Latest / Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry / Episode 71: The Quietness of Awakening: Amoda Maa on Suffering, Surrender & Freedom

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Episode 71: The Quietness of Awakening: Amoda Maa on Suffering, Surrender & Freedom · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  Okay, greetings everyone and welcome back to another Conversations with Amoda Maa.
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  We are freshly back from a retreat in Belgium, the first in Europe, actually that we've
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  ever done.
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  And what a joy it was to meet everybody and to be in Europe and now a delight to be back.
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  So here we are again with another Conversations with Amoda Maa
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  today we're going to be exploring something that is tentatively called
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  the Quietness at the Center. It's an article that Amoda wrote for her
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  substack page, substack site, just this Tuesday. So it's fresh from the press and
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  Amoda is going to read the article and then we're going to use that as a
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  springboard to explore and hopefully unpack a little bit more some of the nuances therein.
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  So welcome, Amoda, and over to you in your own sweet time. Okay, thank you.
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  Let's start with a quote from Krishna Murti, "To sit with yourself without resistance,
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  without escape is the beginning of revolution.
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  There is a quietness at the centre of our being that is untouched by the movement of life.
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  It is not separate from life nor is it a place we have to retreat to in order to escape the world.
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  It is the still centre within movement, the silence within sound, and the unmoving presence
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  within all that changes. Most of us live at the surface of experience, caught in the story of my
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  life, in the ceaseless commentary of thought, in the fluctuations of emotion, and in the ways we
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  measure ourselves according to whether we feel loved or unloved, successful or unsuccessful,
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  peaceful or disturbed. This movement is so familiar that we mistake it for who we are.
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  Yet beneath all of it, there is a quiet radiance that has always been here. The cultivation
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  of quietness is one of the most profound journeys into the silence of being. By cultivation
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  I do not mean that quietness is something we manufacture or impose upon ourselves.
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  I do not mean that we must force the mind to stop, suppress our feelings or withdraw from the demands of life.
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  True quietness is not created through control.
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  It reveals itself when our resistance to what is begins to soften.
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  Resistance is subtle. It appears as judgement, rejection, avoidance, complaint and the need
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  for the moment to be different from the way it is. It appears as the attempt to hold on
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  to what feels pleasant and push away what feels painful and as the endless inner movement
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  of trying to secure ourselves against uncertainty.
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  This resistance is one of the primary ways the sense of a separate self is maintained.
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  The self positions itself against life and says, this should not be happening.
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  Or I need something else to happen before I can be at peace.
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  In doing so, it creates an inner division between what is here
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  and what it believes should be here. Quietness begins when this division is no longer fed.
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  As the movement of resistance softens, attention naturally relaxes inwards. We begin to notice
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  the simple presence of the body, the rhythm of the breath, the sounds around us, and the sensations
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  and feelings that arise and pass. There is no need to make anything special happen,
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  because everything is already appearing effortlessly within awareness, and awareness itself is simply here.
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  At first, this quietness may seem like an absence. It may feel like a pause in the usual noise of thought,
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  or a temporary relief from emotional turbulence. But when we rest more deeply,
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  we begin to discover that quietness is not empty, dull or lifeless. It is gently alive.
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  There is a subtle warmth within it, a quiet fullness, an inner radiance that cannot be located in any
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  particular place. It is not a light that shines visibly, nor is it a dramatic spiritual experience.
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  It is the gentle luminosity of presence itself.
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  This is why the distinction between awareness, presence and love begins to dissolve as we
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  deepen into the silence of being. Awareness is not cold observation and presence is not detached,
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  neutrality. The stillness at the centre of experience is quietly vibrant and its very
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  nature is intimacy. It receives everything without judgement and without rejection.
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  Joy and sorrow, silence and noise, peace and turbulence all arise within the same field of
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  awareness. Nothing is outside the light of being and nothing needs to be excluded from the sacred.
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  We often imagine that the light is found only in rare moments of stillness, beauty or transcendence.
