Latest / Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry / Episode 54: Awakening to Love's True Nature

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Episode 54: Awakening to Love's True Nature · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  Greetings and welcome back to
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  another conversation with Amoda Maa. Good morning, Amoda. Good morning, Kavi. Now today we are
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  going to use a short section of a piece that Amoda wrote in her book Embodied Enlightenment,
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  which was published actually quite a few years ago. Was it 2016 Amoda? It was 2017.
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  2017 Embodied Enlightenment. So we're going to use a section from that and I'm going to ask
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  a number of questions related to it. So if you bear with me, I'm going to read the quote.
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  "When everything falls in new dies, what remains is the truth of love,
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  not an ordinary kind of love or a polite love, but a love that is uncompromising in its inclusion
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  of the totality of life. This love cannot be packaged, it cannot be bought or sold or negotiated
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  with. It is limitless, unconditional, wild and absolutely free. This love is in the heart of you,
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  every saint and sinner and in every speck of gold, dust and piece of dirt.
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  When this love is seen as the heart of everything, an inexplicable recognition of non-duality
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  within duality arises. This is the ultimate cosmic joke that resounds across the universe
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  as the peace that passeth all understanding. When that unconditional laugh lands in your belly,
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  the ripples of transformation in your life have begun.
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  What a beautiful piece, it's very evocative.
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  So I've got three questions and let me start out with asking you this a motor.
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  So you describe a love that is uncompromising and includes the totality of life.
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  How can someone begin or continue to open to this kind of love, especially when faced with deep pain or conflict in their lives?
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  So let's open this up a little bit.
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  Good question, of course.
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  If I could start by speaking of, if you like, two sides of the non-existent fence,
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  one is prior to awakening and the other one is, if you like, post-awakening.
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  Prior to awakening, let's say on the path, on the seeking path, the question is relevant
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  because the full revelation of that uncompromising love hasn't yet been revealed.
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  And therefore there's a longing if you like to move towards it to know that love.
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  So then the question is relevant. It's still relevant post awakening but it's more subtle then.
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  So let's just talk about being on the path as such. If you would repeat the question.
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  You describe a love that is uncompromising and includes the totality of life. How can someone
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  begin or continue to open to this kind of love, especially when faced with deep pain or conflict
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  in their lives. Okay, so really this this is speaking to meeting everything that arises in one's
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  experience with non-resistance. It's really meeting everything with a soft touch and that's
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  something that we don't have to wait for awakening for that, that's something that can be part of our
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  ongoing devotion. It's like a devotional
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  approach. What does that mean? That's not devotion to some deity or such like, but devotion to
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  the soft touch with life so that when pain arises, when challenge arises, to really,
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  to really within oneself deep down have the willingness to meet that softly.
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  In the understanding that resistance creates more suffering, resistance creates an inner tightness,
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  inner agitation, anxiety, fear and so on and non-resistance softens everything, softens the inner world and it softens the outer world.
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  If we truly understand that as a foundation, then we will have the willingness to meet everything from that place,
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  or at least in that willingness to attempt that, it doesn't always go that way.
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  Sometimes there are layers of resistance, layers of fear, but we can at least attempt that.
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  Yeah, it's a really, again, devotional in the sense that we have the capacity as individuals,
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  we have the choice to love what arises, to love what arises.
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  We may not like it, it may be uncomfortable, it may be powerful, it may be intense, but
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  we can still meet it lovingly, lovingly.
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  changes everything. If we start to practice that, if we start to bring that
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  approach, if you like, into our lives, the evidence will be that it lightens the
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  load, it lightens the burden and it relieves suffering. It's like we each, we
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  each are invited to take responsibility for not what happens, but how we see or
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  how we meet what happens. That's part of our personal evolution, our growth.
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  and our awakening. There was a, we published this, these words as a short article somewhere,
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  and actually we did include the title then, "When the false dies, love is what remains." So I'm
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  going to ask you about, you just said there is something that we can do, and yet you're also
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  speaking of the surrender of the false self that holds on to its stories. This is the
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  nature of the depth of the teaching, this is non-dual teachings. 101 in a way is like
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  so can the self surrender itself? I'm sorry to get to that so quickly, but I actually
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  I'm quite curious about exploring this a little bit because it is relevant to this.
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  Well, that's why I said there's a kind of, at least a sort of metaphorical or symbolic
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  fence on this side or on that side. Actually, there isn't in reality in truth. There isn't
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  and any fence, but there appears to be.
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  So on one side of the fence,
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  which we just touched on somewhat in talking about
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  what we can do, how we can approach,
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  we have the choice, then that seemingly is something
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  that we do, that we choose, that we activate within ourselves.
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  So the self is actively choosing,
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  or at least trying, yeah, it doesn't yet.
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  Yes, yes, yes.
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  To meet what is, what arises as a feeling, as an emotion,
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  as an energy, as an experience with a softness,
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  with a light touch, not with resistance.
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  And we have to work out for ourselves what that means,
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  how it feels, what the difference between resistance
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  is and softness, the softness is the surrender.
