Online Weekend Retreat
Online Weekend Retreat with Mooji 17 - 19 March 2023
Observe with Detachment and Discover Your Natural State of Being
18 March 2023 (with subtitles)
[Q: Brandon] Hey, Mooji. How're you doing?
[Mooji] I'm doing just fine, sir. How are you?
[Q.] Good, good. [Mooji] Very good.
[Q.] So I've been following you since 2020.
I came upon a video of you on YouTube.
And 2020 was a year for me, where,
I guess, I had a conceptual awakening at that moment,
as I was reading Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now'.
And then, once I started to read, I started to become more curious,
and nothing else fulfilled me,
nothing could like ... it could give me nothing.
So I was always just reading, reading, reading,
and I just couldn't find anything until I found you.
So, I guess that whole time, I was just looking for the truth,
I was searching for the truth.
And that truth that you relayed to me through your words,
it touched my heart.
And I am forever grateful for my inner Guru
to introduce me to my earthly Guru.
So, I appreciate you, and I love you,
and I just thank you for your continuous guidance
as I continue to go through my journey,
because I am still in the process of integrating the presence
[Q.] through my daily life. [Mooji] Ahh.
[Q.] Because once I had that initial insight through meditation,
I thought it was over, I thought it was done.
But then, go back into the real world and the mind comes back,
and hence the mind attacks.
And so, now, the integration process is my meditation,
[Q.] like just going through daily life. [Mooji] Let's take it from there, sir.
Returning to the real, or the unreal world,
whichever way you want to say it,
I'd prefer to say a bit unreal, I say unreal because
it is a highly subjective experiencing.
[Mooji] So much so that whatever you may perceive
of the phenomenal world,
the mind takes it to be a kind of foundation that is solid.
But you see that as you change, your world changes.
As you experience deeper states of consciousness,
the world that you perceive is transformed by your inner transformation.
So I am aroused a little bit when you say,
'I must try now to integrate these two'.
And I want to look at that,
to find what you mean by integrating the two.
[Q.] Integrating means to continue to not identify
[Q.] with things that are coming up. [Mooji] That's good. That's better.
If you don't identify emotionally or deeply with whatever is arising,
then there is nothing to actually physically participate in integrating.
It becomes integral.
You see, this is why I wanted to go in there a little bit with you,
to find out what you mean by integrating with the unreal world.
Because you don't need to integrate with any unreal world.
If you are real, then your worldview, everything,
somehow it will prostrate to the real.
But as long as we have a conception of ourself
as this ever-changeful being trying to get somewhere,
we are a victim to these seeming causes and effects,
patterns of the manifest world. Because we will include ourself
as part of the dynamic world that is ever-changing and so on.
Now, an aspect of ourself is manifesting
as a person navigating through life,
and that person is growing from its experience,
becoming more and more refined.
But if that personal sense is traveling in a journey
that went on for years and years and refining its understanding,
but ultimately it just becomes a refined person
if it holds on to the notion of itself as a person.
So therefore when I say, Observe, include the sense of one's person,
which is also supported by our imagination and desire and identity,
include all of that as one sphere or plane of manifest phenomenon
watched from a place that cannot be identified phenomenally,
but you intuitively know the sense of being.
I may call it a sense of presence.
I may say it's the place where impersonal witnessing is functioning.
I may call it the 'I am'-ness.
I may call it the sense of being or consciousness, but impersonal.
The person becomes, somehow, a victim of its own projections.
The Self is not projecting.
It is simply on everything, it's reflecting to itself its own stillness.
And I want to clarify it because
once we are imbued strongly with the identity of the person,
the person is a restless state searching for rest
in fulfilling its projections, which never happens.
[Mooji] It just moves from one state to another state to another state.
[Mooji] It's like having an idea
that the ocean is only purely ocean when it's calm.
So when the wind blows and the water is shaking,
we say, 'Oh no, it is not quite the ocean'.
The Self is not like that, the true Self, which you are.
And so I'm only calling to be here, in that unchanging place.
If we have a strong conviction in personhood,
then the attraction to come into the unchanging being is not so easy.
This is why sometimes suffering and pain
exhilarate your receding back into the place of stillness.
[Mooji] Once we have the power and the strength and the desire,
it is always going out.
Through the senses and the mind, the creative mind,
our energies are going out, to do something, to capture something,
to control something, to balance something.
But from the place of being, you watch.
The beingness is not observing the world like an interesting movie.
The world becomes like a mirror
that's constantly reflecting the stillness.
So even in the midst of activity,
it's like you are the stillness in the heart of activity.
Have you come to this recognition?
Because I believe you have. I just want to check in with you.
[Q.] Yes. I used to be attached to the spaciousness,
the 'I am' presence. I used to be attached to that.
And then I remember listening to one of your satsangs,
[Q.] and you said, 'You're not even that'. [M.] Yes.
[Q.] And so I was going through a loop in my head for like a month,
[Q.] like, hold on, what do you mean I'm not that?
What do you mean I'm not that? It was just a loop.
And then, I saw. I said, Hold on.
I'm the one that's actually watching that.
