Why Don't I Experience Happiness All the Time

Hi, Rupert. I'd like to first remember during the first meditation we did here together, was it Monday? No, Sunday evening, you elaborated on Satchitananda, and you were, I think, talking about deep sleep. where Ananda is really being felt very without objects, and it shines, and it's our true nature, and it's eternally there. And then you said, by the way, there's one thing in what I said that you might object to, is that that Ananda doesn't seem to be there all the time. And at the end of this retreat, which is more or less now, I hope you will better understand that contradiction. Do you remember that? Yeah, the test was going to be tomorrow morning. I was going to ask you right there and then on, you know, Sunday evening, but you know, Ananda doesn't seem to be ever-present, always there. And I think that you already answered her question. What's your experience now? Is it ever-present now? Do you have a better understanding of that? But the question was this, if my essential nature is happiness, and my essential nature is ever-present, then happiness must be ever-present. And if that is the case, how come I don't seem to experience it all the time? That was the question. So now what's the answer? I get to do the questioning, you get to do the answering. Well, you just mentioned that it goes through every thought, and that ocean is in the waves, water is in the waves throughout, and so it really, it's only the individual separated self who could possibly turn around and say, I'm separate again, and I've forgotten that. Yes, you see, the the separate self is like that part of the earth that is turned away from the Sun and seems to be in darkness. That's what the separate self is. So from the point of view of that separate self, there is darkness, which in this metaphor is unhappiness, where the peace of our true nature seems not to be present, the light of the Sun is not present on the dark side of the earth. Yes? So it is from the point of view of the separate self, the imaginary self, that has in its own imagination separated itself from its source. From that one's point of view, happiness seems to be an experience that comes and goes. Every time that one reaches its object, it dies as a separate self, and then happiness shines. Then the thought-made self rises again, and happiness is dimmed. As a result, it goes out after an object or relationship. It gets what it wants. It dies as a seeking self. Happiness shines. Thought attributes the happiness to the object. The separate self is recreated. Happiness is dimmed. And this process goes on ad infinitum. That is why for the separate self, happiness is a state that comes and goes. It's not. Actually, the Sun is always shining. It's the earth that is sometimes turned towards it and rotates and turns away from it. So unhappiness is that part of the earth that is turned away from the Sun, which in our metaphor is the arising of the separate self. That part of our self which ignores or veils or forgets our true nature. So what is for awareness continuous happiness, or rather ever-present happiness, is experienced by the separate self as a state that comes and goes. So if we have the freedom to choose either to be the presence of awareness, in which case peace is continuous, or to be a separate self, in which case it is intermittent. We're free to be whichever we want. I was thinking, when talking to someone during lunchtime about a metaphor that just popped up, I was wondering what you would say about that. A new metaphor? Great. But better than the self-aware screen? I doubt it. But I'm open to possibilities. No, no, it's not that kind of metaphor, but it's like in the beginning our understanding and the moments that we realize we are the light and not the earth that turns away or not. It's like my metaphor was about soup. Soup, yeah. And in the beginning you have watery soup, very light with vegetables and stuff which are the objects. And the accent is so much on the object that from time to time you get a glimpse of oh, I'm the watery substance and the vegetables, they're in there, but not really you know the water. So, but my experience, I was wondering about that in fact, is that the soup tends to thicken over time and that you, this kind of what I called mirror substance, or you call it the aware screen substance, tends to become more like thickening of the soup, like more prevalent. Even though you never see it, you never feel it because you are it, but still it somehow manifests more. Is it possible? Yes. I was wondering what you're... Yes, yes. Or is this maybe another? No, but that's that's right. Not quite sure about the metaphor, but Sorry, and I hope nobody's hungry. But you're absolutely right in that when we look at experience where we previously saw a collection of objects themselves, the objectness of the object seems to fade and its reality which is pure awareness seems to shine more brightly in correspondence with the fading of the objectness of the object. So, but what's what's interesting is that the actual experience itself doesn't change. I'm sorry, I'm going to go back to my metaphor which I prefer to yours, which is that the TV screen and the image. And I hope by now you've understood that I use the TV screen and the image in two different ways. One time it's a conventional TV screen with an image and it's being watched by somebody sitting on a sofa. At other times I use it, it's the screen itself that is doing the watching. So in this case, it's a conventional TV screen, the movie begins, we're sitting on the sofa. Now you're looking at what appears to be the landscape and gradually the you realize that what is real in the image are not fields and rocks and trees and sky. What is real is the screen. So as you're looking you you begin to focus on the screen rather than the landscape. Actually, you're looking at exactly the same thing, but the landscaped, the landscape-ness of the image seems to fade and the screen-ness, its reality, seems to come forward. So instead of thinking it's a landscape with a screen in the background, you think it's a screen with a landscape in the background. So in that sense, yes, there is a kind of exchange. Instead of objects shining in experience, and by objects I mean thoughts, sensations and perceptions. I don't just mean physical objects. I mean anything. Instead of the object-ness of the thought, sensation and perception being primary with awareness off in the background somewhere, it's the knowing of experience, the knowingness that pervades all experience, that seems to come to the foreground. That's the first experience shines primarily with that knowing and the object-ness of the thought, sensation or perception is just a temporary coloring. It's just like a watercolor wash over the ever-present light of pure knowing. But experience itself doesn't change. It was actually always only that. But and then, so it's like we could then look at, say in looking at physical objects now, we could, it's like feeling, instead of feeling that they shine with the light of the physical sun, instead of thinking it's the sun that renders them visible, we realize no, it is the light of awareness that renders them knowable or experienceable. So instead of seeing the reflections of physical light, we see all this as reflections of the light of pure knowing, that this knowing shines in experience. That's what we see first and that's what we stick to in experience. In order to stick to an object, you have to first forget that knowing. As we forget that knowing, at that moment the objects seem to acquire their own independent existence and we want some and we don't want others. But we have to first forget or overlook this knowing. It never really gets forgotten or overlooked, but it seems to from the point of view of the self that we have imagined ourselves to be. Yeah, I have to admit that your way of putting it is clearer than the soup.