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  We believe we are closest to truth when the mind is silent, the heart is peaceful,
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  and life is moving according to our wishes. But the deeper invitation,
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  rather the deeper realization, is that the same presence is here in the ordinary,
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  the uncomfortable and the unresolved. Every experience can become a doorway to the light
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  when it is met without resistance.
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  This does not mean passivity, it does not mean tolerating harm, abandoning discernment,
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  or refusing to act when action is needed. It means that our response no longer has to arise
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  from the contracted centre of fear, defence and opposition. Actions can arise from a deeper ground,
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  from the quietness that sees clearly without being consumed by reaction.
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  The quietness at the centre becomes an inner sanctuary, but it is not a hiding place. It is not
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  somewhere we go to to avoid the world or protect ourselves from the minds of others. It is a place
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  of refuge in the deeper sense, a place where we remember what is true before thought names,
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  judges and divides. Over time, the sanctuary becomes the ground we live from.
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  We carry its stillness into conversation, relationship, work, uncertainty and the turbulence of the world.
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  The noise may continue, thought may continue, emotion may continue and life may move in waves,
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  in ways we cannot control. Yet something within us no longer moves away. We begin to discover the
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  centreless centre which has no fixed location and does not belong to the personal self.
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  It is the field of being itself within which the person, the body and the whole world appear.
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  Out of quietness comes relaxation, and out of relaxation comes quietness. In this mutual
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  softening, healing takes place. It may not be the healing that restores life to our preferred image,
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  but a deeper healing in which the fundamental conflict with life begins to end. Life is no longer
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  experienced as something outside of us that must be resisted, managed, or overcome. It is
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  recognised as the unfolding expression of the same living presence that we are.
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  The undercurrent of goodness or godness is already here. It is not dependent on circumstance,
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  thought or feeling, and it does not come and go with the changing tides of experience.
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  It is the quiet aliveness at the heart of everything, and in recognising this, we discover the source
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  of true peace.
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  Beautiful.
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  We could end there really, couldn't we?
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  Yeah, we could.
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  Let me... Well, we can explore it a little bit with maybe some of its nuances.
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  So you say this quietness is untouched by the movement of life. How can it be untouched
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  and yet not separate from life.
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  It's untouched in the sense of
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  it is not its quality, its essential nature
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  is not altered by the movement of life.
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  It's as if the movement of life takes place within the same field. There's only one field,
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  we can call it quietness, we can call it beingness. The movement takes place within that field,
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  within that space. But does not leave a trace. In other words, the field itself
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  is not changed by anything that moves through it.
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  It's not separate from the movement of life.
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  It's not separate from the movement of life in the sense that it's not standing apart from it.
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  It's the movement of life takes place and arises within it.
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  The source of the movement of life is it.
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  It is not the right word to use because it implies that it's a thing, an object,
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  it's got a shape and a boundary.
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  So we're using these words as a concession to language and expression to point to something.
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  But there cannot be anything outside of this,
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  everything that appears, everything that is known,
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  everything that is experienced,
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  what we call life, my life,
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  is not independent of the consciousness that perceives it,
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  or within which it takes place.
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  It cannot be outside of it.
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  There isn't consciousness or beingness or awareness.
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  and then life and so on over there.
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  So it's taking place within it.
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  It is the source of all things.
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  The formless, the formless space,
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  the undefined, the unbounded
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  is the source of all appearances.
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  Just as the river is the source of all ripples
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  and patterns that take place
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  that we call the flow of the river, that's life, the flow of life, the movement of life.
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  But the river isn't separate from that.
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  And yet the essential nature of river is not altered by the ever-changing ripples and patterns
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  that emerge within that river.
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  I think because the mind is so habituated to separating everything up, I just got a flash
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  of what it's like to try and understand what you're saying from a mental point of view
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  in a way.
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  And it sort of goes, it kind of goes, I don't can't understand that, it's almost like you
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  has to be accepting that. It can't be understood by the mind. We can refer to it in a sort of logical
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  way by using the metaphor of the river and there it becomes a little more understandable,
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  but it can only be known deep in through direct experience.
