Introduction
Find a comfortable position where your body can be at ease. Close your eyes and allow your breath to find its natural rhythm. We’ll now begin a journey of inquiry that may reveal something that has always been here, beneath the stories of who you think you are.
As we proceed, remember that these words are not meant to add new knowledge but to strip away what obscures your true nature. The understanding we’re pointing to isn’t intellectual - it’s a direct recognition of the true being that you already are.
Take several deep breaths now. With each exhale, let go of any expectations about what should happen during this meditation.
There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to achieve. Only the recognition of what is already here.
The Meditation
The Witness of Experience
Take a deep breath in… and out. Allow yourself to settle into this moment. Let the breath return to its natural pace.
Now, bring your attention to the simple fact of your own presence. Notice that you are here.
Aware. Conscious.
Ask yourself: Who or what is aware of this moment? Who or what knows the experience of sitting here? There is an awareness of sounds, sensations, thoughts - but what is aware of all these things?
Can you find the one who is aware? Look carefully. Is it a thought? Is it a feeling? Is it a physical sensation in the body? Or is it that in which all these appear?
Notice that no matter what arises in your experience - whether pleasant or unpleasant, whether thought or sensation - there is something that remains constant: the awareness of it all.
This awareness is not a thing. It has no shape, no colour, no size. It cannot be grasped, yet it is always here - undeniably present. It is what you are, this is your true nature. Looking out through these eyes, hearing through these ears, feeling through this body.
Who Are You?
Consider your name.
The label that others use to refer to you. Was this name chosen by you? Or was it given to you? If tomorrow you wake up and notice that everyone began calling you by a different name, would you be any different? The name is just a sound, a concept, a phonetical combination of sounds attached to you for convenience - it is not what you are.
In your daily life, how often do you respond automatically when someone calls your name? This habitual identification with a label happens without thought. But pause now and see: this name points to something, but what exactly? A body? A personality? A collection of memories? Or something prior to all of these?
Now, bring your attention to your body.
Notice how it feels in this moment. This body has been changing since the day you were born. The cells that make up your body today are not the same cells that were there a year ago. Your appearance has transformed throughout your life - from infant to child to teenager to young adult to your body one year ago, one week ago, one hour ago. And yet, through all these changes, something has remained unchanged, constant, ever-present.
If you lost a limb, an ear, a lung, or a kidney, would you cease to be you? If your body aged or changed dramatically, would that unchanging sense of presence disappear? No - because you are not the body. The body is experienced but who is experiencing the experience of the body?
In modern life, we’re constantly bombarded with messages about improving, fixing, and changing the body. Entire industries profit from our identification with the body. Fitness grind, cosmetic decorations, plastic surgery modifications. Yet no matter how much the body changes - through exercise, aging, illness, or health - the awareness that knows these changes remains untouched.
The Experience of Experience
Now, become aware of your senses. Everything you know about the world comes through these senses. Vision - colors, shapes, forms - all unfold within consciousness. They are not “out there in the physical world”. They are the experiences arising in awareness.
In this technological age, we’re constantly stimulated through screens and devices. Notice how all digital experiences - social media, movies, messages - still occur within your awareness. The latest smartphone, the most advanced virtual reality, still appears within the space of consciousness that you are.
Listen to the sounds around you. Where do these sounds truly exist as experiences? Not in the external world, everything you hear unfolds within the awareness itself. If I spoke to you in a language you don’t understand, the sounds would reach your ears, but meaning would not arise. Where does the understanding take place?
Feel the sensations in your body. The weight against the surface supporting you, the temperature of the air on your skin, the subtle movements of breath. Where are these physical sensations actually experienced? It seems that they appear to come from a body but notice this. Knowing of them happens in awareness.
You see. As a person you are inside the body. But as consciousness the body is inside you.
Sense of taste. Sense of smell. Where do these sensations take place?
In the mind.
And that brings us to an important question.
If everything is happening inside the mind, have you ever experienced anything but the mind? Have you? Or is everything - every sight, sound, sensation, emotion, thought, memory, idea, hope, expectation, fear - arise within this field of knowing that you are?
Notice this.
You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are consciousness itself - the witness of all experience.
The Mind and Its Contents
Now, direct your attention to your thoughts.
Watch them arise, linger, and pass away.
Your thoughts have been changing and flowing all your life. You had thoughts of a little child, you had thoughts of a younger self, you had thoughts 1 year ago, 1 hour ago, 1 min ago… But has it always been you?
Can you see that thoughts come and go, they are fleeting, transient? Thoughts rise and fall, but something about you remains constant.
In our digital world, the mind is constantly pulled in multiple directions - notifications, emails, messages, news feeds. This meditation is a rare opportunity to notice the space between thoughts, to recognize what remains when the mental noise subsides.
Notice how the mind creates stories about experience. Something happens, and immediately the mind labels it, judges it, compares it to the past, projects it into the future. But the pure experience itself is gone in an instant - all that remains is the story about it.
You just need to slow down to see this. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
See this pattern in your own life. How much of your suffering is created not by circumstances but by thoughts about circumstances?
