It is for this  
reason that Bayazid Bastami said, ‘That for which we long cannot be found  
by seeking, and yet only seekers find it’. *  
 
*     *     *  
 
 
30* As quoted in James Fadiman and Robert Frager, Essential Sufism  (HarperCollins, 1997 ). the art of self-enquiry
I’m haunted by the feeling of being a failure and not having fulfilled my poten -
tial in life. I’ve tried so many approaches to help with this but it just persists. Can the practice of self-enquiry help me? In this approach we don’t pay much attention to the feeling of failure or lack  
of fulfilment. Instead we go directly to the core of the issue, the ‘I’ on whose  
behalf such feelings arise. All our emotional or psychological suffering arises on behalf of that one,  
so by resolving this issue once and for all, we do not simply take care of the  
feeling of being a failure or unfulfilled; we take care of the  source  of all afflic -
tive emotions. When we explore the ‘I’ around whom our suffering revolves, we don’t  
find a self who is frustrated, unfulfilled, anxious, lonely, ashamed, and so on. We find our essential being, which is completely free of any such feelings. That is to say, it finds or recognises itself. It is open, empty, at peace and  
without any sense of lack. This is our natural state. In fact, it is not even necessary to conceptualise it as peace and happiness. We do so only in order to contrast it with our previous state of disturbance  
and lack. Once we have been accustomed to this natural condition for some  
time, it simply becomes our new norm. All that is necessary is to remain in touch with our self, the inherently  
peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled presence of awareness, until this be -
comes our new, felt sense of self. In fact, it is not really a new sense of self. It is simply the familiar sense of self that always accompanies us, that is us, 
but is now relieved of its previous agitation and sense of lack. The feeling of dissatisfaction which has accompanied us for most of our  
life simply leaves us, not because we have done anything to it but because  
we have undermined the assumption upon which it arose. We feel fulfilled,  
but for no particular reason. All our physical and mental faculties remain intact. They are simply re -
lieved of the tyranny of the separate self and, as a result, are now free to be  
used in service of the qualities that are inherent in us, namely peace, joy, love  
and freedom. *     *     *  
 
31you are the happiness you seek
How can one evaluate the authenticity of a teaching? One of the hallmarks of a true teaching is that it is not affiliated with any  
particular position, attitude or practice. It is not a body of knowledge and  
practices that is disseminated like a maths or history curriculum. It is simply  
a spontaneous response to a situation or question that comes directly from  
understanding or love. Understanding and love do not have a form of their own and are, therefore,  
free to assume any shape or action that is perfectly tailored to a particular cir -
cumstance or question, just as a bucket dipped into the ocean will draw out a  
measure of water that is uniquely and exquisitely fitted to its own proportions. A true teaching cannot be evaluated by its form or content alone but by  
the source from which it originates. Any expression that originates in under -
standing or love contains within it a particular quality, a power even, that  
has the ability to take the recipient to the same source of understanding and  
love in their self. The teaching is simply the means by which they are given  
experiential access to this understanding and love. The finite mind superimposes its own limitations on everything that it  
knows or perceives and, therefore, cannot find happiness or know the ulti -
mate reality. For this reason, the teaching will often refuse to entertain the  
mind on its own terms and will find ways of exposing and undermining it. As a result, such a teaching may give one person a practice and in the next  
moment, in response to another question, refuse to suggest any such practice. For some people, just a few words of guidance will be sufficient. However,  
if a person has an inquisitive and sophisticated mind, then it is likely that  
they will raise objections and question every aspect of the teaching. If such  
a mind is not acknowledged and honoured, it tends to become frustrated  
and angry. In order to pave the way for the understanding and love that is the essence  
of the teaching to be taken deeply into the heart and body, it will, in such  
cases, be necessary to elaborate refined lines of reasoning. For such people,  
it is only when the mind’s objections and questions have been met satisfac -
torily that they will be open to a new possibility. In this case, the teaching will give the mind complete freedom to explore  
these matters as much as it wishes, and even encourage it to do so, thereby  
allowing it gradually, naturally and effortlessly to bring itself to its own end. 32chapter five
The Essence of Meditation
There is a huge silence inside each of us  
that beckons us into itself. meister eckhart   
 
The recognition of our true nature is not a new experience that happens  
to us. It is the revealing or the noticing of what we always and already are  
but often overlook due to our exclusive fascination with the content of ex -
perience. It is we, awareness, who, being intimately one with all experience, seem  
to lose our self in it, thereby overlooking our innate peace and happiness. The inevitable suffering that ensues from this is a call from our self to our  
self – a call to return home from the adventure of experience in which we  
have become entangled. In this recognition we do not cease being one kind of self and become  
another kind of self. We simply cease losing our self in or identifying our  
self with the content of experience, and we recognise our self as the inherently  
peaceful presence of awareness that lies behind it. We cannot become  what we always and already are, and we cannot be 
what we are not. We can only cease imagining and feeling that we are some -
thing other than the presence of awareness. Once we have disentangled our  
self from the content of experience, our true nature simply shines by itself,  
just as the blue sky is revealed when the clouds disperse. disentangling our self  
 
If the forgetting or ignoring of our essential self is the veiling of our innate hap -
piness and the ultimate cause of psychological suffering, then the remembrance  
or clear knowledge of our essential self is the means by which this forgetfulness  
or ignorance is removed  and our innate peace and happiness revealed. you are the happiness you seek
     If someone believes they have covid-19 , they may take a test. If the test  
comes back negative, their ignorance of their state of health is simply re -
moved. The removal of ignorance cannot be said to be the cause of their good  
health. It simply allows what is already the case to be fully acknowledged. Likewise, the recognition of our true nature is not the  cause  of happiness;  
it is simply the removal of the ignorance of our true nature. It is the uncover -
ing of our being, whose nature is happiness itself. Meditation is the relaxing of the focus of our attention from its content,  
the disentangling of our self from the drama of experience, and the sub -
sequent emergence of our essential nature of silent awareness. It is simply the process whereby our essential nature or being is revealed,  
after it is divested of all the qualities or characteristics that it acquires from  
experience. Instead of allowing our attention to become mixed with the con -
tent of experience, we trace it back in the opposite direction. In the absence  
of anything to hold on to, attention can no longer stand and is dissolved  
in its source of pure awareness. This recognition of the essential nature of our self is traditionally referred  
to as enlightenment, awakening, salvation or satori. However, enlightenment  
is not an extraordinary, mystical or exotic experience. In fact, it is not an ob -
jective experience at all. Somebody once asked the Zen teacher Shunryu Su -
zuki why he never spoke of his enlightenment experience, and his wife, who  
was sitting at the back of the hall, stood up and said, ‘Because he never had  
one!’ Our essential being or true nature of pure awareness simply ceases to  
be veiled or ‘endarkened’ by experience and, as a result, stands revealed. direct and indirect paths  
 
This return to our being, which is referred to in many different ways in  
the religious and spiritual traditions, constitutes the essence of meditation. It is sometimes referred to as the Direct Path, as it is the means by which we  
go directly to the happiness that is the nature of our being, rather than via  
an object such as a mantra, the breath or a teacher. Ramana Maharshi referred to it as ‘sinking the mind into the heart’. Jesus  
referred to it as ‘entering into thy closet, closing thy door and praying to thy  
Father, who is in secret’, that is, returning one’s attention to one’s being and  
resting there quietly, all alone. 34the essence of meditation
     This return to our being and its inherent peace is often initiated by an  
investigation, and hence its name, self-enquiry. However, once the enquiry  
has brought about the letting go of everything with which we normally ident -
ify our self, no further investigation is required. Self-enquiry gives way to  
self-abiding, self-remembering or simply resting in being, as being. It is in this self-resting that the unlimited and inherently peaceful nature  
of our being reveals itself, either gradually or suddenly. The memory of our  
eternity emerges, not from the past but from the depths of our being, where  
it is lying quietly all the time. Thus, the essence of meditation is simply to be aware of being. And as  
we are always aware of simply being, meditation ultimately is not something  
we do. It is what we are. In the context of this understanding, what is the purpose of meditations that  
involve focusing our attention on something like a mantra, an image, a flame,  
the breath or the pause between breaths? Many of us are so accustomed to giving our attention exclusively to the con -
tent of experience that bringing our attention back to rest in the heart of  
awareness may, initially, be too much of a confrontation. The gravitational  
pull of thoughts and feelings, the experience of the body and world, and the  
demand of activities and relationships is simply too strong. So, as a compassionate concession to such a mind, the religious and spiri -
tual traditions suggest a compromise whereby they give the mind an object  
on which to focus, by way of preparation for its ultimate subsidence in the  
heart of awareness. Such an object is a half-way stage between the finite mind  
and its essence. In this case, the mind which is usually dispersed amongst the objects of  
experience is brought to settle on a single object. Not only does this bring  
the disparate energies of the mind to rest, but it also infuses the mind with  
the particular quality of the object itself. For instance, a mantra, although it may be only a single syllable, is the dis -
tilled essence of centuries of understanding and is considered, as such, to  
contain this understanding encoded within it. Not only does the repetition  
of such a sound bring the mind to rest on a single object, but the pre-verbal  
35you are the happiness you seek
understanding that lies within it, in the form of a subtle vibration, gradually  
permeates the mind, infusing it with its innate intelligence. The same principle lies behind the power of music. Rock music has the  
capacity to arouse and articulate instinctive impulses in the body. Folk music  
can awaken the deepest longing in our hearts. And in listening to Bach or  
Beethoven, one may intuit that the very structure of the universe is being re -
vealed in a way that can never be grasped by the narrow compass of the mind. It is no coincidence that in classical Greek thought, the Logos or Word  
is considered the first form of divine love and intelligence, through which it  
manifests as the universe. Conversely, music in general, and a mantra in par -
ticular, are means by which we may return to this love and intelligence. The object could also be the breath. It is significant that in Latin both  
the word spiritus,  from which our word ‘spirit’ is derived, and the word  
anima , which refers to the soul or individual, can be translated as ‘breath’ or  
‘breathing’. Thus, the breath was seen as the principle in a living being which  
connects it to its divine or universal origin. Focusing attention on the breath is considered a powerful practice be -
cause it not only steadies the mind but also infuses it with its transparency,  
thereby preparing it for its final dissolution in the emptiness of awareness. Some traditions recommend that in meditation we give attention to an  
image of our teacher, and that in life in general we devote ourself to the  
person of the teacher. Entering into such a devotional relationship obviously  
has many potential pitfalls, but let us briefly consider the understanding  
that lies behind it. If correctly understood, the teacher is not a person as such but rather  
the impersonal functioning of love and intelligence. In giving one’s atten -
tion to a teacher, such as the Buddha, Jesus or Ramana Maharshi, one is  
placing one’s own mind in their mind, thereby clothing the individual  
mind in the divine mind, until, through continual acquaintance, it becomes  
subsumed by it. In the Sufi tradition it is referred to as ‘clothing oneself in  
the teacher’. I first met Francis Lucille in 1996  and immediately recognised that he  
would be the person to guide me to the recognition of my true nature. That  
is, he became my teacher and, later on, a close friend. For many years we  
used to host retreats for him in our home in Shropshire, and at the end of  
36the essence of meditation
one such retreat I found that he had left one of his tee shirts in my bedroom  
drawer. I immediately recognised it as a symbol of the unique quality of  
friendship that develops between a teacher and student, which often requires  
no verbal or formal acknowledgement. These examples are just some of the ways the religious and spiritual tradi -
tions have used the object-facing tendency of the mind as a means whereby  
the mind itself may be divested of its objective content and its essence of  
pure awareness revealed. Many of us also enact these sacred rituals in our homes without necess -
arily realising it. A vase of flowers on the mantelpiece, a bowl on the table,  
a carefully prepared meal, a painting on the wall: all such objects are invita -
tions to the mind to return from its adventure in the past and future to the  
sanctity of the now, in which we stand at one with our experience, divested  
of the subject –object relationship. If we are to find the peace and happiness for which we long above all else,  
we must, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, disentangle our self  
from the content of experience and recognise our essential, uncoloured,  
unqualified being. Until recently, the Direct Path that is being suggested here was not widely  
available, or if it was, it was couched in language that made it seem complex  
and unattainable. For this reason alone, many of us started on an indirect  
path. During the first conversation I ever had with Francis, he asked me how  
I had come by my great love of truth. I explained that my mother had intro -
duced me to the non-dual tradition in my teens, and went on to describe  
the various pathways and practices I had explored over the following twenty  
years. Because these practices had either been devotional in nature or  
required the directing of attention towards an object, a mantra in my case,  
I lamented the fact that it had taken me so long to find this simple, direct  
approach. Francis immediately replied that they were not wasted years. They were  
exactly what I had needed by way of preparation, he said, and had enabled  
me to understand the truth that I had heard from him at our first meeting. After a long silence, he added, ‘How beautiful, the mother handing her son  
back to God’. 37you are the happiness you seek
the focusing and relaxing of attention  
 
