I Am ... Rupert Spira on the Illusionary Sense of Self

Before we start today's show, I want to give a shout-out to our partners for this podcast, Vitality. They are an essential part of me being able to facilitate these conversations. I've been in ambassador now with Vitality for several years, and always the one thing that stands out most for me is just how much they care about people's health and are so keen to enhance their experience of life, whatever way they can. They understand as much as I do, I think it's never about quick fixes or the one pill fixes everything. It's about the small, healthy, proactive behaviours sustained through a lifetime that can lead to incredible differences. Not only does Vitality protect members with award-winning cover, but they also offer discounts on gym membership, trainers, activity trackers and healthy food too. So you can take the small steps to make the meaningful changes. Head to Vitality.co.uk for more information. Terms and conditions apply. Hello and welcome to I Am with me, Johnny Wilkinson. Today's episode is with Rupert Spirer, and if you want to hear more about why I'm talking to Rupert and who he is, then do head over to the Tuesday episode just before this one, where I will explain everything as well as I can. These Thursday episodes are just for the guest though. I feel they have so much to offer, so much possibility and opportunity in talking about what they've been through, and it's a great chat. So I don't waste any more time on me. Thanks so much for listening. I'm your host, Johnny Wilkinson. Welcome to I Am with Rupert Spirer. So Mr Rupert Spirer, thank you very, very much for being here. It's a real provision honour to have you as part of this discussion. And thank you so much for inviting us into your home as well. First of all, how are you? Very well, thank you, Johnny, and off towards the pleasure to be here talking with you. Brilliant. Well, thank you. This is the I Am podcast, centered around potential, human potential, and in a transformation. I understand some of the youth experience, and I would love to hear more about that. So can you give us your definition of transformation? What does it mean to you? Yes, it's perhaps not quite so much a transformation as a recognition of something that has in fact always been present and is always the case, but has not been recognised. I don't speak so much in terms of a transformation of ourself, but rather a recognition of our essential self, which we perhaps didn't recognise before, because our sense of ourself was so entangled with the content of our experience, with our thoughts, with our history, with our memories, with our activities and relationships. So whilst everybody has the sense, I am myself. Not everybody knows theirself clearly, because their sense of self is so mixed up with or conditioned by their thoughts, their history, their relationships. So what I speak about, what I try to lead people towards is the recognition of their essential self. When I say the essential self, I mean that aspect of us that hasn't been acquired during the course of our lives, that part of ourself that remains, when everything that is superfluous to us or extra-anious to us has been removed, sometimes I liken it to undressing. When you undress at night, we take off everything that is not essential to us, our bodies don't become transformed in the experience, our bodies are just revealed in the experience. So I like the title of your podcast, I am, because when we say I am, we refer to just the essential sense of being, just the fact of being. When we say I am this or I am that, we add something to ourself, and that's the clothing. And that's the clothing exactly, I am a mother, I am a father, I am a doctor, I am a nurse, I am a bus driver. We're not always a mother or a father, but we always are. Once we've taken the clothing off, the I am refers to our essential being, the I am this or I am that refers to our essential being plus the conditions, the qualities, the limitations of experience. And as a result of this mixture of our essential self with the objective elements of experience, our sense of self acquires limitations, conditions. So it's a kind of psychological and dressing. The podcast called I am for that exact reason, as to what is that essential I am. And I love the idea that even some of the sages when translating the original message of sort of said, I am, I am, is who I am. There's nothing more you can add, there's nothing more you can be. That recognition of that for you, were there key moments where it sort of took hold gathered momentum or was it something that was always taking place for you or went that recognition, how did that come about? I was interested in these matters from quite an early age from my mid teens onwards. And like many people I traveled, not in fact physically, but more intellectually to the east to look for, because this understanding, although it's, it is present in the Christian tradition, but it's, it's buried underneath layers of doctrines that have been added later on. So I couldn't find this understanding anywhere in my own culture. So like many people in the, this was now the mid to late seventies, I went intellectually used to India and explored Indian philosophy. But again, like many people, I misunderstood what was being spoken of, enlightenment for, for one to the better word, which is awakening is the kind of common word for what we're speaking of. And it was always, whether or not it was presented as such, I don't know, but I certainly understood it to refer to an extraordinary exotic experience, better than any experience one could possibly imagine. So I spent 20 years really striving to have this experience. And in fact, as you said, you're on to transform yourself into a different kind of self, a higher self, an enlightened self, a real self. And of course, it was a frustrating project. It wasn't until I was maybe 20 years after 20 years that my understanding began to change. And I realized that what is referred to as enlightenment or awakening is not an exotic experience. In fact, it's not an experience at all. It is simply the recognition of the nature of our essential self, not a self that we might become if we practice hard enough or study long enough or meditate sufficiently well. But the self that everybody, not just those relatively few of us that are interested in these matters, but the self that all seven billion of us are now, but simply haven't recognized because we, as I said earlier, because we don't see our self clearly. That was really a turning point for me when I stopped seeking some extraordinary, marvelous experience. And I realized that what was being referred to was just my essential being underneath the layers of experience. What is this essential being that I am before what I am has been qualified in any way by experience? And that was a turning point. It was such a relief. I suddenly realized that what I was looking for was not an infinite distance from myself. It was closer than close. I was already that. I was looking too far away. It's like the eyes, the physical eyes, trying to see themselves and traveling all the way around the world, looking for themselves. They can't see themselves, not because they're so far, but because they're so close. In fact, they're closer than close. That was a real turning point. This understanding that what is traditionally referred to as enlightenment, awakening, salvation is not something extraordinary, exotic, out of reach, only attainable if you become a Buddhist or a person. Or live a certain lifestyle or lead a certain lifestyle. It's just that the ordinary intimate familiar self that everybody already is before it is qualified by experience. So how would you describe or articulate potential and is it something that actually this enlightenment is awakening? Are there moments for all of us maybe daily, weekly, monthly or whatever it be where we're actually in touch with that? I know I'm talking about some sporting background. You get that in the zone moment that I'd have spent time in where you kind of feel like you just transcend the boundaries of time because when we talk about human potential, quite quickly the mind goes to that, what can we do? What can we build? How high can you jump and all these kind of things? But how would you frame potential and are there are there moments for all of us where we may actually be in touch with this even though we probably don't recognize that. Let's go back to the image of our naked body with layers of clothes. So what is sometimes referred to as the ego or the separate self, the apparently separate self would be our essential self, our essential being, the I am clothed in thoughts, feelings, activities, relationships and so on. So most of the time our sense of our self is conditioned by our thoughts, by our feelings, by our activities, by our relationships and this gives us a limited feeling of who we are. Now there are times and I would suggest that being in the zone is one of these times but there are many other times in life not not related to sports where we are temporarily free of the limitations of our thoughts and feelings. In other words, we're just in touch with our essential self, although we were not formulated to ourselves as such because we're not thinking about our self at that time but we are free of the limitations of our thoughts, feelings, free of our history, free of our relationships. At that moment we are just pure unlimited being and it always comes with a sense of joy. Have you ever been miserable in the zone, you'd long to be in every sports person, long to be in the zone because that's when they're relieved of the limitations of their thoughts, feelings, expectations, hopes, disappointment. That's when they're just pure free being and that's when I would suggest in sports but actually in any activity, that's when we form at our very best. But of course there are