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  That's what becomes known in when the self, the separate self, falls away or comes undone.
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  What we call awakening or freedom or enlightenment. And then these truths, if you like, or these,
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  Yeah, eternal truths, universal truths are known. It has nothing to do with the mind.
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  Yeah, that's right. So because we talk, I know you talk about the limitations and the
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  concession of language is slightly off the point, but the knowing that we're talking about,
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  which is not a mental knowing, is that's, you know, you talked about sort of within oneself or
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  something. Isn't that like a wordless, wordless, descriptive,
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  less, knowing deep within one's being that when it comes to
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  the describing, it's already, it's already lost in many ways,
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  which is why you use metaphor.
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  Yes, that's right. Absolutely. Which is why just to bring a
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  personal aspect of it. After awakening, I couldn't speak of it. And yet much was known on that level.
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  And there was nothing that could describe it. And yet it was lived. It was the truth of it was
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  lived, the seeing of it, the lens, which there was no more lens to see through. But the
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  the expression of it and the
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  languaging of it, which has formed itself over years,
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  did take years to form.
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  I think that, you know, for some people,
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  I mean, we are slightly off the point, but that's okay.
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  We're going down a little trajectory.
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  You know, for some people who have very much a spiritual background,
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  whether it's non-duality or some other, you know, maybe Buddhism or something,
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  they will have a lot of language that can be easily used to describe what is known through direct
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  experience. In my case, I didn't have that language. I'd kind of had some but I kind of threw it all
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  away into not knowing. And so it took a very long time to be able to speak to it either through
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  metaphors or through the concession of language or the attempt to describe something that is
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  actually worthless. I like that. I like that. I like that. Okay, that's beautiful. Thank you.
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  And so let's kind of go back a little bit to the movement of life and the quietness and stillness
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  of quietness within. So can there still be this genuine quietness while, for instance,
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  I don't know, sorrow or agitation or fear, the more dense human emotions or feelings?
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  Let's just talk about feelings, never mind emotions, because the waves, the river keeps going.
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  and the river keeps going presumably even after awakening the river still keeps going.
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  So that's a question because I know that's a question that people have that arises for
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  them is, you know, what happens when the dense feelings come up?
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  Is there a still a quietness or?
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  Again, this can only be known once one has truly realized the quietness of being, or the
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  essential nature of that within which all movement and experience takes place, then the
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  question won't arise anymore.
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  and it'd be a genuine quiet as of being even amidst turbulence
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  from that position or perspective or realization.
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  Yes, of course, that's all there is.
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  That's all there is.
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  A quietness of being simply, not simply, but
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  trying to make it simple
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  is where there is no narrative running, wrapping itself
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  around the turbulence, around the agitation,
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  saying this shouldn't be happening.
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  There's no argument.
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  So agitation can happen, and turbulence can happen.
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  What is that?
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  What is agitation or turbulence?
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  Most people will somehow confuse it
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  or entangle it with mental agitation,
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  where that's the narrative, that's the argument,
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  that's the resistance to what is, that shouldn't be happening,
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  it shouldn't be happening to me,
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  it's a constant self-referencing,
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  yes, that is a certain level of agitation for sure,
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  and turbulence, but there's an energetic turbulence
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  that can take place when we come across a very sudden
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  circumstance in our lives, a shock, a loss, a tragedy,
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  an accident, I don't know, whatever, minor or major,
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  And then there can be agitation or turbulence in the field,
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  in the movement of life, which is simply energy that's moving,
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  whether it's moving on the level of the sensation in the body,
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  on the level of the nervous system and its reactivity or response,
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  or heightened alertness.
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  But there isn't the overlay of the narrative,
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  the self-referencing that this shouldn't be happening to me or this shouldn't be happening
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  or whatever other narrative tends to wrap itself around the energetic experience. So
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  energy is simply matters energy. That is the paradox, the seeming paradox of where
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  the stillness, the silence of being, the quietness of being, are undisturbed by disturbance.