There seem to be so many different types of meditation. How do we decide which  
one is best for us? All meditation practice can be divided into two categories, each defined by  
its use of attention. In the indirect approach described above, attention is  
focused; in the direct approach, it is relaxed. In order to distinguish between  
them, it is helpful to understand what is meant by ‘attention’. The word ‘attention’ comes from two Latin words, ad, meaning ‘to’  
or ‘towards’, and tendere , meaning ‘to stretch’, implying that attention is  
a ‘stretching’ or directing of awareness towards an object of experience. When we say ‘I know a thought’ or ‘I perceive the tree’, the word ‘I’ refers  
to our self, awareness, the subject of experience that knows or is aware, and  
‘a thought’ or ‘the tree’ refers to the object that is known or perceived. Know -
ing and perceiving are the pathways of attention that connect the subject to  
the object. The directing of awareness towards an object of experience could be likened  
to the stretching of a rubber band. In order to stretch a rubber band, both of its  
ends must be secured. This sets up a tension within it. Directing one’s attention  
towards an object in meditation is like stretching a rubber band between two  
points, between the subject that knows and the object that is known. It requires  
an effort. Whilst this effort may initially be necessary to gather and steady the  
mind, ultimately it creates a state of tension that cannot bring about peace. If attention could be considered the ‘stretching’ of awareness towards  
an object, then the ultimate meditation is the relaxation of that movement. The effort of attention must be relaxed. Once the mind has become accus -
tomed to resting steadily on its selected object, we let go of the object and  
allow attention to flow back to its source of pure awareness. Just as a rubber  
band spontaneously reverts to its relaxed condition when one of its ends is  
released, so our attention naturally sinks back into the awareness from which  
it arises when its object is released. Attention is relieved of its tension. In this way, the mind, divested of its dynamism, is revealed as pure aware -
ness. That is the experience of peace. So do not worry about what sort of  
meditation to practise; sooner or later all rivers lose their dynamism and  
return to the ocean. 38the essence of meditation
Why do we lose ourselves so easily and frequently in experience? It is we, awareness, who being utterly, intimately one with experience, become  
lost in it. As the visionary poet and artist William Blake said, ‘Eternity is in  
love with the productions of time’. *   
     However, awareness pays for this love with its own innate happiness,  
just as a mother at times forgoes her own happiness for the sake of her child. At some point, the ensuing suffering compels awareness to extricate itself  
from the content of experience and return to itself. And it returns home on  
the same path by which it left: the path of attention. Previously we, awareness, directed our attention towards, and seemed to  
lose ourself in, the content of experience. Now we retrace our steps in the op -
posite direction, backwards, inwards or self-wards, withdrawing our attention  
from its content, thereby extricating ourself from the drama of experience and  
returning to our being, where our innate happiness is found quietly shining. *     *     *  
 
Is there such a thing as meditating too much? It depends on what you mean by meditation. If you mean focusing your at -
tention on an object, then yes, there is such a thing as too much meditation. If you consider by the word ‘meditation’ resting in and as the presence of  
awareness, then there is no such thing as too much. Being knowingly the  
presence of awareness is not something you do for a certain amount of time;  
it is what you always are! My goal is to be always knowingly myself, but why is it I so often seem to miss  
the mark? How can being yourself be your goal? You are already yourself! It’s like saying,  
‘My goal is to breathe’, except that being yourself is even more essential to  
you than breathing. You are already the self that is having the intention of  
being itself. 39* William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell  (c. 1790 ).you are the happiness you seek
It’s just that there are times when the thing that’s supposed to transpire during  
meditation transpires, and there are times when it doesn’t. Nothing is supposed to transpire during meditation! The thing that is  
supposed to transpire during meditation is the one thing that is transpi -
ring all the time. That is, the presence of your being. The fact of being  
aware. Well, then I’m not meditating! If meditation is something you do from time to time, it cannot be essential  
to you. It is added to you and then removed from you. Meditation is not an  
activity that you undertake in order to bring about a particular experience. The ‘I’ that you are is prior to the activity of meditation and cannot, there -
fore, depend on whether you are meditating or not. Meditation is to be  
knowingly the one you always and already are but may not have noticed due  
to your fascination with the drama of experience. Replace the word ‘medi -
tation’ with ‘being knowingly your self’. Ramana Maharshi suggested that  
the highest form of meditation was simply to be. Meditation is what we are, not what we do. The separate self is an activity  
of thinking and feeling that we do; it is not what we are. I think I have residues from decades of trying to meditate in exactly the wrong way. Most of us do! But the years of meditation practice have not been wasted. They have brought you to this understanding. However, now that your pre -
vious practice has done its job, don’t keep repeating it. Don’t be like one who  
has finally arrived on a beautiful Caribbean beach after a long, arduous jour -
ney and keeps asking, ‘Where shall we go next?’  
 
It’s not so easy to drop it. It feels like an ongoing process. The idea that you have to drop something is itself part of the old residue of  
believing that meditation is a battle between one part of your mind and  
another. These old habits are the remnants of the storm clouds that linger in  
the sky for a while after the storm. If you struggle with them, you simply  
40the essence of meditation
perpetuate them. The sky never struggles with the clouds. Why should it? It is not implicated by them. Your self or being is not implicated by the content of your mind, so why  
have an agenda with it? Just let the residues of this old conditioned activity  
slowly wind down in your welcoming but disinterested presence. Sooner  
or later, this residual effort will die of neglect and the peace that was lying  
dormant in the background of experience all this time will begin to emerge. There are times when I can easily practise this, but sometimes either my feelings are  
so overwhelming or my life is so busy and stressful that it just seems impossible. This is not about practising; it is about recognising what is always and already  
the case but has been temporarily overlooked. You cannot become what you  
already are; you cannot be what you are not. Simply be aware of your being. The awareness of being shines in you as  
the experience ‘I am’ before what you are is coloured or qualified by experi -
ence. Simply be knowingly your self all the time, irrespective of your cir -
cumstances: not just when sitting quietly with your eyes closed at certain  
periods during the day, but when you’re having lunch, going for a walk, talk -
ing with a friend, answering an email, and so on. Don’t make a distinction between everyday life and meditation. Even  
when you go to sleep at night, feel that you remain resting in and as your  
being. In fact, in deep sleep, you don’t really fall asleep; the world falls asleep  
in you. Meditation is simply what we are, and what we are never leaves us. It is  
the only thing (which is, of course, not itself a ‘thing’) that cannot be separ -
ated from us. We take our self with us wherever we go. If I am depressed, I am. If I am lonely, I am. If I am agitated, I am. If I am  
in ecstasy, I am. Whatever I am experiencing or feeling, I am. Allow the  
awareness of being to shine through your experience irrespective of its  
contents. Then you will find yourself at peace all the time. 41 chapter six
The Ultimate Prayer
Accept, Lord, this my emptiness,  
and so fill me with Thyself. frances nuttall   
 
intimate, impersonal, infinite being  
 
When we, awareness, lose our self in or become mixed up with the content  
of experience, we seem to acquire its qualities. The clear luminosity of our  
being is dimmed or endarkened by experience. However, just as the screen is never really veiled by a movie but only seems  
to be obscured due to the absorption of our attention in the drama, so our  
being is never really eclipsed by experience but only seems to be concealed,  
due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the content of experience. And just as one who is lost in a movie may temporarily take on its mood,  
becoming sad if the scene is sad or scared if it is frightening, so we lose our  
self in the drama of experience, becoming mixed up with its content and  
seeming, as a result, to become conditioned or qualified by it. Instead of experiencing our thoughts flowing through us like birds in the  
sky, we feel ‘I am my thoughts’. The experience of agitated thoughts becomes  
the feeling ‘I am agitated’. We allow our colourless being to be coloured by 
thoughts. Instead of experiencing afflictive emotions like clouds passing slowly through  
the sky, we feel ‘I am my emotions’. The feeling of sadness becomes ‘I am sad’. The feeling of tiredness becomes ‘I am tired’. Instead of experiencing sensations  
of the body like slowly moving clouds passing through us, we feel ‘I am the 
body’. What we are aware  of  becomes, or seems to become, what we are. In this way, our being is mixed with the content of experience and seem -
ingly qualified or conditioned by it. The awareness of being is coloured or  
obscured by the awareness of experience. you are the happiness you seek
     The familiar experience of our self to which we refer when we say ‘I am’ be-
comes the belief and feeling ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’. Our unlimited, aware being  
becomes, or seems to become, a temporary, finite self or ego and, as a result, our 
innate peace and joy is veiled. It is this veiling of our being that is responsible  
for our suffering. The happiness we are becomes the happiness we seek. the divine name  
 
When we feel ‘I am tired’, ‘I am lonely’, ‘I am depressed’, ‘I am stressed’,  
and so on, most of us emphasise the feeling of tiredness, loneliness, anxiety  
or stress and neglect our self. Our being becomes mixed up with the tired -
ness, loneliness, anxiety or stress and seems, as a result, to be veiled by it. On another occasion we may think, ‘I am reading’, ‘I am walking’ or  
‘I am eating’, thereby mistaking an activity that we do from time to time for  
what we always and essentially are. Or we say, ‘I am a mother or a father,  
single or married, a doctor, artist or gardener’, and thus allow our being to  
be qualified or conditioned by a relationship. All that is necessary is to relax or soften the focus of our attention from  
the feeling, activity or relationship and become aware of our self or being,  
the ‘I am’ aspect of experience. In fact, we don’t become  aware of our being; our being is always aware of  
itself. But having lost itself in the feeling, activity or relationship, it seems  to 
lose touch with itself and, therefore, appears to return to or become aware  
of itself. T o initiate this process, it is only necessary to take the thought ‘I am’ and  
stay with it, allowing it to invite us into the depths of our own being. The  
thought ‘I am’ is, as such, like the golden thread of Ariadne in Greek myth -
ology. If we follow it, it will lead us out of the labyrinth of experience and  
return us to our being, where the peace and joy for which we long resides. The formulation  ‘I am’ is a conceptualisation of the experience  ‘I am’, the  
awareness of being. It is like an image of the screen on the screen. As long as  
it is not qualified by experience, ‘I am’ refers directly to intimate, impersonal,  
infinite, self-aware being. It is for this reason that ‘I am’ is said to be the divine name. It is a beacon  
in the mind of the reality that lies behind  the mind and is, at the same time,  
the very essence  of  the mind. T o abide in the ‘I am’ is the highest form of prayer. 44the ultimate prayer
the soul, the world and god  
 