still limitations that we have as a mind and the body. If I was in a moment when I was free of the ego, I was just pure being, I wouldn't suddenly perform brilliantly as a rugby player because my body hasn't been trained in that way. Whatever my body mind was trained to do, it would do it at its very best as a result of that. So my potential as a mind and the body would be enormously enhanced by feeling myself to be free of the limitations of the ego. So to answer your question, it's very closely related to potential. That's really interesting, especially about the training part and when you mentioned about the joy, always being joyful in that zone, that definition of joy, all these definitions when their word comes up, they can be so tempting to head off into the idea of what's joy it's smiling, it's laughing, it's joking but in fact when you're talking about being in the zone, the joy you're talking about is it's clarity, it's deep engagement, it's absolute involvement and engagement and sometimes people as a rugby player, I try to find that by thinking almost reverse engineering, I'm always joyful in the zone so I'm going to be joyful as you go out into the pitch, you start trying to smile and try to laugh and of course it's completely irrelevant to that experience. Exactly, because it's the trying to be that is initiated by the ego or the separate self that prevents you from being in the zone, it actually has the opposite effect. When you're naturally in the zone, basically what is absent is the trying, the sense of becoming, the sense of limitation, it's the ego that is absent, there's just your being and your performance. I would suggest that it's because the nature of our being is joy, that's what the experience of joy or happiness is, just the awareness of being. So when you're in the zone, you're relieved of all the limitations with which you've clothed your being and you're just pure being performing and it cannot help but not be joyful because the very nature of our being is joy or peace or happiness. So when those boundaries are softened or dissolved of the self and there's that almost more direct experience of the pure being involved, where does intention lie in that? Because I'm putting myself back on the field for a sake of an easier example. That sort of separate being, if you like, is maybe much more open and I feel like I'm fully involved but I still have a knowing of what I want to achieve. On whose path am I trying to achieve that and how does it still rest if I'm dissolving that, that clothing? I still know that we need to score and I want to passable to someone and I don't. But I doubt you're thinking of any of that. No, I'm not. Definitely. You think about that beforehand, you think about it afterwards, if you were to watch footage of yourself and you were to describe to someone what was going on. You would say, "I was watching where my mate is." But were you doing that in the moment? No, you weren't thinking. There's an allowing. There's almost like people call it the flowing. You're in the flow. You're in the zone. What does that mean? It means you haven't separated yourself out from the whole as a separate entity. It's not me and everyone else. It's not me and my teammates and the opposition. It's just one experience and you are part of the flow of that experience. You don't have a sense that I am an individual. I'm trying to win where my mate. All of that comes beforehand when you're training and afterwards when you're analysing. And I'm not suggesting it's not appropriate to do that. You have to do all that. But then in the moment you have to do it. I mean, you know this much better than I do or certainly in sports. You cannot perform at your best when you're thinking. That if that were actually interrupts. It's interrupts. So really that there is. I would suggest that in a way there's no intention in the zone. You're so at one with the moment. You're not anticipating what's coming. You're just totally at one with the moment. That's what they was you to perform. In a way, when we see people in sports doing things that most of us think would think were superhuman. When you see something, you just think that I didn't know that was possible. How is it that that person has performed at the level beyond what we think is possible? It's because it is beyond thought. They've been relieved of the limitations of thought, of the past, of what's possible, what we did on the training pitch, what we worked out on the board. They've been relieved of all that and that enables us. That's where inspiration comes from. It enables something inspired to happen that is not just an extension of our past, not just an extension of all the hundreds of hours on the training. It's not an deduction or a calculation of what's possible. Yes, we had to do all that. But then you had to forget it. If we didn't forget it, then everything we did would just be an extension of the past. It would be good, but it wouldn't be inspired. It wouldn't be great. You know, you well know your greatest moments where they were inspired. You thought afterwards, how did I do that? Where did that come? I didn't train to do that. Of course, you had to do the training, but then you had to forget it, be liberated from it. That enables something new to come into the situation. That's really interesting because to reference that example, quite interesting when you see someone in my position on the field would have been in the middle of play and often sometimes that deep involvement of the game came with a lack of time. Often when the action heated up and it was quite chaotic, there almost seems to be a surrendering. Yes. And you fall into that. You almost fall into alignment with the energy of the situation and just become at one with it, as you mentioned. But as soon as a referee might blow his whistle and put his hand up, so you've got a penalty and you're the kicker, you watch the difference in the body language as the kicker then goes into a space of what about me? Exactly. Save myself, survive as my reputation when all of that has disappeared. Exactly. Keep my cast alive almost. Exactly. The moment the whistle goes, you know you've got a penalty to take. That's when the eye, the ego rises again. I, what about me? You feel the weight of the country's expectations, you project forward. What if I get this forward? One scenario in my life with the rest of my life. I'll be fine by this. If I don't get it the rest of my life is such a damn. That is, of course, scripting. But the moment before the whistle, when there was no sense of a separate eye, you were just one with the totality of the situation, flowing with everyone, doing exactly the right thing at the right moment. But with no sense of, I am a separate person doing it. No, exactly. When I work with players, especially in the dead ball situation of kicking a ball, the concept is exactly that. Exactly that. Liberation of everything. And in that space liberation, whether you design drills that almost hand themselves over to that being the whole purpose of doing it, the inspired performance or just responses that you see in their ability and it almost shocks them. And yet you sort of use a funny example of sort of saying, you know, that took us two minutes. Imagine what you could do with the whole week. But of course, it's the opposite. A week later they come back, empty shells of themselves speaking about pressure and expectation. And it brought to me the concept about what the idea, what are we doing? And this is a much bigger question when it's posed towards education and society and everything. But what are we doing with preparation for performance? Because you mentioned about you have to go through the training. And the conditioning of the body or sports conditioning is it's called fitness conditioning, but that training and that understanding, but it's so often aligned with the idea that that is stress and suffering and that stress and suffering will therefore result in joy as a natural outcome. And that's for me what that did was when I got those brief moments of absolute joy, you attribute it not to the straightforward conditioning, you attribute it to the amount of suffering again in that almost Christian message of sort. And I used to say, well, brilliant, if I want more of those moments, I need to suffer more. So I would move away from the idea that it was important for me to be the guy in the change room who left last, who beat himself up hardest for errors, who watched more and more video, who felt the most humiliated when things went wrong, the most shameful when mistakes were made. And the least joyful when things went well, the least celebratory, the one that didn't do celebrations or kind of put his hand up and say, what a great game, I feel great about myself. It was almost, this is the root towards more of that joy is about almost creating more habits of basically avoiding joy. Yes, yes. I think you've put your finger on it, Johnny. What is the one thing that everybody loves and wants above all else? Happiness. And in our culture, we have been educated to believe that happiness comes about as the result of the acquisition of some particular circumstance, a particular situation, an object, an activity, a relationship. We think that happiness is the result of something that we do achieve, acquire, own, etc. And as you say, we then strive towards whatever we think for us will be the cause of happiness, whether it's been the best rugby player in the world or the best musician or the having a family. Well, whatever it is for us, we strive towards that. We've lost the understanding in our culture that happiness is the nature of being. Happiness is where we start from. Happiness is what we essentially are. It's not something we can achieve in the future by manipulating our thoughts, our feelings, our physical body, our performance, none of that leads to happiness. Although we've been educated to believe it