Welcome.

Welcome to Satsang.

Satsang is your true Self. It is not an activity. It is not an experience. It is not a place. It is not of the mind.
It is beyond all of that, the end of all of that. It is the end of the habitual mind.

So welcome to satsang, welcome to your true nature. Welcome to your very Self.
YOU welcoming YOU.
I welcoming I.
I am not welcoming You and You are not welcoming Me.
We ARE pure welcoming. A welcoming that has no borders.

A welcoming that has no conditions. No terms. A welcoming that does not come and go.
The open space of welcoming recognizing itself, loving itself, rejoicing in its own recognition.

Your true nature does not come and go. What you truly are is eternal and does not come and go.
Thoughts, events, perceptions, feelings, sensations, emotions, come and go in THAT and out of THAT that does not come and go.
The aware presence that you are.

Time… events in time, all time experiences, come and go in THAT that does not come and go.
Your true self, your true nature.
So, welcome to satsang.

So, satsang welcomes everything. Everyone…..
There is nothing that is not welcome.
Thought says I welcome this but not that, I prefer this over that. Irrespective of thoughts imagined conditions, ALL is welcome.
Satsang is wholeness, all embracing… the infinite embrace of Consciousness. The embrace of the aware presence that is your true nature, that YOU are.

The truth, what we truly are, is so simple, so direct. Whenever you feel that it is complicated and confusing, you will notice that you are in the labyrinth of the mind, in the grips of the I-thought, the convoluted alleys and chambers of the I-thought.
You will notice that you are in the me-Thought, thinking about me in time, me in the past, and me in the future. An imagined me.

Whenever you feel confused and contracted, you will notice that there is an I- Thought, a me, a me-body mind object perceived as a man, a woman. Me as a mother, me as a father, that is traveling in time, that is hoping and wishing for an outcome, and that is struggling with the current situation.
The current situation being an imagined situation because… the true situation is beyond imagination, is beyond the mind, is Satsang.

This pure beingness that embraces everything and leaves nothing unembraced.
But this habit, the I-thought habit, the me-I-thought habit, me in time, the habit of me as this person, whatever that is… some person in time, that is born, that has a history and that is moving in time… that habit maintains and reinforces the me, the I-thought in space and time. All along, the space is open, free and unbound… the space right here right now. The spaciousness of awareness.
The spacoiusness of Presence…

The ‘right here right now’ is total openness. Wholeness.
So you are hearing these words in total openness, out of total openness. Effortless openness… Intentionless openness… You hear these words, you perceive this perception effortlessly, openly. That is the quality of consciousness.

But somehow the mind does not notice the openness. The effortlessness. It pursues and struggles with objects through the senses and the mind. It perceives a separate self via the me-thought, the I-thought.
What is going to happen to me?
What am I going to get out of this?
What am I going to get out of today’s satsang?
Will I get enlightened?
Will I live a better life?
Gee I have been for so many years studying the way, how come I didn’t get enlightened yet?
I should have gotten it by now. I am sure if I stay long enough here with Magdi, I will get it. If I practice, if I only get the core teaching, if only I could….. It is an endless I. It is endless…

But this entire affair, this entire conversation, the I conversation, and these very words right now arise in the openness. Complete total openness. Effortless openness. They arise effortlessly.
In the same way that you hear these words effortlessly, the I-thought arises effortlessly. But the I-thought is made out of resistance, complaints and argumentation.

Here you are invited to notice the effortless presence that invites you to pursue nothing and avoid nothing. There are no words that I am going to say today, that I want you to remember. Don’t remember anything. Nada. Remain empty handed.
Because if you need to remember something, that means you are lacking something. But you are lacking nothing. Because you are not what you imagine yourself to be. That is just an imagination that arises to you. A thought, a perception, a sensation that is arising to you. YOU meaning THAT that hears these words right now. YOU the pure, pure formless presence, that lacks nothing.

If I tell you that you are lacking something, and that you need to follow some instructions in order to attain something, please leave now. Because I would be a charlatan.
In religious terms I could say that God has created everything and everyone in her own image. Thus we are all like droplets of water. The same water. The same divine drop. And our substance is divine beingness. Divine consciousness.
Divine means borderless and eternal. Does not mean my god or your god. Nothing like that. It means infinite and eternal. Infinite and eternal presence. Borderless.

