Guided Meditation: Peace and Happiness are the Shining of Being

Excerpt

In this guided meditation Rupert draws on the wisdom of the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, whose philosophy of being, emphasises the importance of living without mental constructs. Without these constructs being can be described as both empty and full. Peace arises from this emptiness, while happiness stems from its fullness. By removing the limiting layers of experience we reveal our true essence and dissolve the sense of separation between us and God, allowing the shining of peace and happiness inherent in our being.

Transcript:

Good morning, everyone
and hello, everyone at home.

Good morning, Manny.
I’ll wake you up at the end of the meditation.

Meister Eckhart said, “Our life ought to be just being.”
To the extent that our life is just being, to that extent, it is a life in God.

In just being, there is:
Nothing to be known.
Nothing to be understood.
Nothing to be acquired or achieved.
Nothing to become.
Nothing to get rid of.

There is no person either to be ignorant or to be enlightened.

From the point of view of the mind, being is said to be empty.
That is empty of objective content.
From the point of view of itself, it is full of itself alone.

The inherent emptiness of being is the experience that we refer to as peace.
The inherent fullness of being is the experience that we refer to as happiness.

In other words, peace and happiness are simply the shining of being in the midst of experience.

In being’s own experience of itself it is whole,
complete,
one,
indivisible.

It is the mind that is the activities of thinking and perceiving that refract the unity of being, making it appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves.
This oneness, this unity of being, this indivisibility, this absence of separation or otherness is the experience that we know as love.

If you would like an image rather than a description to evoke the qualities of being, imagine a cat lying curled up in a pool of sun on the windowsill.

The cat is not practicing being.
It just is, essentially being.

The cat did not have to learn how to be.
Being is its natural condition.

In fact, the cat does not even know that it is a cat.
That is what we say about it.

The cat does not have the experience of being a cat, but it does have the experience of being.

If you look closely at your experience now without reference to the past, to memory, to ideas, to images, but if you look just at your experience of yourself now, you have no experience of being a human being or being a body.

But you do have the experience of being.
That is your natural condition, your essential nature or self, if we can call it a self.

It’s not something you are doing.
It is not something you are practicing.
It’s not something you had to learn how to do.
It’s just what you are.

It has nothing to do with meditation.
Meditation is what we do with the mind.
Being is what we are prior to mind.

Meister Eckhart said, “All that God asks you to do most pressingly is to go out of yourself and let God be God in you.”

What does it mean to go out of yourself?
It means to undress, to take off all the layers of experience that are not essential to us:
thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities, relationships, and so on.

It is from all of these experiences and activities that we derive our sense of our self as a temporary, finite, separate self.

In other words, the separate self that we seem to be is a mixture of infinite being, God’s being, with the temporary finite qualities of experience.
When we go out of ourself, we simply take off all the temporary finite qualities that we borrow from experience.
And we stand revealed as we essentially are.

The word “revealed” comes from “revelare” in Latin, meaning to lay bare.
When we take off all the qualities of experience, all the qualities that we borrow from experience, we are revealed as naked being.

Infinite being, God’s being.

And that being is not in us as a person or separate self.
There is ultimately no person or separate self.
There is just this mixing, this apparent mixing of the true and only self, if we can call it a self, of infinite being with the qualities of experience.

So when we stand as naked being, we have, as it were, gone out of ourself, ourself, the separate self.
We have died before we die.
That experience is not in us as a person.

Our being is not really our being.
It is just being.
There is no personal self for being to belong to.

Being is like the full moon, in a Turner watercolor of a landscape at midnight.

The full moon seems to be an object in the painting.
But when you go up close, you see that it’s the only part.
The full moon is the only part of the paper that has not been painted.
It is just the white paper.

In other words, the full moon is not in the landscape.
It’s not in the painting.
Just as being is not in ourselves.
It’s not in our experience as a personal self.

The full moon is only a full moon from the perspective of a person in the painting.
When they look up, they see the full moon.
When we look closely at the painting, we see only the white paper.

In other words, being is only an experience in us as a person from the illusory perspective of the person we seem to be.
But from its own experience of itself, it is not in experience.
It is not in the person.
It is not in the time and space that seem to be real from the point of view of the mind.
Just as the moon is not in the world that seems to be real from the point of view of a person in the painting.

When we go to just being and abide as that, we pass out of the world.
We pass out of time and space.
We stand in eternity.

Just as the cat does not know that it is a cat.
Just as we, if we stay very close to the truth of our experience, do not know that we are a person, so God does not know that it is God.

This is why Meister Eckhart prayed to God to rid him of God.

In other words, he prayed that the last vestige of separation between himself and himself may be removed.
Leaving that which is shining all by itself.

Just as the cat does not know that it is a cat.
But rather, infinite being clothes itself temporarily in a cat’s experience.

Just as a human being does not know that they are a human being.
But rather, infinite being clothes itself in human experience.

So God does not know that it is God.
But rather, infinite being remains naked, unclothed.

That naked being is God’s being.
It is that naked being that shines in us as the knowledge “I am”.

Meister Eckhart again:
“When I am able to establish myself in nothing and nothing in myself.
Uprooting and casting out everything that is within me, then I am able to enter into the naked spirit, the naked being of the spirit, which is the naked being of God.”

It is what Rumi meant when he said,
“Be like melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”

It is what Ramana Mahashi meant when he said,
“When the I is divested of the I, only I remain.”

It is what the Sufis mean when they say,
“Die before you die. Die before you die.”

It is the ultimate way to lead one’s life,
and it is the best preparation for death.

Well,
thank you,
Meister Eckhart.