is, and we push and push and push and push for this elusive goal of happiness, which we consider to be in the far distance. Happiness is the very nature of our being. And in fact, let's take a situation in, let's say football, you, while the game is building up, there is tension, expectation, you're going towards something that that's not a state of joy, the state of expectation. When the goal is scored, there is an immediate release of tension. You're no longer going towards something, you're where you want to be. Surprise, surprise, you feel joy. Of course, the mind says, "I fear joy because we scored the goal." No, no, the joy isn't caused by scoring the goal. Scoring the goal brings the state of expectation to an end. It brings the thoughts and feelings to an end. And as a result of that, the joy, which was already there, already presently, the joy, which is the very nature of your being, at that moment, was able to shine. Previously, it was clouded by the expectation. But the mind misinterprets it. I feel joy because I won the game. Well, if that was the case, once you've won the game, you'd be joyful for the rest of your life. Are you two minutes later? No, you're not. Why? Because the mind rises again, it's the next game, the tension, the expectation builds up, builds up for a week, and then you score the goal. There's a release of tension. And that joy, you think, "Oh, the day you are, the joy, it must have been caused." I felt it again when I scored a goal. No, that wasn't the cause of the joy. It was just that you're the expectation, the tension, the sense of becoming ceased. And as a result, the joy that is the nature of being, at that moment, was able to shine clearly. Now, imagine if this understanding were to be part and parcel of your training, if you understood that you're not going towards joy, you come from that. It doesn't mean that we won't continue to train. All that is still important. But our happiness is not invested in the future. It's not invested in what happens. It's not invested in the outcome. Our seeking for happiness in the future comes to an end, by definition, because we're feeling joy now. So the joy in the now always always take place at the same time. The possibility of it is phenomenal, because even in the training, that concept of becoming is part of every training drill. As in at the end of this, we will be here. At the end of this weight session, I will be here. Instead of the payback being instantaneously involved in the moment itself, such as a sort of references with that sense of flowing, that the things that pay back instantaneously are not a case of, "I will be like this at the once I've done this." It's the involvement in it, such as dancing. Nobody really dances because they think, "Oh, once I've finished dancing, then I'll feel good. It's the dancing itself." And that's what I described as almost on the field in that moment is, you're not seeking anything. You're expressing. Yes, you're expressing. Dancing is a very good example. If you're a dancer or a musician, a violinist or a pianist, you cannot perform tens. So those are good examples where any kind of tension, any kind of expectation, any kind of fear, all of these tension, expectation, fear, they all come from a separate sense of I, a sense of ego. How am I doing? What do people think of me? What's going to be the. As soon as that comes in, that fear, anxiety, tension, expectation, worrying about what other people think, it translates into tension in the body. And exactly the same in rugby, exactly the same in all sports and not just in sports in any field of life really. Yeah, physiologically, it makes perfect sense in terms of the efficiency of the body and so many people will get this, but getting it and truly experiencing it are really interesting different things. And when you mention about that tension, that stress, the interesting I would have experienced in the dressing I was involved in is that you have, from an external perspective, this understanding of people when they see these people that there's so much fulfillment there. And there's so much worth within the individual, the individual so worthy, because they're doing what they're doing there, they must be so fulfilled that you go into the change room just before the event. I've not been in too many scenarios like that, but what you sense is an enormous fragility and lack, an enormous sense of I'm not enough. I mean, it's rife almost to an extent that not that I'd ever stereotyped or group, but it almost goes hand in hand with performers to a degree in certainly that there's this sense of I'm not enough yet in the zone moment. It's almost what is expressed is that sense of I'm all there's nothing I like I am complete, which allows me to to explore what I'm really capable of and it's that expression of my completeness. I think the sense of that and unworthiness comes from allowing our sense of our self to be conditioned by our past, by our expectations, by other people's expectations of us as soon as all of those ideas are mixed into our sense of our self. We then feel I'm not good enough and unworthy that feeling is translated into the body as tension and we cease performing it on our best. I can well imagine that before a game, a lot of people feel that there's the expectations are good enough and after the game, you feel the same. But during the game, as soon as the whistle starts, you're relieved of it. This white people perhaps I shouldn't use the word addiction because of the negative connotation. This white people are passionate about sport because they know that although it's held before the whistle goes and for most of the game, you're relieved of this sense. Your sense of self is by vested of your family history, your expectations, what the world thinks of you, how many people are watching on TV, what the outcomes are going to be, what impact on my life is going to be. You're just in the moment and that timeless moment, the moment that everybody longs for, that's the moment that everybody loves. In a way, for me, then hearing that, I really get the sense that like you said, potential is liberated. It's sort of that sense of liberation that goes with it. And so many people speak about, you know, it's in the world all around, but around our environment or my old environment, expressions before a game in order to try and calm that tension would be some really, really powerful messages. But they don't touch because they're almost reframed by the conditioning, things like just be yourself. They reinforce it. They reinforce it. Just let go. Be yourself. Live in the moment. Don't worry too much about what's going to happen, but all of those things. They're so powerful, but they're also powerfully almost counterinsuitive because they just see a be yourself. You then try and you try and be yourself. It's not understood. It's that power because also in the change room coaches will look at someone. If someone's kind of in the corner, just loose and reading the program before the game and kind of having a laugh with someone next to them, the most beautiful expression of ease. For me, immense preparation. It's almost viewed as, hey, you get your head in your miles away. You know, how dare you come on? You're not ready. Whereas in fact, actually what they're saying is ready. This person over here banging their head against the wall saying to themselves, I can do this. I can do this. Almost trying to reassure an obvious doubt. Whereas the doubt is missing in the person that's saying this moment is beautiful. It's enough. I'm enough. And I'm almost practicing and preparing and performing right now what I'm aiming to perform in ten minutes time. Yes, there's no discrepancy between the mindset beforehand and the mindset during. I had a tennis coach once that I played with in America and he at the time was coaching one of the top ten under 14 girls in the world. And he told me a story about her that every time she made a mistake, she smiled. It was brilliant. That's it. That's the story. Because what do we normally do when we make a mistake? We lose a point in tennis, the opponent score a try or a goal to go. We immediately, the separate self rises up and we go down on ourselves. We blame ourselves or somebody. Immediately, when we're out of the flow, we separate ourselves from the whole as an independent self. And then we blame ourselves if the goal is scored against us. If it's us that scored the goal, we give ourselves credit. But either way, we extract ourselves from the whole and become a part. What does smiling when you make a mistake? What does smiling do? It erases that habit. In other words, it places you back in the now. It counteracts the habit of the separate self or ego rising up and saying, "I did anti-wonderful or I made the mistake onto anti-offer." What's interesting about it, it wasn't a psychological exercise. It was a physical exercise. It was a smiling. It's difficult to be down on oneself and smile at the same time. It just erases the tendency of separating yourself out from the totality either as a great success or as a great failure. And therefore, placed ourselves in exactly the right position to face the next ball without fear or tension. It's immensely powerful. And you mentioned before a little bit about what I'm really, really interested in. We're talking about liberating potential and how that references or coincides or corresponds with that feeling of being in the now. And that time issue we've been speaking a lot about past and what that means. And yet, direct experience, which I know is a great basis of that sort of self-investigation and non-jaw understanding. That direct experience tells us only that there is just now. And yet, we seem to rely on so much me, especially in terms of this is what I've been through according to my memory and my understandings of it. And it's made me who I am. Almost that construct prevents me from living in the now. Yes. And