I have always thought of God as being at an infinite distance from myself. You seem to be suggesting that what is traditionally referred to as God is our very  
own being. Is that right? Many of us intuitively feel that there is a reality behind the visible universe  
which the finite mind, due to its limitations, cannot know. However, believ -
ing ourself to be an individual person, we project this greater reality at an  
infinite distance from us, thereby satisfying our intuition that it is impersonal  
and unlimited but neglecting its intimacy. After all, we as a person emanate  
from the universe, and therefore, whatever is the ultimate reality of the uni -
verse must also be the ultimate reality of ourself. In this way, we emphasise  
its transcendence at the expense of its immanence. Thus, the conventional idea of a creator God, beyond the world and at  
an infinite distance from ourself, is the inevitable corollary of the belief in  
ourself as a temporary, finite, independently existing entity. Instead of sinking  
deeply into our own being, discarding everything that is not essential to it,  
until its impersonal, unlimited but utterly intimate essence is revealed, we  
project God beyond the universe and then enter into a relationship of prayer  
and devotion to that God. The unity of being becomes the individual self or  
soul, the world and God. T o better understand this, imagine an actor, John Smith, playing the part  
of King Lear in Shakespeare’s play. It is as if King Lear, believing himself to  
be the king of England, the father of three daughters and at war with France,  
intuits the presence of John Smith but, unable to find him in his own ex -
perience, projects him at an infinite distance from himself and then begins  
to search for him, entering into a relationship of devotion and supplication  
with him without realising that he is, in fact, his very own being. This exoteric practice of prayer attenuates the ego or sense of separation,  
at least to a degree, and for this reason was considered a regulating factor in  
society for many centuries. However, in most cases, the sense of being a sep -
arate individual remains intact, and is even enhanced by its association with  
its particular image of God. Being a projection of the mind, this idea of God must share its limita -
tions. It is, as such, not so much that God ‘made man in His own image’,  
45you are the happiness you seek
although that is true in another sense, but that man conceived God in his  
own image. Such a God must always be a product of the limited point of  
view of the mind that projects it, and thus is always in danger of becoming  
an idea in the service of the ego. The egoic appropriation of the divine paves the way for individuals and  
nations to act out their beliefs and prejudices while claiming to be inspired  
and sanctioned by God. In this way, religion may cease to be a unifying prin -
ciple in society and become a source of division, conflict and hostility. Having said that, just as meditating on an object such as a mantra or the  
breath may be a prelude to the mind’s subsidence in its source, likewise our  
devotion to an external God may be a preparation for the dissolution of our  
longing in its source of pure love. And even after the traditional distinction between self and God has dis -
solved, the love that is the inevitable consequence of this dissolution may  
well continue to express itself in dualistic terms. Indeed, some of the finest  
poetry that has ever been written is couched in traditional dualistic language,  
although much of it bears the unmistakable signature of one whose sense of  
self has completely dissolved in God’s being. abiding as ‘i am’  
 
Just as the highest form of meditation is not the directing of attention to -
wards an object, however refined that may be, but the immersion of attention  
in its source of pure awareness, so the highest prayer or the ultimate gesture  
of devotion is not a movement of our longing towards the beloved but the  
subsidence of our longing in its source of pure love. In the words of a six -
teenth-century Italian monk, ‘Lord, Thou art the love with which I love  
Thee’. It is the baptism of becoming in the ocean of being. When attention is divested of its object, it stands revealed as pure aware -
ness; when devotion is relieved of the beloved, it stands revealed as love. Just as one who practises meditation must, at some point, relax the fierce  
discipline of attention and come to rest in and as the presence of awareness,  
the same is true for one on a path of devotion. The apparently separate sub -
ject of experience who once longed to merge with the object of her devotion  
now realises that she must abandon it and subside in the source of pure love  
from which her devotion arises. 46the ultimate prayer
     Thus it is said, ‘In the existence of your love, I become non-existent.’ *  
On both paths, our efforts have brought us to a threshold beyond which  
they cannot pass. At some point there is a shift or a conversion in our understanding:  
what  appears from the perspective of a separate self to be the effort we make  
towards the object of our longing is, in fact, the subject of our longing attract -
ing us into itself. Our longing is only the veiling of love. What we, as an apparently sep -
arate self, experience as effort is, in fact, the gravitational pull of grace. All desire is the attraction of love. For this reason, the ultimate prayer is to take the name ‘I am’ and lose  
oneself in its referent, abiding as that. In this abidance, our being is divested  
of the qualities and limitations that it acquires from experience and stands  
revealed as intimate, impersonal, infinite being. Just as we take off all our clothes before going to bed at night, revealing  
our naked body, so, in the practice of prayer, we discard everything that is  
superfluous to us, leaving naked being revealed. The person has dissolved,  
leaving only impersonal, infinite, utterly intimate being. Thus, the art of  
prayer is to abide as ‘I am’. It is the practice of the presence of God. *     *     *  
 
When I first heard about my true nature of being aware or awareness itself, it was  
easy and natural to reside there, but now the old habits of thinking and feeling have  
returned and I find myself going back and forth. How can I stay in awareness? When you say, ‘How can I stay in awareness?’ you are taking yourself to be  
something other than awareness, such as a body or a mind. Awareness is con -
sidered something that you must approach, rest in for a period of time and  
then leave. This ‘something other than awareness’ is the bundle of thoughts,  
images, feelings, sensations and perceptions that constitute the ego or separ -
ate self that most people believe and feel themselves to be, and around whom  
their activities and relationships revolve. 47* Jelaluddin Rumi, ‘I Am Yours’, The Love Poems of Rumi , translated by Fereydoun Kia, edited by Deepak  
Chopra (Harmony, 1998 ).you are the happiness you seek
     One of the activities of this apparently separate self is to undertake a spiri -
tual practice such as meditation in order to cease being a separate self, with  
the suffering that inevitably attends it, and become open, empty, inherently  
peaceful awareness. However, such an activity simply perpetuates the separate  
self at its origin, which is why it is so frustrating. So is there nothing I can do? There is nothing that you, awareness, need to do to be yourself. You are  
already always only yourself. However, if we believe and feel ourself to be  
a separate self, then we are already doing something. What are we doing? Seeking peace and happiness in objective experience. So what can I do? Investigate the ‘I’ on whose behalf the search for peace and happiness arises. That is, turn your attention upon yourself and investigate who you really  
are, and in this way bring yourself back to the experiential understanding  
that you always and already are the awareness that you seek. All the peace  
and happiness you long for resides there. It is easier said than done. No, it is easier done than said! It takes but a moment to ask yourself who  
you really are and allow that question to reveal the ever-present awareness  
that is your essential, irreducible nature behind and within all experience. There is nothing complex about this. We know our self more intimately  
than we know any other thing. Even our most treasured thoughts and feel -
ings are but strangers to us compared to the familiarity and intimacy of  
our own being. Know yourself as the fact of being aware or awareness itself rather than  
a continuous flow of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions. It is true that when any of these are present they are you, in the sense that  
they are made out of the awareness you are. But that is not all you are. They  
are ripples on the surface of your being. None of them define you or are  
essential to you. 48the ultimate prayer
     Mind is always in movement. No movement, no mind. But what about  
awareness? Awareness is always just awareness, colouring itself in the form of  
the mind or remaining in its uncoloured condition. But irrespective of whether  
awareness is colouring itself as experience or resting colourless, does awareness  
ever leave itself and then come back to itself? Does awareness ever ask the ques -
tion, ‘What practice do I need to undertake in order to know myself?’  
     What does awareness have to do to be itself? Does it have to undertake  
any activity in order to maintain itself, or is it always effortlessly simply being  
itself? What kind of experience could prevent awareness from being itself? What kind of experience could prevent awareness from being aware? Is not  
awareness effortlessly being aware now? What kind of a movie could prevent the screen from being the screen? Likewise, what kind of experience or activity could make awareness more  
aware than it already is? Does anything that takes place in a movie add any -
thing to or remove anything from the screen? Similarly, does anything that  
takes place in experience add anything to or remove anything from your self,  
awareness? Can you feel the freedom that is your original nature and that  
needs nothing from experience? I guess it’s more about not being so identified. But who has to be less identified? There is no separate self to be identified or  
not to be identified. There is awareness all alone or awareness colouring itself  
with its own activity, that is, awareness simply resting in and as itself or  
appearing in the form of experience. See clearly that knowing, being aware or awareness itself is your nature . It is who you are, not what you might become . Let this be your new default  
felt understanding. It is not something you can work towards. There is no  
separate, independently existing ‘you’ who could become or work towards  
awareness. There is just awareness and its own activity. And even when awareness is colouring itself in the form of thoughts,  
images, feelings, sensations and perceptions and seeming, as a result, to be a  
person, it is still not identical to any of these, just as a screen is never identical  
to any of the objects or characters in the movie. Awareness is always only  
ever identical to itself, for there is nothing in itself other than itself with  
which it could be either identified or unidentified. 49you are the happiness you seek
So there is just the recognition of that? Yes, there is just the recognition of that. And who is it that would recognise  
awareness? Only awareness is aware, and therefore only awareness is aware  
of itself or, indeed, aware of any other apparent thing. But I still find experience distracts me from my true nature. The drama of experience may retain the capacity to veil your true nature for  
some time, and therefore there may be a feeling of back-and-forth for a while. However, just as the movie loses its veiling power in time and, as a result,  
the distinction between the screen and the movie fades, so experience loses  
its ability to conceal awareness and, as a result, the distinction between aware -
ness and experience diminishes and the conflict between them ceases. At that stage there is no longer any back-and-forth, because it is all aware -
ness wherever you go and whatever you experience. At that point meditation  
is life and life is meditation. We may still choose to sit quietly with our eyes  
closed for some time to rest in being, but we would not essentially be doing  
anything different from what takes place in the activities of everyday life. *     *     *  
 
I’m wondering about the balance between doing and non-doing, because I feel  
I need to make an effort, yet at the same time I feel that non-doing is actually  
allowing me to step back more into who I truly am. If it seems, to begin with, that an effort is required to be aware of your  
own being, then make the effort. First investigate your essential nature and  
then stand knowingly as that. Don’t superimpose the idea of non-doing  
on yourself. In time, it will be clear that you cannot make an effort to be what you  
always and already are. Indeed, it would only be necessary to make an effort  
to be something you are not, such as a separate self. That is why it is so ex -
hausting to be a separate self! If I were to ask you to stand up now and take  
a step towards yourself, how much effort would you have to make? 50the ultimate prayer
None! Yes! Any effort would only seem to take you away from yourself, although  
even that is not true, because wherever we are, we are! The same is true  
of meditation, which simply means to be knowingly our self rather than  
mistaking our self for a cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and  
perceptions. However, if we feel that we are something other than this open, empty,  
inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled presence of awareness, then  
we should make the effort to investigate our self, recognise our self and then  
be that knowingly. All that then remains is to establish our self as that in all circumstances  
and to realign every aspect of our life with this felt understanding. 51 chapter seven
The Silent Presence of Awareness
My silence, life returns to thee  
In all the pauses of her breath. Hush back to rest the melody  
That out of thee awakeneth;  
And thou, wake ever, wake for me! alice meynell   
 
awareness is immanent and transcendent  
 
The understanding that we are the awareness that witnesses, knows or is  
aware of experience is the first great recognition. It is the first step on the  
path to rediscovering our innate happiness. In order to arrive at this understanding, we extricate ourself from the  
content of experience. We distinguish the knower from the known, the ex -
periencer from the experienced. We have not manipulated or rejected any  
aspect of experience; we have simply seen that no experience is essential to us. However, awareness does not witness experience from a distance like an  
aloof observer. Just as an image does not exist at a distance from the screen  
upon which it appears, likewise no experience stands apart from the aware -
ness with which it is known. Imagine a magical television screen that is not watched by someone sit -
ting on a sofa but has the capacity to watch the movie that is playing on  
itself. It is an aware  screen. We, awareness, are like that. We are utterly, inti -
mately one with any experience and, at the same time, free from and inde -
pendent of it. Awareness is both immanent and transcendent. This recognition is often accompanied by a great peace and joy. For so  
long we have been oppressed by our conditioning and history, weighed  
down by our circumstances and relationships, and now we have the first  
taste of our inherent freedom. It is a liberation from the burden we have  you are the happiness you seek
unknowingly carried around with us all our life, which usually becomes  
heavier as we get older. Now the burden lightens. Occasionally it is discarded wholesale, in one  
simple recognition that is so complete and powerful that no experience ever  
again has the capacity to veil the nature of our being. More commonly,  
as this understanding percolates more deeply into us, the accumulated  
burden of experience is gradually eased, and in its place a peace and lightness  
emerge from within. Later on, we will further collapse the apparent separation between aware -
ness and experience. However, for one who is lost in the drama of experience  
and has, as a result, mistaken their self for a bundle of thoughts, feelings,  
sensations, activities and relationships, it is first necessary to make the dis -
tinction between the two. awareness is eternal and unchanging  
 