Knowing presence.
So, in satsang, there is nothing that you need to do because as soon as you come to satsang, you are already home.
Actually you are home all along, unknowingly. In satsang somehow you remember. There is a remembrance that you are home. A knowingness, a remembrance.
Sometimes you forget, but because of your love for truth, because you love god, she loves you back and she reminds you.
She reminds you, for example, by inviting you here.
She reminds you wherever you are, snap (Magdi snaps his fingers), somehow in so many ways she reminds you. In every way, she reminds you. But the filters of your conditions interpret according to the I-thought. I want this and that. I don’t want this or that.
So, often you do not accept the invitation. You let down God in favor of the mind.

When you go on the wrong path, by the way, the wrong path is very simple, it is the path of me vs. you. Me vs. the other. Or me, the hopefully better me now vs. the worst me in the past and hopefully the even better me in the future.

The worst me in the past means I am improving, I will be better in the future? Yes?
So that is the wrong path. The wrong path is me vs another me. The other me could be somebody else or it could be me… Me in time. Me number 1. Me number 2. Me number 3.
Why is this the wrong path?
Because of the illusion of time and the illusion of me in time. The I-illusion and time are one illusion.
Illusion means simply imaging something that is not real. So you imagine a me-tomorrow, but you never experience a tomorrow. Right? And you never experience a me, right? You only experience thoughts, sensations, perceptions but no me.
There is no such thing as tomorrow outside of thought. Yes?
In thought, yes there is tomorrow.
There is yesterday. In thought.
There is the worst me, the better me, progressing up or down the enlightenment ladder. But that is illusion. Meaning it is just thought and sensation. Right?

So there is no right path.
There is a wrong path and when you realize the wrong path, you are free of ignorance. That is why it is said that awareness-consciousness-presence is a pathless path. Pure presence. You don’t get to it. You don’t go to it.
It is revealed when the wrong path dissolves which is right here right now. Your current ordinary experience, irrespective of what thought says.

Having said all that, in the dream, meaning the waking dream, which is right here right now, why do I refer to it as the waking dream? Because you could be dreaming this experience, this perception. The images could be dream images.
The dream seems very real, but when you wake up from the dream, in an instant it is realized that the entire dream was just thought.
Was mind.
But YOU, the real YOU, are not an image in the dream. You are not dream images.
In the same way, the waking dream, this experience right here right now, it is possible that this experience is being dreamt, like in the night dream.

You might realize that this is mentation.
This experience right here right now is your perception.
You perceive your perception and not necessarily things out there. But your perception.

You are experiencing your perception. You know your perception. You are experiencing your experience.
Although the content might shift, there is a constancy to YOU, awareness, the experiencer of this experience.

It is very lovely in a way. Sometimes it can be scary as well.
What is lovely about this dream is that there is nothing lacking to it.
You could be in your night dream, dreaming all sorts of characters and events and yet you are in bed, sound and safe.
There is no real danger to you tucked tightly in bed.
Consciousness, what you truly are, dreaming this waking dream, is not affected. Is sound and safe, and is comfy.

In fact, you know that you are peaceful and comfy whenever thought is quiet.
I invite you to pay attention whenever thought is quiet; meaning whenever the I-trip is quiet, notice that you are comfy.
But when you are seeking something or avoiding, you are not comfy.
It is that simple.

Thank goodness that the seeking and avoiding is just imagination. It is a dream seeking.
Because your experience lacks nothing.
It is full and complete, right now and there is no other experience but this experience right here right now. Lacking nothing, in spite of thought’s arguments.
Which means this experience right here right now is complete.
It includes thought.

Even the thought that says: ‘Oh no, this is incomplete’, is being experienced fully right now as a thought. It is part of this experience and is just what needs to be.
What accompanies the sense of lack is also a pinch at the body level, at the feeling state.
That also is included in your experience and nothing stands apart from your experience.

This pinch is the reminder. The suffering and the misery is when you imagine there is a thief hiding behind the door. You look out the window and you perceive a thief, but it is actually a bush. Because you are convinced there is a thief out there, you feel the pinch.
You feel the danger.
Your heart pounds and you tremble.
You don’t know where to hide in your house.
It all seems so real, and the fear, the unhappiness, is unbearable.
And calls you to investigate.

The same way your fears and your concerns, the discomfort calls you to inquire into your nature.
The main source of confusion is the belief that consciousness is born. That you are born. You are identified with mortality.
The belief that you are a body mind. That is living in time. Growing, aging, improving and deteriorating.
The main cause of the wheel of samsara, the ongoing suffering of birth and rebirth, and the spiritual quest, the main cause of ignorance is the belief that you are a mortal body mind. This belief is held by 99.999% of the people on this planet.
It is the main virus in the system.
It is a shared belief.
We all believe we are this body mind, born on such and such a date.