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  So you've answered the question for. Oh, have I? It's true peace, the end of disturbance
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  or the discovery of that which disturbance never touches. Well, let's just open that
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  up then. True peace does not mean that nothing's happening. You know, that there isn't any
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  movement that there isn't any, you know, the river isn't flowing anymore. True peace isn't
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  a static state. Again, on the journey to awakening, let's say there is still this idea
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  that true peace will be found, will be known, will be discovered. When there is
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  nothing when there's a vacancy, when there's an absolute emptiness, when there's no thought,
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  when there's no feeling, when there's no emotion, when there's no sensation. This is
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  sort of an unexamined belief because that's impossible. It's impossible. It's not a vacuous
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  state, it's not a, it's the realization of the sky that's always here, even though the
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  weather continues, you can't stop the weather. But the sun is always here, the sun is never,
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  it never disappears, it's only obscured by the weather system. So, and even then, you
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  know, the weather system is known because the sun illuminates it, that's why it's known.
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  So it's a much deeper realisation than any image of peace that is desired.
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  It's impossible that there is no such thing as an absolute vacancy.
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  You have managed to answer questions on the free.
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  You describe stillness, which is the same as what you're describing, as gently alive
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  rather than empty or inert. May I ask you a question? You can ask many questions. I do.
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  When you're speaking of these, the radiance, let's call this the radiance. As you are speaking,
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  I've got a million ways of describing the same thing, a million words describing the same thing
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  that we could call quietness. But quietness is not entirely accurate when the mind really
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  grabs a hold of it because you talk about peace and you do talk about the radiance
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  at the centre, the radiance of being. And as you're speaking in such an eloquent way,
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  it strikes me that I don't wish to go to speak of your name really, but there is something
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  that you bring to the conversation, not just this conversation, but I think the spiritual conversation,
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  which does speak of the quiet radiance of joy.
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  And I'm curious about that. And I think other people are quite curious about that in a way because
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  and I know we're sort of veering and we're not really veering off of of subjects, but this is
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  This is a thing that you have that is your thing and I wonder that hasn't ever really
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  been cultivated.
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  It's something probably I would imagine because there's nothing false about it.
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  You haven't created yourself as a person of radiant joy.
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  It's absurd.
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  by over the course of a troubled and difficult life, that which must have been there all during
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  that difficult, well, the difficult and troubled life was the jewel, the jewel of this radiant
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  quietness of joy, kind of waiting and not waiting to shine. And so then there's an experience that
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  changed everything for you many, many years ago. And since then there's been this capacity
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  or, you know, giving voice to that, which seems to be in everybody. I'm not just talking
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  about awareness as a, that's why you're speaking of it, awareness just as a cold, inert, detached
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  thing, but actually a some awareness that all of us that makes it through the human experience
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  and is perceived in a way which is quite unusual as the quiet radiance of joy, which in our
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  crazy cynical world, which probably the world has always been, is a rather unusual quality.
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  Can you speak to that?
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  I'm not just flattering you because of, because I'm married to you. I'm actually really curious
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  because it does, you know, I'm seeing it from another person's experience, not my experience of you.
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  The quiet radiance of joy is not personal.
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  It's the very nature, the very essence, the very fragrance of the realization of the quietness of being.
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  Why does Buddha smile? Why does Buddha smile? Why do we say enlightenment?
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  It's not because the light bulbs gone on. Aha! I got it. It's not.
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  I'm just going to wrap down.
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  I've got a comic book version.
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  You've just reminded me that I spent really quite a few years with that famous picture of
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  of Ramana sitting on my desk, the picture of his face,
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  and all I ever saw was the quiet radiance of joy
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  without cause emanating from these vast eyes.
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  - That's right.
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  It's really the fragrance of love.
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  And so it's not personal.
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  It's the universal essence of being.
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  and the realization of that, the realization of our Buddha nature, of our being nature.
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  So it's not cultivated, I'm not quite sure what the question was you asked me to speak to it, but
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  it's not, it can't be cultivated because it's not of the personality, it comes through the personality.