Having extricated ourself from the content of experience and recognised  
ourself as the presence of awareness, the next step is to explore the nature  of 
the awareness that we essentially are. The essence or essential nature of anything is the aspect of that thing that  
cannot be removed from it. Anything that can be removed from a thing is  
not essential to it. No movie is essential to a screen because the screen can  
exist in the absence of movies. No cloud is essential to the sky because the  
sky can exist in the absence of clouds. All thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and re -
lationships are continually appearing and disappearing in our experience. They are added to us and subsequently removed from us. They cannot, there -
fore, be essential to us. However, there is one element of our experience of ourself that remains  
consistently present throughout all changing experience, namely, the fact of  
knowing, being aware or awareness itself. It is that to which we refer when  
we say simply ‘I’ or ‘I am’, before what I am has been coloured, qualified or  
conditioned by experience. It is the constant factor in all changing experience. In fact, the presence of awareness is not constant in time; it is ever-present  
now. It is only said to be constant in relation to the impermanence of things. However, being limited, the mind has no knowledge of the eternal and,  
54the silent presence of awareness
therefore, construes it in a way that is consistent with its own limitations. It conceives the ever-present as the everlasting. However, if we refer directly to the experience of being aware, that is,  
if awareness refers directly to its experience of itself, there is no thought pres -
ent and, therefore, no knowledge of time. In its own experience of itself,  
awareness is simply ever-present. It is eternal. It is from the ever-present nature of awareness that experience derives its  
singularity. A typical movie comprises approximately 150,000  frames, but  
when we are watching it we don’t think we are experiencing numerous  
images; we feel we are watching one movie. The movie derives its unity from  
the singularity of the screen. Likewise, we are always having only one experience, from which thought  
abstracts and conceptualises what is referred to in Buddhism as ‘ten thousand  
things’. What is it that unifies the apparently disparate elements of our  
experience? Awareness, the silent presence behind and within all experience. The presence of awareness is not something that we become , although in  
almost all cases its recognition requires some investigation. It is simply our  
essential, irreducible nature or true self, the ever-present background of all  
changing experience. Just as a person in a cinema watches a movie, enjoying the good and bad  
characters alike, so we, awareness, witness or are aware of the entire spectrum  
of experience, irrespective of its content. And just as nothing that takes place  
in a movie changes the basic nature of the screen, so nothing that takes place  
in experience changes our essential nature of pure awareness. The screen upon which a horror scene appears is the same screen upon  
which a romance unfolds. The awareness that witnesses our most ecstatic  
moments is the same awareness that witnesses our deepest sorrow. Awareness never changes; experience always changes. It is for this reason  
that each of us feels that we are now the same person as we were five minutes  
ago, five days ago, five years ago or when we were five-year-old children. But what is it in us that truly remains the same? The thoughts, images,  
feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and relationships that constitute  
‘me’, the person, have changed innumerable times over the course of our  
lives. And yet we feel each of these experiences as ‘mine’, betraying our rec -
ognition that there is in us a stable principle to whom  they happen or belong. 55you are the happiness you seek
That stable principle is our self, the immutable presence of awareness that  
we essentially are. It is easy to verify this in our experience. If each of us were to compare the  
content of our current experience with the content of our experience as, say,  
a five-year-old child, the two experiences would be entirely different. If, however, we were to refer to the awareness with which our current ex -
perience is known, and we were to have done so as a five-year-old child, the  
awareness in each case would be identical, just as all movies play on the same  
unchanging screen, irrespective of their content. Nothing ever happens to  
awareness; it does not change, age or evolve. That is, nothing ever happens  
to our essential self. Each of us has encountered innumerable experiences in our lives, some of  
which were painful and traumatic. Whilst these may have left residues in the  
deeper layers of our mind, which find their counterpart as subtle tensions and  
contractions in the body, nevertheless our essential being, the fact of simply  
being aware or awareness itself, remains unchanged and unharmed by them. This also accounts for the fact that many of us do not feel that we are  
getting any older. In this case, our essential, changeless nature is shining  
through the cloud cover of experience. Little do we realise how accurate this  
intuition is. One might argue that every time we look in the mirror, we are confronted  
with evidence of ageing. However, when we look in the mirror we do not  
see an image of our self  ; we see an image of our body. The awareness that  
perceives the image in the mirror is in exactly the same immaculate, untar -
nished, ageless condition as the awareness that saw the image of our face in  
a mirror as a five-year-old child. The Zen master who demands, ‘Show me your original face before you  
were born’ is simply trying to evoke in us a direct, immediate recognition of  
the ageless, pristine, ever-present nature of our self. awareness is self-aware  
 
All experience appears to or is known by awareness, but awareness itself never  
appears as an object of experience, just as the screen upon which a movie  
plays never itself appears as an object in the movie. 56the silent presence of awareness
     However, although awareness can never be known objectively, this does  
not imply that it is unknown or unknowable. If awareness were unknow -
able, we would not know that we are aware. If someone were to ask us the question, ‘Are you aware?’, each of us would  
pause and then answer, ‘Yes’. What is it that takes place in the pause between  
the question ‘Are you aware?’ and our answer ‘Yes’? We become aware that  
we are aware. That is, we, awareness, become aware that we are aware. If we, awareness, did not know the experience of being aware, we would  
have answered ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’. But we are certain beyond any doubt  
that we are aware, and that certainty comes from our experience  of being  
aware. Now, who or what is it that has the experience of being aware? Only  
awareness is aware, and therefore only awareness can be aware of anything,  
including itself. Thus, our certainty that we are aware is awareness’s knowledge  
of itself . In other words, awareness is self-aware, just as the sun is self-luminous. Awareness’s knowledge of itself is an utterly unique knowledge. It is  
the only knowledge that does not take place in subject–object relationship. In all other knowledge and experience, the object that is known – the  
thought, feeling, sensation or perception – is distinct from the awareness  
that knows it. But in awareness’s knowledge of itself, the one that knows and  
the one that is known are identical. I once heard a lecture on the nature of consciousness, given by a highly re -
spected professor of philosophy at Oxford University. At one point he said,  
‘Some philosophers believe that consciousness can know itself; their ideas  
should be put in the rubbish’. At the end of his talk, I asked him if he would agree that everyone in the  
room was presently having the experience of being aware. He agreed. I then  
suggested that whatever it is in each of us that is having the experience of  
being aware must, itself, be aware. He agreed. When I then pointed out that whatever it is in us that is aware of being  
aware must, therefore, be awareness’s awareness of itself, he simply dismissed  
the suggestion and turned away. In spite of his great erudition, he had over -
looked the most obvious, intimate and familiar aspect of experience. In the same way that the sun cannot direct the rays of its light towards  
itself as it does the earth or moon, and yet never ceases to illuminate itself,  
57you are the happiness you seek
likewise awareness cannot be known as an object of experience, and yet it is  
never unknown. That is, it never ceases to know itself. Awareness is self-aware by nature  and, as such, cannot not be aware of  
itself. It is always aware of itself. It is aware of itself simply by being itself. Awareness only seems to be unaware of itself because it is so accustomed  
to directing its attention, the light of its knowing, towards the content of  
experience. In doing so, it loses itself in experience and, as a result, overlooks  
or forgets itself. In other words, awareness’s knowledge of itself is obscured  
by its knowledge of objective experience. In the pause between the question ‘Are you aware?’ and our answer ‘Yes’,  
awareness does not become  aware of itself. The question simply invites aware -
ness to relax the focus of its attention from the content of experience and to  
‘come back’ to itself. *     *     *  
 
Does everyone have the chance to become enlightened? The question is based on a misunderstanding, namely, the belief that enlighten -
ment  is an extraordinary experience that may or may not be in reach of  
everyone. That’s true, but it is a misunderstanding that is almost universally shared! That’s also true! There are two reasons for this. The first is that Western cul -
ture has so profoundly lost contact with the simple understanding of our  
true nature that many people, at least until recently, turned to Eastern tradi -
tions for guidance on these matters. Although the recognition of our true  
nature – commonly known as awakening or enlightenment – is the same for  
all people, at all times and under all circumstances, the expression of it is in -
evitably coloured by the cultural conditioning in which it arises. For Westerners, Eastern culture is, by comparison with their own, un -
familiar and extraordinary, and therefore the various expressions of the rec -
ognition of our true nature that arose in these cultures acquired an air of  
the exotic. India and Tibet may seem to have been extraordinary cultures  
from a Western point of view, but there is nothing extraordinary about the  
58the silent presence of awareness
recognition of our essential being. In fact, our being is the most intimate,  
obvious and familiar experience there is, although, because it has no objective  
qualities, it is almost always overlooked in favour of objective experience. The second reason, which applies to Eastern traditions as much as West -
ern, is that the simplicity and directness of this recognition was often mis -
understood and, as a result, became mixed with beliefs and practices that  
obscured and mystified the original understanding, conferring upon it an  
atmosphere of complexity which alienated many people. But I have been exploring these matters for so many years and the recognition  
of my true nature seems as far away as ever. Imagine that John Smith plays King Lear one night and Romeo the next. As King Lear he is miserable; as Romeo he is in love. Is any part of King  
Lear or Romeo’s experience not pervaded by John Smith? No. Is the knowledge ‘I am John Smith’ less available in King Lear’s experience  
than it is in Romeo’s? No. Would the knowledge ‘I am John Smith’ be more available to King Lear if  
his relationship with Cordelia improved, or would the knowledge ‘I am John  
Smith’ be obscured for Romeo if he and Juliet fell out with one another? No. How far is the knowledge ‘I am John Smith’ from King Lear or Romeo? In other words, how much distance is there between King Lear or Romeo  
and John Smith? No distance at all. They are the same person. Exactly! There is no distance between anyone and their true nature. 59you are the happiness you seek
Whether one is a saint or a sinner, healthy or sick, intelligent or unintelligent,  
wealthy or impoverished, makes no difference. The knowledge ‘I am’ – that  
is, awareness’s awareness of itself – shines equally brightly in everybody’s  
experience, irrespective of its content. So there is no question of enlightenment  
or the recognition of your true nature being ‘far away’. How far is your self  
from your self? No distance! When you say, ‘The recognition of my true nature seems as far away as  
ever’ you are not referring to the recognition of your true nature; you are  
referring to an extraordinary event that you have perhaps read about in  
books and that you believe, should you be so lucky as to have such an ex -
perience, will relieve you of your suffering. As such, you are imagining  
that you are a separate person or self and that your true nature is an extra -
ordinary experience that you, as this separate person or self, will one day  
find. Is John Smith an extraordinary experience that King Lear might one  
day attain? No. King Lear is simply a series of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and per -
ceptions that are added to John Smith and subsequently removed, but John  
Smith remains the same throughout. Likewise, your thoughts, images, feel -
ings, sensations and perceptions are added to you and subsequently removed  
from you, whilst you remain the same throughout. What is that ‘you’, the  
one you call ‘I’? Are you not already fully present now? Yes, of course! So-called enlightenment is simply the recognition of the nature of that ‘you’,  
the familiar, intimate, obvious, ordinary ‘you’ that you currently are. It is not  
a ‘you’ that you might find or become in the future, nor an extraordinary  
experience that you as a person might have, but the very ‘you’ that lies at the  
heart of your experience irrespective of its content, including your current  
experience. Therefore, it is not necessary to postpone this recognition to  
60the silent presence of awareness
sometime in the future. The very idea of a search for your self is absurd. You are already that for which you are in search. Nothing needs to happen to the self that you already and essentially are. It does not need to be stilled, purified, transformed or improved. Above all,  
it does not need to be enlightened. It is already the bright light of awareness  
that shines in the midst of all experience, be that a deep depression, a mo -
ment of ecstasy or the taste of tea. It just needs to be seen for what it is. That  
is, it just needs to see or recognise itself as it is, before it is coloured or quali -
fied by experience. What is the nature of the ‘you’ – the one you call ‘I’ –  
that shines brightly in all your experience? (Long silence)  
 
