while living. What do I mean? Know that your position is the permanent awareness, the true Reality and true life in which this shadow-life arises and subsides. Awareness is not in life, it does not flicker on and off like a switch; it is the content of consciousness, all experience, which comes and goes. It is the content of consciousness which flickers in your immensely bright being. Life is in awareness, and awareness is Reality itself. From the standpoint of Reality this life has already passed away, or, rather, it was never really here to begin with, because that which is eternal can alone be considered real. Anything else is mere names and forms, the conjuration of appearances.

We are consumed with this one small life, this one birth, which is but a half-blink in the eye of being. It will resolve the way it is destined to. Recognise that which is changeless in you, which is dependable, which never suffers. Then you are free from suffering even in the presence of pleasure and pain, of gain or loss. You are secure in yourself, in your invincible being. This is a call to discover what is real in you, and always is.

Your being is one with what is, with existence itself. The world, with its multitudes of lives, is but an ephemeral expression of Reality. You are intrinsically one with this Reality. Everything else about you is incidental: your birth, your body, your mind, your relationships and desires, your suffering, even. All of these will leave you. But your being will never leave you. It is your true friend, true companion, true love, true source of happiness and true Self.

You are here. Wherever you are, and in whatever circumstance you currently find yourself, take some time to appreciate this fact: you have made it this far. You have arrived at this moment in your life, at this point in time, reading these words.

Experiences beyond counting have preceded this one, experiences of all grades, from the most difficult to the most sublime. You have witnessed the entire range of human life, love, and suffering, whether in yourself or in others. You have enjoyed the pleasures of your body, the love of family, the bonds of friendship, the beauty of nature, and the power of creativity. You have suffered tragedy, loss, illness, trauma, and emotional upheaval. And yet, you are here.

No matter what has come before, you have overcome it. This is a remarkable situation. You have conquered all experiences. The most difficult challenges in life reveal an inherent capacity in you to withstand them. Why? Because you have withstood them. Take stock: you have withstood all that has happened in your life. You have weathered the storm. This fact is taken for granted, but has astonishing implications. Re-evaluate and reframe the meaning of all you have endured thus far: no matter the degree of difficulty or the sorrow associated with it, you still stand as witness to this moment, to what is happening now. What seemed insurmountable and impossible to overcome yesterday is only a memory today. In seeing the difficulties, in focusing on your struggles and your suffering, don't lose sight of your real strength. All else has passed, but you stand strong. You are strong.

You need not develop this strength, for it is already here; you need only discover it. This capacity to bear both the best and worst of life, to overcome all, is innate in you. Despite how your mind colours experience as good or bad, despite your struggle and strife with what happens, your true nature, whether known or unknown to you, is a bulwark which, without effort, intention, or fear, again and again protects and preserves you against every possible experience. That you are here now is testament to this fact.

Just like a diamond which is formed and refined through intense heat and pressure within the earth, so, too, do the extremes of life and the dirt of the human condition prove your intrinsic strength and your brilliant purity. It is through adversity that you overcome adversity, because all the adverse conditions of experience are impotent to overpower what you are. Use experience to recognise that you are stronger than any experience. You are pure, untouched awareness, always present here and now.

This awareness is the core of your identity, the unchanging intelligence by which experience can happen and in which everything is perceived. It is the indomitable ground of being on which all your personal and subjective forms, qualities, and limitations are superimposed. It is you, beyond all you have known yourself to be. Until now.

Your personality, self-image, vacillating mind, and body are all prone to weakness, subject to limitation, sorrow, instability, frailty, and destruction. For this finite and tenuous assemblage of identity, experience is an ongoing cycle of hope and despair, and life is forever on the brink of catastrophe. But from the standpoint of your true nature, from the standpoint of the Self, pure awareness, you are strength itself, and in you, without effort or resistance, all is endured, all is overcome, all is conquered.

Just like a beggar who subsists on meagre scraps and lives, day-to-day, in uncertainty and fear, at the mercy and charity of others, yet all the while carries a diamond whose unfathomable value is unknown to him, so, too, do you live as though you are a pauper to life, a victim of circumstance and experience, suffering the ebb and flow of what happens, without recognising your inherent strength and sovereignty. This is not a denial of your humanity, but a call to realise the true grandeur of your being and the non-duality of all Reality. Recognising this, your mortal life can be lived fully, and fearlessly.

In each moment, a tiny stone is flung at a mountain whose heights and depths cannot be seen. You are that mountain. To you, immovable and indestructible awareness, the stones of experience, whether joyful or terrible, thrown by the forces of fortune and indifferent nature, have no impact.

Return to this reflection each day, each week, each month, each year, and you will see that no matter what happens, you endure. You are still here. The timeless truth will dawn in time.

Allow yourself to become rooted to the floor or the furniture you're sitting on. If there is tension in your legs, whether straight or crossed, allow that tension to disperse. Allow the weight of your bottom to be evenly distributed. Notice the sensation of your stomach, whether it feels full, empty, or tense, and let it relax.

Next, notice the position of your arms and hands; note the way they naturally lie against your body, and allow these to relax, too. Observe the natural rhythm of your breathing, whether your breath is fast or slow. Take a few moments to be with the breath and the rising and falling of your chest. Then, notice the muscles of the face, whether there's tension in the face, whether the jaw is relaxed or clenched, and let the tension dissipate. Take a deep breath, and release. Allow any tension to leave the body. Allow the mind to settle down.