Remember something from your past. What you’re experiencing now is not the actual event - that experience is long gone. At that moment that has passed, you had the direct experience. Today, you are experiencing a thought, a memory, a narrative of what had happened, that the mind is spinning right now. Notice this. The past exists only as a thought in this present moment. Who are you without the stories your mind is conjuring for you?
Now imagine your future. Can you see that future is too just a mental projection happening in the now? It’s built from the pieces of your past experiences.
You cannot imagine what you have not experienced in some form. Everything that your imagination creates only comes from your past experience. All the words, concepts, notions are absorbed from the world and create the Dream of the Future. You see? The Future is like the Past. It only exists as thought arising in this moment.
And that’s what you can notice.
You can only expereince Time, if you are in the Thought. Where there is Thought, there is no presence. Pure presence is a thoughtless state - no judgment, no labels, no story, no future or past. Only the Isness of the Here and Now.
In our achievement-oriented culture, we’re conditioned to constantly strive toward future goals. Do more. Work more. Earn more. Achieve more. You are never enough.
Notice how this perpetuates the illusion of a separate self moving through time. In reality, there is no Time. All there’s ever been and all there will ever be is this moment of awareness. You can be in what is real - this very moment, or you can be in the illusion listening to the mind that contains all these thoughts about past and future.
The Shifting Identity
Reflect on how your sense of self has changed throughout your life.
As a child, you identified with certain interests, abilities, and limitations. As you grew, this identity transformed. Even looking back at yourself one year ago, can you notice differences in how you defined yourself?
Think about your online presence - social media profiles, avatars, digital personas. These are all representations, stories about who you think you are. Yet none of these are you. They are images projected outward, built from concepts, tastes, beliefs.
This “self” you believe yourself to be has been constantly shifting - it is not a stable, unchanging entity but a flowing stream of identification. If you were truly this Concept of Self, how could it change so dramatically while you remain You?
Consider your professional identity, the roles you play, the titles you hold. These too are temporary labels, not what you fundamentally are. In an era where careers change frequently and skills must constantly be updated, can you find anything permanent in these shifting identities?
Notice this.
The person you think you are is just an entanglement of thoughts - a cobweb of your self-image, beliefs, memories, notions and ideas about who you should be. But none of these are you. They are just thoughts - temporary content appearing in the space of awareness that you are.
I want. I should. I need. I can’t. I have to…
Everything starts with that core thought - the “I” thought.
Ramana Maharshi said: “The thought ‘I’ is the first thought of the mind. It is the ego. From it arises the thought of the world.”
Notice how your entire experience of being a separate self in a separate world springs from this primary thought “I.”
But who is this “I”?
The Illusion of Control
Notice the persistent belief that there is someone “in here” controlling actions, making decisions, directing life. Look closely at this sense of being a controller, a doer.
When you decide to lift your hand, what actually happens? First, there’s a thought about lifting the hand, then the hand lifts. But who created the thought?
Did you create the thought to lift the hand, or did the thought simply arise in awareness? If you created the thought, then you would need a previous thought to decide to create that thought, leading to an infinite regression.
Watch closely as decisions happen. Can you find the moment where “you” actually make a choice? Or do choices simply appear in awareness, like everything else?
Nisargadatta Maharaj said: “There is nobody who acts. There is the act, but no actor. There is a walking but no walker.” Can you see this in your own experience? There is thinking happening, but no thinker. There is acting happening, but no actor separate from the action.
In our society, we place enormous value on individual achievement and personal responsibility. This reinforces the illusion of a separate doer. Yet upon close examination, can you find this doer?
Who is doing the doing?
Who is thinking the thinking?
Who is constantly talking inside your the head?
The Anxiety of Separation
The belief in being a separate self creates a fundamental anxiety - a sense of lack, of incompleteness, of vulnerability. This is the root of suffering.
Notice how much of your life energy goes into protecting, enhancing, and defending this separate self that doesn’t actually exist. Our constant never-ending chase of security, recognition, achievement, wealth - but all stem from the belief in separation.
In our modern world, this anxiety manifests in endless consumption, constant distraction, and the relentless pursuit of more. Social media amplifies this by encouraging comparison and the curating of a perfect image.
And you have that image of self. But are you the image?
As you sit here now, can you recognize the peace that’s always available to you when this sense of separation temporarily relaxes?
When the thought of being someone separate subsides, what remains?
When the illusion of personhood dies away, what will you be?
Not nothingness or emptiness. But the fullness of effortless being you always have been.
Awakening to Awareness
Now, for a moment, drop all effort. If the mind says this is all so confusing, notice that this thought rises. Don’t battle it. Don’t force it. Don’t try to understand it. There is no enlightenment to achieve.
Simply be aware of being aware.
Notice that you can observe your thoughts without becoming them. This simple fact reveals the truth - you are not the mind; you are the awareness in which the mind unfolds.
Thinking is just a property of consciousness. It is the activity of consciousness. But it is not the consciousness itself.
For as long as you believe you are your thoughts, they will own you. But in recognizing that you are that aware boundless space in which all experience arises, true freedom will be revealed to you.