Perfect! Stay in that silence and the memory of your eternity will emerge. Your self will remember itself: not the memory of an experience in the past,  
but the memory of something that is present in you now but which seems  
to have been obscured by the clamour of experience. Your self will wake up  
from the amnesia of experience and recognise or remember the self that it is  
and has always been. That self – if we can call it a self – divested of the limitations that it seems  
to acquire from experience, is without limits, ever-present, immutable and  
imperturbable, and thus its nature is peace. It is devoid of any sense of lack,  
and thus its nature is unconditional happiness. It feels neutral. T o begin with, by contrast with the objects of experience, it may feel neutral,  
but in time its innate peace will make itself felt. This is not a peace that is  
dependent upon what does or does not take place in experience, nor a peace  
that is beyond  experience, but rather the imperturbable peace that is prior to  
and shines in the midst of all experience. In time, that peace emerges from the background of experience and be -
gins to pervade the foreground, progressively saturating experience with the  
feeling of sufficiency, fulfilment and contentment. That quiet, unconditional  
peace and joy is the hallmark of this recognition. 61you are the happiness you seek
awareness is never not known  
 
If someone were now to suggest that we become aware of our breathing,  
we would relax the focus of our attention from these words and become  
aware of our breath. In fact, we do not become  aware of our breath. We were  
already aware of it, although our awareness of our breath was eclipsed by our  
awareness of these words, our room and whatever else was commanding our  
attention prior to this suggestion. Awareness is even more subtle than our breathing. It is the silent presence  
behind all experience which, like the breath, is always being experienced. That is, it is always knowing itself, although it often overlooks itself in favour  
of objective experience. So it would be more accurate to say that awareness’s  
knowledge of itself is partially  obscured by objective experience, and even  
then, only seemingly  so. Let us take another analogy to illustrate this. Imagine a woman just before  
she leaves home for work in the morning. When she thinks of herself, she  
thinks of herself as a woman. Now she goes to work at the police station. She changes into her uniform and starts her day’s work with her colleagues  
in the office. She now thinks of herself as a policewoman. In both cases, she knows herself as a woman. In the first case, her knowl -
edge of herself as a woman is not qualified by any association or activity. In the second case, her knowledge of herself as a woman is qualified by her  
relationships and activities as a police officer. As a result, she now thinks of  
herself as a policewoman; she no longer knows herself as an unqualified  
woman. Likewise, awareness never ceases knowing itself, because self-awareness is its  
nature. Its knowing of itself is simply mixed with the content of experience  
and so, in most cases, it does not know itself clearly . Awareness partially over-
looks or forgets its knowledge of itself in favour of its knowledge of objec -
tive experience. That is the price it pays for experience. Shantananda Saraswati used to tell a story of ten men who swam across  
the Ganges. Once on the other side, each man counted the party in order to  
ensure that everyone had crossed the river safely. Each man counted only nine. A passerby, finding them distraught, enquired as to the reason, and they  
explained that one of their friends had drowned.
You-are-the-Happiness-You-Seek-Rupert-Spira.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        It is for this  
reason that Bayazid Bastami said, ‘That for which we long cannot be found  
by seeking, and yet only seekers find it’. *  
 
*     *     *  
 
 
30* As quoted in James Fadiman and Robert Frager, Essential Sufism  (HarperCollins, 1997 ). the art of self-enquiry
I’m haunted by the feeling of being a failure and not having fulfilled my poten -
tial in life. I’ve tried so many approaches to help with this but it just persists. Can the practice of self-enquiry help me. In this approach we don’t pay much attention to the feeling of failure or lack  
of fulfilment. Instead we go directly to the core of the issue, the ‘I’ on whose  
behalf such feelings arise. All our emotional or psychological suffering arises on behalf of that one,  
so by resolving this issue once and for all, we do not simply take care of the  
feeling of being a failure or unfulfilled; we take care of the  source  of all afflic -
tive emotions. When we explore the ‘I’ around whom our suffering revolves, we don’t  
find a self who is frustrated, unfulfilled, anxious, lonely, ashamed, and so on. We find our essential being, which is completely free of any such feelings. That is to say, it finds or recognises itself. It is open, empty, at peace and  
without any sense of lack. This is our natural state. In fact, it is not even necessary to conceptualise it as peace and happiness. We do so only in order to contrast it with our previous state of disturbance  
and lack. Once we have been accustomed to this natural condition for some  
time, it simply becomes our new norm. All that is necessary is to remain in touch with our self, the inherently  
peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled presence of awareness, until this be -
comes our new, felt sense of self. In fact, it is not really a new sense of self. It is simply the familiar sense of self that always accompanies us, that is us, 
but is now relieved of its previous agitation and sense of lack. The feeling of dissatisfaction which has accompanied us for most of our  
life simply leaves us, not because we have done anything to it but because  
we have undermined the assumption upon which it arose. We feel fulfilled,  
but for no particular reason. All our physical and mental faculties remain intact. They are simply re -
lieved of the tyranny of the separate self and, as a result, are now free to be  
used in service of the qualities that are inherent in us, namely peace, joy, love  
and freedom. *     *     *  
 
31you are the happiness you seek
How can one evaluate the authenticity of a teaching. One of the hallmarks of a true teaching is that it is not affiliated with any  
particular position, attitude or practice. It is not a body of knowledge and  
practices that is disseminated like a maths or history curriculum. It is simply  
a spontaneous response to a situation or question that comes directly from  
understanding or love. Understanding and love do not have a form of their own and are, therefore,  
free to assume any shape or action that is perfectly tailored to a particular cir -
cumstance or question, just as a bucket dipped into the ocean will draw out a  
measure of water that is uniquely and exquisitely fitted to its own proportions. A true teaching cannot be evaluated by its form or content alone but by  
the source from which it originates. Any expression that originates in under -
standing or love contains within it a particular quality, a power even, that  
has the ability to take the recipient to the same source of understanding and  
love in their self. The teaching is simply the means by which they are given  
experiential access to this understanding and love. The finite mind superimposes its own limitations on everything that it  
knows or perceives and, therefore, cannot find happiness or know the ulti -
mate reality. For this reason, the teaching will often refuse to entertain the  
mind on its own terms and will find ways of exposing and undermining it. As a result, such a teaching may give one person a practice and in the next  
moment, in response to another question, refuse to suggest any such practice. For some people, just a few words of guidance will be sufficient. However,  
if a person has an inquisitive and sophisticated mind, then it is likely that  
they will raise objections and question every aspect of the teaching. If such  
a mind is not acknowledged and honoured, it tends to become frustrated  
and angry. In order to pave the way for the understanding and love that is the essence  
of the teaching to be taken deeply into the heart and body, it will, in such  
cases, be necessary to elaborate refined lines of reasoning. For such people,  
it is only when the mind’s objections and questions have been met satisfac -
torily that they will be open to a new possibility. In this case, the teaching will give the mind complete freedom to explore  
these matters as much as it wishes, and even encourage it to do so, thereby  
allowing it gradually, naturally and effortlessly to bring itself to its own end. 32chapter five
The Essence of Meditation
There is a huge silence inside each of us  
that beckons us into itself. meister eckhart   
 
The recognition of our true nature is not a new experience that happens  
to us. It is the revealing or the noticing of what we always and already are  
but often overlook due to our exclusive fascination with the content of ex -
perience. It is we, awareness, who, being intimately one with all experience, seem  
to lose our self in it, thereby overlooking our innate peace and happiness. The inevitable suffering that ensues from this is a call from our self to our  
self – a call to return home from the adventure of experience in which we  
have become entangled. In this recognition we do not cease being one kind of self and become  
another kind of self. We simply cease losing our self in or identifying our  
self with the content of experience, and we recognise our self as the inherently  
peaceful presence of awareness that lies behind it. We cannot become  what we always and already are, and we cannot be 
what we are not. We can only cease imagining and feeling that we are some -
thing other than the presence of awareness. Once we have disentangled our  
self from the content of experience, our true nature simply shines by itself,  
just as the blue sky is revealed when the clouds disperse. disentangling our self  
 
If the forgetting or ignoring of our essential self is the veiling of our innate hap -
piness and the ultimate cause of psychological suffering, then the remembrance  
or clear knowledge of our essential self is the means by which this forgetfulness  
or ignorance is removed  and our innate peace and happiness revealed. you are the happiness you seek
     If someone believes they have covid-19, they may take a test. If the test  
comes back negative, their ignorance of their state of health is simply re -
moved. The removal of ignorance cannot be said to be the cause of their good  
health. It simply allows what is already the case to be fully acknowledged. Likewise, the recognition of our true nature is not the  cause  of happiness;  
it is simply the removal of the ignorance of our true nature. It is the uncover -
ing of our being, whose nature is happiness itself. Meditation is the relaxing of the focus of our attention from its content,  
the disentangling of our self from the drama of experience, and the sub -
sequent emergence of our essential nature of silent awareness. It is simply the process whereby our essential nature or being is revealed,  
after it is divested of all the qualities or characteristics that it acquires from  
experience. Instead of allowing our attention to become mixed with the con -
tent of experience, we trace it back in the opposite direction. In the absence  
of anything to hold on to, attention can no longer stand and is dissolved  
in its source of pure awareness. This recognition of the essential nature of our self is traditionally referred  
to as enlightenment, awakening, salvation or satori. However, enlightenment  
is not an extraordinary, mystical or exotic experience. In fact, it is not an ob -
jective experience at all. Somebody once asked the Zen teacher Shunryu Su -
zuki why he never spoke of his enlightenment experience, and his wife, who  
was sitting at the back of the hall, stood up and said, ‘Because he never had  
one. ’ Our essential being or true nature of pure awareness simply ceases to  
be veiled or ‘endarkened’ by experience and, as a result, stands revealed. direct and indirect paths  
 