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  So that's something, the phrase, if you like, when the false dies, or that remains his love,
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  well that's referring or speaking to the metaphorical other side of the fence, which is the awakening itself.
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  It's not then that we have to try anything or do anything.
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  It's a revelation. Love reveals itself as the nature of things.
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  And so resistance falls away. There's no more resistance.
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  And that's what it really means when the false dies, when everything false in you dies,
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  where what is the false? The false is the self that believes itself to be a victim of life.
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  One of the core identities or layers of identity of the ego self, the separate self.
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  The false is the sense that I am a separate entity and life is out there and I either have to
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  control life or manipulate life or hold on to life or reject life and push it away in order to keep
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  myself safe and secure and whatever it might be. That's a layer of the false self, a fundamental
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  layer of the false self, the sense or the belief, the unexamined belief that I am separate.
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  and there are lots of separate other entities, other human beings, other people, other things,
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  and we're all battling for survival. Other layers of self might be, 'I need to get love,
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  I need to get love from someone or something. I need to get whatever it might be. I need to get
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  recognition, approval from someone or something, these are all layers of the identity, the
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  me identity, that obscure not only our own true nature, but also the true nature of everything,
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  because there's actually no separation.
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  So those false layers of self, they come undone in awakening, in full awakening.
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  And we then see, we naturally, innately see life not from the paradigm of separation,
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  But from, we could say, the paradigm of oneness, yeah?
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  Of unity, a unified beingness that is existent in all things, through all things.
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  And that changes everything.
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  And then love is, we could also replace the word love with openness.
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  You know?
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  Love and openness become the same thing.
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  In other words, there's no resistance.
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  It's a deep acceptance of what is in the open field
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  of beingness, the open field of awareness.
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  We can call it the unbounded heart.
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  We can call it the unbounded mind.
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  There are ways of describing really the same paradigm shift.
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  - Could I ask that because most people
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  will just sit on this point,
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  Most people when we hear the word love,
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  associate it with quality,
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  equality usually of the self.
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  You know, we associate it with my love
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  and we give it a kind of quality.
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  But I hear what you're saying in a sense
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  because you're equating it with openness,
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  with awareness if you like.
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  You know, with all of these very open kind of,
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  I don't know what to call them, qualities,
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  but they're not qualities.
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  Is there any quality to the love that you're talking of?
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  - So let's say first of all in response to that,
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  yes, love is usually associated with a feeling,
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  an emotion or anything.
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  - That's right.
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  And so that's the self, yeah, interpreting.
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  And of course, there's a conditioned,
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  conceptual understanding of love.
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  Love is what we give somebody or somebody gives to us.
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  Love is an action, love is a behavior,
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  love is a feeling, love is an emotion,
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  love is feeling good and all of this.
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  And here we're speaking of a love
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  that is stripped of all conceptual understanding.
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  I have to say at this point that my understanding and the reason that I wrote that, there was
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  a lot more written, but that particular section in the book, the reason I wrote that was that
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  was my direct experience.
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  prior to that, my understanding of love or my conceptualizing of love was exactly that,
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  the conceptual love. Love is somebody being nice to me or me being nice to somebody and
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  so on and so on. And all of that came undone. So the love that's being spoken about here
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  is it can't even be encapsulated by the word love, but we use that because
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  it has a certain quality or it points to something, but it's really the end of resistance,
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  the deepest acceptance. Now, does it have a quality? If yes, yes and no, if you keep on stripping it,
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  It has no quality other than openness itself.
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  Unbounded, infinite openness itself,
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  which isn't a quality, it's just a way of describing
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  infinity, the infinite awareness of what is.
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  But it does have a quality because we do,
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  it does get filtered through the human experience,
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  yeah, as long as we're alive.
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  And that quality, we could say softness,
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  and tenderness,
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  lightness,
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  ultimately non-resistance.
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  Yeah, again, as soon as we use words like softness,
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  that can mean a whole load of things to different people.
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  It could imply just being passive or being kind of
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  a little bit weak or a little bit.
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  Yeah, and that's not what it means.
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  No, that's right.
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  Yeah.
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  So it's a little bit...
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  Well, you said, sorry, but you said it is limitless, unconditional, wild was a word to
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  use.
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  And I want to get to that question, not quite yet.
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  But these are, these are, these are, and absolutely free.
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  You know, these are profound things to kind of say.
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  And I would add that what you're talking of when you describe the qualities of it are,
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  are this is the fragrance. It's more fragrance than it is quality because
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  qualities we tend to associate with a self. I've found this and it has this
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  style or this quality to it, whereas this that you're talking about is a
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  very different, it has the same word, but it's located in a very
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  different way. It's not locatable. It hasn't got a self in it, but it does have these qualities
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  of tenderness and kindness that you're talking about. But it also does have a wildness to it
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  because it is uncontainable. It's not going to play the game.
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  That's right. It's uncompromising. So that's why to limit it to softness, kindness, and all this.
