A conversation with a friend
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Friend: Magdi, I would like to ask you about how to do contemplation right!
I spent 3 hours yesterday contemplating but i felt as i did nothing
there was great peace however and i forgot that i do live in this world
but thoughts kept on coming and rarely did i have a moment of total peace
that’s it
Reply: It is good you had some peace. Your love for contemplation is what matters much more than the result.
Do not try to fix the situation with thinking. If you experience peace, savor it and re-member it, remember the happiness.
As much as possible remain as the witness since the witness is peace.

Friend: I see! Do i need to stay with that peace indifinetly ?
because it gets boring to be in that state of nothingness
Reply: Peace is not nothingness. The mind perceives it as nothing since the mind is stuck on objective experiences.
Remain neutral and notice that you are not a form, you are not a body mind… You are the borderless witnessing presence that is not in time and space.
Time and space, events appear to you.
You, the borderless witnessing space, do not appear and yet you are the reality. This reality is the peace.
Friend: Yes i did realize at that time that i’m not a form nor anything that i can point to
Ahhh I understand more now, when you said time and space appear to me, i remembred that i had that feeling of being only aware and time and space were something I did observe, I contained them
Reply: Yes.Time and space come and go, time and space change.
You, the witnessing presence are eternal. You do not change
Peace does not change. The mirror does not get stained by the images.
Friend: I see now, and i’d like to tell you that the more i contemplate the more i feel acceptance of what is, I no longer critisize my country or what’s happening in the world, I no longer feel any aversion toward stupid beliefs and the injustice …they are all just appearance and they depend on how my mind interprets them, and those interpretation are a form of sensation in my body and consciousness
so if i do not have any reaction or sensation in my body and mind, then nothing would or can harm me in anyway, nothing can affect me
Reply: Yes. Like in a night dream. You dream of pink flying elephants and you wake up and the pink flying elephants are gone.
You, aware presence…. remain. Unhurt, unstained by the dreams, no matter what they are.
Friend: Yes yes, like a dream! All the world’s appareances are only dreams
and also there is only Now, the dreams were untrue, there is no reason to keep thinking or believing the past to be true! what is is now
thinking about the past or future is futile
Reply: You, aware presence, what I call ‘consciousness’, whatever it is that truly perceives these words is not a dream. The images come and go like in a dream. But you are not an image and you do not come and go. You are the screen.
Friend: I am the screen where the images appear, and those images are only a dream, and my mind is interpreting and believing those images to be reality, is that it?
I understand it intellectually
Reply: Intellectual understanding is part of the exploration but not the complete understanding. The beliefs in the separate self have to also leave the body.
Notice that it is You who interprets the images to be externally real. It is not the mind that interprets.
There is no real mind. You are not a mind.
By mind we refer to the known. Thoughts, images, memories, perceptions, sensations.
Friend: I -the awareness- is interpreting those images to be real
Reply: Yes. Only awareness is real
Friend: to see reality as it is, i should stop believing and interpreting those images to be real
I understand
even now while chatting and writing, I have a sense that I am independent of all of this, all of the images, things are just happening
Reply: You are the reality of the images.
You (not the body, not the feet or hands or nose).You, awareness. Images appear on the screen… they come and go…. YOU are the reality of the images, do not come and go and you are not a thing.
Without awareness, there would not be this conversation
Friend: I am the only reality
Reply: Without you…. what is?
Friend: Nothing
but here it gets a little bit difficult for me
I mean, I still have the belief that I was born and goign to die
Reply: Where is this belief when you are in deep sleep?
Don’t feed this belief. Don’t feed this sensation. Notice it as a mind event arising in the open space that you are. The open space of awareness that you are.
They are images on the screen.
Friend: I understand, feeding it by thinking it to be true is what makes it true
but if i stop giving it attention and forget it or give it up, then I won’t believe that I was born and going to die
it’s not the absolute true
Reply: Consciousness is eternal. No one has ever experienced the absence of consciousness, the absence of I.
Friend: Yeah, I understand now, I have never experienced the absence of consciousness
Yes It is always here with me, and it has never left me
always present and fresh
Reply: It IS You
It is not WITH you. It IS you. You never leave yourself.
That means that I am everything
I am you, and this computer and every atom
everything i experience is Me ?
Reply: Computers come and go…. you don’t
Everything is made out of YOU, but YOU are not a thing. YOU are not made out. Not an event, not a form, not a trans-formation.
Friend: Ahaa!! I see
I am this presence that is now, the awareness that I have now, it is Me
without me, there would be no thing
Reply: You do not have it, you are it.
There is no such thing as without you. YOU is the eternal presence.
Friend: Thank you Magdi
I will contemplate all of this now
Much Love