Be at ease. Be at ease with your ordinary thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. Be at ease with the ambient sensations around you. Become familiar and at ease with the entirety of your present experience. Being relaxed, and yet alert, become intimately familiar with whatsoever is currently arising in the mind, in the body, and in the environment. Be at ease here and now; don't wait for the next moment, don't anticipate a new experience or the next happening. Be contented with the ordinary, mundane experience. Let this be enough.

Allow any experience to move through you, without yourself moving. Without grasping, manipulating, or changing the contents of consciousness, you are just here.

You are like a stable, unmoving riverbed. On you, life passes like a rushing river; a continuous stream of experiences, overflowing with thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, all characterised by quality, movement, and change. Yet, in your boundless centre, you are still. Without qualities, immovable, and unchanging: you are the bedrock of existence.

Observe: the whole space of subjective experience, all you know of your life, is appearing in you; life arises in you, abides in you, and resolves in you. You are the sustaining force behind life; you uphold it without any effort at all. You are the 'place' of all experience; all of this is issuing forth from you, from moment-to-moment, in perfect ease and in perfect fullness.

Reality is fully present as you. You are all-pervading awareness, all-encompassing being. This is the truth. As an individual, you feel you are an island unto yourself, separate from the whole, separate from Reality, which is 'out there.' But there is no such dividing line. All that constitutes your individuality: the body, mind, and senses, is intrinsically bound with and dependent on the world it inhabits; it is the world. The whole world is in experience, and all experience is in your Self.

Between appearance and Reality there's no conflict or contradiction. Reality is that which is, full stop. Nothing can be separate from that which is. Nothing can be other than that which is, otherwise, it is non-existent. By definition, there is nothing which is non-existent. That which appears to be, partakes of existence, and existence is Reality. Therefore, everything is Reality. How can you be away from Reality, and how can Reality be away from you?

The Self is the Reality of all; just as the wood is of the table, the clay is of the pot, the gold is of the ornament, so are you the fundamental existence, the very Self, of this thought, this feeling, this sensation, this perception; indeed, of all experience, all conditions, and all things. You are the Reality appearing as the countless illusory forms, within and beyond all, the innermost being of everything. There is no duality between the world and the Self, between what appears and what exists. Just as the vast sea, with all its diverse waves, is nothing but water, so is the diverse world of experience nothing but the Self. Nothing but you.

Own up to the Reality you share with all things. The limitations of your individual identity, of your corporeal form, are appearances within a greater identity, which is the common source and substance of all. This is where you and I truly meet. You make a mistake when you say that this body and this mind is alone what you are; you make divisions within the whole. To say you are only these limited forms, of which you are aware, is to misunderstand yourself, fatally, and to divorce yourself from the totality of being, the totality of existence, from which you cannot possibly be apart.

Distinctions are apparent but not real; minds are distinct from other minds, bodies from other bodies, sentient or insentient objects from other objects; all these are distinct, limited in time, space, and quality, but none are different from the secondless awareness in and by which they are apparent. Duality is attributing existence to what is apparent, and non-duality is resolving all that is apparent to existence. That existence abides in you, as you, as your intrinsic being.

Your apparent limitations don't need to be gotten rid of, nor need they be denied. All the diversity of experience and human limitations you perceive have transactional value and relative validity within their sphere of operation. Just as the false dream has its own internal coherence and apparent reality, so, too, does this waking dream called life. And yet, the Self which perceives life is unlimited, and is the true Reality in which all lives are lived.

You are beyond everything, and yet everything you know is in you. You cannot pinpoint yourself as any one object, and yet all objects appear within your Self. All forms are limited to their substance, but the substance is not limited to any one form. You transcend all appearances, all experiences, all forms, but nothing transcends you. You are the substratum of all that is perceivable or conceivable: all bodies, all minds, all worlds, all objects. Everything is a solitary, limitless block of Reality, existing by itself, to itself, dreaming an apparent universe. That is you.

From the point of view of the ignorant mind, there is only separation and limitation. But from the point of view of being, there is only being. Understand you are the limitless, changeless being in which all temporary limitations appear. Life itself is a limitation, with a beginning and an end; it is but a momentary appearance, a flash within your bright and boundless immensity.

Everything is defined by limitation, except you. You are just the Reality which gives rise to all apparent limitations; they appear in you, play in you, and subside in you. This limited, temporary body; this partial, subjective, mind; this flawed and fragile personality which navigates an impersonal and threatening world; you are the existence on which all these images are painted.

You are the infinite canvas on which all experience is painted. With experience there is growth, maturation and decline. With experience there are introverted and extroverted states. With experience there are thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. With experience there is progress, time, beginnings and endings. With experience there is one moment and the next. With experience there is appearance and disappearance. With experience there is always becoming.

But for you there is no becoming, there is only being. In you there is no progress, only perfection. In you there is no next. There is no moment-to-moment experience. There are no thoughts, feelings, sensations or perceptions. In you there is no growth, maturation, or decline. In you there is no change, no practice, no states. There is no introversion or extroversion. There is no beginning or end. There is no appearance or disappearance. There is no boundary or limitation.

There is nothing missing, nothing lacking, nothing else.