Everything is an Expression of Consciousness - 28th November 2016

Yeah. And Consciousness is only reminding itself that in the play, it seems to be working out in a way which is full of suffering and individuality and egotism, and yet it is all part of the play of Consciousness. And this game of reminding goes on within Consciousness itself, and something in the play says, 'Yes, this is unreal. This is not the truth of who I am.' And there can be a dropping of all of these conditions.

And I also said that the good news is that right now they are dropped. But some things which come to lure you back into it can seem attractive because of our prior belief in that, our prior interest in something. So it's all interrelated, what we've spoken, because it is the same as openness. To remain in this openness, allow all this luring of the tempting mind to go, is to remain open. Just to let it go, and that is surrender. This letting go is surrender.

Then you find that, 'Okay, this one seems to be picked up very often over here.' And as part of the play itself, of course, the suggestion from the Master has been: 'Okay, look at this particular identity and inquire into it.' Pull that into the inquiry and you see that there is nobody there with that identity, you see. Then when the messages from the mind come for that identity, there is no way for them to land. It's like you deleted that mailbox. Then the mind will get a 'Sorry, no such mailbox exists.' So the dropping of all of these individual attributes—seeker identity, worker identity, family identity—is the dropping of conditioning. The same thing then leads to what? Openness.

Now, is it a bad thing to have conditioning? No. It depends on how you want to play. That's why I keep asking these days: how do you want to play? If the urge is to play in a certain way, like if the urge is to play as a successful businessman or something like that, then there's full freedom to walk down that path. But if you say, 'My urge is freedom,' then I will say, 'Okay, drop all the conditioning and let Life play out in itself.' See, that's why to define it as a play makes it lighter. That's why I keep saying it's a play, because even if you are identified for a long, long period of time, nothing is happening inherently to the truth of who you are. Just that the play seems to be continuing.

Just like that character in The Matrix who was sitting there and said, 'Yes, yes, I know all of this is not real, but I enjoy my whatever steak and wine.' He wanted to play some more. So nothing stops us from playing. But if you're done with the play, we say, 'We want to get out of the Matrix. Show me the way out.' Then Satsang is for that. The beautiful part is that even within this Matrix, to come to the dropping of the false identity leads to a lot of lightness. The heaviness of our untrue beliefs is dropped away.

When we lose interest in the Matrix, it doesn't mean that the Matrix has to vanish. The Matrix can still continue to appear. That's why all the expressions are there—Saints, Sages, various expressions are of those who have dropped the conditioning and yet, in the world, the expression continues to move and function. How do they remain? They remain open. And as we are not resisting what is, then that is the end of suffering, except momentarily.