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  I mean, even as I speak those words, it conjures up in me, somebody who's constantly kind and
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  constantly doing good things for other people and you can end up being a doormat in that
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  way. So it's not that it doesn't have that quality but it's actually more wild and free
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  and uncompromising than that. In other words it won't, when it comes through the human
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  experience or when it's experienced or it's not even an experience, it's just what it
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  it's uncompromising and that's not harsh, that's not cruel. It's just not doing anything
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  in order to get anything. Let's put it that way. No transaction whatsoever. It's not compromising
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  itself in order to be loving or to be loved. And that's, I think, the ground of it, the
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  core of it. It just sees clearly, in that sense, love and awareness are the same. It
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  sees clearly and whatever action gets taken or non-action gets taken is so natural, so
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  we don't have to have a strategy for it. It doesn't think, "Oh, well, if I was
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  loving, or if this is love, what would I do? What would I say?" It just doesn't do
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  that. It has no self in it. And again, I know this. It's...
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  You know, when I wrote that book, it was, well, it was quite a few years after, but
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  it was still very, very, very visceral and vibrant, this knowing, this seeing. I mean,
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  it still is, but it's become so integrated into ordinary life that it hasn't quite got
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  that full on, you know, vibrancy. It's just here as a gentle, a more gentle, eternal knowing.
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  But now that we speak about it, I can look back and it was just so obvious and so vibrant
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  and it was so different if you like.
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  The shift was so different to how it was prior to that for me.
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  And it was just so clean and so pure.
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  It was the seeing, the clarity, the awareness and the love, totally the same, unbounded,
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  infinite openness, that's all it was.
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  So that everything that was experienced, the ordinary life, the interactions with other
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  people, not that there were many people, I think you were one of them.
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  But you, all of it was just so and all the strategies for getting love or giving love
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  or being loving totally came undone. So it was kind of very naked and beautiful. It was
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  still, it was just a whole new paradigm of love and that nothing was not love, which didn't
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  mean that, you know, I had to put up with anything. It was just so clear. Anything that
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  was not love in my frequency field, I just didn't move towards it. Anything that was,
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  even if my mind or self, of course, with a human self here said, "Well, I'm not sure
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  about this," it would just move towards it. Things that would have triggered me previously,
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  things that would have caused me to question either myself or life, they just came undone.
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  So I'm really speaking from that place when I wrote that.
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  I mean, I still do, but...
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  This is interesting because I think that I've witnessed that to a certain extent.
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  I didn't really know you before that awakening time you had a little bit, but not really.
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  But I know that you speak to this with the kind of passion, if you like, that you just
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  talked about or intensity, that you just talked about because I think you did experience
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  radically the difference between the compromising transactional self and the liberated one who
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  was had the capacity to just meet life openly. And I think you speak to it very well and very
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  kind of intensely in a certain way, because that was your life. Before awakening, you were, I did
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  meet you a couple of times and there was a sense that you, you know, there was a victim
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  self who was maneuvering in social situations. I don't know about your intimate life with John,
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  your previous partner, but it had that kind of quality that you were almost trying to
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  protect yourself or strategize your way through or, you know, and then the utter
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  difference to when I first came into your orbit and we started on a relationship was there was none
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  of that at all. It was a very different woman that I met from the one that you're relating to.
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  When I met you, you were uncompromising. You weren't ruthless, but there was a love that was there,
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  that was drawn towards in such a profound way, but it was a very uncompromising. You were not
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  going to transact anything anymore, and that wasn't coming from a place of self. It was seemed to be
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  the natural fragrance of who you were. That describes it. That's true, huh?
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  That's right. But it also gives itself wholeheartedly to what is.
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  There's no compromise, there's no strategy, there's no game playing or role playing.
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  But it also gives itself wholeheartedly to what is.
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  And in this sense, as it filters in more and more into the human experience,
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  then everything, everything that we experience, every circumstance, every event, every, I don't
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  know, happening, whether we think we've chosen it as a direction to go in or whether it seems to
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  have appeared in our lives, you know, unbidden, is actually seen as love. It actually is. It completely
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  reframes the way of seeing life, seeing our experience. So whether it's a challenging
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  experience that takes place in our lives, whether it's the loss of something or someone,
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  whether it's something that stretches our capacity in some way, whether it's an unexpected
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  event, whether we're out of our comfort zone and so on. Actually all of it is seen as love.
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  It just reframes everything and again one of our favourite phrases has been cherish everything.
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  That cherishing just happens naturally. It doesn't mean that we're precious about anything.
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  It just means that everything is seen as love in the sense that it's here to serve our
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  growth.
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  And I mean that as, because we're still human beings that have emotional and the capacity
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  for emotional, spiritual, personal growth. That means going beyond our comfort zone,
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  deepening into our human maturity and so on. So everything serves that. It also serves our
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  capacity to continue the ongoing journey of opening to what is.
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  the falling away of regret and resentment and grievances in all situations and circumstances
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  and the capacity to be with whatever feeling or felt sense is here which continues to
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  change and be fluid as we have a human experience. So everything serves that,
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  everything, rather than seeing it as a punishment or something's gone wrong or I made the wrong
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  choice. Well, we can learn from that anyway if we feel we've made a wrong choice. But everything
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  serves, life serves the evolution of love, openness within us, rather than being a punishment or a
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  constriction, you know, something that wants to limit us or it's gone wrong or we've taken a wrong
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  turn. And this changes again the way that we are in life and the way that life is in us.
