What is reality?

Elliot, hello. Nice to see you. You must be just down the road in the city. Yeah, I can feel you from here. It's so close. We miss you. And yet you are with us. Yeah, I just, it's so beautiful. I mean, I really feel like I'm in the room with you guys. We feel that too. We miss your wicked humor, but apart from that, we feel that you're with us. Well, soon enough. But I just, you know, this has all really awakened in me a fear of death that I didn't know was there. And that's what I want to ask about, is that I'm constantly visited by this fear of dying. And, and I know it's like the thing, the only thing to move through. I just, I don't, maybe that's even too much to say. I just, I just wondered if you could help me at all with that. Elliot, don't work directly on the fear of dying. The reason we fear death is because our identity is invested in the content of our experience. And therefore, as our experience leaves us, we feel that we are leaving. We are heading for non-existence. I guess, I'm sorry. So don't work on that. Because all of that fear of death just depends upon our mistaken identity. So just go back, as we have been doing these last few days, just go back to your being again and again. And the extent to which you are established in and as your being, you will begin to feel its ever-presence. Not that it lasts forever in time, but its ever-presence now. And your fear of death will just gradually leave you as an inevitable consequence of this abidance in being. The fear of death will just begin to leave you. Well, I guess what I mean is the deeper I investigate, the more this, I mean, what I'm calling the fear of death is really in the body. It's this reaction that the body has, the more deeply I investigate. And so maybe, but maybe that's exactly what you're saying, that it's sort of like a relapse. That's like a relapse into the belief that I am the body. Elliot, just close your eyes now. Imagine this is the first experience you have ever had. You're a newborn child. You have no memory to refer to. You haven't yet opened your eyes. You know nothing of the world. Tell us about your experience of yourself. What's the first thing you can say about yourself? Well, just that I am, right? Just that fact. Perfect. What else can you say about yourself? That I'm here. I'm present. Perfect. Yeah. I guess there's not really anything else to say, right? Because anything, it doesn't, like I'm empty of all things. Well, yes, but now you're referring to your memory of things. You haven't experienced things yet. I know why you say that, but you haven't even, don't even go there. It's too much to say I'm empty of all things. You haven't experienced anything yet. You've just got your experience of yourself. Tell us about your experience of yourself. I mean, I can't say anything else about it. I mean, I could say. Exactly. You can't say anything else about yourself. I pushed you two or three times to say something about yourself. You didn't mention anything about being a body. You don't experience yourself as a body. You just experience yourself as being. You tried a few times to say something else about yourself, and you quite rightly stopped. Your essential experience of yourself is not your experience of yourself as a body. Your essential experience of yourself is just your experience of yourself as being. Your knowledge of yourself as being. The awareness of being is your essential experience. You see how familiar it is. You just close your eyes. You don't refer to the past, and there it is right there. You say all there is is the awareness of being. How hard was that? Not hard. It's so obvious. It's so close. It's so familiar. That is your essential experience. Everything else is added to that. Just don't let the content of your experience eclipse that simple awareness of being. Your being will, as it were, emerge from the background of your experience. It will begin to take over as the primary element of your experience. You'll still have thoughts, feelings, sensations, and so on. But your identity will be invested in your being, and this will give you a peace, a stability, a quiet, causeless happiness, a feeling of deep connection with others. When the fear arises... Don't touch it. Don't touch it. When the fear arises, just see it as an alarm bell that goes off. I have temporarily overlooked my being, lost myself in the content of experience, and just use the alarm bell to go back to your being. You go back to your being so easily, Elliot. I just said, shut your eyes. Tell us about yourself. You paused, and you just said, I am. I simply am. There's nothing I can add to that. It's that easy. Don't touch the fear. And when you say to not allow experience to eclipse that, it's just a decision. But by which I mean, we normally feel, I am a body, rather than feeling simply, I am. In other words, I am a body becomes our primary experience, and the pure I am, the awareness of being, recedes as a result into the background. Actually, when you close your eyes, your primary experience is not the awareness of being a body. It is the awareness of being. But we have allowed the experience, I am the body, to eclipse or at least obscure the simple awareness of being. Thank you so much. Nice to see you, Elliot. Take care. See you again soon. See you soon. Bye-bye.