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  So troubled or untroubled, a difficult past, a challenging past, a painful past or not,
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  it shines through
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  unbidden, uncultivated, uncontrolled, when we are free or empty, and to use that word, of
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  the self that is at the centre of who we think we are, the me identity. When that comes undone,
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  then that innate essence of being, like the essence of water,
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  is free if you're like to shine through. We use these words like shine or radiance or light
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  because it is, it's picked up as a fragrance by the environment, by others, by those that seal.
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  Yeah, as a light, it's not a great big light bulb or a halo, but it is a lightness of being
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  that does come through. So, and it's causeless, it arises from that essential nature, but it's
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  It's causeless in the sense that it's not dependent on any circumstance and it's not
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  dependent on any personality quality.
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  If you don't mind, I'll ask one more question before I try and get back to something of
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  what we were speaking of, which is all this anyway.
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  know, which is that do you think that any of the depth or the fragrance that comes through
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  you or the real life, not the realization, but the way you express it, or something about
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  it has anything to do with the suffering that you experienced in your life beforehand?
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  You remind me of one of the Christian mystics, strangely, but the Christian mystics largely
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  and their deepest realizations were born of certain suffering, maybe because of the times
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  or the persecution or the trouble, but there's always trouble.
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  Life is trouble.
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  Does that resonate with you?
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  Yes, I would say that not for everyone.
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  It's not a formula or an equation, but for many, perhaps because of the times we live
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  in the karmic cycles that we are in, yeah.
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  Suffering of some kind must or often does not must, but often does come to a crescendo,
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  a peak in order for something to almost shift its allegiance to either question the nature
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  of suffering, not from a personal point of view, what was wrong with me, what was wrong
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  with my life, not from the victim identity or the me identity, but more from what is the nature of
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  suffering? What is the cause of suffering? Which is always the same mechanism irrespective of what
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  the seeming circumstance of suffering is. When we can really ask that question, that's one way in,
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  which is deep inquiry, a deep looking within those internal activities that create suffering.
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  That's a shift in allegiance because we're asking a different question to,
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  oh what's wrong with me and my life and why do I suffer, why do bad things happen to me or
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  bad things happen in the world and what can I do about it? That's a different kind of question.
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  So we're looking not to the periphery or the actual conditions but to the actual activity within
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  that actually creates a sense of suffering.
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  So that's one way in.
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  Another way in, and usually they go together,
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  is that at the peak of suffering,
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  whether it's the Christian mistakes
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  or myself or somebody else,
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  we have in some ways, a bifurcation point
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  where we have a seeming choice,
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  one is to become diminished
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  or very contracted within that suffering
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  and the other one is to simply surrender.
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  Which means the same thing as the question that was asked,
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  what is the nature of suffering, what is the activity?
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  It's where the activity that perpetuates
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  the victim identity
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  and the contract itself comes to an end.
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  So both of those sort of come together.
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  One is actually an inquiry,
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  the other one is an energetic shift.
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  So for many, it needs to come to that point
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  in order for something to shift,
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  in order for the matrix of knee self
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  to begin to crack open or loosen or fall open.
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  up until that point, we as human beings tend to just go along in our default unconscious
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  position paradigm of this shouldn't be happening. I don't want this to happen or I like this
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  or I don't like that or I want this or I don't want that and this constant craving and aversion
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  and it's not examined. At some point something has to be examined, not intellectually, but
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  by really looking within and sensing within.
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  And so it's when that comes to a peak,
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  then we have that possibility, it's the catalyst.
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  So yes, I would say that was the case.
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  Otherwise we just go along with life,
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  trying to accumulate.
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  - Yeah, I suppose you would.
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  - Yeah, I suppose.
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  - Relationships and love, and if we're okay with that,
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  that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that.
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  But at some point, it's not the whole picture.
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  I think this is the... I think this is the...
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  I can't totally reach that.
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  He reached that within his own experience.
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  It's that, you know, something intolerable.