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  Yes, beautiful. I think there's a notion almost that when the flip or the awakening, you know,
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  one side of the fence to the other of a fence that doesn't exist. But when that happens,
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  it's like you land almost in the awakened place. And that's not what you're describing
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  at all. You're actually describing some sort of falling, which is never a good word, but
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  it is a kind of an ever, it starts the journey. That's actually the start of the journey,
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  then everything is known and seen and felt as love, but it constantly informs, doesn't
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  it?
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  It's a constant deepening, if you like, into the maturity, into the nuances of what this
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  truly means.
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  And that's exquisite.
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  That's an exquisite journey.
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  I mean, it stops from being a victim's journey to starts to become, you know, what a lover's
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  journey if you like and they'll use lovers in the biggest way and the biggest use of
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  the word, doesn't it?
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  Yes, yes indeed, we stop.
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  I think that's fundamental actually the end of the victim.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, and again this word victim means different things to different people and it really doesn't
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  relate to whether bad things have happened to you or abusive situations or
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  circumstance or a life, a childhood of hardship. It's not just that.
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  Most people even, even when there's a good life or a, there's no such thing as a
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  good life is there. It just is life. But most people do carry an unexamined victim identity.
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  It can be very subtle, but it's still there so that when good things happen, they feel
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  good about themselves or bad things happen. They feel like life's done something bad or
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  it's gone wrong or and so on and that's being a victim. That's a victim identity where we actually
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  are separate from life and then life either does something good or it does something bad
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  and we can be skillful or or strategic about trying to keep it on the good path so that bad
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  things don't happen but we can't control that. There's just a a losery sense of control but to
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  undo the victim altogether, that's what transforms are in a world into, you could
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  say that, the lover, the beloved, the beloved is everything. Everything becomes
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  love. It's a deep union with unity with what is. There's no more separation. Everything
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  is God. Everything. Everything that appears is God because it serves something. It serves
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  our knowing of Godness within ourselves.
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  in order to know God, you must welcome everything.
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  - That's right.
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  - Okay, so, well, let's just get back on the path here.
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  So if I just to finish off that first question,
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  if I were to say to you, how can some,
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  and I'll answer it as well,
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  how can someone begin to open to this kind of love,
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  especially when faced with deep pain or conflict
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  in their lives?
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  And these are very difficult areas, of course,
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  because they suck us into the personhood often.
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  But I've heard you potentially kind of answer that
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  in a way of entering the idea of victim consciousness
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  and open it up.
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  There is the inquiry right there.
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  It's not an answer that's coming from a motor.
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  It's not an answer that's coming from anywhere.
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  But if there is something to be looked at
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  is that is the entry, that's one of the entry points
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  and it's a very valuable entry point to see
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  where that takes you because it could take you all the way,
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  couldn't it?
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  - Yes, examining the victim identity
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  isn't just an intellectual exercise
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  of making a list of how the victim plays out in your life.
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  - Although it could be useful as well.
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  that's useful on one level, that's an entry point as well, but ultimately it's about the
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  energetic sense, felt sense of the victim. And as we move closer to that and become intimate with
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  it, which is like seemingly contrary to what we want to be doing, we want to be moving away from
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  it and getting rid of it, but actually it's the moving into it that undoes that energetic knot.
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  Beautiful. That's a very good point. And I love that point because I'm
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  talk to you forever. It's moving into not moving away from.
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  Once again, on resistance.
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  Just to get that, just to get that. So let me quickly, not so quickly, but
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  excuse me, move on to this second question. We are answering all these questions anyway,
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  But you've said that this love is openness, whatever you want to call it, cannot be bought,
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  sold or negotiated with. How does this limitless love challenge the ego's typical way of relating
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  to the world and to others? And I know we have answered it to a certain extent, but we need to
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  keep going through these things because this is untangling something very, very, very hard wired
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  into the human being? Yes. Well yes, it's a challenge to the ego identity. The ego
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  self, yes, the unexamined self, the self that is operating as a me identity, me as
• 5:29
  this me is that me essentially as a separate entity will use love unconsciously because
• 5:30
  we've been conditioned in this way, as a bartering system. So on a very surface level,
• 5:31
  will it's represented, I should say, it's reflected by the way that love is portrayed
• 5:32
  in society, the majority of society. Something that we give somebody gifts,
• 5:33
  yeah, and such like, yeah, so we see the whole commercialization of love. It's also something
• 5:34
  that we see as romantic love and all the images that we get for that and ideas about that.
• 5:35
  That's on the kind of surface level.
• 5:36
  On a more personal level, then from the ego identity position, love is what we try to
• 5:37
  get from somebody, whether it be our parents, whether it, and of course as children, we
• 5:38
  do need love for emotional, psychological, well-being and physical well-being as well.
