Your Being is Always Ahead of Your Mind - Guided Meditation to stay Empty

Come back to your freshness, your aliveness right now. Snap out of it. Unimportant, uninteresting. Remain unconcerned. This is how you be vigilant. It's actually effortless and natural. Initially, it may seem to take some effort. Do you get the difference between this and the checker guy? If you were checking—'Oh, I'm doing so badly, I'm never going to become free'—it becomes more and more difficult. It can seem like vigilance, but it's taking you completely away from being vigilant. You're just mentally concluding. So remain empty like this. This is how you are at your most innocent, led by God. Don't try to know. The trying to know is troublesome. Innocence is not trying to know; it is to remain simple, to remain empty.

Because yes, but don't go there right now, okay? No, no, no. Never actually, not even later. Because the minute you start to frame, you see, it seems like a helpful framing initially, but soon we are in the frame rather than in the empty. Because we feel naked without our conclusions. Then you say, 'Ah, this is what He is doing.' It seems to provide some crutches, some benefit, but actually, it can be very tricky because that becomes an expectation, it becomes a conclusion. Then you can make a conclusion this time that it went very well, and the next time it happens you'll say, 'Oh, but this time it's not going so well.' So don't make any conclusions about well or not. That is still from the mind. So don't go there. It's empty, empty.

And be careful of the 'yes, but.' That 'but' is like a need to buy into the doubt. 'Yes, but I can't always live like this, I can't go to work like this.' Then those frames, those narratives, will become compelling. Everything can happen from here. Whatever needs to happen can happen from your Being. So don't have an expectation that 'I want to be like this, but then work should happen' or 'this should happen.' That will burden it. Be empty. His will means it is not a concern what happens or not. That is to live in His will. You see how vigilance, innocence, and living in His will are all actually like that? Just be supremely innocent. Don't understand. The conclusion offers itself like a very juicy chocolate: 'Finally, I found some meaning in that whole process, this is what it means, I am like this.' When it comes like that, really close, notice it. That ball is better dropped than caught.

In the Now, we can't be sure about anything from the past. It is now, now. Where are you coming from? Leave that, but don't conclude that 'I can't speak then.' We don't know. That's the experiment. It needs patience, it needs faith, but not like 'I'm being patient, patient, I'm having faith, faith.' Being aware, of course, is beyond any of that. But the way we use 'aware' in the world—to be attentive—is not really about the content of the world, because we can get stuck in it. It's not about using the content as an anchor. Many people get into that trap of trying to be in the present moment by grasping at what is here so they won't get involved with the mind. But that is very tiring for your system, isn't it? It has to be from a place of ease. To allow the stream of perception to flow through. The sheer open and empty is like this: pure perception, but unconcerned about the perception. Pure perception is unlabeled, unnarrated.

Pure perception doesn't mean 'I'm only perceiving.' That is a mistake some make. It's just that the perception remains pure, empty of labels, unadulterated. But I am Being or Awaring more than I am perceiving. Perception is just happening naturally in the background.

Father, you mentioned as it is said in the past, a lot of sages have talked about it. A lot of times when you're sitting, you can almost see the 'I' or ego in perception. It's talking, it's doing things, and you can begin to separate that—that is not you, right? And you can hear the birds, you can hear the sounds, you can hear everything. But somewhere at the back, you know this phrase 'I Am That' you read and everybody's talked about. It is the 'I' there, even though you know it is not the ego 'I,' it still for me seems to put you in a loop. That is still the 'I,' right? Versus in pure perception, you're letting everything flow and you don't even want this 'I' business. So maybe if you can talk a little bit more about why do the great ones say 'I Am That' or 'I Am'? For me, right when you're sinking in, your mind throws this 'Okay, this is the I Am' and then you go into another loop.

I hear your question. So let's look for a moment at continuing to be empty. How would I play-act being an individual? The ego is the idea of 'I am something.' There is no boundless ego. So if I was to now, from this emptiness, take on a boundary to be true about me... let's try that experiment. You said you can see the ego play out. Maybe you notice that the minute you return to the seeing, rather than the involvement with the boundary, then the strands of the ego are not so strong anymore. They start to thin out. And maybe for that moment, I am boundless. Now, when I say 'I am boundless,' who am I referring to? We're not saying Ananta is boundless. Ananta obviously can't be boundless. Ananta is the name for this body-mind. And those of you who consider Ananta the Guru, it's just a name for your inner Satguru presence.

