Morning Spiritual Exercise How to Live as Presence
19 October 2020 (with subtitles)
[Mooji] In the morning, you get up and sit.
Just that, you know.
And just pay attention to your being.
Before you go out and touch the world,
already your mind is touching the world inside your own room
in the form of thoughts, feelings, judgements,
and plans, projections, and so on.
So sit quietly, and just notice.
See if you can discern the difference
between the mind energy and beingness.
Always beingness is there first.
You cannot have mind energy without consciousness.
Beingness and consciousness are same thing.
So, you sit quietly.
Don't try to stop the mind or to stop thinking.
Notice first.
That is a very neutral attitude.
You stay put. You observe. Just be observing.
You say, 'Ahhh'. You can feel so much [sounds of mind chattering].
Don't get entangled in that. Don't log into it.
Just notice that.
Also, notice the space which we don't notice.
Often we don't notice it.
Nobody pays any attention to that.
And yet, that space is there before any noise comes.
It's there during the noise and it's there after the noise.
Nothing has happened to it.
So I say, just pay attention. Don't create anything.
Just simple, sober attention.
And then you start to see that the mind is all the things,
and it is almost always personal.
'I've got to do this and this ...' 'Oh, no ...' Chat, chat ...
It's always personal. That's the mind stuff.
The beingness is not personal.
It is like space, silence and peace. And presence!
Just presence.
In one word I can say, just 'presence'.
Impersonal presence. Impartial presence.
Sit with that and be one with just the presence.
Stay with the presence because that is the ground.
The mind is like a ship without an anchor, in a storm.
[acts as a ship tossed all over]
But the presence is like the root.
I can't call it an anchor because an anchor is a small thing.
Presence is everywhere!
Stay with that and clarify your being
just by paying attention to that.
And see that it is not a waiting state.
Beingness is not waiting for the mind to relax.
It is just constant. It is there.
Relative to the mind, it is a constant state.
Just by sitting like that,
and with that distinction between mind and presence, and see.
Then you don't have to try and control the mind.
Just by being one with the presence,
the mind stuff becomes very weak, meaningless.
If you stay as the person,
who is what you may call,
the kind of daily self,
if you stay as the person,
then that's the one that the mind is relating with a lot.
[chattering sounds] Like this.
But if you stay as presence, even that going on is nothing at all.
Because that will change. It's always changing.
It's always new actors on that stage.
But the Self, being Self-aware, this is beautiful.
If you do this, even for ten minutes or so,
you're going to like it so much
because you're experiencing the peace that is naturally your Self.
You just pay attention to that.
Even if you do it for a short time, do it completely.
You'll come to a point where you see,
'OK, Mooji says, "Don't get entangled in the mind stuff",
but it is difficult because they are very familiar'.
It is like old friends come to the house and knock.
And, 'Arghh!' You are not to answer.
I said, Yes, you are not to answer
because although they are old friends, they are stale friends.
They are not good friends.
Don't accept something, only because of familiarity.
It has come, and you know the scenario that happens.
The minute you engage from the personal standpoint,
it is very difficult to pull away from it.
But you exercise your discernment. You are looking.
This is not something you have to create because that is a fact already.
It is just that it's a fact unnoticed.
Now you must notice the fact that,
when you think of yourself as 'I',
very quickly the mind is taking claim of this 'I'.
When we say, 'I',
we are almost always thinking, 'I person am'.
'I person am.'
Not the words, but actually what they mean.
We think of ourself as a person.
You open your door to leave your room as a person.
Obviously, if you go out as a person,
you are going to meet a world of persons.
And you are going to interrelate as person to person.
Leave your room as presence.
Leave the room as presence.
This little thing you can do. And it doesn't take that much time.
Gradually, as you keep at it,
you see that it becomes natural.
It is not that you have to practice to be your Self,
but you have to practice to be your Self. Do you see?
Your self is there. Our true Self is here.
Even the false selves cannot appear without the true Self.
It is here.
But because of the reflex to begin from the place of personhood,
it's like you're here, but you're living as though you're there,
and you're meeting the world as there.
This is why I say, This is the mask of what you are.
You are dealing with the world, but actually, your Self is here.
You are living as the mask, unaware of your Self.
That is the main and most important thing to recognise.
It is the most important!
If you are just snipering the little troubles that come here,
[demonstrates shooting at individual troubles]
you are going to have to connect with a good bullet store,
because it's going to keep coming with more and more things.
Or if you go out fishing with one string and a hook,
you might catch a fish now and again,
but what I am sharing with you is like fishing with a huge net
that covers the whole ocean, actually.
Why do I say that?
You have to find the one that is the cause of this world
and this worldly person and identity.
You have to find it.
Why? How can you know him?
Because he also goes by the name of 'I'.
That is one of the great paradoxes.
Because I say, 'I' is the first to appear,
'I' is the first in any language.
The intuition, the sense 'I am' appears first.
Only then can you see other, or this and that,
because 'I' is the subject for the experiencing, the sense 'I'.
But we must understand what the 'I' means.
Because, as I said before, God says, 'I am',
but the ego also says, 'I am',
and even the devil says, 'I am'.
So, is it the same?
You must see the difference.
The personal sense 'I am' is the root cause,
'I am' meaning, 'I am the body'.
You don't remember saying that, but instinctively we relate.
'If you see this body, I am this one. This is me.'
'I am the body', then, 'I am my conditioning'.
Then other conditioning can come.
That is where the person is born.
The person is not born at the birth of the body.
The person is born when the belief,
'I am the body and I am my conditioning',
when that is born, the person comes.
But before the person comes, consciousness is there.
[Mooji] Is that saying too many things? [Voices in sangha] No.
[Mooji] So, as you begin to break the reflex energy,
which is immediately starting to think in the 'I am the person' mode,
then you can continue all day thinking, 'I am the person',
trying to sort out all the problems
of the 'I am the person, I am the body' mode.
This is why I said, in the morning when you get up,
sit for a little bit, in silence,
and watch your sense of self,
which means your mind and the sense of being,
and discern the difference.
The mind will be [chattering sounds] with some personal quality.
Beingness is impersonal.
Beingness is like space.
Inside and outside, it is like space.
A mind is like a person, because it comes with the noise
and intention and emotion,
plans, attachments, and desires, all of that history.
So you are aware of the noise.
So, this time, don't just link up.
Be aware of it only.
If you link up, you're going to say, 'Please help me to get rid of it'.
No, just being aware is enough. Be aware.
And be aware at the same time,
of the space of being, the place of presence.
And you will see that the presence is stillness, the mind is movement.
Remain in the stillness.
You don't have to become something.
It is there already!
You are already watching from stillness.
So when I say, Be zero,
zero means Emptiness, the Self. Stay like this.
If you sit like this for five, seven minutes, ten minutes if you want,
it's going to be the best ten minutes you're going to spend.
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