• 5:39
  But as we mature and don't need that dependency on a caretaker, we still try to get love from
• 5:40
  our parents in a particular way. Usually it's tied up with approval. And then we try to
• 5:41
  to get love from a partner, a husband, a wife, a friend, whatever it might be.
• 5:42
  So love becomes a transactional commodity.
• 5:43
  We also try to give love in the form of things, in the form of actions, in the form of behaviours.
• 5:44
  And so it becomes a kind of give and take situation.
• 5:45
  And if I don't get that love according to what I think love should look like, then I
• 5:46
  don't feel loved and that has an impact on who I think I am.
• 5:47
  Then I become evicted, then I become impoverished in some way.
• 5:48
  So I go looking for love somewhere else.
• 5:49
  So it has great ramifications on our relationships and our relationship to ourself.
• 5:50
  As if love could be quantified or quantified in terms of an objective experience, something
• 5:51
  that I get, if you give me more things, that means I'm more loved. If you act this way
• 5:52
  towards me, that means I'm more loved. So it becomes something that we accumulate in
• 5:53
  terms of quantity and quality perhaps. And that has an impact on who we think we are,
• 5:54
  and that has an impact on my life, the quality of my life, and the quality of my relationship
• 5:55
  to myself and then we need to be surrounded by that love in terms of quantity, things.
• 5:56
  And when I say things, I don't mean just physical material objects, I mean just objective experiences.
• 5:57
  Otherwise I don't feel good about myself or I don't feel good about life.
• 5:58
  And so on.
• 5:59
  So it has huge ramifications on our whole experience of life.
• 6:00
  Do you think that this search for, you know, what's perceived as love or what's thought of as love or what's long for as love is one of the root searches of the human being?
• 6:01
  because ultimately it's a search for a kind of union,
• 6:02
  for a search for wholeness, a search for...
• 6:03
  It's almost... I hear you speaking, it's almost at the heart of the human being.
• 6:04
  Yes, we could say that. It is ultimately underneath the surface,
• 6:05
  search for love, which has this transactional quality to it, this commodity quality to it,
• 6:06
  because that search is arising from the unexamined self, which is identified with its 'me'
• 6:07
  identity and its separate identity. Then it has this quality of seeking that love in
• 6:08
  objects or objective experience. But ultimately underneath that, if we go deeper than that,
• 6:09
  that's why the seeking needs to go inward. It's a deep longing for wholeness.
• 6:10
  It's not extraordinary. Yeah. Wholeness being the total knowing, and again,
• 6:11
  not an intellectual knowing, but a visceral and agetic knowing that I am enough. Not I am as a
• 6:12
  personality or a personhood am enough, although that as well. But I am enough, I am not excluded,
• 6:13
  I am not punished, I am not a victim, I am not cursed, I am not rejected. I am as I am
• 6:14
  is enough. We could add something to that which is for God's love. Not God as a separate entity
• 6:15
  but just existence itself. And that changes everything. And that's the foundation of awakening,
• 6:16
  if you like. Wholeness to no one's innate wholeness. Well, that's the deepest longing for love, but
• 6:17
  but it's not seeking it in the linear plane,
• 6:18
  but it's a verticality,
• 6:19
  yeah, verticality of beingness
• 6:20
  that reveals love's true nature.
• 6:21
  - It strikes me from what you were saying,
• 6:22
  that actually, you know,
• 6:23
  because I know in the spiritual world,
• 6:24
  a lot of people have an in for the ego self,
• 6:25
  and they do it down, and it's this terrible thing.
• 6:26
  But as you were speaking,
• 6:27
  we were talking about the self and how it longs for, you know, seeks to get through addiction
• 6:28
  a lot of times through addiction, through another person, through this relationship.
• 6:29
  If I transact this, I'll get what I want. But actually, isn't it extraordinary because
• 6:30
  the ego self, the very self, is actually a reflection of the soul that seeks union. It's
• 6:31
  not so very bad. It's just got a kind of false version. It's taken the soul's true longing.
• 6:32
  with the soul or the spirit or the deepest longing for union for home and it's done what
• 6:33
  it can with it. It's doing the best that it can because it's rooted in self. So it says
• 6:34
  all if I get it there, then we'll be home and it obviously doesn't work for long, but
• 6:35
  it's actually really quite a beautiful thing in itself, isn't it?
• 6:36
  Well, that's the amazing kind of paradox of it is that the ego is not a thing.
• 6:37
  Yeah.
• 6:38
  The ego is not a separate entity that somehow has taken us over and is bad.
• 6:39
  It's actually a reflection of true nature.
• 6:40
  Yeah.
• 6:41
  And again, when we awaken out of that identity of ego, yeah, ego identity, which is when
• 6:42
  everything falls in you, full, you know, full dies. We see that in some ways the ego
• 6:43
  doesn't exist. They're all conceptual structures of identity. And those structures have
• 6:44
  of informed are seeking. And they continue to inform our seeking for most people until
• 6:45
  that seeking turns inwards to who am I, not how can I get what I think I need. Because
• 6:46
  what I think I need is actually right here.