• 5:37
  Something was at Crescendo Point.
• 5:38
  Something was...
• 5:39
  You know, the build up in a way to a certain necessity.
• 5:40
  Necessity, it was of necessity to him.
• 5:41
  And I think it was of necessity to you,
• 5:42
  maybe with a different language,
• 5:43
  different set of circumstances
• 5:44
  that they brought that on.
• 5:45
  Well, yes, absolutely, because it, you know, there were many conditions in my life and
• 5:46
  circumstances that you would say were traumatic or difficult or dark or whatever.
• 5:47
  But then the suffering continued after that.
• 5:48
  That was the, that was the crescendo.
• 5:49
  It was like, well, nothing bad's happening actually.
• 5:50
  It's quite good on some level.
• 5:51
  I was pretty peaceful and happy and you know, it was, you know,
• 5:52
  and I'd surrendered to what is and it was all flowing in some ways.
• 5:53
  And I wasn't looking for anything or striving for anything.
• 5:54
  It was quite a peaceful flow of my life.
• 5:55
  And suffering was still there.
• 5:56
  So that was the, you know, it's sort of the suffering detached itself,
• 5:57
  if you like unhooked itself from circumstance.
• 5:58
  And that allowed me to see or question.
• 5:59
  - I see, right.
• 6:00
  - What is suffering?
• 6:01
  Why is there still psychological suffering
• 6:02
  when it's unhooked itself?
• 6:03
  It's not actually arising from a circumstance that's happened.
• 6:04
  - So does that mean,
• 6:05
  I've got to pursue this a little bit, ladies and gentlemen.
• 6:06
  So that means it unhooked from the story of your life,
• 6:07
  from being associated with experience.
• 6:08
  So that was the first unhooking.
• 6:09
  And that first unhooking allowed you then
• 6:10
  through grace or whatever,
• 6:11
  to ask a deeper, different question,
• 6:12
  which is what is the nature of suffering itself?
• 6:13
  Not just what is the nature of my suffering
• 6:14
  with the history, et cetera, et cetera,
• 6:15
  but to ask without it being an intellectual question,
• 6:16
  but it being a visceral soul-searching,
• 6:17
  deep dive question at the very core of existence itself.
• 6:18
  What is the nature of suffering?
• 6:19
  - That's right.
• 6:20
  And not relying on any theory, on any model,
• 6:21
  or any spiritual teaching of which I had many
• 6:22
  else, psychologists as well.
• 6:23
  So it had hundreds of books on everything.
• 6:24
  Nothing esoteric, nothing metaphysical.
• 6:25
  It was like without knowledge,
• 6:26
  without any prop, without anything to take me
• 6:27
  to the other shore, nothing without knowing on that level.
• 6:28
  Asking the question, it was a deep inquiry
• 6:29
  and really just being totally open
• 6:30
  to either not knowing or something to be known,
• 6:31
  but not grasping for anything.
• 6:32
  I could have stayed in that question forever
• 6:33
  if you like that, the willingness.
• 6:34
  - Yeah, yeah, no, I get that.
• 6:35
  But with all your knowledge,
• 6:36
  this is micro kind of looking at what was happening for you.
• 6:37
  At that time when that question,
• 6:38
  what is the nature of suffering,
• 6:39
  you had enough experience, you're a smart person,
• 6:40
  you know, with a lot of history of reading books,
• 6:41
  you could have gone to mind.
• 6:42
  You could have gone to knowledge
• 6:43
  because there are a thousand books
• 6:44
  that might give you an insight into that,
• 6:45
  but you didn't.
• 6:46
  Why not?
• 6:47
  for something else was calling you. You didn't. You didn't go to mind.
• 6:48
  Truth was calling truth in the sense of discovering what is true without
• 6:49
  knowledge, true direct experience. That's one way of saying it. Another
• 6:50
  thing was that I wasn't experienced meditator, not in any particular
• 6:51
  technique. I wasn't following then or this or that or the other. I was simply sitting. I mean,
• 6:52
  I had done a million and one different meditation techniques, but those I'd also kind of let go of
• 6:53
  as such. But I could sit in silence for a long time, and I did in various ways. And so I think
• 6:54
  that that allowed a clearer seeing of the internal movement of mind that actually creates suffering.