it conditions your response in the now to whatever situation you may face. For instance, whatever you are now, whatever yourself is, your self is obviously present now. So if you were to want to make this investigation into who you essentially are, you wouldn't have to reach back into your past. You reach into your present experience because yourself is present now. So if I were to say to you without referring to the past, tell me about yourself. Yeah, you've only have experience. What would you say? I am. Would you say I am a rugby player? No, you have no experience of being a rugby player now. But anything you talk about from a physical perspective would relate to the past. Would relate to the past. Even if I asked you that question in the middle of a game, if you could freeze the game. And I say to you, John, don't refer to your past. Your self is present now. Therefore, in order to access it or know yourself, you don't need to reach into your past. So don't refer to the past. Who are you now? You wouldn't say I'm a rugby player. You wouldn't even say I'm a person. You close your eyes. There are a few physical sensations present. But you don't actually have an experience of being a person. You just have the awareness of being. Yeah. Everything else that we add onto that experience limits our self. And has to have come from. And comes from from knowledge. So if we are able to have access in ourselves just to this pure sense of being, just the awareness of being. And for that to be our, the place where we live. And then of course we still, we have a body in the mind that it's still functions. But its function is to express the qualities that are innate in our being. In other words, our body in the mind is used in the service of being rather than in the service of a fearful, anxious, apparently separate self for ego. So all the qualities of the body and the mind that we train, all of that remains. That can be trained. But it's liberated from serving this illusory sense of a self. Yeah. And the concepts of therefore through knowledge and understandings and past experiences, whatever those understandings or that's just memory anyway. But all that gathering, we're talking about that as potentially being the clothing. As you say from a very early age, we're having experiences that we resist. We don't understand them. We're not able to process them. So they get, in a way they get laid down in the deepest layers of our mind. And this storehouse of uncomfortable feelings that is laid down early on in life is then also translated into tensions in the body. And this early trauma, it builds up in us, in the mind, and corresponding counterpart in the body to use our analogy of clothing. It's like layer after layer after layer after layer of clothing. And so by the time that most of us get to a young adulthood, our sense of our self is profoundly influenced by dependent upon all of these traumas that we've experienced through our life. So it takes some unraveling, you have to go back through the layers all the way back. Not just that there's one surface thoughts and immediate feelings, but through the layers that have been accumulated in the mind and the tensions in the body to go all the way back through that to our essential being. The I am, the I am before it is qualified by the content of experience. If we make the, get in the habit of going all the way back there and resting there, that acts as a kind of, it's like a kind of dissolving agent. The layers are gradually dissolved. It's really, really interesting because at times that you can apply some kind of logic to these things, you know, you sort of see a situation, you've kind of, oh, that's because of this and you can work it out. But there are times certainly for me in my life where things just come up out of nowhere. And then suddenly the mind is recruited by the feeling or the feelings exacerbated by the mind's thought process and suddenly you're down a space where you become almost a different person. You're saying things you're thinking, I would never say this and I'm seeing things a certain way they say, this is ridiculous to how I know myself to be. And yet you become consumed by those layers, if you like, because something, something in the current situation, which to somebody else might be so trivial that they may not even notice it. For you, it triggers one of these deep-seated layers and it can be tiny, it can be just what your partner says to you in passing or it can be the time you're saying, but it puts you back. For that moment, you're a five year old boy with your father ignoring you or whatever the trigger has been. And of course, to an outsider, it's completely irrational. Johnny, don't be silly. I just say, but for you, it's very real. You are re-experiencing that trauma. Exactly. And so it's really interesting, because like I said, there's that for me, I had a very interesting relationship with, or when I say, had a sort of it still have experiences of this relationship with a fear. And my understanding at the time when I was young was almost to overcome it, to protect myself against it, to stave it off, to conquer it, whatever it be, it was about perfectionism achieving. And those kind of things, as much as they were probably more irrational from a young mind, and as they got more subtle through an older mind, but they're there in the way that you're thinking about things coming up, or the way that you're thinking about things gone by in there. It's also part of I think everybody's experience that there is a clothing there. What is that preparation or that opportunity, and how does it take place that you can come to that direct experience of that I am, or we can sort of remove these layers? To the example you gave a fear as a child, what was it or who was it that was afraid? What were you protecting? Well, you're not talking about fear of your body. You weren't in physical danger. It's not that kind of fear. So it was a psychological entity. It was your sense of yourself. You were afraid. You were, I am afraid. But was your being just a fact of being? Was it in danger at that moment? No. So it was something, it wasn't your essential being, and it wasn't your body that was afraid. Somewhere in between the two, there is this illusory, ultimately illusory sense of self, that is afraid, anxious, and that it's quite possible to lead a whole life whose purpose is to defend and enhance that illusory sense of self. In fact, many people do spend their whole lives defending and enhancing their sense of self. Without ever meeting that self, or getting into the service. Without ever investigating the self clearly enough to realize that there is something called a self, if we can call it self, that there is being, that there is the experience of being. If we can call that a self or the self, but the self that is afraid, we're not talking about physical fear, the self who is anxious, psychologically afraid, that self, when we look for it, is not there. And imagine if those times in your childhood that you had felt afraid and anxious, that you had the tools to realize the fear and anxiety, their feelings. But what happens if I go back further, take a step back from my feelings, to the being, to the sense of 'I am' that is behind, when we say, 'I am afraid, I am anxious, I am excited, I am in love'. The 'I am' is always the same, we're not always afraid, we're not always anxious, we're not always in love, we're not always excited, but we always are, I always am. So the fear is temporary, but the 'I am' is essential. Imagine in those moments of fear as a child, if we had the tools, to have not got immersed in the fear and then to have built a life around accommodating and coping with it. But had been able to go through, take a step back from the fear to the being behind it, and to realize that being is not threatened, just going back to one's, that is the cure for the fear. You don't have to spend the rest of your life doing whatever one would normally do to accommodate the fear. All you need to do is go back one step further back to your being, which is already inherently free of fear. That is the cure. But the interesting thing is rather than take a step back, the almost conventional and accepted form is to take a step forward into it, to try and reassure the fear and feed it with reassurance. Yes, exactly, to do something that will either get rid of it or to prevent us having to fully feel it. So let's say we have the feeling 'I am afraid'. We go to the fridge, to the bottle, to the video, to the. Whatever our particular object or substance is, and sure enough when you eat the food, have the drink, we are distracted from our fear. At that moment we do feel relief from the fear. And as a result of that, we briefly taste the joy of being. But we wrongly attribute the joy of being to the sandwich, to the beer. And we think, 'Oh, if I have more of that, I do more of that. I'll get more relief from my fear.' And then when you have the next drink, you think, 'Oh yes, it does. I do feel, in that moment you're relieved of the tension of the fear, the innate joy of your being briefly shines.' We wrongly attribute it to winning the match, to having the drink, whatever it is, and hence the addiction. And we spend our life in pursuit of objects, substances, circumstances, trying to get rid of the fear. Without realizing that what we actually experienced in that moment, when the fear came to an end, it wasn't winning the match, scoring the goal, having the dream. It was in that moment that the tension of fear briefly came to an end, which is a possibility available at all times. And the joy of being, which is a possibility available at all times to all people in all circumstances, that joy of being just shone in that moment. And we felt relief from the fear just because our innate joy of being came out of hiding in the background. And it ceased being clothed by the content of our thoughts and