Nic Higham - You're Already Awake | Nonduality

If you're new here, thanks for joining us. We speak about the same thing, the non-thing, every month, and yet we can't talk about it. And again, we can only talk about it, it's just that no word, no pattern of language can capture it, words can only point. Every word, every sentence points to that which is all that is. We're not here to give out beliefs, we're not here to tell you what to think, how to live your life, we're here to inquire together. We're here to be and to experience this presence and not to get to a conclusion through the mind, not to reach some kind of final understanding. But more to question our conclusions, more to question what we think we understand about reality, what we think we understand about ourselves. So, there's nothing to get, because you are it, all is it. And that it, that doubt, that cannot be named, that reality, that can't be comprehended. It's all that is, all you are, and it's shoving up as this presence, as this moment, as all you are experiencing. Notice that you're experiencing, there is experiencing, sounds, sensations, thoughts, it's an obvious fact isn't it, so simple, experiences happening. Who's experiencing? Can you find a centre? Can you find an experiencer? And if you do find a centre, if you do find an experiencer, isn't that just an experience? So it's so interesting to recognise that there is only ever experiencing and the apparent experiencer is an experience. We can't find the experiencer, yet all we find is experiencing. The experiencer and the experiencer, the experienced are synonymous, non-jewel. There is not me the experiencer and an object, I experience. There is not a separate self who is conscious of something out there. I never really find out there, I never really find in here, I only find experience and the eye, I'm really referring to, is experiencing. And you can drop the word experiencing, it's a word, it's a pointer, don't get hung upon that word. And that's the thing about words, each word implies an agent, each word implies one or something and that duality between the subject and the object. So I can say I'm experiencing sounds and that sentence is loaded, isn't it, with concepts, with meaning, I experiencing sounds, but that eye is experiencing that the ultimate eye, not that ultimate eye is somewhere else or someone else or a special eye, it's all there is, but that eye ultimately is experiencing, it's not an eye that I can locate an objective experience. And any eye that I can locate, maybe a feeling, a thought, a self image, a body, a mind is an experience, I don't find the experiencer and yet there is experiencing eye experiencing a sound, there is experiencing that's irrefutable, we may not know who's experiencing, where it stems from, how it's happening and of course we can come up to come up with all sorts of conclusions and theories, but in this moment of experiencing it's just known, it's just obvious there is experiencing, eye experiencing, experiencing, sound, what is sound, what you really experience when you experience sound, you experience experience, and experience is experiencing, this is non-diality, experiencing, experiencing, experiencing, not too, no divisions, no boundaries, nothing finite, nothing separate, nothing that isn't included in the whole, only the whole, and you are that. And we are looking for that wholeness, always, if we are overlooking the obvious, we're looking for it, because overlooking is believing that it's not here, it's not me, it's not already the case, we're searching for a special state, we're searching for cosmic consciousness, absolute awareness, non-dual being, presence, and yet there's only that, and in our overlooking in our searching, in our apparent forgetfulness, there is experiencing, experiencing, experiencing, no way to say what that experiencing is, yet no way to deny it, experiencing is what you fundamentally are. So what if this experiencing you're having right now is already the awakening or rather the awakefulness, the enlightenment or rather the light of presence, already the liberation or rather the fact of freedom. So if it's already that, so it's not someday, it's not after more practice, after meeting a special guru, after attending a retreat, but simply the fat of this experiencing this wakefulness. With no division, with no lack. It's this self-aware existence. So that's what I'm pointing to when I say awake. It's not a wakefulness that has an opposite. There is no opposite, there's only the wakefulness. And that wakefulness can take many forms, it can appear and know itself or not apparently through different modulations of itself, through different patternings of itself, through different expressions of itself. So it's this radiance, this brightness of being, reality knowing itself, experiencing itself. And we've all heard teachings that say wake up. And actually this language is misleading because you're not asleep. You're already self-aware experiencing already what they point to as this awakened consciousness. So what needs to wake up is simply the recognition of what you already are. And I say need, but even that's not quite true, it's more about questioning the assumption of sleep, of not there, of not complete. Question the assumption that this experience has to feel a certain way, has to look a certain way, has to change. Or this experience can't be changed. If I do a practice or if I work in myself or if I explore my patterns, that also means I'm not awake because if I'm doing that, then well, order that there is unfolding within the same space of this radiance of experiencing. So whether you are playing the game of seeking, searching, fixing, resolving, understanding, or simply being, well, you're always being, you're always that radiant light of reality. Always knowing yourself and you can know yourself in a multitude of ways. You're knowing yourself right now. So if this moment doesn't feel as it should according to the mind, according to some comparison to how it wants felt or how it how others feel apparently, then that's how you're experiencing yourself. Whatever you're experiencing is you experiencing yourself. This is self-knowledge, this moment and I'm not talking about a conceptual knowledge. It's an existential knowledge. In Sanskrit they say yana. This is that, this is that self-knowing, this is the process of awakefulness. It's it's a liveness. It's vital. It's radiant. And it includes this human experience. This human experience is one expression that this experiential field, the totality of reality comes to explore its infinite potential. Each experience, each expression, each mode of being and knowing is equal. There's no hierarchy, so your experience right now we could say is it is already that