• 6:55
  And I do remember a very, very specific time where
• 6:56
  after the meditation there was this very subtle and very familiar
• 6:57
  sense of lightness and yeah, lightness and then that wouldn't last and then there'd be this slight
• 6:58
  so slight slight movement towards a little bit of melancholy is the only way I could describe it
• 6:59
  and it was so subtle, imperceptible, but I'd become very sensitive and because I was living alone and
• 7:00
  actually didn't have any external distractions, I was in solitude pretty much other than living
• 7:01
  in a city and doing what one has to do to live in a city, but I wasn't, you know, working or social
• 7:02
  So I had a lot of solitary time.
• 7:03
  So I was very sensitive to these internal movements and whether it was the years of meditation practice or energy work that I experienced expansion or whatever I became very sensitive to that.
• 7:04
  And I think that allowed me together with the question.
• 7:05
  They weren't simultaneous, but around the same sort of time period, allowed me to see
• 7:06
  the nature of suffering, the movement away from and towards a particular internal state
• 7:07
  and how that created a victim identity, a victim identity in the sense that I was a victim
• 7:08
  of my internal state. Not a victim of life or somebody abusing me and that, yeah, a very
• 7:09
  subtle victim that I would say is universal with victims of the thought and feeling state
• 7:10
  because we identify with thought and feeling and states experiences. And I just saw that
• 7:11
  so clearly. And allow. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, in the seeing of that, which you've described, so,
• 7:12
  so eloquently, in the seeing of that, you, you, you,
• 7:13
  kind of somehow not decided is not the right word to not move.
• 7:14
  Well, it wasn't immediate. It wasn't immediate. So I mean, it didn't happen just from that
• 7:15
  seeing. I saw that and that perhaps allowed a certain cause or stillness to take place,
• 7:16
  a certain stop within the self that was craving an aversion or moving.
• 7:17
  So that facilitated it, but it's only when, I don't really want to describe it again here,
• 7:18
  but it's only when at some point later, I don't know, a few weeks later, a few days later,
• 7:19
  a few months later, I don't remember, it all happened within a period of several months, I think.
• 7:20
  It's only when a very particular state visited me, again, not dependent on anything
• 7:21
  happened, I was just sitting there, but a particular state of inner desolation, oh yeah,
• 7:22
  yeah, appeared, but those two things came together. What is the nature of suffering?
• 7:23
  And being the victim of a state, and that allowed an absolute stop.
• 7:24
  and in that absolute stop, the self died into no thing and re-emerged as everything.
• 7:25
  That was the actual fundamental shift.
• 7:26
  Okay, that was a very beautiful diversion into, and it's not separate from, but was very much the
• 7:27
  the ground, really the groundless ground of why we are talking about quietness, about
• 7:28
  this depth within, about this radiance within, because even though it was latent, as we say,
• 7:29
  this is latent in a human being, right? It's not special to you in that sense, or any of
• 7:30
  these awakened masters or anything, it's there within everyone.
• 7:31
  But there's something about that movement for you,
• 7:32
  that experience for you that allowed this to then be known really.
• 7:33
  Yes, I think it can't really be known until there is some kind of stop within.
• 7:34
  Yes, yes, I agree with that.
• 7:35
  shape or form it takes place. That's why we can speak to it or I can speak to it or write
• 7:36
  about it or write to it or from it rather. So it's not something that can be taught or
• 7:37
  can be, again, it's not a formula, it's not a method as such. But in speaking from it,
• 7:38
  can speak to that which is true in others, to that which is latent in others, to the light that is
• 7:39
  already awake in others but not realized. So in that sense it has value and there can also be
• 7:40
  glimpses or support on the way if you if we want to say that because we can turn attention
• 7:41
  towards this realization or to the willingness to come home to this realization by speaking from it,
• 7:42
  by by being inspired and it's not really being inspired but by remembering something.