Because I kept trying to turn my perceiving around to myself,
[Q.] but it's impossible. [M.] Wonderful.
[Q.] I am That. [Mooji] Wonderful, wonderful!
[Mooji] I'm so happy you say this. Because the very thing you say ...
At one point in my life, I was very confident
that I had reached my state. And I had read something,
I came across a saying by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
where he spoke very much of that, 'Earlier than the 'I am''.
And it so disturbed me. It totally disturbed me.
Almost for a moment my reaction at that state was like,
[M.] Whoa, I don't want to hear about this! [Q.] Yes, that's what ...
[Mooji] Because it disrupted my cozy sense of realisation.
But it disturbed me so much, and that was my blessing,
because I had to keep probing into this to find, What does he mean?
I could not find anywhere, What does he mean? How dare you say that?
So you continue looking.
And if, say, you try and turn around your 'I am'-ness,
which is looking out towards the world, to see if it can see,
it cannot see this. It itself becomes seen.
But I didn't want to say this too early,
because there's a tendency of the intellect,
which is still under the sway of the egoic identity,
that feels, 'Oh, if he's saying that, it is more than the 'I am',
I'm going straight for this.
But it has not conquered its own 'I am' as the person yet.
This is the dilemma.
This is the trick that can happen
for the intellect of the person that feels,
'No, if he says that there's something beyond that, I'm going for that'.
But he hasn't lost his 'I' as a person yet.
So, therefore, I say, you keep observing the sense of person
from the place of the no-person.
The sense 'I am' or beingness is not a person.
If it is a person, it is the divine person, it's the beingness.
It is the Christ Consciousness or the Buddha Being,
or whatever you want to call it, it is the sense of being.
As you keep being aware of the world without logging into it,
the fullness of your 'I am' returns, and it is grounded.
It is a place of pure joy and peace and stillness and love.
Then you gradually begin to, as I was saying this morning,
begin to also learn to observe the beingness. That's more subtle.
You will not be able to do that
if you're in a state of a strong sense of personhood.
Because the personhood goes out from there, outward towards the world.
But then you realise that the person is also a shape arising
in front of the shapeless.
I hope ... I don't know how many people are present
in this level of the conversation now, but you continue like that.
What became curious for me in your talking,
was about integrating something, and I felt,
that's not an action that can be taken. That happens automatically.
Because remember that the Supreme Consciousness
has already integrated everything.
There's no person that can come to integrate anything.
If he's going to integrate, he must integrate himself into emptiness,
and not into something-ness.
Because you're going back into the wilderness,
maybe not wilderness, maybe jungle of names and forms.
Please be reminded, everyone, that,
we are not having a fight with the manifest world.
We're not saying, 'Life is no good, and all these things, they mean nothing!'
It is no emotional dismissal or cynicism towards the world.
But simply seeing this, we have somehow found it very natural
to integrate with the earthly existence and with personal projections
and personal intentions and so on.
But something must have been built, something is inside us,
that questions that at some point,
either through experience or through deep sorrow or frustration,
helped to turn the attention within.
Your real journey begins within.
And in this within-ness,
you begin to discover the capacity to observe with detachment.
Is this of any value to you, Brandon?
[Q.] A whole lot of value, a whole lot of value.
And I just want to say that, everything you've told me conceptually,
when I started to just continue to go on my path,
I started to really experience it.
What I meant by integrating, going out to the world,
do you know how you have the juicy thoughts,
[Q.] your attention goes to the juicy thoughts? [M.] Yes.
Well, now, when I go out into the world, I sometimes get attached,
well, the attention gets attached to the juicy thought,
but then a negative thought will come in
and it will wake me right back up.
It's just like, oh, I fell asleep for a second
and I will just get right back up.
I enjoy that because it's like,
oh, basically, it's burning the identity
of all these things, it's burning it.
[Mooji] Before you said, 'I enjoy that', something came to me.
Don't enjoy it too much.
[Q.] OK. [Mooji] Do you understand?
[M.] Because sometimes we can become addicted to the states of this,
and we keep an identity to keep enjoying that.
Make use of it, make use of it,
until somehow you find yourself in the effortless.
And the effortless is beyond enjoying and not enjoying.
It's beyond the play of interrelated opposites. Do you understand?
Nevertheless, of course, you can go into life,
into any aspect of life where you find yourself,
and you'll find that you are not compromising your seeing.
And everything becomes more spontaneous.
You don't have to try to twist life to fit the shape of your projections,
because you're without projections. At least ...
You know, I cannot put the truth into words.
I'm happy that you say, the concepts that you have gained from me.
But those concepts must combust into spirit.
Meaning that they cannot just be held as shapes and ideas,
like in some resevoir that you turn to to take what you want out of it.
It is automatically one with your being.
[Q.] An investigation happens spontaneously. It happens on its own.
[Mooji] Yes. Very good.
I'm very happy to talk with you, Brandon.
[Q.] Thank you. I'm happy just to be in your presence.
[Mooji] Yes. Very good.
You will hear from me.
[M.] I love you. Thank you. Wonderful. [Q.] I love you. Thank you.
[M.] Wonderful. Thanks to you. Very good.
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