feelings. And it just shone briefly and we experienced that as happiness. And so by stepping back, by going towards passion, joy, by going towards that sense of relaxation, when everything is saying, 'Do the opposite.' Is that where that meditative state comes in? Two approaches are it. That was a physical approach. We noticed this correlation between joy, which is a feeling, and relaxation in the body. It's very difficult to be joyful and tense at the same time. It's very difficult to smile and for there to be tension in your face. What is a smile? It is a relaxation of tension. What is it laughter? It's a full-bodied relaxation of tension. It's almost impossible to be tense and laugh at the same time. In relation to the 14-year-old tennis player, it's almost impossible to have negative thoughts about one. So, 'Oh, I've failed again.' And to smile at the same time. So there's this very close correlation between physical body and our emotional state. In this case, it's an approach where we put the body in the posture, in the position that it is naturally in when it is free of the tension of fear, anxiety, expectation and so on. If you release them emotionally, it has an effect on you. Physically, you release them physically. It has an effect on you emotionally. You referred, mentioned earlier, 'You're joined again. You drop your shoulders.' It's very difficult to be tense with your shoulder. And you tense the first thing you do. So, if there's an emotional release of tension, your shoulders naturally drop. However, if as an exercise on the pitch, you say to yourself, 'Breathe deeply. Drop your shoulders smile.' That's a physical action, but it has an emotional counterpart. And you can do either. Just taking one deep breath, it's very difficult to be tense and to breathe deeply at the same time. Because of this very close correlation between our emotional state and our physical body, it works both ways. And so, the exercise of meditation, is that more of a total approach to this kind of. Yes, I think so. The smiling in between the points, the taking a deep breath, the relaxing your shoulders, that's something you do for five seconds in between. Well, one of the balls out of play in the middle of the game, but yes, as a general approach. Yes, meditation. Although it'd be nice not to use the word 'meditation' because it suggests this, something we do with the mind towards some kind of goal. Whereas in meditation in this context, it would be simply letting go of all the thoughts, memories, feelings, expectations. And just coming back, sinking back into just the sense of being, that the sense I am. So that just the sense of being becomes increasingly our sense of ourself. So that when we think of ourself, we don't think, oh, I am so-and-so with this history, with this relationship, with these qualities, with these folds. No, just when we think of ourself, when we feel ourself, we just go to the experience of being. And that experience of being, if we go to that experience of being now, if we had gone to that experience yesterday, two years ago, ten years ago, or when we were two-year-old kid, it's the same. It's the same. It does not change one job, whether we win the match, or we lose the match. The pure sense of being before the game is identical to the pure sense of being after the game, irrespective of what's taken place during the game, or what the score is. And the nature of that being is joy, peace. So yes, the attitude that would be to regularly undress, psychologically, to go back to our original, to travel back in oneself through the layers of experience, discarding the thoughts, the feelings, everything that we've acquired, going back just to this pure sense of being. And making that, to begin with, we feel we visit our being briefly from time to time. But the more we go there, the more we feel we live there as that, to make it one's new default identity, to operate from that. And then, so the one sense of being is not just something one visits from time to time, in between all one's other activities, relationships, but it is the place where one lives, one lives from that. And my experience is that the more we do this, fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to take us away from that. So when someone says something to you now, which reminds you of the way your father spoke to you when you were a five year old boy, you don't go back to the five year old boy, you go back to your being. Is your being affected by the words that that discard, no, they were just, they were just innocuous words that they didn't hurt you because there's nothing rose up to meet them and say, I don't like this. No, your being is just open, just heard the words, no problem, the words don't hurt me. So it seems like a very small thing, just returning to one's essential being, the essential I am and living from that as that. But it has a profound effect on, it would have a profound effect in relation to sports, but actually on relationships on every aspect of one's life. I completely agree. And within sports are an incredible mini nutshell version of everything because within there, you've got some really intense relationships. Absolutely. You've got the performance, you've got the leadership angle, you've got the health and well being, which is another thing I might want to touch on in a second, but it's really interesting for me in terms of looking at how that. That past becomes that sort of gathering, if you, if it's allowed to become a gathering, that therefore in terms of what's happening now, understanding the, the opportunity in the way we respond to what's happening now to therefore not contribute to that. So I sort of, like you said about the smile is that after a while, if your smile reaction to a failure or an apparent failure, but the smile in the reaction means it's not a failure, then there's no gathering for the, for the future you. I know we're not talking about that. It doesn't trigger the weight of your past history. Each one of those smiles and a commitment to saying, coming coming back to the being almost is building that momentum of liberation almost for me, the sense of momentum gathered by each one of those triggers, the more you delve into trying to reassure it, like you said, going to the bottle or the fridge or whatever it is. If the, if it's the constant recycling almost of that past, albeit different formulations of it when it comes out, the getting someone in touch with their potential is for them to, to liberate themselves from that cycle and to experience new and to touch that higher intelligence. It's just to free them from their past conditioning, because if we're not free from our past conditioning, our future cannot be more than simply an extension of. Our past conditioning, but to be free from your past conditioning, then there are no limits on the future, of course, that there's a physical limit, but the physical limit is so much less than the physical limit that is determined by our past. And that's when inspiration comes in sports, but actually in any field of life, you know, take a situation in a, in a changing room before a game instead, and you've lost three, you've lost three magic. And if you were, then imagine if you were not to refer back to the past, but if you could have some simple question, tell me what you know about yourself now without reference to the past. Would there be any fear or anxiety there? None at all. And, and how difficult is it, is that to access? Would someone say, you know, sorry, I don't understand or would you have to know, you can ask anybody, just tell me about yourself now, but don't refer to the past. In order to answer that question, actually, you, you don't really mind what they are, the point is not to get an answer. The point is for that person, instead of going back to their past, where, as you say, all the fear and anxiety, they're going to their self, you don't really mind what, what they say in answer to the question, but you do want them to go to their self to have access to their self, which in that moment is completely free of condition. And therefore free of fear and anxiety, you are just by asking them that simple question, you are placing them in the best possible position to play with freedom, innovation, creativity. It's, it's amazing. People talk about the stigma of talking about issues and those sort of things, but even the idea about these kind of conversations we're having within that environment, there would be a stigma to it. There's even slight, there's probably a stigma to meditation as an attitude. It's for softies weirdos. You know, people that, that not so much bowing out, but people that, you know, don't have that drive or passion, you know, to bring in fact, actually, it brings me to the next thing about with that side of being yourself. And how does that play with what you want to manifest physically in your world, your dreams and ambitions? It's, for example, there's a lot being spoken about in terms of, you know, the kind of law of attraction perspective of life and how the universe works in terms of the vibrational frequency of the individual and the thoughts and the whatever it be. How do you see that in terms of goal setting and achieving, because from the physical perspective identified with this is me, mine and body, from the past, this is me, my clothing, it's very much a, I've got to do it. I've got to, I've got to make it happen. I've got to compete against everyone else. I've got to compare myself to everyone else. I've got to be better, be more worthy, I've got to deserve it more and so on. How does it work for you in terms of what you want to achieve and how do you look to bring that about? I think one thing that happens is that because one's sense of oneself is derived more from one's being than from one's intellectual physical abilities from one's past and so on. I notice I compare myself less and less with other people. My sense of my own