This return to our being, which is referred to in many different ways in  
the religious and spiritual traditions, constitutes the essence of meditation. It is sometimes referred to as the Direct Path, as it is the means by which we  
go directly to the happiness that is the nature of our being, rather than via  
an object such as a mantra, the breath or a teacher. Ramana Maharshi referred to it as ‘sinking the mind into the heart’. Jesus  
referred to it as ‘entering into thy closet, closing thy door and praying to thy  
Father, who is in secret’, that is, returning one’s attention to one’s being and  
resting there quietly, all alone. 34the essence of meditation
     This return to our being and its inherent peace is often initiated by an  
investigation, and hence its name, self-enquiry. However, once the enquiry  
has brought about the letting go of everything with which we normally ident -
ify our self, no further investigation is required. Self-enquiry gives way to  
self-abiding, self-remembering or simply resting in being, as being. It is in this self-resting that the unlimited and inherently peaceful nature  
of our being reveals itself, either gradually or suddenly. The memory of our  
eternity emerges, not from the past but from the depths of our being, where  
it is lying quietly all the time. Thus, the essence of meditation is simply to be aware of being. And as  
we are always aware of simply being, meditation ultimately is not something  
we do. It is what we are. In the context of this understanding, what is the purpose of meditations that  
involve focusing our attention on something like a mantra, an image, a flame,  
the breath or the pause between breaths. Many of us are so accustomed to giving our attention exclusively to the con -
tent of experience that bringing our attention back to rest in the heart of  
awareness may, initially, be too much of a confrontation. The gravitational  
pull of thoughts and feelings, the experience of the body and world, and the  
demand of activities and relationships is simply too strong. So, as a compassionate concession to such a mind, the religious and spiri -
tual traditions suggest a compromise whereby they give the mind an object  
on which to focus, by way of preparation for its ultimate subsidence in the  
heart of awareness. Such an object is a half-way stage between the finite mind  
and its essence. In this case, the mind which is usually dispersed amongst the objects of  
experience is brought to settle on a single object. Not only does this bring  
the disparate energies of the mind to rest, but it also infuses the mind with  
the particular quality of the object itself. For instance, a mantra, although it may be only a single syllable, is the dis -
tilled essence of centuries of understanding and is considered, as such, to  
contain this understanding encoded within it. Not only does the repetition  
of such a sound bring the mind to rest on a single object, but the pre-verbal  
35you are the happiness you seek
understanding that lies within it, in the form of a subtle vibration, gradually  
permeates the mind, infusing it with its innate intelligence. The same principle lies behind the power of music. Rock music has the  
capacity to arouse and articulate instinctive impulses in the body. Folk music  
can awaken the deepest longing in our hearts. And in listening to Bach or  
Beethoven, one may intuit that the very structure of the universe is being re -
vealed in a way that can never be grasped by the narrow compass of the mind. It is no coincidence that in classical Greek thought, the Logos or Word  
is considered the first form of divine love and intelligence, through which it  
manifests as the universe. Conversely, music in general, and a mantra in par -
ticular, are means by which we may return to this love and intelligence. The object could also be the breath. It is significant that in Latin both  
the word spiritus,  from which our word ‘spirit’ is derived, and the word  
anima, which refers to the soul or individual, can be translated as ‘breath’ or  
‘breathing’. Thus, the breath was seen as the principle in a living being which  
connects it to its divine or universal origin. Focusing attention on the breath is considered a powerful practice be -
cause it not only steadies the mind but also infuses it with its transparency,  
thereby preparing it for its final dissolution in the emptiness of awareness. Some traditions recommend that in meditation we give attention to an  
image of our teacher, and that in life in general we devote ourself to the  
person of the teacher. Entering into such a devotional relationship obviously  
has many potential pitfalls, but let us briefly consider the understanding  
that lies behind it. If correctly understood, the teacher is not a person as such but rather  
the impersonal functioning of love and intelligence. In giving one’s atten -
tion to a teacher, such as the Buddha, Jesus or Ramana Maharshi, one is  
placing one’s own mind in their mind, thereby clothing the individual  
mind in the divine mind, until, through continual acquaintance, it becomes  
subsumed by it. In the Sufi tradition it is referred to as ‘clothing oneself in  
the teacher’. I first met Francis Lucille in 1996  and immediately recognised that he  
would be the person to guide me to the recognition of my true nature. That  
is, he became my teacher and, later on, a close friend. For many years we  
used to host retreats for him in our home in Shropshire, and at the end of  
36the essence of meditation
one such retreat I found that he had left one of his tee shirts in my bedroom  
drawer. I immediately recognised it as a symbol of the unique quality of  
friendship that develops between a teacher and student, which often requires  
no verbal or formal acknowledgement. These examples are just some of the ways the religious and spiritual tradi -
tions have used the object-facing tendency of the mind as a means whereby  
the mind itself may be divested of its objective content and its essence of  
pure awareness revealed. Many of us also enact these sacred rituals in our homes without necess -
arily realising it. A vase of flowers on the mantelpiece, a bowl on the table,  
a carefully prepared meal, a painting on the wall: all such objects are invita -
tions to the mind to return from its adventure in the past and future to the  
sanctity of the now, in which we stand at one with our experience, divested  
of the subject –object relationship. If we are to find the peace and happiness for which we long above all else,  
we must, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, disentangle our self  
from the content of experience and recognise our essential, uncoloured,  
unqualified being. Until recently, the Direct Path that is being suggested here was not widely  
available, or if it was, it was couched in language that made it seem complex  
and unattainable. For this reason alone, many of us started on an indirect  
path. During the first conversation I ever had with Francis, he asked me how  
I had come by my great love of truth. I explained that my mother had intro -
duced me to the non-dual tradition in my teens, and went on to describe  
the various pathways and practices I had explored over the following twenty  
years. Because these practices had either been devotional in nature or  
required the directing of attention towards an object, a mantra in my case,  
I lamented the fact that it had taken me so long to find this simple, direct  
approach. Francis immediately replied that they were not wasted years. They were  
exactly what I had needed by way of preparation, he said, and had enabled  
me to understand the truth that I had heard from him at our first meeting. After a long silence, he added, ‘How beautiful, the mother handing her son  
back to God’. 37you are the happiness you seek
the focusing and relaxing of attention  
 
There seem to be so many different types of meditation. How do we decide which  
one is best for us. All meditation practice can be divided into two categories, each defined by  
its use of attention. In the indirect approach described above, attention is  
focused; in the direct approach, it is relaxed. In order to distinguish between  
them, it is helpful to understand what is meant by ‘attention’. The word ‘attention’ comes from two Latin words, ad, meaning ‘to’  
or ‘towards’, and tendere, meaning ‘to stretch’, implying that attention is  
a ‘stretching’ or directing of awareness towards an object of experience. When we say ‘I know a thought’ or ‘I perceive the tree’, the word ‘I’ refers  
to our self, awareness, the subject of experience that knows or is aware, and  
‘a thought’ or ‘the tree’ refers to the object that is known or perceived. Know -
ing and perceiving are the pathways of attention that connect the subject to  
the object. The directing of awareness towards an object of experience could be likened  
to the stretching of a rubber band. In order to stretch a rubber band, both of its  
ends must be secured. This sets up a tension within it. Directing one’s attention  
towards an object in meditation is like stretching a rubber band between two  
points, between the subject that knows and the object that is known. It requires  
an effort. Whilst this effort may initially be necessary to gather and steady the  
mind, ultimately it creates a state of tension that cannot bring about peace. If attention could be considered the ‘stretching’ of awareness towards  
an object, then the ultimate meditation is the relaxation of that movement. The effort of attention must be relaxed. Once the mind has become accus -
tomed to resting steadily on its selected object, we let go of the object and  
allow attention to flow back to its source of pure awareness. Just as a rubber  
band spontaneously reverts to its relaxed condition when one of its ends is  
released, so our attention naturally sinks back into the awareness from which  
it arises when its object is released. Attention is relieved of its tension. In this way, the mind, divested of its dynamism, is revealed as pure aware -
ness. That is the experience of peace. So do not worry about what sort of  
meditation to practise; sooner or later all rivers lose their dynamism and  
return to the ocean. 38the essence of meditation
Why do we lose ourselves so easily and frequently in experience. It is we, awareness, who being utterly, intimately one with experience, become  
lost in it. As the visionary poet and artist William Blake said, ‘Eternity is in  
love with the productions of time’. *   
     However, awareness pays for this love with its own innate happiness,  
just as a mother at times forgoes her own happiness for the sake of her child. At some point, the ensuing suffering compels awareness to extricate itself  
from the content of experience and return to itself. And it returns home on  
the same path by which it left: the path of attention. Previously we, awareness, directed our attention towards, and seemed to  
lose ourself in, the content of experience. Now we retrace our steps in the op -
posite direction, backwards, inwards or self-wards, withdrawing our attention  
from its content, thereby extricating ourself from the drama of experience and  
returning to our being, where our innate happiness is found quietly shining. *     *     *  
 
Is there such a thing as meditating too much. It depends on what you mean by meditation. If you mean focusing your at -
tention on an object, then yes, there is such a thing as too much meditation. If you consider by the word ‘meditation’ resting in and as the presence of  
awareness, then there is no such thing as too much. Being knowingly the  
presence of awareness is not something you do for a certain amount of time;  
it is what you always are. My goal is to be always knowingly myself, but why is it I so often seem to miss  
the mark. How can being yourself be your goal. You are already yourself. It’s like saying,  
‘My goal is to breathe’, except that being yourself is even more essential to  
you than breathing. You are already the self that is having the intention of  
being itself. 39* William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell  (c. 1790 ). you are the happiness you seek
It’s just that there are times when the thing that’s supposed to transpire during  
meditation transpires, and there are times when it doesn’t. Nothing is supposed to transpire during meditation. The thing that is  
supposed to transpire during meditation is the one thing that is transpi -
ring all the time. That is, the presence of your being. The fact of being  
aware. Well, then I’m not meditating. If meditation is something you do from time to time, it cannot be essential  
to you. It is added to you and then removed from you. Meditation is not an  
activity that you undertake in order to bring about a particular experience. The ‘I’ that you are is prior to the activity of meditation and cannot, there -
fore, depend on whether you are meditating or not. Meditation is to be  
knowingly the one you always and already are but may not have noticed due  
to your fascination with the drama of experience. Replace the word ‘medi -
tation’ with ‘being knowingly your self’. Ramana Maharshi suggested that  
the highest form of meditation was simply to be. Meditation is what we are, not what we do. The separate self is an activity  
of thinking and feeling that we do; it is not what we are. I think I have residues from decades of trying to meditate in exactly the wrong way. Most of us do. But the years of meditation practice have not been wasted. They have brought you to this understanding. However, now that your pre -
vious practice has done its job, don’t keep repeating it. Don’t be like one who  
has finally arrived on a beautiful Caribbean beach after a long, arduous jour -
ney and keeps asking, ‘Where shall we go next. ’  
 
It’s not so easy to drop it. It feels like an ongoing process. The idea that you have to drop something is itself part of the old residue of  
believing that meditation is a battle between one part of your mind and  
another. These old habits are the remnants of the storm clouds that linger in  
the sky for a while after the storm. If you struggle with them, you simply  
40the essence of meditation
perpetuate them. The sky never struggles with the clouds. Why should it. It is not implicated by them. Your self or being is not implicated by the content of your mind, so why  
have an agenda with it. Just let the residues of this old conditioned activity  
slowly wind down in your welcoming but disinterested presence. Sooner  
or later, this residual effort will die of neglect and the peace that was lying  
dormant in the background of experience all this time will begin to emerge. There are times when I can easily practise this, but sometimes either my feelings are  
so overwhelming or my life is so busy and stressful that it just seems impossible. This is not about practising; it is about recognising what is always and already  
the case but has been temporarily overlooked. You cannot become what you  
already are; you cannot be what you are not. Simply be aware of your being. The awareness of being shines in you as  
the experience ‘I am’ before what you are is coloured or qualified by experi -
ence. Simply be knowingly your self all the time, irrespective of your cir -
cumstances: not just when sitting quietly with your eyes closed at certain  
periods during the day, but when you’re having lunch, going for a walk, talk -
ing with a friend, answering an email, and so on. Don’t make a distinction between everyday life and meditation. Even  
when you go to sleep at night, feel that you remain resting in and as your  
being. In fact, in deep sleep, you don’t really fall asleep; the world falls asleep  
in you. Meditation is simply what we are, and what we are never leaves us. It is  
the only thing (which is, of course, not itself a ‘thing’) that cannot be separ -
ated from us. We take our self with us wherever we go. If I am depressed, I am. If I am lonely, I am. If I am agitated, I am. If I am  
in ecstasy, I am. Whatever I am experiencing or feeling, I am. Allow the  
awareness of being to shine through your experience irrespective of its  
contents. Then you will find yourself at peace all the time. 41 chapter six
The Ultimate Prayer
Accept, Lord, this my emptiness,  
and so fill me with Thyself. frances nuttall   
 
intimate, impersonal, infinite being  
 
When we, awareness, lose our self in or become mixed up with the content  
of experience, we seem to acquire its qualities. The clear luminosity of our  
being is dimmed or endarkened by experience. However, just as the screen is never really veiled by a movie but only seems  
to be obscured due to the absorption of our attention in the drama, so our  
being is never really eclipsed by experience but only seems to be concealed,  
due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the content of experience. And just as one who is lost in a movie may temporarily take on its mood,  
becoming sad if the scene is sad or scared if it is frightening, so we lose our  
self in the drama of experience, becoming mixed up with its content and  
seeming, as a result, to become conditioned or qualified by it. Instead of experiencing our thoughts flowing through us like birds in the  
sky, we feel ‘I am my thoughts’. The experience of agitated thoughts becomes  
the feeling ‘I am agitated’. We allow our colourless being to be coloured by 
thoughts. Instead of experiencing afflictive emotions like clouds passing slowly through  
the sky, we feel ‘I am my emotions’. The feeling of sadness becomes ‘I am sad’. The feeling of tiredness becomes ‘I am tired’. Instead of experiencing sensations  
of the body like slowly moving clouds passing through us, we feel ‘I am the 
body’. What we are aware  of  becomes, or seems to become, what we are. In this way, our being is mixed with the content of experience and seem -
ingly qualified or conditioned by it. The awareness of being is coloured or  
obscured by the awareness of experience. you are the happiness you seek
     The familiar experience of our self to which we refer when we say ‘I am’ be-
comes the belief and feeling ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’. Our unlimited, aware being  
becomes, or seems to become, a temporary, finite self or ego and, as a result, our 
innate peace and joy is veiled. It is this veiling of our being that is responsible  
for our suffering. The happiness we are becomes the happiness we seek. the divine name  
 