Question: I thought it is something called separation. That the separation is our biggest pain. Thinking that we are separate.

M: Right, the belief that I am this separate personal body mind.
That I am this man and you are this other.
Yes.
And we also feel that way.
I feel that I am me and not you. (In fact I don’t, but I am saying that as an example)
It is a very common impression. Part of the ignorance is to feel I am a me.
Somehow something is here that is me and something is there that is you.
And they are 2 separate things. That is the belief.
So as long as that is going on, there is suffering, unhappiness and a yearning for wholeness.

But there is an end to unhappiness, thank goodness!
What brings the end to the unhappiness is your love for Truth. Your heartfelt desire for freedom.
Your curiosity and your passion to wake up. To come to the end of that cycle. To be done with that.
To realize the truth.

That is the fuel. The main drive and fuel for awakening. It is your love, your passion for truth.
Not to become a famous person or a great teacher, not to rise above others… just to reach the complete freedom. Complete freedom. Complete happiness, peace and happiness. Not some interim state. The happiness that you know deep down in your heart.
You know you are it, and you know when you have arrived at it. The happiness that does not come and go, no matter what occurs. No matter what challenges you. No matter what anybody tells you, you know deep down in your heart. You know it.

So, satsang is like a raft. Like a surfboard. You have to be vigilant. Watch your intention.
The surfboard will take you to the other shore, but you have to be willing to go the entire distance.
Willing to retain nothing.
Willing to die.
What is eternal does not die.
Satsang reveals the eternal. What dies is dead already.

Do not be concerned. Just follow your love.
So your passion, in ignorance turns to the world, to forms and to the I character. Me as this person.
This entity.
The habitual turn of your attention is to the impermanent, to the form.
Notice that!

You have to be very honest with yourself.
Notice that 80% 90% of your thoughts are worldly. They are about me.
Me in time.
Me pursuing experiences, relationships, situations, states.
It is important that you notice that in all candor.

And it maintains itself. The I thought maintains itself, uses the me-sensation through the body. The me-feeling maintains the separation.
Maintains the impression of separation. That is unhappy.
Unhappiness is separation.
The sense of separation.

When you are in love, when there is love there is no separation.
When you love a child, your friend, your neighbor, your partner, whatever, when you love you don’t feel any separation. Right?
But as soon as there is the separation, you feel unhappy.
You feel it in your body.
So, you have to be sincere with yourself and notice your thoughts.

Most of them are me, me, there is a me, unquestioned me.
The I-thought can say: Oh my god I hear Magdi, I understand what he is saying, it is true, it is true, Oh my God I am getting depressed. How am I going to get out of this?
These words are arising in the aware presence, in the awareness that you are. But that is not noticed since you are wrapped up in the me-impression.

Without doing any effort right now, there is an aware presence that hears these words.
Your attention can include that. Right?
There is an aware presence, whatever you want to call it, consciousness, whatever. There is something that hears, that hears these words, right?

So turn your attention now. I am inviting you to notice the presence.
Something we habitually overlook .
It is like these trees outside this window. We overlook them. So when I tell you: Notice the trees around the house, you go: Yes.
So in the same way, I am simply turning your attention to the aware presence, the awareness that hears these words.
And notice that this awareness is always present.

So you look and you turn your attention inwardly and you go :Yes. Yes to the awareness hearing these words.
And this awareness that perceives these words, that perceives the trees is the same awareness. And it perceives the I-thought as well. It perceives the thought that says: ‘Oh God, what am I going to get out of the satsang today?’

Lets say that thought arises. Something knows that thought.
Because if that thought is not known, it wouldn’t exist.
You wouldn’t be aware of such a thought. Right?

So the fact that there is an I-thought also means there is awareness.
Which means that although 99.99% of the time there is an I-thought, 100% of the time there is awareness.

Now that is astounding.
So there isn’t just the images on the screen. There is the screen. And the screen is eternal. There is eternal awareness. Awareness is eternal.
So turn your attention to the awareness and not simply to the thoughts.
And notice, that the thoughts arise in the awareness out of the awareness and the awareness remains untouched.

So you become interested in the awareness.
Because if you are interested in your story, like you have been for 20 30 years, you could go on for another 1,000 years, because the story, meaning the I-thought phenomena, is endless.
You don’t have to be interested in the I-thought since it is repetition. There is nothing new. Just let it be and turn your attention to the unmoved awareness.
Be curious and interested in the awareness and as you become interested in the aware presence, you realize that it has no borders, no edges, no walls that contain it.

The awareness is effortless, borderless and free.
And it doesn’t come and go.