So when it is said 'I Am That' or 'I am boundless,' is it referring to the separate individual entity? No, because the ego is the idea of an entity. Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi said something very important on this matter. He said that till 'I Am,' no trouble. When 'I am something,' that is when the trouble starts. And by definition, that is where the ego starts. But unidentified Beingness is that same pointer from the sages: just be, or just remain empty of identification, empty of attachment.

One is a made-up 'me'—that 'I am so good' or 'I am so bad,' 'I am enlightened' or 'I am bound.' These are boundaries. Every construct that we take to be true about ourselves then becomes a boundary. It's like if I give you a task that for the next two hours, just imagine yourself to be somebody who lives in Barbados. You keep trying to bring attention to thoughts about living on the beach, give that identification a name, 'Jim,' and you keep building on it: 'Oh, my family was like this.' In two hours, there will be some identification, some conditioning around this 'Jim.' It's like watching a movie where you find the character relatable, and when the movie is over, someone says the character dies in the sequel and you feel hurt. Why? Because there's identification.

So that 'I am something-ness'—I am a father, I am at work, this is my money, my house—all of these attributes become the conditions which define the ego. The ego is basically a set of conditions being believed in. If there was not a single condition being bought, there is no separation, there is no ego. Empty of that, we are doing this exercise. The beauty of this exercise is that it doesn't matter whether you have a million conditions or only two. When you are empty, you are empty of all of that. As high as the highest sage, in that moment, we are. Whether you're Bhagavan or just 'little old me,' when you are empty of conditions, you are the same.

Now, what is that sameness? Have we ceased to exist? We haven't ceased to exist. Even perception is here. You're hearing. You could be empty, not identifying with the body, and yet the centrality of this visual perspective may continue. All of this world may be perceived and yet you are not identified; you're not being egoic. That being empty of being 'something' is called the 'I Am.' That is the 'I Am' because even if someone asks 'Who is perceiving now?', unless we become very intellectually Advaitin, with the innocence of a child, if you ask 'Who sees this hat?', they will say 'I am.' They respond in those innocent ways, but empty of any conditions of pride or sense of ownership.

Empty of all identification, if I was to say 'Who's aware of this perception?', I am aware of it. But that 'I Am' is not adulterated by conditions of pride, of unworthiness, of any of these ideas. You're empty of the ego and you're just Being. And that Being belongs to 'I,' but that 'I' is the 'I' of Reality. It is the 'I' of Awareness. That pure Awareness which is aware doesn't change even in the sleep state. Then the adjunct of 'Am' wakes up within That, and in the light of this I Am-ness, the world appears. The play of light and sound happens, and also the play of mental constructs—language in our head offering proposals that 'I am something,' 'I should be better.' Attaching to those, as harmless as they may seem—like 'I like green coconut better than brown'—you notice the whole narrative is stuck in the most harmless-seeming notions. To remain empty, innocent of even that, is to remain empty of ego.

This 'I' which is pure Awareness then gives birth to this 'Am' which is pure Being. It is 'I Am.' Nobody says 'I was asleep but then somebody woke up.' They say 'I woke up.' It's most natural because it is the 'I' itself in its manifest aspect as Being, as 'Am,' which arises. Suddenly the light comes on. Nobody knows how, when, or why. Just this 'Am' comes. Now, imagine a world in which it was impossible to identify. The world wakes up, everything is, but it's not relatable. Our primitive theory is that entertainment without relatability was not enough 'juice' for God playing this game. God said, 'Let me make it so that when I play the game, not only do I have the body of James Bond, I also have a narrative: I have this mission, I have to save the world.' In picking up the narrative, this 'I Am' takes up the idea that 'I am James Bond.' In the same way, we play the game: 'I am Ananta,' 'I am Bala.'

To not identify, to have no narrative, no mission—then what happens? The narrator of the game still continues. If you stop paying attention to the subtitles, it doesn't mean the subtitles of the movie will stop. Initially, the narrative continues, but that narrative is designed to make you identify as the character. To be free from that identification is to be free from the ego. Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi said: 'I' removes the 'I' and yet remains the 'I.' That is impossible for the mind to understand. It removes the false 'I'—the 'I am something'—and yet the true 'I,' the Nirguna Brahman that is our true reality, remains. That is why it's called Self-realization. It is still the Self, but it is not a limited self; it is not an egoic self. The difference between the big 'S' Self and the small 's' self is very big.