When we feel ‘I am tired’, ‘I am lonely’, ‘I am depressed’, ‘I am stressed’,  
and so on, most of us emphasise the feeling of tiredness, loneliness, anxiety  
or stress and neglect our self. Our being becomes mixed up with the tired -
ness, loneliness, anxiety or stress and seems, as a result, to be veiled by it. On another occasion we may think, ‘I am reading’, ‘I am walking’ or  
‘I am eating’, thereby mistaking an activity that we do from time to time for  
what we always and essentially are. Or we say, ‘I am a mother or a father,  
single or married, a doctor, artist or gardener’, and thus allow our being to  
be qualified or conditioned by a relationship. All that is necessary is to relax or soften the focus of our attention from  
the feeling, activity or relationship and become aware of our self or being,  
the ‘I am’ aspect of experience. In fact, we don’t become  aware of our being; our being is always aware of  
itself. But having lost itself in the feeling, activity or relationship, it seems  to 
lose touch with itself and, therefore, appears to return to or become aware  
of itself. T o initiate this process, it is only necessary to take the thought ‘I am’ and  
stay with it, allowing it to invite us into the depths of our own being. The  
thought ‘I am’ is, as such, like the golden thread of Ariadne in Greek myth -
ology. If we follow it, it will lead us out of the labyrinth of experience and  
return us to our being, where the peace and joy for which we long resides. The formulation  ‘I am’ is a conceptualisation of the experience  ‘I am’, the  
awareness of being. It is like an image of the screen on the screen. As long as  
it is not qualified by experience, ‘I am’ refers directly to intimate, impersonal,  
infinite, self-aware being. It is for this reason that ‘I am’ is said to be the divine name. It is a beacon  
in the mind of the reality that lies behind  the mind and is, at the same time,  
the very essence  of  the mind. T o abide in the ‘I am’ is the highest form of prayer. 44the ultimate prayer
the soul, the world and god  
 
I have always thought of God as being at an infinite distance from myself. You seem to be suggesting that what is traditionally referred to as God is our very  
own being. Is that right. Many of us intuitively feel that there is a reality behind the visible universe  
which the finite mind, due to its limitations, cannot know. However, believ -
ing ourself to be an individual person, we project this greater reality at an  
infinite distance from us, thereby satisfying our intuition that it is impersonal  
and unlimited but neglecting its intimacy. After all, we as a person emanate  
from the universe, and therefore, whatever is the ultimate reality of the uni -
verse must also be the ultimate reality of ourself. In this way, we emphasise  
its transcendence at the expense of its immanence. Thus, the conventional idea of a creator God, beyond the world and at  
an infinite distance from ourself, is the inevitable corollary of the belief in  
ourself as a temporary, finite, independently existing entity. Instead of sinking  
deeply into our own being, discarding everything that is not essential to it,  
until its impersonal, unlimited but utterly intimate essence is revealed, we  
project God beyond the universe and then enter into a relationship of prayer  
and devotion to that God. The unity of being becomes the individual self or  
soul, the world and God. T o better understand this, imagine an actor, John Smith, playing the part  
of King Lear in Shakespeare’s play. It is as if King Lear, believing himself to  
be the king of England, the father of three daughters and at war with France,  
intuits the presence of John Smith but, unable to find him in his own ex -
perience, projects him at an infinite distance from himself and then begins  
to search for him, entering into a relationship of devotion and supplication  
with him without realising that he is, in fact, his very own being. This exoteric practice of prayer attenuates the ego or sense of separation,  
at least to a degree, and for this reason was considered a regulating factor in  
society for many centuries. However, in most cases, the sense of being a sep -
arate individual remains intact, and is even enhanced by its association with  
its particular image of God. Being a projection of the mind, this idea of God must share its limita -
tions. It is, as such, not so much that God ‘made man in His own image’,  
45you are the happiness you seek
although that is true in another sense, but that man conceived God in his  
own image. Such a God must always be a product of the limited point of  
view of the mind that projects it, and thus is always in danger of becoming  
an idea in the service of the ego. The egoic appropriation of the divine paves the way for individuals and  
nations to act out their beliefs and prejudices while claiming to be inspired  
and sanctioned by God. In this way, religion may cease to be a unifying prin -
ciple in society and become a source of division, conflict and hostility. Having said that, just as meditating on an object such as a mantra or the  
breath may be a prelude to the mind’s subsidence in its source, likewise our  
devotion to an external God may be a preparation for the dissolution of our  
longing in its source of pure love. And even after the traditional distinction between self and God has dis -
solved, the love that is the inevitable consequence of this dissolution may  
well continue to express itself in dualistic terms. Indeed, some of the finest  
poetry that has ever been written is couched in traditional dualistic language,  
although much of it bears the unmistakable signature of one whose sense of  
self has completely dissolved in God’s being. abiding as ‘i am’  
 
Just as the highest form of meditation is not the directing of attention to -
wards an object, however refined that may be, but the immersion of attention  
in its source of pure awareness, so the highest prayer or the ultimate gesture  
of devotion is not a movement of our longing towards the beloved but the  
subsidence of our longing in its source of pure love. In the words of a six -
teenth-century Italian monk, ‘Lord, Thou art the love with which I love  
Thee’. It is the baptism of becoming in the ocean of being. When attention is divested of its object, it stands revealed as pure aware -
ness; when devotion is relieved of the beloved, it stands revealed as love. Just as one who practises meditation must, at some point, relax the fierce  
discipline of attention and come to rest in and as the presence of awareness,  
the same is true for one on a path of devotion. The apparently separate sub -
ject of experience who once longed to merge with the object of her devotion  
now realises that she must abandon it and subside in the source of pure love  
from which her devotion arises. 46the ultimate prayer
     Thus it is said, ‘In the existence of your love, I become non-existent. ’ *  
On both paths, our efforts have brought us to a threshold beyond which  
they cannot pass. At some point there is a shift or a conversion in our understanding:  
what  appears from the perspective of a separate self to be the effort we make  
towards the object of our longing is, in fact, the subject of our longing attract -
ing us into itself. Our longing is only the veiling of love. What we, as an apparently sep -
arate self, experience as effort is, in fact, the gravitational pull of grace. All desire is the attraction of love. For this reason, the ultimate prayer is to take the name ‘I am’ and lose  
oneself in its referent, abiding as that. In this abidance, our being is divested  
of the qualities and limitations that it acquires from experience and stands  
revealed as intimate, impersonal, infinite being. Just as we take off all our clothes before going to bed at night, revealing  
our naked body, so, in the practice of prayer, we discard everything that is  
superfluous to us, leaving naked being revealed. The person has dissolved,  
leaving only impersonal, infinite, utterly intimate being. Thus, the art of  
prayer is to abide as ‘I am’. It is the practice of the presence of God. *     *     *  
 
When I first heard about my true nature of being aware or awareness itself, it was  
easy and natural to reside there, but now the old habits of thinking and feeling have  
returned and I find myself going back and forth. How can I stay in awareness. When you say, ‘How can I stay in awareness. ’ you are taking yourself to be  
something other than awareness, such as a body or a mind. Awareness is con -
sidered something that you must approach, rest in for a period of time and  
then leave. This ‘something other than awareness’ is the bundle of thoughts,  
images, feelings, sensations and perceptions that constitute the ego or separ -
ate self that most people believe and feel themselves to be, and around whom  
their activities and relationships revolve. 47* Jelaluddin Rumi, ‘I Am Yours’, The Love Poems of Rumi, translated by Fereydoun Kia, edited by Deepak  
Chopra (Harmony, 1998 ). you are the happiness you seek
     One of the activities of this apparently separate self is to undertake a spiri -
tual practice such as meditation in order to cease being a separate self, with  
the suffering that inevitably attends it, and become open, empty, inherently  
peaceful awareness. However, such an activity simply perpetuates the separate  
self at its origin, which is why it is so frustrating. So is there nothing I can do. There is nothing that you, awareness, need to do to be yourself. You are  
already always only yourself. However, if we believe and feel ourself to be  
a separate self, then we are already doing something. What are we doing. Seeking peace and happiness in objective experience. So what can I do. Investigate the ‘I’ on whose behalf the search for peace and happiness arises. That is, turn your attention upon yourself and investigate who you really  
are, and in this way bring yourself back to the experiential understanding  
that you always and already are the awareness that you seek. All the peace  
and happiness you long for resides there. It is easier said than done. No, it is easier done than said. It takes but a moment to ask yourself who  
you really are and allow that question to reveal the ever-present awareness  
that is your essential, irreducible nature behind and within all experience. There is nothing complex about this. We know our self more intimately  
than we know any other thing. Even our most treasured thoughts and feel -
ings are but strangers to us compared to the familiarity and intimacy of  
our own being. Know yourself as the fact of being aware or awareness itself rather than  
a continuous flow of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions. It is true that when any of these are present they are you, in the sense that  
they are made out of the awareness you are. But that is not all you are. They  
are ripples on the surface of your being. None of them define you or are  
essential to you. 48the ultimate prayer
     Mind is always in movement. No movement, no mind. But what about  
awareness. Awareness is always just awareness, colouring itself in the form of  
the mind or remaining in its uncoloured condition. But irrespective of whether  
awareness is colouring itself as experience or resting colourless, does awareness  
ever leave itself and then come back to itself. Does awareness ever ask the ques -
tion, ‘What practice do I need to undertake in order to know myself. ’  
     What does awareness have to do to be itself. Does it have to undertake  
any activity in order to maintain itself, or is it always effortlessly simply being  
itself. What kind of experience could prevent awareness from being itself. What kind of experience could prevent awareness from being aware. Is not  
awareness effortlessly being aware now. What kind of a movie could prevent the screen from being the screen. Likewise, what kind of experience or activity could make awareness more  
aware than it already is. Does anything that takes place in a movie add any -
thing to or remove anything from the screen. Similarly, does anything that  
takes place in experience add anything to or remove anything from your self,  
awareness. Can you feel the freedom that is your original nature and that  
needs nothing from experience. I guess it’s more about not being so identified. But who has to be less identified. There is no separate self to be identified or  
not to be identified. There is awareness all alone or awareness colouring itself  
with its own activity, that is, awareness simply resting in and as itself or  
appearing in the form of experience. See clearly that knowing, being aware or awareness itself is your nature. It is who you are, not what you might become. Let this be your new default  
felt understanding. It is not something you can work towards. There is no  
separate, independently existing ‘you’ who could become or work towards  
awareness. There is just awareness and its own activity. And even when awareness is colouring itself in the form of thoughts,  
images, feelings, sensations and perceptions and seeming, as a result, to be a  
person, it is still not identical to any of these, just as a screen is never identical  
to any of the objects or characters in the movie. Awareness is always only  
ever identical to itself, for there is nothing in itself other than itself with  
which it could be either identified or unidentified. 49you are the happiness you seek
So there is just the recognition of that. Yes, there is just the recognition of that. And who is it that would recognise  
awareness. Only awareness is aware, and therefore only awareness is aware  
of itself or, indeed, aware of any other apparent thing. But I still find experience distracts me from my true nature. The drama of experience may retain the capacity to veil your true nature for  
some time, and therefore there may be a feeling of back-and-forth for a while. However, just as the movie loses its veiling power in time and, as a result,  
the distinction between the screen and the movie fades, so experience loses  
its ability to conceal awareness and, as a result, the distinction between aware -
ness and experience diminishes and the conflict between them ceases. At that stage there is no longer any back-and-forth, because it is all aware -
ness wherever you go and whatever you experience. At that point meditation  
is life and life is meditation. We may still choose to sit quietly with our eyes  
closed for some time to rest in being, but we would not essentially be doing  
anything different from what takes place in the activities of everyday life. *     *     *  
 