identity, I don't see it in relation to other people, because my sense of myself is not derived from comparison with other people it's derived from my being. I think something that is quite often misunderstood is that people often think that someone who is interested in these matters no longer has any desires or ambitions. It's not that. It's just that one's desires and ambitions and plans and so on. They no longer rise on behalf of the fearful, anxious, insecure, depressed self. They come from somewhere deeper in you. They're still filtered through your character. So for this reason, different people desire different things. That depends on their particular mind and body. But one would no longer choose where one lived or the activity is one engaged in or the work one did. To compensate for this ultimately illusory sense of self, the sense of self that is built on fear and anxiety and therefore one's life it unfolds more in response to the qualities that are true of our essential being, not the illusory self. So the piece that joy that is the very nature of the being our character as a person, including our desires, our ambitions, our plans are informed by those qualities more than being a compensation for the feeling of lack, anxiety, fear and so on. Is that where when people speak about finding your higher purpose or when I say, "Oh, I just mean you can find your purpose." Exactly. One's higher purpose for one to the better phrase. The purpose of one's life is no longer to accommodate the feeling of fear and anxiety or to numb it or avoid it or to enhance oneself. The purpose of one's life is for one's body and mind to express the qualities that are the essential nature of your being and because every essential nature of our being is the same in everyone. The qualities of the mind and the body are different in everyone so everyone is going to express this differently. This is very powerful because it's something I experienced, I mean life long just happened to manifest itself in the sport side of things as well naturally because that's part of life and it was something that meant a lot to me. Two or three, well three or four year injury period and during that experience probably want a lot of other players are talking about when it comes to the end of a career where there was that that sense of lack really shone through because there wasn't the bottle and the fridge available for me, which was playing covering it up by being in front of crowds, by having a huge goal like it properly sort of my anyway at that time was physical so I had to be on the pitch kicking a ball to feel like I'm worthy. And then there was the kind of meetings and the reviews and the games and everything that was completely gone not available and therefore the lack was just saying you know you can't appease me a lot of players are getting that at the end of careers and a lot of people are getting that in retirement stages I imagine and at various times during lives and everything and a lot of speaking about that sense of lack and not fitting and not belonging unable to contribute but also. Talking about no longer being able to find their passion not having the same passion a lot of them try and revisit that by going straight into coaching attempting comebacks going and doing this going to whatever they can to try and almost find something close enough to whatever it was but when you're talking about that that true nature shining through the mind the body almost is that a natural passion. Is that is that passion finding itself is that movement towards passion or because a lot of people are seeing passion as belonging in the thing rugby rugby or sports my passion and if I can't play sport then I'm going to have to find another passion and almost can't try all these other things and you know all these all these other clothes on for example aren't going to you know they don't fit doesn't fit doesn't fit but if you go back into yourself is that part of coming back to passion as well. I think the crisis that a sports person faces at towards the end of their career is that the activity that they have invested their identity in their sense of their self is coming to an end and therefore when all of that is taken away there's a sort of empty feeling feeling of not being valuable not being worth as a and then to compensate for that feeling of emptiness well a healthy a reasonably healthy way of doing that is to go into coaching commentating on an unhealthy way and we did the well known examples you you you do to drink or but what are we doing in that case we're engaging some kind of activity or substance to fill up or avoid the sense of emptiness that's left when the activity that we previously invested our sense of self in has come or is coming to an end. And that in it's a great opportunity and it's an opportunity you are obviously taking it's an opportunity not just to substitute one activity with another activity but but to have the courage to to face the the void the sense of lack and instead of reaching for the proverbial bottle or whatever it is to take the opportunity to to explore investigate the sense of lack when I say I feel empty I am a who is this self it's obviously not my body is it my being no my being is the same now as it as it has always been it doesn't fluctuate it that crossroads that you face at the end of your career it's a great opportunity sure but that would be a very powerful time to introduce this this possibility that what the satisfaction the joy the peace that people really seek is not through fulfillment through activities relationships substances and so on it is just a run being that that would be the time to a very potent time to begin this this exploration yeah definitely I think just the nature of it as well it's I find the idea about the quiet peaceful the sitting with the allowing the meditation if you like for that expression. It's a it's a really such an interesting journey whereas people like myself might be used to is a bit more of a tangible one numbers and figures you know you go into a training session you've got your weights you push this at the end of it you get that immediate release of the the hormones that make you feel like wow I've done a load of work I feel good about myself and you try and almost transfer that into while my meditation I'm going to sit there for however long and then this will happen like you said dear enlightenment idea and then I'm going to get a buff moment where I'm going to go it is very true people often I heard often I can't meditate okay it's like saying I can't breathe yeah I can walk it is why because they have an idea that that when you when you meditate you enter into some kind of blissful peaceful state in which there are no thought no what about if you simply change the definition as you just implied a few minutes ago you change the definition meditation simply to this that instead of avoiding an uncomfortable feeling you face it is that something that anybody cannot do so I feel this void this sense of lack and my impulse is to go to the proverbial bottle of whatever the equivalent is for each of us instead of doing that with and that is of course an avoidance of the sense of this is this is unbearable this sense of emptiness this sense of lack I can't bear it I want something or someone to distract me from it what about in that moment if we said no I'm going to do the one thing that I've probably never done in my life I felt this sense of lack from the age of three to three years or and I've always more or less successfully managed it or avoided it I'm now going to do the one thing I've never done which is just sit down close my eyes and turn towards it instead of turning away from it that's it that's meditation that that would be meditation it's not something you can't do it's not something it's nothing to do with achieving a peaceful state or even changing one state on the contrary it's it's it's ceasing trying to change one state and simply facing something which one previously considered to be unbearable but which actually if we face it we find it's not unbearable it wasn't really the feeling itself that was unbearable it was our rejection of it that was uncomfortable if we withdraw that rejection of the uncomfortable feeling and simply face the discomfort of the feeling it it loses much of its discomfort is it a reasonable representation to suggest that a movement in that direction is a movement towards the truth itself the movement away and those two if we use it in that respect movement towards is a movement towards join a movement away is a movement into anxiety and stress you're right instead of turning away from the feeling we turn towards it we open ourselves to it we just we don't do anything to it we just we just face it we allow it we welcome it and that's the first step towards taking one step back and asking us of the question okay what is it that is facing this feeling what is it that is aware of this feeling I am aware of this feeling who am I I'm just this I'm just that which is aware of the experience what I'm aware of in this case the feeling of emptiness I that which is aware of them I'm inherently free of all these afflictive emotions in other words my nature is is is peace and and the interesting thing is we've mentioned at the beginning is that the momentary glimpse of this can come at the idea of actually you know when the game is won or the big moment happens but it's so fleeting it's so fleeting but two things one it's so fleeting because immediately that the feeling that the ideas the feelings they have their rise again are are aren't I great and so the the separate self comes back again and and obscures that this is never so I never really need so it's fleeting but not only that we wrongly interpret its cause we think it was scoring the goal yeah winning the game having the drink finding the relationship buying the house this is what caused the joy that I briefly