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Clear Seeing: The End of Separation and the Soft Inner Gaze · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  You are listening to the Amoda Maa podcast.
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  In this series, Amoda explores her essential teaching through conversation and excerpts
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  from interviews and events.
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  Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
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  I'd like to speak a little more about clear seeing.
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  And just to remind ourselves
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  listen to receive, not just with a linear grasping mind that wants to attach to the words
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  to remember the words, to hold on to the words. Because then it will compare words with words.
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  What was said yesterday with what is said today, what will be said tomorrow, what was
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  said in a book. To listen with the whole being with your heart, with your body, with your
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  soul with your depth because all words are simply circling around the same. It's not
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  linear. It's not a theory. It's not something to learn. They're all circling around the
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  the same. What is the same? If we put words to it, then it becomes a whole load of different
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  things but let's put some words to it. Truth. Freedom. Awakening.
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  and ultimately love. The undoing of the tight not of self, the undoing of identity, the
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  seeing through the continual movements of self-activity, ego activity. It's all pointing
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  to the same and spoken of using slightly different words each time, approaching it from slightly
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  different angles, but all the same. So there's no step by step. There's no do this, do this,
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  learn this, and then you'll get here. So I just say that as a reminder that what's about
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  to be offered today, let's see, is the same as yesterday and the day before.
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  Now we'll come from the approach of clear seeing today, because that's what awakening
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  is. Waking up out of the myopic lens of ego self, of me identity. Because what we call
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  seeing is not really seeing at all. We see through the lens of accumulated memories,
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  beliefs, desires, fears, preferences. It's as if all experience, all that we experience
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  gets drawn into the orbit of the Me Self.
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  My thoughts, my feelings, my fear, my hope,
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  It all gets claimed by the 'me'. Experience is not free because the 'me' claims it,
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  And in claiming it, it reinforces the centre called 'me'.
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  Awareness does not operate in that way.
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  When everything is drawn into the centre, there is comparison.
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  Comparison between this experience and that experience.
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  This is a better experience, this is a worse experience.
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  There is comparison, there is judgement.
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  This should be happening, this shouldn't be happening.
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  This shouldn't have happened.
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  And then there is judgment on the Self because that happened or this is happening.
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  So the Self, the Me Self, claims everything.
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  There is comparison, there is judgment and there is categorising.
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  And we put this experience where there is a thought, a feeling, a circumstance, a sensation
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  into this box or that box.
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  We divide reality, we divide experience.
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  This is a function, an unconscious function, of the 'me' self.
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  Awareness is not of that order.
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  Awareness does not judge or categorise or criticise or compare.
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  The ego loves to compare.
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  "I'm better, I'm worse, he's better, he's worse, she's better, she's worse."
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  They're better, they're worse.
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  Constantly dividing.
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  Reality.
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  But then it's no longer reality, because it's been totally coloured by that lens of division.
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  Awareness has nothing to do with that.
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  Awareness simply sees what arises.
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  There is no lens.
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  What arises is what arises.
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  It's quite simple really.
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  innocent.
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  Since awareness is what you are, prior to comparison or judgment or categorising, then
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  it's very available.
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  We could say that this quality of awareness is simply letting it be, letting water rises,
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  letting experience be, not interfering, not interpreting because the interpretation is
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  always a self-referencing, it's always about the 'me' self.
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  And then if it's about the 'me', the 'me' has to have a strategy to protect itself, to defend itself,
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  to overpower, to find its platform, either as superior or inferior.
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  It loves either of those.
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  Inferiority or victimhood or lesser than
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  is just as much an ego strategy as superiority
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  and overpowering and so on.
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  They're both the same.
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  Just opposite ends of the continuum, the polarity.
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  Awareness has nothing to do with this. Your true nature has nothing to do with this.
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  What arises is what arises, letting it be. It just is.
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  That doesn't mean...
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  We are circling around this again. It doesn't mean that you are passive.
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  It doesn't mean you have withdrawn from life. It doesn't mean you are indifferent.
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  On the contrary, life comes closer. Life as it is comes closer because there's no lens
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  creating a distance between subject and object, object being the experiences which are put
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  in all these different boxes. They're not objects anymore. They're appearances right here. So
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  the living texture of life comes alive. Life becomes more vibrant. Even in its difficulty,
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  Even in the challenges, even in the pain, even in what we call the darkness,
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  becomes more vibrantly alive because awareness as your natural state is simply open, present,
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  Undivided and undividing.
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  It's not doing anything with experience.
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  It's not interfering with experience.
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  So subject and object come closer.
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  This willingness to let it be, when we start, the most important place is letting be our
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  own experience, feelings, emotions, thoughts, sensations. This willingness to let it be
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  is what dissolves the 'me' centre.
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  So it's not about trying to get rid of me, trying to transcend me,
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  trying to meditate yourself out of me,
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  [laughter]
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  killing the ego, getting rid of the ego, yes?
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  I use the word 'ego' and 'me' interchangeably.
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  These are all strategies of the self, the 'me' self against itself.
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  That's insanity, but perhaps in this short meditation today you might have got a sense
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  that you can't actually find a 'me'.
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  What is this 'me'?
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  Well where is it?
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  Is it tangible?
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  So it's an imaginary thing, a construct, trying to get rid of itself.
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  It's not going to work.
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  No.
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  The capacity to let it be, and it sounds like letting it be, is something that the self
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  is doing, but we have to give it some concession here, because it seems to still be involved.