that brightness of consciousness. It's already that. It's just a belief that says there's somewhere else to get. There's a brighter light to become. This is not radiance because there is pain. This is not radiance because there is sadness. Well, whether the apparent self-fulxid or not, pain and sadness is also how the radiant shines. Darkness, lossness, whatever it might be, is how the radiant shines, how it explores itself. And this is what you are already right now. And within this there is absolute freedom as that totality to experience. And there's nothing ruled out there. It doesn't have to look a certain way. Freedom, too, experience, experience. As reality, that's what's going on. As is experiential field. This primordial experiential field that has working up to itself as your experience. It's not a special, altered state of consciousness. It's not necessarily permanent bliss or peace. It's not necessarily freedom from all suffering or confusion. It's not necessarily the absence of thought or this apparent ego. It's not a higher level above this so-called ordinary consciousness, which is anything but it's not something you achieve. It's simply this present, this you, this moment, this wholeness that you are. And so it's a radical inclusion of every possible experience. Because if there were certain experiences that were ruled out or that were not this awakefulness, that were not a facet or an expression of that wholeness, then that would be duality. That would be a contradiction. So what if non duality were not a negation, not an exclusion but a complete, unconditional inclusion and brace of every expression of itself? Because that's what is. Yeah, of course we can use negation, netty-netty, not this, not this. We can use it as inquiry. Am I limited to this mind? Am I limited to this body? Am I limited? Am I defined by? Am I stuck within? Am I confined to this thought, this sense of self, this ego? And we find no, these are expressions. So that process of exclusion, that refinement of. of what we are through negation, it is clarifying, but non-duality itself is incomprehensible fullness of itself which, by its nature, includes every manifestation of itself, it's non-dual. There's not a part of this that isn't that, that would not be non-duality. There isn't a certain thought that isn't that, that isn't that wholeness, that thought is, it can only be an expression of that, this humanity, this human experience is that. This human being, is that being, being human, but never really being defined by that humanness, never really being captured or ultimately a stuck in that mode of being, but delighting in that particular modulation. So, yeah, there are often those thoughts, aren't there, that says, I'm limited, I'm small, I'm unawake, there's something greater, there's absolute consciousness, there's pure awareness, there's self with a capital S, I need to realise that, I need to become that. And we hear, don't we, we already are that, and it's like, why do I not feel that way? Well the answer is because it includes every feeling, but that doesn't mean that you have to try to accept what is here, you can explore the nature of what's here, whether that's a difficult experience or whatever it might be, you can explore that, and you can recognise that, it's an appearance, you can, you know, derailleur, you can recognise that, ah yes, it's a belief, it's a sensation, it's not ultimately what I am, it's an experience. So it doesn't, so what we're pointing to isn't, isn't ruling out exploration of experience and the possibility of recognising the true nature of experience, in fact that's all we're talking about, it's not that you have to kind of just like it, you know, try to like it, try to, you know, sit with it, although that can be relatively, ah, clarifying, believing, it's not that you have to try to, get to a place of absolute acceptance, the acceptance is already built into the totality because it's a radical inclusion of itself as this, as this, as this, as this, it's already, it's already accepting, I mean it's a word, it's not, a word that can really do it justice, but if it's here, it is inherently accepted because it's only itself in that form, in that particular expression, not disconnected from its origin, it's the origin appearing as this, this moment, this thought is feeling this identity, the sense of self, so you're not in darkness seeking light, you are the light, and as the light you can experience every shade of that radiance, but in every shade there is only radiance, scratch the surface of the darkness and you find a light, our friend, Peter Brown, often said, recognise the true nature of one thing and you recognise the true nature of all things, and if you do that enough, then it's a matter of this too, this too, this too is that, ah, yeah, this too is that, it's a natural recognition, there's no work in that, no effort, it's like, ah, yeah, this too, or even this, even this is that radiance, even this, but how can it be? Well, there's no way to say, it simply is, it's an experiential recognition, there's no understanding it, so this moment, this experience is reality, a way of reality, it's almost a miracle that reality has become aware of itself, I mean, it's not a miracle, but it seems like a miracle in comparison with an idea of it not being aware, not being awake, this is the, this is the indescribable, undergraspable, irrefutable radiance of existence, this, exactly how it is, and it's what you are, and you're not a small separate consciousness trapped in flesh looking at a vast and conscious universe, you are the experiential field itself, that which you are always experiencing and always are, that which is boundless and divided, and it's reality's own nature, we could say organized into this brightness, this radiance, and in its most self-reflexive form, so that, so the work has been done, the awakeness is here, they even as this, even, even in this human experience, so you're not really seeking a wakefulness, you are a wakefulness, you are that light of reality, you are a wakefulness, which is this experiential field of experiencing, knowing itself, now self-aware, it's what we call ordinary consciousness, when we believe that there is some marvellous otherworldly spiritual consciousness, so there's no higher awakeness to attain, this is it, you are already experiencing in self-aware mode, but it's not that you are only aware of your apparent self, you are aware of all this, but it turns out that all of this is you, just to borrow another line from Peter Brown, your true body is your experience, and you're not separate from that, you're not in it, any thought, any feeling, any concept you have about yourself is in it, as all things are, as the whole totality of manifestation is.