• 6:47
  So it seems to be a beautiful play, if you like,
• 6:48
  and not something wrong.
• 6:49
  I mean, it's sort of almost derigue
• 6:50
  in non-dual circles to say there's no evolution.
• 6:51
  Nothing ever happened and there's no evolution.
• 6:52
  And yes, on an absolute absolute level, but we don't live in the absolute absolute.
• 6:53
  Yeah, there is an absolute and there's also life and this is a experience.
• 6:54
  Yes, they coexist.
• 6:55
  And that coexistence within that coexistence is an evolution.
• 6:56
  evolve out of the ego identity to knowing our true nature and that seems to be part of
• 6:57
  our human experience is that both as individuals but also on a very large time scale. It's
• 6:58
  for us to come to know ourselves as that. So it's all dare I say perfect in that sense.
• 6:59
  Wow. A perfect dance.
• 7:00
  I love speaking with you so much because it's like this becomes alive, the inquiry,
• 7:01
  the questioning, the other becomes a life thing. It's not you just repeating what you
• 7:02
  know somewhere. It's actually there's such a liveness that I experience. And this that you're
• 7:03
  speaking of would dare I say be a kind of evolutionary non-duality. But not in the way that the mind
• 7:04
  gets hold of these words. You've got to be people, please be cautious about using words to just
• 7:05
  judge these things, inquire into the words, the words of the clue. Yeah, the words of the entry point.
• 7:06
  Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. And you know, when I say evolution, yeah, I, the where it gets hooked up
• 7:07
  with this idea that there's no evolution, which again, on an absolute level is true. Nothing happens
• 7:08
  and it's all here now and all this business. But when I say evolution, I don't mean it's
• 7:09
  progressive. It's not a progressive path. That's how it's interpreted. Well, nothing is progressive
• 7:10
  because actually everything is taking place in the now. In the eternal now, there actually
• 7:11
  isn't time and space. There are all structures that we see through, you know, use for perception
• 7:12
  and experience, but in reality, absolute reality, time and space don't exist,
• 7:13
  sort of collapses into the eternal now. Yes, so I'm not speaking of evolution as a progressive
• 7:14
  path, even as an individual. It's not that we evolve on a progressive path. The evolution
• 7:15
  is pointing to the directness of waking up out of ego identity.
• 7:16
  It's like the fence comes undone and we see there never was a fence.
• 7:17
  It was all self created if you like.
• 7:18
  There is no spoon.
• 7:19
  There is no spoon.
• 7:20
  By the way that we see things, it's just simply a paradigm shift.
• 7:21
  but not a paradigm shift that moves us from here to there.
• 7:22
  It's a paradigm shift that reveals what's always been here.
• 7:23
  But that is an evolution.
• 7:24
  It's kind of a vertical evolution.
• 7:25
  - Yes, I guess.
• 7:26
  It's not Darwinian.
• 7:27
  It's not this, it's not linear.
• 7:28
  It's vertical and there's a linearity on it,
• 7:29
  but it's a very vertical thing.
• 7:30
  Yes. That's so beautiful.
• 7:31
  Oh, a murder engine is trying to harness this because we're going to come to an end,
• 7:32
  but not before I have a chance to.
• 7:33
  And I think we've just been talking about this.
• 7:34
  There are the third question.
• 7:35
  There is no spoon first.
• 7:36
  The recognition, you're going?
• 7:37
  No, I'm listening.
• 7:38
  The recognition of non-duality within duality is a profound statement. Can you elaborate
• 7:39
  on how this recognition shifts one's perspective on everyday life and relationships?
• 7:40
  Again, I think we've just touched on that, haven't we? The verticality of evolution
• 7:41
  of the paradigm shift? Well, I can refine this question a little bit in the sense that there
• 7:42
  can be these perennial thought, ideas that once non-duality has been recognized, then
• 7:43
  there's no more conversation in a sense to do with what the relationship of that with what
• 7:44
  could be called duality, the dream. There's known as the dream. It is recognised here,
• 7:45
  we do recognise it, we're talking about the relative and the absolute. And so the recognition
• 7:46
  of the absolute within the relative is a profound statement. How do you speak to that?
• 7:47
  Yeah, what that refers to is the understanding that has come from the revelation,
• 7:48
  that everything that arises, everything that is experienced, everything that is perceived,
• 7:49
  everything that is felt, everything that is thought, everything that is sensed, which
• 7:50
  is the whole of the human experience, is not separate from the undivided field of beingness,
• 7:51
  light of being, the open field of, again we call it awareness, no word will suffice,
• 7:52
  the unnameable. Everything appears not as a separate thing, nor as something that obscures
• 7:53
  it, although it appears to obscure it initially, but in the realization of the non-dual, within
• 7:54
  the dual, to use that terminology, everything that we experience is not an obscuration to
• 7:55
  the light of beingness, the knowing of that light of beingness that is always here and
• 7:56
  shines through everything. So yes, it's a dream, but it's not a dream that is a, if
• 7:57
  you like, a problem to what is true nature, the true nature of everything. So then the
• 7:58
  true nature of everything as the light of beingness starts to permeate everything. What
• 7:59
  What does that mean on a practical level?