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  But really it's pointing to the nature of awareness, which is very nature is letting
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  it be.
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  It just is, it's being itself.
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  So as you are willing, more and more, to let experience be, so there's no interference,
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  there's no judgment, there's no categorising, it becomes very subtle at this point.
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  In the 'me' centre, which is that which ultimately is our torturer, gradually comes
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  undone.
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  It softens, it dissolves.
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  The centre comes undone.
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  And that allows life to come closer.
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  So the distance between me and life and so on is just a lens, a veil that dissolves.
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  Life becomes more alive, more here, more present, more open, more free.
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  This is love.
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  Love arises naturally when the distance between subject and object collapses, when there is
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  There's no more lens between you and reality, between you and life.
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  Love arises naturally.
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  You don't have to try to be loving.
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  You don't have to seek for love as a feeling, an emotion.
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  It transcends all of that.
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  The natural fragrance of love arises because you are no longer in the paradigm of separation.
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  It says nothing to do with like-mindedness, liking everybody, loving everybody, everybody
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  agreeing to the same beliefs, the same religion, the same this, the same nothing to do with
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  that the multiplicity, the diversity, is just as it is, letting it be, but because there
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  is no distance, no lens, then the unity, the unified field illuminates the unified field
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  of awareness, of beingness illuminates all things. That's what makes it alive.
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  A live presence, awake presence.
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  It allows peace and happiness that is not dependent on circumstance, that is not dependent on
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  experience that is not dependent on what appears. It's that which underlies all things. Love
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  underlies all things. From the perspective of the self we've divided love into love is
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  feeling good and when we feel bad, then it's not love. Love becomes a commodity, an object,
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  something that we've drawn into the orbit of self and defined it. But that is not love,
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  that is an image that we've created.
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  Love is ever-present as a fragrance, as a subtle undercurrent.
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  So, letting it be is a soft gaze.
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  It's a soft inner gaze upon reality.
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  Here we can become sensitive to that.
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  It's an inner sensitivity, sensing, that's all it means, just sense.
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  When we're tight on something, and this is wrong, this is right, you know,
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  Or where we have a soft inner gaze upon reality, with sensory beings, everyone has this capacity.
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  A soft inner gaze upon what arises.
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  An irritating sound.
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  Take away the irritating sound.
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  The plane flying overhead when you're trying to sleep.
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  The person talking too loudly on the train.
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  Yes, perhaps some irritation arises in the nervous system, but still the soft inner gaze.
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  It is as it is, letting it be, letting it be, even letting the irritation be.
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  So what?
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  All things are movements.
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  First, there is this, then there is that.
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  It changes. It's not what is that is the problem. It's the divided self that is the
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  problem. This shouldn't be happening. That shouldn't be happening. This I like, that
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  I don't like so on, so on, so on, so constant. Assessment. No. Again, it doesn't make you
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  just whatever. It doesn't make you a doormat, doesn't make you, you know. Brings clear seeing.
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  That's what clear seeing is. And out of clear seeing, there is natural discernment, discernment,
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  judgment, natural boundaries, natural yes/no, not from a violent place. It is the movement
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  of love, the expression of love, in harmony with the whole. So the soft inner gaze is
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  simply the soft stop. When there is a pull, a movement, inevitably there will be towards
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  grasping or rejecting or following that movement of irritation or judgment or so on, inevitably
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  there will be a pull because these are the tendencies that have driven us for lifetime
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  more lifetimes and the collective human condition. So there will be a pull with your willingness
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  and your availability. There is something in you that will not follow that movement to
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  its conclusion. That's the soft stop. It's not a hard stop. It's not a forcing of the
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  yourself. You see the movement and allowing everything to be as it is. You don't follow
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  it to its conclusion. The conclusion is this shouldn't be happening. I have to get rid
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  of it. Or there's something wrong with me. Or there's something wrong with him or her.
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  Or there's something wrong with the world. No, don't come to the conclusion. The soft
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  stop is just this, ah, and there is a soft inner gaze. This is the heart of Tantra, not
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  Tantra, Tantric methods, Tantric sex and all this, no, no, no. True Tantra is true seeing.
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  Soft inner gaze.
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  as if we choose, if you like, to take up this invitation.
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  As we choose to take up this invitation, then there's nothing you need to do as such
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  to awaken out of the dream of separation.
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  Awareness, the soft gaze, let's say,
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  is what allows the center to come undone.
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  And by and by the veils of identity of me,
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  It's not a psychological process in the conventional way,
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  but you have to work out our personality
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  and the different aspects and how we're going to rearrange them.
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  It gradually dissolves itself.
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  So we start to live without a centre.
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  I know it's very common to say, I have to find my centre.
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  I have to be centred, yes, on a more mind-body organism, not to be scattered and so on, to
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  be grounded.
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  But this is a different way of looking at it, because we're looking at clear seeing, we're
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  speaking to freedom, liberation from the me identity, liberation from the tight knot,
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  the prison of self, awakening out of the dream of separation.
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  And paradoxically, living without a centre brings great presence, clarity and groundedness
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  Because you know love and go living in the imagination.
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  The lens, the division, these are all occlusions, obscurations.
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  So you don't have to go looking for truth.
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  Truth reveals itself when the self is empty.
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  This is an emptying, yeah?
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  An emptying of the Self.
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  You don't become vacant.
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  You become alive.
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  Awake.
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  Fully present.
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  Without having to practice mindfulness.
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  No practice.
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  Only the willingness to let it be.
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  Let it be.