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The Quiet Revelation of True Nature · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  [Music]
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  You are listening to the Amoda Maa podcast.
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  In this series, Amoa explores her essential teaching through conversation and excerpts
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  from interviews and events.
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  Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
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  - So often we believe that awakening
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  out of the dream state of the separate self
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  comes with some dramatic explosion of energy.
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  explosion of energy.
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  Some super refined state of consciousness.
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  Something spectacular.
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  This causes us to reach towards that state, which is really in our imagination.
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  It's how we imagine it to be.
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  And by the revelation of true self, true nature, the liberation that we seek is so often
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  and something much quieter than that.
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  It doesn't come through effort or discipline.
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  It comes through a quiet willingness to meet what is here without resistance.
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  And somehow that's too simple for the spiritual seeker that is
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  in some way identified with
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  the complexities or the discipline of practice, whether it be meditation practice or any other
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  spiritual practice or attached to understanding through the mind, spiritual ideology, philosophy,
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  concepts. This is too simple. But in its simplicity and directness, it's often out of
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  reach for many spiritual seekers until something quietly falls away, until there's a willingness
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  to meet what is here with our resistance.
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  This falling away, it's not something that we have to do.
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  This is so counter-intuitive to the self that is seeking something.
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  It's what happens when the effort to hold ourselves together begins to relax.
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  This goes right to the core of the self-structure, the separate self-structure,
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  which is really a psychological or conceptual structure.
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  over time, over the human life as we grow up as we become adult human beings. We develop
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  a sense of ourselves as something solid or something continuous, a me self, a me identity
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  that needs to be maintained and protected and often improved. This is natural. The sense
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  of self is a natural formation within the human experience. And a necessary one in being
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  able to function as a human being. But essentially it's built of tension, it's sustained by
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  a subtle contraction, a holding in the body and in the mind that keeps experience organised
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  around the centre. So we believe that this is who we are. This core contraction is mostly
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  questions not examined because on one level it's natural. However, if we look more closely,
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  this me, this centre that we believe ourselves to be is not actually solid or stable,
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  It's not continuous. It's made up of a conglomeration, a cluster of thoughts and sensations and emotions and reactions and patterns, which are constantly shifting.
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  It's not that those patterns should be erased so that there's nothing here.
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  It's simply the reinforcements that we give to these patterns, to these movements
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  that is being invited to fall away, because it's that reinforcement that gives us a sense of being
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  trapped, imprisoned at some point. We get that sense, usually on the spiritual journey,
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  and we want to break free. And so it's not about getting rid of the self, fixing the
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  self, dismantling the self, destroying the self, simply about the willingness to stop
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  reinforcing it. And that doesn't happen through complex practice. It happens by
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  allowing what is here exactly as it is. Very often if a contraction arises in the
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  mind or the body or the emotions. We want to move away from it. We want to change it
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  because it's uncomfortable. But what if we could meet it with openness, without interference?
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  this essentially is the soft stop.
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  It's this soft stop that reveals a contraction to not be solid.
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  It's not a thing that's stuck in your body.
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  It's not a thing that's stuck in your emotions or your mind.
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  It's actually a movement in the soft stop, that which appears to be so solid reveals itself
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  as more fluid.
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  And in that fluidity, it's contained, if you like, in a much bigger field.
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  soft stop allows you to notice the field itself. The space of the awareness in which
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  the contraction appears and to notice that this space, this awareness is not
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  contracted. Open, whatever appears in it, within it, is open, it's undisturbed, it's
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  unaffected by anything that arises within it. And this is the profound shift, often a quiet shift,
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  because it starts to loosen the identification with the contraction, it starts to loosen
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  the identification with all appearances.
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  And when all appearances and all contractions are no longer reinforced by resistance,
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  something begins to suffer.
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  very often this is gradual. This is quiet, it's not dramatic necessarily.
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  The tendency, the allure of looking for a dramatic experience so that you can
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  finally say, well, this is it, I've arrived, I've awakened, I'm free. Such a misdirection,
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  misunderstanding.
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  It's made very much like the gradual erosion of a mountain.
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  It may be for some people that that erosion takes place like an avalanche
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  but don't look for that. It may or may not and it doesn't matter either way. What matters is the
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  falling away. What matters is the relaxation of the holding pattern.
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  And so that that which has always been here, openness, presence, being, starts to reveal itself.
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  It's lost an achievement. It's not a state that you've arrived at, but simply the recognition
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  of what's always been here, present, beneath the effort to maintain the illusory solidity
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  of the 'me' identity.
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  So perhaps right here, right now,
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  look within for a few moments.
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  And see, notice is there anything in your experience that you're subtly resisting?
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  It could be something physical, experienced in the body.
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  It could be emotional.
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  It could be something in the mind, thoughts.
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  And if there's nothing much here now in this moment, perhaps there's a memory of something,
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  perhaps something that you've dreamt in the overnight whilst you were asleep, a memory,
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  a dream or a memory from yesterday or at any point it doesn't matter it's here now.
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  And see if there's a resistance, however subtle to whatever is appearing in the field right
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  now, whether it's past or future or present it's all appearing now.
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  So it's all presence.
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  And whatever it is, whether it's a thought or feeling about the past, a thought or feeling
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  about the future, or a sensation.
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  here right now? Can it be allowed to be here? Just as it is.
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