I’m wondering about the balance between doing and non-doing, because I feel  
I need to make an effort, yet at the same time I feel that non-doing is actually  
allowing me to step back more into who I truly am. If it seems, to begin with, that an effort is required to be aware of your  
own being, then make the effort. First investigate your essential nature and  
then stand knowingly as that. Don’t superimpose the idea of non-doing  
on yourself. In time, it will be clear that you cannot make an effort to be what you  
always and already are. Indeed, it would only be necessary to make an effort  
to be something you are not, such as a separate self. That is why it is so ex -
hausting to be a separate self. If I were to ask you to stand up now and take  
a step towards yourself, how much effort would you have to make. 50the ultimate prayer
None. Yes. Any effort would only seem to take you away from yourself, although  
even that is not true, because wherever we are, we are. The same is true  
of meditation, which simply means to be knowingly our self rather than  
mistaking our self for a cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and  
perceptions. However, if we feel that we are something other than this open, empty,  
inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled presence of awareness, then  
we should make the effort to investigate our self, recognise our self and then  
be that knowingly. All that then remains is to establish our self as that in all circumstances  
and to realign every aspect of our life with this felt understanding. 51 chapter seven
The Silent Presence of Awareness
My silence, life returns to thee  
In all the pauses of her breath. Hush back to rest the melody  
That out of thee awakeneth;  
And thou, wake ever, wake for me. alice meynell   
 
awareness is immanent and transcendent  
 
The understanding that we are the awareness that witnesses, knows or is  
aware of experience is the first great recognition. It is the first step on the  
path to rediscovering our innate happiness. In order to arrive at this understanding, we extricate ourself from the  
content of experience. We distinguish the knower from the known, the ex -
periencer from the experienced. We have not manipulated or rejected any  
aspect of experience; we have simply seen that no experience is essential to us. However, awareness does not witness experience from a distance like an  
aloof observer. Just as an image does not exist at a distance from the screen  
upon which it appears, likewise no experience stands apart from the aware -
ness with which it is known. Imagine a magical television screen that is not watched by someone sit -
ting on a sofa but has the capacity to watch the movie that is playing on  
itself. It is an aware  screen. We, awareness, are like that. We are utterly, inti -
mately one with any experience and, at the same time, free from and inde -
pendent of it. Awareness is both immanent and transcendent. This recognition is often accompanied by a great peace and joy. For so  
long we have been oppressed by our conditioning and history, weighed  
down by our circumstances and relationships, and now we have the first  
taste of our inherent freedom. It is a liberation from the burden we have  you are the happiness you seek
unknowingly carried around with us all our life, which usually becomes  
heavier as we get older. Now the burden lightens. Occasionally it is discarded wholesale, in one  
simple recognition that is so complete and powerful that no experience ever  
again has the capacity to veil the nature of our being. More commonly,  
as this understanding percolates more deeply into us, the accumulated  
burden of experience is gradually eased, and in its place a peace and lightness  
emerge from within. Later on, we will further collapse the apparent separation between aware -
ness and experience. However, for one who is lost in the drama of experience  
and has, as a result, mistaken their self for a bundle of thoughts, feelings,  
sensations, activities and relationships, it is first necessary to make the dis -
tinction between the two. awareness is eternal and unchanging  
 
Having extricated ourself from the content of experience and recognised  
ourself as the presence of awareness, the next step is to explore the nature  of 
the awareness that we essentially are. The essence or essential nature of anything is the aspect of that thing that  
cannot be removed from it. Anything that can be removed from a thing is  
not essential to it. No movie is essential to a screen because the screen can  
exist in the absence of movies. No cloud is essential to the sky because the  
sky can exist in the absence of clouds. All thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and re -
lationships are continually appearing and disappearing in our experience. They are added to us and subsequently removed from us. They cannot, there -
fore, be essential to us. However, there is one element of our experience of ourself that remains  
consistently present throughout all changing experience, namely, the fact of  
knowing, being aware or awareness itself. It is that to which we refer when  
we say simply ‘I’ or ‘I am’, before what I am has been coloured, qualified or  
conditioned by experience. It is the constant factor in all changing experience. In fact, the presence of awareness is not constant in time; it is ever-present  
now. It is only said to be constant in relation to the impermanence of things. However, being limited, the mind has no knowledge of the eternal and,  
54the silent presence of awareness
therefore, construes it in a way that is consistent with its own limitations. It conceives the ever-present as the everlasting. However, if we refer directly to the experience of being aware, that is,  
if awareness refers directly to its experience of itself, there is no thought pres -
ent and, therefore, no knowledge of time. In its own experience of itself,  
awareness is simply ever-present. It is eternal. It is from the ever-present nature of awareness that experience derives its  
singularity. A typical movie comprises approximately 150,000  frames, but  
when we are watching it we don’t think we are experiencing numerous  
images; we feel we are watching one movie. The movie derives its unity from  
the singularity of the screen. Likewise, we are always having only one experience, from which thought  
abstracts and conceptualises what is referred to in Buddhism as ‘ten thousand  
things’. What is it that unifies the apparently disparate elements of our  
experience. Awareness, the silent presence behind and within all experience. The presence of awareness is not something that we become, although in  
almost all cases its recognition requires some investigation. It is simply our  
essential, irreducible nature or true self, the ever-present background of all  
changing experience. Just as a person in a cinema watches a movie, enjoying the good and bad  
characters alike, so we, awareness, witness or are aware of the entire spectrum  
of experience, irrespective of its content. And just as nothing that takes place  
in a movie changes the basic nature of the screen, so nothing that takes place  
in experience changes our essential nature of pure awareness. The screen upon which a horror scene appears is the same screen upon  
which a romance unfolds. The awareness that witnesses our most ecstatic  
moments is the same awareness that witnesses our deepest sorrow. Awareness never changes; experience always changes. It is for this reason  
that each of us feels that we are now the same person as we were five minutes  
ago, five days ago, five years ago or when we were five-year-old children. But what is it in us that truly remains the same. The thoughts, images,  
feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and relationships that constitute  
‘me’, the person, have changed innumerable times over the course of our  
lives. And yet we feel each of these experiences as ‘mine’, betraying our rec -
ognition that there is in us a stable principle to whom  they happen or belong. 55you are the happiness you seek
That stable principle is our self, the immutable presence of awareness that  
we essentially are. It is easy to verify this in our experience. If each of us were to compare the  
content of our current experience with the content of our experience as, say,  
a five-year-old child, the two experiences would be entirely different. If, however, we were to refer to the awareness with which our current ex -
perience is known, and we were to have done so as a five-year-old child, the  
awareness in each case would be identical, just as all movies play on the same  
unchanging screen, irrespective of their content. Nothing ever happens to  
awareness; it does not change, age or evolve. That is, nothing ever happens  
to our essential self. Each of us has encountered innumerable experiences in our lives, some of  
which were painful and traumatic. Whilst these may have left residues in the  
deeper layers of our mind, which find their counterpart as subtle tensions and  
contractions in the body, nevertheless our essential being, the fact of simply  
being aware or awareness itself, remains unchanged and unharmed by them. This also accounts for the fact that many of us do not feel that we are  
getting any older. In this case, our essential, changeless nature is shining  
through the cloud cover of experience. Little do we realise how accurate this  
intuition is. One might argue that every time we look in the mirror, we are confronted  
with evidence of ageing. However, when we look in the mirror we do not  
see an image of our self  ; we see an image of our body. The awareness that  
perceives the image in the mirror is in exactly the same immaculate, untar -
nished, ageless condition as the awareness that saw the image of our face in  
a mirror as a five-year-old child. The Zen master who demands, ‘Show me your original face before you  
were born’ is simply trying to evoke in us a direct, immediate recognition of  
the ageless, pristine, ever-present nature of our self. awareness is self-aware  
 
All experience appears to or is known by awareness, but awareness itself never  
appears as an object of experience, just as the screen upon which a movie  
plays never itself appears as an object in the movie. 56the silent presence of awareness
     However, although awareness can never be known objectively, this does  
not imply that it is unknown or unknowable. If awareness were unknow -
able, we would not know that we are aware. If someone were to ask us the question, ‘Are you aware. ’, each of us would  
pause and then answer, ‘Yes’. What is it that takes place in the pause between  
the question ‘Are you aware. ’ and our answer ‘Yes’. We become aware that  
we are aware. That is, we, awareness, become aware that we are aware. If we, awareness, did not know the experience of being aware, we would  
have answered ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’. But we are certain beyond any doubt  
that we are aware, and that certainty comes from our experience  of being  
aware. Now, who or what is it that has the experience of being aware. Only  
awareness is aware, and therefore only awareness can be aware of anything,  
including itself. Thus, our certainty that we are aware is awareness’s knowledge  
of itself. In other words, awareness is self-aware, just as the sun is self-luminous. Awareness’s knowledge of itself is an utterly unique knowledge. It is  
the only knowledge that does not take place in subject–object relationship. In all other knowledge and experience, the object that is known – the  
thought, feeling, sensation or perception – is distinct from the awareness  
that knows it. But in awareness’s knowledge of itself, the one that knows and  
the one that is known are identical. I once heard a lecture on the nature of consciousness, given by a highly re -
spected professor of philosophy at Oxford University. At one point he said,  
‘Some philosophers believe that consciousness can know itself; their ideas  
should be put in the rubbish’. At the end of his talk, I asked him if he would agree that everyone in the  
room was presently having the experience of being aware. He agreed. I then  
suggested that whatever it is in each of us that is having the experience of  
being aware must, itself, be aware.
Meditation is not an activity to be done, but rather it is what we already are. We are to simply be knowingly our self, and this understanding is the key to finding peace and happiness.
What is the purpose of meditation, according to the text?
Awareness is not an object of experience, but rather the witness of all experience. It is the constant presence that underlies all changing experience, and its nature is peace and happiness.
What is the relationship between awareness and experience?
Yes, it is possible to lose oneself in the drama of experience, but it is not necessary to do so. We are already the awareness that we seek, and all that is required is to recognize this and return to our true nature.
Is it possible to lose oneself in the drama of experience and then find oneself again?
No, it is not possible to meditate too much. The idea of meditation as a practice is a misconception. We are already aware, and our true nature is always present. There is no need to make an effort to become something we already are.
Can one meditate too much?
Yes, it is possible for everyone to recognize their true nature. There is no extraordinary experience or attainment that is necessary for this recognition.
Is it possible for everyone to recognize their true nature?