felt and therefore if I try that much harder to win the next game to get the next relationship for the next dream would and in this way that there's an endless cycle of seeking acquisition fleeting moment of joy or peace and then the next round of seeking it is initiated and eventually this leads to addiction whereas all that is required is is to understand that the brief moment of joy that we felt was not caused by any of those objects substances activities and so on it was the cessation of the seeking resisting impulse and as a result the shining so to speak of the quiet joy of being all of the talk around this is about coping managing dealing with these issues which in itself the very nature of anyone talks about I've got quite a lot to manage at the moment you sort of get immediately like what my sense stressful whereas the sense I'm getting about this is that you're moving into a space that it's not because it's boundless it's not really a space but you're moving into possibility you're absolutely right to use an analogy that does the space of this room when we came in here this morning does the space I'm caricaturing the space of this room does the space of this room think oh couldn't so I've got a lot to cope with now if you're going on I better be honest does the space think it's is it under pressure is it is it stressed is it got a lot to get if we started arguing what would the space do would he get uptight about it would it it wouldn't mind it or just just in a way we and I I refer to us now as the space of awareness the present the witnessing presence of the ones that that which knows or is aware of our experience it is never stressed by what it is aware of and that's not something we have to develop it's not something we need spend 30 years of our life training not to be stressed no our nature is by definition unstressed and unstressable all one needs to do is recognize one's essential nature and make it one's starting point make it the place where we to begin with we visited so to speak from time to time but but increasingly we make it the place where we where we live so something it doesn't mean to say that the difficult situations don't arise of course difficult situations arise for all of us but they arise they don't they don't immediately trigger these all this old series of associations no we just go back to our to our being we recognize I am that which is aware of this situation and that which is aware of the situation is free of the situation it is knowing it it is aware of it and it is inherently free of stress doesn't mean say that I dissociate from the situation and don't have anything to do with it now I may be required to be involved to interact to make a decision to perform some action but we do so not from a position of stress anxiety fear we do so from this place in ourself which is free of all of those emotions and therefore best able to make a decision or to perform an action that is in service of the whole inclusive yeah that is inclusive exactly it and then that doesn't serve any particular person it's it's the best possible outcome for all parties concerned yes it's so powerful when I mean for example in sport the whole thing is based on how do you deal with pressure but you're that instead of beginning the first question of what is pressure who's under pressure how does that because I know from my perspective when I was 18 and just joined in the club and you're full of the unknown is a friend to you and then suddenly because you're open with it you're unknown the unknown becomes your friend and then five six years down the line when you've won apparently won some things and people are talking about you and you've this now you've got so much known about you from your path and now all you talk about is pressure expectation they're a failure and yet you look at the two situations it is just player pitch ball game yes I begin with seeing it as opportunity and the other is seeing it as failure because to begin with your sense of yourself was at least to a large extent it was it was derived from yourself it wasn't derived from your expectations your failures your successes whereas five years later you have an image of yourself you're no longer really in touch with yourself as you really are you're aware of an image of yourself which is largely clean from what other people say about you and expect of you and criticize you and so that you take that in and it becomes your new felt sense of yourself what does that do for health and well-being in its terms around body and mind is there you know the obvious thing about being away from stress being that space of inspiration for you example for your experience what is your life from a health and well-being perspective feel like compared to your other moments where you might be able to compare it I think it has a very profound effect on health and well-being of course the well-being of the body the health of the body is very closely connected to our emotional well-being so if our sense of our self is derived from our self from from this the fact of being does as we've said there's less stress there's less fear there's less anxiety and therefore less need to compensate for those feelings and avoid them no need to compensate through excess working excess eating excess drinking we don't require continuous stimulation from substances it doesn't mean to say I'm not suggesting that we don't enjoy a glass of wine or we never have a cup of coffee and not suggesting or that we may not work hard but we don't do any of things as compensations for the increasing sense of dissatisfaction and void and is that where the word just a simple thing of people say you need a balance to your life but when you're compensating and there's need how do you keep those plates spinning whereas versus when it's coming from a place of exactly if one's sense of self is still invested in the content of one's experience in one's past in one's thoughts and feelings one's activities one's relationships other people's expectations then even if we were to impose balance on our life through a regime with dire exercising it doesn't address the underlying cause which is your felt sense of separation as long as that is active however much yoga you do however pure your diet however much you exercise that's going to make some difference but sooner or later the underlying tension that comes from this deep belief and feeling of self as a temporary finite separatop is going to emerge and sooner or later the cracks in our regime will begin to show so I suggest the opposite approach where we go first to the underlying sense of being which is inherently free of stress anxiety and we make that our starting point and that we then develop a life that is an expression of that and that includes diet exercise but it's not our lifestyle is then not a compensation for the sense of lag it is simply a natural expression at the level of the body in the mind there's something that we are already in touch with in ourself yeah one thing I'd like to sort of round up on is an interesting question maybe it'll bring up a few things but one of the questions that hit me right in the middle of that injury period when I suddenly realize a lot of the injuries I was going through puts me in a way of saying you may never play again so at 24 that could be it and suddenly I was looking back thinking blind me if I made the most of this yeah I've won a load of things and this started the ball rolling in this sort of space but that's nowhere near enough so if it's not there how do I ever get to say I've made the most of this career and I thought but that's going to be a life question when I when my life finishes whenever that is I'll also be able to say how do you make the most of life how do you make the most of anything so many people are talking about smelling the rose and making the most of every moment but the question being what is a life well-lived and how would you paint that picture? I think a life well-lived would be a life when we've had the courage to face all these feelings of lack, fear, sorrow, anxiety and so on instead of avoiding them, suppressing them we'd have the courage to to to face them to explore them and to penetrate through them to go through them to find a sense of yourself that lies prior to that and then to allow that understanding to then inform once thoughts and feelings and once subsequent activities and relationships so it would be a life where we we cease avoiding suppressing, compensating we first have the courage to turn around and face the thing that we are fleeing from to face it, uncomfortable as it is, it's not going to be peaceful, pretty not going to sit there with a beaming smile on your face, it's uncomfortable having the courage to stay there and then slowly sink down deeper than that to go through back through the layers of discomfort the thing to to make touch with this essential sense of self for being and then to allow that to begin to inform our thoughts and feelings and the way we live and act and relate in the world, whatever that would mean for each of us same sense of being but expressed differently in every single person's case it's I mean the way that I've heard that expressed, well not necessarily that but I've had something expressed to me was the head and the racer between head and heart in a sort of metaphorical term I guess more in that the heart when I was younger and it was just exploration and expression and just that powerful sense of vibrancy sort of almost clothing that or burying that with the head in terms of its ideas and what's right and suddenly I found myself in a position where everywhere I went I was almost again metaphorically stooped over because I wanted my head in their first guarantees everything's okay everything's right how I want it to be and it's like okay heart you can come in but the heart never does because the head still stays ahead and it's almost that ability for me