• 7:43
  That's why people go to satsang or follow teachers, spiritual teachers or listen to awakened ones because it does speak to something that's already awake,
• 7:44
  but hasn't really been realized. So it's like creating a bridge.
• 7:45
  Yeah, sure. What I like about the way you speak about it is that it does come back to what we're talking about.
• 7:46
  there is a quietness that you bring to the conversation. I've seen comments on YouTube and people who
• 7:47
  are drawn to this quietness, a kind of softness that has no weakness to it. You're far from weak,
• 7:48
  it's not a weakness actually, there's a kind of clarity to you, a sort of truth to you,
• 7:49
  But all the time there's this kind of quietness that I think is very refreshing.
• 7:50
  Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's not flag waving. It's not saying, "Oh, here, look,
• 7:51
  I got it. You can do it too. Here's three steps to awakening." There's a lot of that around, right?
• 7:52
  You know, or this is what awakening is and this is what it's not. And, you know, all of this stuff,
• 7:53
  It's not like that and it's not a fireworks experience.
• 7:54
  I mean, awakening comes in many different ways.
• 7:55
  It's always the same awakening,
• 7:56
  but the way it sort of reveals itself
• 7:57
  comes through the individual,
• 7:58
  but it's not fireworks.
• 7:59
  It is awakening in itself,
• 8:00
  and I know many people may argue with this
• 8:01
  or oppose this view,
• 8:02
  but it's not. The fireworks comes only because the self is creating the fireworks by saying,
• 8:03
  "Oh, look, I got it!" or it's an amazing experience or, I don't know, whatever, or there's some
• 8:04
  deeply held contraction that sort of opens up very suddenly and then it feels like fireworks.
• 8:05
  But the nature of awakening itself beyond the fireworks is quiet. It doesn't shout about
• 8:06
  itself. It doesn't have, it's not embellished by anything. So I think that comes through and
• 8:07
  I think, you know, those that are drawn to it will be drawn to it in that way because that's the
• 8:08
  truth of it. I know that I don't wish to drop other people's names but I know that Adjut Shanti
• 8:09
  has also talked about quietness. And he has. I saw something with him kind of pointing to a
• 8:10
  softening, you know, kind of much more kind of gentle. In all of these words,
• 8:11
  very beautiful words when we embrace them and when they're coming from the deepest,
• 8:12
  they do have a certain fragrance. And you've taught me everything in many ways that I've
• 8:13
  experienced about a quietness within, and it's taken me really quite a long time to not
• 8:14
  feed the desire and aversion and to actually be okay and to be quiet within. And I don't
• 8:15
  think there's any cultivation of it that I do, but there is a conscious return to it
• 8:16
  for me. You know that still that's a great place of refuge is the quietness. So I think we might
• 8:17
  be leaving it there at this point. I think that's a beautiful conversation. I don't think it needs
• 8:18
  to be embellished anymore. I'm not one for embellishment. No, you're not one for embellishment.
• 8:19
  So, okay, well, this is beautiful, Amoda. Thank you so much. It's good to actually use that as a
• 8:20
  way of exploring some of the nuances, you know, very delicate way, I feel, you know, not with a
• 8:21
  sledgehammer, but actually to open up a little bit of what happened for you, what were the
• 8:22
  contributors factors is not the right, you know, but that again, that's a bit gross.
• 8:23
  But some of the inside things, because this experience and this that you bring is very beautiful.
• 8:24
  So I thank you and I hope it touched people and that's it. So let's leave it there. Thank you so
• 8:25
  much for everybody for listening and watching and do like, share and subscribe or something.
• 8:26
  If you're moved and we look forward to seeing you again. Thank you so much, Amoda. Namaste
• 8:27
  to you and we'll see you again on the conversations with a Amoda Maa. Namaste.
• 8:28
  Thank you. Namaste.
• 8:29
  Thank you.