• 8:00
  On a practical lived level?
• 8:01
  It means that things, what things that we feel, things that we sense, things that we perceive,
• 8:02
  things that we experience are less burdensome.
• 8:03
  Even intense or powerful feelings are less burdensome.
• 8:04
  like the light of beings permeates everything. It means we take things more lightly. We are
• 8:05
  not assigning a meaning just because there are things, let's call possessions, objects,
• 8:06
  whatever, the self isn't invested in that.
• 8:07
  If things, experiences, happenings are taking place,
• 8:08
  the self is less victimised by that.
• 8:09
  So there's a whole lightness of being.
• 8:10
  So it's like the non-dual, eternal nature of reality
• 8:11
  informs the experience that we're having as a human being.
• 8:12
  It's like when we're watching a movie in the unconscious state, let's say, the unexamined
• 8:13
  state, the unawake state, we really believe the movie to be real.
• 8:14
  But once we've seen the screen upon which the movie is playing out, the screen that is totally
• 8:15
  obscured by the movie, the events of the movie, the details of the movie.
• 8:16
  But once we've seen the screen, and we could say the screen is the naked canvas or the
• 8:17
  naked, the naked open space within which everything appears.
• 8:18
  We can call that the absolute and the movie is the relative.
• 8:19
  But once we've seen the screen, which is what awakening is, it's not that we see a screen,
• 8:20
  not a thing, is just that we know the infinite nature of openness, we could call it space
• 8:21
  within which everything appears. You can never not see it again. You can never not know it
• 8:22
  again, even though the movie completely covers it up or the painting on the canvas. You can
• 8:23
  never not see the canvas again. It's always here. And that gives a lightness to the movie,
• 8:24
  though we're totally involved in it. We're totally kind of removed from it, we're sensing
• 8:25
  it, we're feeling it, we're experiencing it. But there's something that informs it, that
• 8:26
  gives it a lightness of being. So then our relationship to the movie, the movie of life,
• 8:27
  a light touch and it has a light at touch on us. Sometimes the movie is intense.
• 8:28
  So does life in this recognition of the change of location, if you like, you know, the shift,
• 8:29
  paradigm shift. Does life still touch you? Experienced? Does experience still touch you?
• 8:30
  When you say touch, do you mean bother?
• 8:31
  Not just bother because I, you know, bother is an aspect of the self, really. It suggests
• 8:32
  implicitly in Boulder, that there's someone there to be bothered. But you've recognised that you're
• 8:33
  excuse me, we recognise that there's still a form here moving in the marketplace and life is
• 8:34
  unpredictable in many ways or you know one experience could be pleasant and another experience could be
• 8:35
  you know, difficult. We move in the world. So, does it touch you in that respect?
• 8:36
  I would say yes. Everything is felt. The feeling organism, yeah, and feeling is not an emotion.
• 8:37
  An emotion is a story and a feeling. It's a feeling that's been wrapped up with a story.
• 8:38
  So no, not emotion, but feeling because we are feeling organisms.
• 8:39
  Feeling takes place on a sensory level.
• 8:40
  We feel through skin, through touch.
• 8:41
  We feel through taste.
• 8:42
  We even feel through perception and hearing.
• 8:43
  There's internal feeling as well.
• 8:44
  It's not just on the boundary of the senses.
• 8:45
  The senses are internal.
• 8:46
  So everything is felt.
• 8:47
  I would say we are feeling organisms, not emotional.
• 8:48
  feeling organisms, sensory feeling organisms. That doesn't go away. As long as we're alive,
• 8:49
  as long as I'm alive, as long as there is a body with the senses, the physiological
• 8:50
  intelligence to sense, that's how we navigate life internally with our digestive system,
• 8:51
  our endocrine system and so on. And seemingly externally, that's an intelligence, the intelligence
• 8:52
  of life. That's always here. That doesn't get numbed. That doesn't get detached. It's fully feeling.
• 8:53
  But emotion is not here. Feeling can be intense,
• 8:54
  whether it's the feeling of irritation or the feeling of, I don't know, whatever it might be.
• 8:55
  ecstasy or something like that.
• 8:56
  Whatever it might be, yes.
• 8:57
  But emotion is not here because emotion is a story created by the self.
• 8:58
  Yeah. And there's no self.
• 8:59
  So, yes, life touches. Yes, yes.
• 9:00
  It's not a drama.
• 9:01
  It's not a lie to touch, sorry.
• 9:02
  The self, the self, because the self is all evaporated.
• 9:03
  So, there isn't really a self to wrap it around, wrap itself around any of the feelings that occur.
• 9:04
  But I wanted you to make this point because there can be a tendency to imagine, if you like,
• 9:05
  that this detached quality where life doesn't touch.
• 9:06
  And I would say it's the opposite.
• 9:07
  I would say that the organism becomes more alive.
• 9:08
  It's more alive.