in a playing sense was to bring their head back and let the heart lead which in terms of the relationship with the unknown is exactly that as soon as that possibility was there I wanted to flee from it the concept that actually that it's okay in there and then actually I'm going to take a step a bit like in those cartoons where they start running step appears just before the foot hits yes yes but you run anyway because there's a deeper knowing that the step is there but physically meant you know I can't see I can't feel it I can't smell it I can't touch it I can't taste it but I'm going into that space because not because at the same there was danger there and it was a irrational move from a physical perspective but we're talking like use from a psychological perspective just to say let's go back to that change of my idea of those very very few that I used to sat there and he sort of said to me you ready for the game of course yes let's just see how it goes trained ready cited so let's go see versus me who is there going but what if this happens after 10 minutes you'll be there won't you and you'll do that and I'll be ready to do that and if you do that again and if this happens you're that head saying let me just make sure that steps there okay it's there off you go and that was the end of the flow but also the end of the health that the stress and everything that followed from it but I think in the way that you've expressed it that's exactly what I wish someone had been able to get to me and as a final question when is someone ready and when are they not because these messages are around everywhere because like I said this is something I'm looking now thinking and I know we could argue that I am just I am here and therefore it's always been now that this has happened but what would it have taken for that 21 year old me who was firing into that kind of I need this and I must get that next result to start understanding a softening to this opportunity it has only happened when it's right when it's how does that come about when when when is someone ready can everyone be connected to every moment or is there a time or a place I think the answer is to both those two possibilities you've just presented if the answer is yes both of them everybody is is everybody's essential being is already and always inherently peaceful yeah without resistance without the sense of lack so in that sense at every moment everybody has this potential to be completely at peace and at ease and full of joy yeah every moment everyone has that potential just by virtue of fact that that that they are that they exist that they are aware at the same time why it is that some people here of this possibility once age 16 and things yes that that's true I know that's true that's what I want what is it that somebody their heart gets broken for the first time age 20 and they realize I invested my entire happiness in a relationship that ended in a phone call I'm actually talking about myself that ended in in a phone call and and then the recognition I had allowed my happiness to be entirely dependent on the relationship which I projected into the future for the rest of my life and it came to an end in a phone call for me at that moment it precipitated this question that really really was the driving force of my interest in these matters in what can we reliably invest our desire for peace and happiness when it is quite clear that if we invested in anything objective an achievement an activity a relationship a substance a circumstance it is going soon related to come to an end and if my happiness was dependent on it my happiness was going to come to an end as well so if I I don't want fleeting happiness I want lasting happiness but what where can I find lasting happiness now why is it that I ask that question aged I was 21 I think why is it that that happened to me and not my next own neighbor you know Johnny I can't answer that question I don't know so in theory yes everybody has the potential at every moment to go directly to the piece of their true nature what is it that makes some people explore that invitation and others postpone it or not explore it I can't explain that I mean I guess something that's really powerful for me I'm sort of enjoying your being myself book at the moment and one of those things is like you said that understanding that your true self whatever that is isn't going anywhere so as long as wherever we go wherever I went with the games wherever I continue to go that opportunity will still be there at that moment and that moment and that moment yeah it's it's the fact that you know as much as you know I felt at times alone isolated and and very very lost but the sheer power of that being is that it's allowing you to feel that way because it is so allowing yes it doesn't resist to the as you have the space of this room doesn't say yes and no to that it is just I'm always at that moment when you had the feeling I am lost probably your attention went to the feeling of being lost and then you compensated for it in your own particular but if at that moment a friend had said to you make the statement I am lost instead of going to the feeling of being lost at the expense of the I am emphasise the I am yeah that's always present yesterday you felt I am lonely the day before you felt I am tired the feeling of being lost the feeling of being lonely the feeling of being tired that comes and go but it's always the same I am that would have taken you to yourself prior to and independent of the feeling of being lost the feeling of loss would have dissipated as a result of your coming back to your to your being which is not lost and doesn't need anything objective to feel fulfilled and that's bringing us right back to the your answer to the life where I lived which is as uncomfortable as that coming back to that feeling may seem at the time to not give you whatever that experience is that's where everything we're seeking lies yes ultimately even in sports we think what do you want you want to win if you knew that winning the game would make you miserable and losing the game would make you happy which would you go for you'd go for the loss it's not really winning the game you win the game because winning the game brings the state of tension and expectation to an end and as a result of that you're innate joy briefly shines that's the experience that everybody seeks that's what everybody is doing they're basically we're all seeking the being that we already are and I spent lockdown writing a book called you are the happiness you seek we are what we seek to seek for it in something other than ourself is a recipe for misery Wow Rupert thank you it's been an absolute pleasure I have no idea what time it is I'll hang with you it's been a pleasure we could have quite easily gone on all afternoon yeah thank you it's it's so so powerful and and so impactful what I think you're doing you mentioned what I'm trying to do but what you've been doing for so many years and yeah like I said I was I'd love to have been in connection with with your message earlier but it happened for me at the right time John you know you had your own your own unique path and it's because of your own unique path that you you now want to do what you're doing now you probably wouldn't want to do what you're doing now if you had this so I think your your path it's been perfect for you and it's beautiful and that you've that you've turned your experience into what you're now doing and and what I'm doing is I'm speaking very generally not particularly to sports people or I'm speaking to to very wide whereas you're tailoring this to your field to sports people and that's a beautiful thing to do and then like you say I mean you know the 20 year olds that will benefit so much from from hearing this and I do feel like I'm on where I'm supposed to be but very much there I think when people see sport it's not to realize as we've said numerous times you want to speak about sport and you say yeah but this is actually the same for everyone you kind of guys just people are very interested in sport and it's a great way of sports people realizing that actually we can exist through sport outside of sport and other people who are not in sport realizing that actually they're all sports and as well if they want to be all playing life in their own way but thank you so so much not at all it's pleasure and just like that we're at the end of another episode of I Am I'm so so grateful to all of you for listening in I'm enormously keen that this be a two-way conversation so if you've got any thoughts, questions, ideas, anything that's been inspired by these conversations anything you just want to get off your chest and get out there then please send them across in the reviews or just get in touch on social media I absolutely love holding these types of discussions I do believe there is no more powerful an opportunity in life than to look at what we can make of our time here on earth individually and collectively there's so much scope and depth in these conversations and all the learnings and lessons I do feel are limitless if you haven't already and you want to know a little bit more about why I'm holding this space and talking to these guests and do head over to the Tuesday episodes there I'll explain my journey and my history with these people I'll also use this time to answer any of your questions so don't hesitate to get in touch and I'd love it if you'd rate, review, follow and subscribe to the show Until next week, have a great weekend thanks for listening to I Am with me, Johnny Wilkinson Before I go I want to say a final thank you to the sponsors of today's podcast Vitality For me the secret to a happy and healthy life is about living consciously and when we can align those little things we do and decisions we make every day with the life we really want to live, it really makes 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