Jean Klein wrote: “When you realize that all that appears and disappears, all that is born and dies, is perceived by something that doesn’t appear and disappear, doesn’t come to be and cease to be, then you have glimpsed your true nature.”
In a world of constant change and increasing uncertainty, this recognition offers the only true security. While everything in the phenomenal world remains impermanent, the awareness that you are remains unchanged.
Rest in this recognition. The awareness that you are is not a thing, not an object, not a concept. It is the boundless space in which all experience comes and goes.
You are not the ripples on the water.
You are the ocean itself.
The Oneness of Experience
Notice now that everything in your experience - thoughts, sensations, perceptions - arises together as a unified whole. The artificial boundaries between “in here” and “out there” exist only in thought.
This is non-duality.
Which external or internal world are we talking about when everything is One?
The sound of traffic, the feeling of the chair, the thought about dinner - all appear within the same field of awareness. There is no separation between the perceiver and the perceived except in the story that your mind is telling you.
In our daily life, we move through the world as if we are separate entities navigating an external reality. But look closely - can you find where “you” end and the “world” begins? Is that you moving through the world? Or is it the world moving through you? Maybe there just this seamless happening, this one experience without borders?
You have the ability to see through this illusion of Separateness.
“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think, and everything you do, is for yourself, and there isn’t one.”
With each breath, notice the artificial boundary between “inside” and “outside” dissolving. The air moves in, the air moves out. All you know is the experience of that experience.
Where does the world end and where do you begin?
The Mirror of Relationship
Our relationships often reflect and reinforce the illusion of separation. We interact with others as if they are truly “other” - separate entities with whom we must negotiate and compromise.
Yet in the clarity of non-dual seeing, we recognize that the consciousness looking through their eyes is the same consciousness looking through yours. We all are connected. We all have the same nature. The forms and expressions differ, but the essence is identical. We are One.
In your daily interactions - at work, with family, with strangers on the street - can you recognize this shared being? Can you see beyond the costumes of body, face, psyche, personality, beliefs, culture, tradition, language, roles that are being played, to the awareness that vibrates behind all forms?
This is true kindness. This is love.
As Rupert Spira says: “Love is the recognition that we are the same being, temporarily appearing as separate entities.” When this recognition appears, compassion flows naturally.
Love is not something you do - it’s what you are.
Love is your True Nature.
The Freedom of No-Self
In this stillness, ask yourself: What am I, truly?
Don’t answer with concepts or learned ideas. Simply allow the question to illuminate the obvious - you are that which is aware of everything, yet cannot itself be seen as an object.
The only true freedom is freedom from the illusory self.
When the identification with thought dissolves, what remains is the peace that has always been here, unconditioned and ever-present.
Papaji said: “Freedom is not found in a particular state of mind or a set of circumstances. Freedom is the recognition of that which is already free.”
This is not something to achieve - it is the recognition of what already is.
Everyone can know this freedom because everyone already is this freedom. This freedom is simply obscured by the veil of thoughts - this habit of identifying with the content of the mind rather than pure consciousness itself.
In our society, freedom is often equated with having more choices, more options, more control.
But true freedom is found in the dissolution of the very controller who makes these choices.
It is the freedom from the constant burden of being someone.
Freedom from the Person you have always believed yourself to be.
Living from Non-Duality
As we prepare to close this meditation, consider how this recognition might inform your daily life. Non-duality is not an escape from the world but a more intimate embrace of it.
When identification with thought relaxes, action happens more spontaneously, more appropriately to each situation. Without the constant reference to a separate self with its preferences and aversions, life flows with greater ease.
In practical terms, this might mean less resistance to what is, less compulsive thinking, less emotional reactivity. It might mean greater presence with others, more authentic communication, more natural compassion.
The paradox of non-duality is that it doesn’t remove your uniqueness - it actually allows your unique expression to flow more freely, unobstructed by the contractions of a separate self.
As the Zen saying goes: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
An awakened being can return to any worldly activities. Because they are done. Because now they see the truth.
Conclusion
As we bring this meditation to a close, remember that you can return to this recognition at any moment. The truth of what you are is not hidden - it is the most obvious fact of your existence, continuously being obscured by the mind’s noise, mind’s tendency to seek complexity.
There is nothing complex. Nothing to understand. Nowhere to arrive.
As you live in the world in your daily life simply keep asking yourself:
Am I aware? Am I aware of being aware?
Observe the mind. And the more you recognize the illusion, the less you will be controlled by it.
The illusion of ego will dissolve over time.
Take a deep breath, and when you’re ready, gently open your eyes, bringing this clarity into your daily life.
The world hasn’t changed, but the one who sees it has dissolved into seeing itself.
Your true nature is both the formless awareness that contains all experience and the expressions that appear within it.
Let this understanding live in your ordinary activities. Let it inform how you work, how you relate, how you move through this world. Not as a separate entity in a foreign universe, but as the universe itself that is experiencing itself through this particular form.
The only true freedom is the freedom from self. And everyone can be free, because everyone is already that freedom, simply waiting to be recognized.
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