• 9:09
  There's a greater sensitivity, but that sensitivity isn't one of the
• 9:10
  reactive sensitivity.
• 9:11
  "Oh, I'm sensitive. I have to protect myself or it's a trauma or it's a drama."
• 9:12
  Not that kind of sensitivity. It's a naked sensitivity. Yeah, you just feel it.
• 9:13
  But this is important, but it's not snatched, which is why I gave the metaphor of the movie and the
• 9:14
  screen. The movie doesn't detach itself from the screen. It's still completely, seemingly embedded
• 9:15
  on the screen, they're one and the same.
• 9:16
  They're one and the same.
• 9:17
  So nothing is detached, you don't become detached.
• 9:18
  It's just that you, the lightness of the screen,
• 9:19
  you know, the empty naked field sort of filters through.
• 9:20
  Yeah, everything's naked.
• 9:21
  Reality is naked, it's stripped of its overlay of
• 9:22
  what we invest ourselves in, what we project, what we put meaning, yeah?
• 9:23
  You know, it means something about me or it means something about...
• 9:24
  It's all about investment of self.
• 9:25
  Self becomes divested of qualities of self that we've picked up along the way
• 9:26
  through conditioning, learning, belief systems and so on. We become
• 9:27
  divested of the layers of myself and so life becomes divested of qualities,
• 9:28
  concepts, meanings that we beliefs that we've applied to life. How beautiful.
• 9:29
  Yeah, it's a pure experience.
• 9:30
  And very porous as well in the sense that it goes through permeable and it goes through.
• 9:31
  My own experience of whatever this is is that I used, you know, everything used to enter
• 9:32
  me and get stuck somewhere within my energetic, subtle energy body in my mind and emotions.
• 9:33
  I was a walking bag of stuff.
• 9:34
  And now in this way everything flows through.
• 9:35
  If it actually flows through, I process the world and my own experience of the world
• 9:36
  effortlessly now.
• 9:37
  That's exactly it.
• 9:38
  I think we've learned in it.
• 9:39
  It's transparent.
• 9:40
  Everything becomes transparent, which is not the same as detached.
• 9:41
  The transparency of being.
• 9:42
  And then it has a certain luminosity.
• 9:43
  again, we're using words, but they kind of point to something.
• 9:44
  Absolutely beautiful. And I think that points to love. I honestly think that that points to the
• 9:45
  fragrance of love, the depth of love, the naturalness of love, the awakening of love,
• 9:46
  you know, that we're talking about. So love is stripped of all the categorizations of it
• 9:47
  actually becomes a revelation of the natural state. That's why I like these conversations
• 9:48
  because they're not about going somewhere to find awakening. They're only stripping away
• 9:49
  through whatever ways we can to find the love that is there inherently in the whole shabang,
• 9:50
  in the whole experience, isn't it? That's right. So let me just so that I can wind this up for
• 9:51
  people. We've come to the end of the podcast, but I am going to read this phrase out, you know,
• 9:52
  the thing, the piece that the motor wrote, just so it wraps it up.
• 9:53
  When everything falls in you dies, what remains is the truth of
• 9:54
  love, not an ordinary kind of love, or a polite love, but a love
• 9:55
  that is uncompromising in its inclusion of the totality of life.
• 9:56
  This love cannot be packaged. It cannot be bought or sold or
• 9:57
  negotiated with, it is limitless, unconditional, wild and absolutely free. This love is in
• 9:58
  the heart of you, every saint, every sinner, and in every speck of gold dust and piece
• 9:59
  of dirt. When this love is seen as the heart of everything, an inexplicable recognition
• 10:00
  of non-duality within duality arises. This is the ultimate cosmic joke that resounds
• 10:01
  across the universe as the peace that passeth all understanding. When that unconditional
• 10:02
  laugh lands in your belly, the ripples of transformation in your life have truly begun.
• 10:03
  I love your writing.
• 10:04
  Okay, I think, Amoda, we've explored it to a certain extent.
• 10:05
  Obviously, there are always continuous explorations and more questions to be asked, but I think
• 10:06
  we've done our best to get underneath and inside into the verticality of being.
• 10:07
  Is there anything you'd like to say in conclusion to our podcast today?
• 10:08
  No, I think that was enough of a conversation and exploration.
• 10:09
  Thank you for the questions.
• 10:10
  Beautiful.
• 10:11
  Well, thank you for sharing your depth and nuances and your joy with us.
• 10:12
  And thank you very much for listening everybody and watching, of course, this will be out on
• 10:13
  YouTube at some point and we look forward to seeing you again. Please do sign up somewhere
• 10:14
  in some sort of way down below. On the YouTube channel, sign up to our newsletter, sign up to
• 10:15
  join us, come to our in-person events that we're doing where this can be, you know, the very basis
• 10:16
  of our exploration and where the juice really is. Join us online, somehow find us if you move to,
• 10:17
  otherwise we wish you well. Thank you and take care and we will see you again on the
• 10:18
  Emodomar Conversations with Amoda Maa I meant to say. Thank you Amoda, bless you. Bye-bye.
• 10:19
  Namaste.