Accessing Wisdom

The speaker discusses the concept of accessing wisdom or the quiet mind. They mention a video by Sydney Banks that talks about the spiritual essence and the true self. They believe that knowing what you don't know is more important than knowing what you do know. They discuss the conflict between the ego and the true self and the need to integrate both aspects in order to live successfully. They share their personal experience with achieving a quiet mind and how it has helped them handle difficult situations. They emphasize that the quiet mind is like opening the first layer of a Russian doll and describe it as the absolute absence or consciousness without thoughts. They acknowledge that living in the physical world will always offer distractions. This audio is an outtake from a Zoom discussion which was all about accessing wisdom or the quiet mind. A short video of Sydney Banks was played before the discussion. The URL to the video excerpt is or soon will be included in the description. Since the beginning I have said that I that I would not presume to teach anyone anything. My reason for that isn't because I feel that I have nothing to teach. There's one thing that is more important than knowing what you know and that is knowing what you don't know. When you know what you don't know you don't presume to teach anything. At least until you find out what other people know or don't know and whether they know what they know or don't know. Anyone who has been long enough in this conversation is familiar, you might say, with the idea of the spiritual essence that Sydney Banks talked about in this short clip. We often talk about that's who we are, that's what we are, the true self and all that nonsense. Why am I saying it's nonsense? Because eventually we must see if you're open to it. You don't must anything. I was watching a video last night. I'm not going to say who was speaking. It was not someone that I'm overly familiar with in the community, the three principles community. The talk basically centred around who we think we are, the ego, the thoughts that we get lost in, all that stuff and then turned to the, in quotes, the true self, the spiritual essence that we truly are and we are. There is no doubt about that, no doubt in my mind whatsoever that that is part of who we are. That is who we are, that essence, that is what we are. You might call it sentience, you might call it consciousness, you might call it sentient consciousness. When we talk about the true self, we create a separation and we make an enemy of the ego, the made-up story, the stories that we carry, the story of me and what happened to me and yet how are we to become whole? Before learning about this spiritual essence, this true self, there was conflict already because we had forgotten about the true self. We were wholly identified with the physical reality of our mundane living and we were totally identified with that and that caused problems. Yes, of course. And then we learn about this true self and we make an enemy of this, not what I am, not this, not this, nitty-nitty as the Hindus say in certain philosophies of Hinduism. So we have this earthly mundane experience of who I am, not this ego, this false ego, you might say, and the true self and we create a conflict between those. There was already conflict. That was a problem. It was the conflict that was a problem because we were unable to live successfully so long as we are running our life on free will or self will. And so we find out eventually that if we're lucky enough, we find out that we, that the false ego is not who we are, but who we truly are, is this inner essence. And we then tried, or this time we've been denying that or being unaware of that. Most are in denial of that or denial of the spiritual essence, if you will. And now we come to this true self and we start to deny the ego. Once we've understood the true essence, the spiritual essence, the true self, if you will, then we will find out that we have to continue living on this earthly plane. I have witnessed, I have been the victim of someone who is trying to deny the whole physical realm of their existence and they want to speak to you in a detached way. There is no me, there is no you, there is no I, there is no self, there is only that spiritual essence that I am. Who is the I that is, if that's what I am, right? So what that does is that brings me back, that brings me back to that there must be a way to live, there must be a way to communicate with others and that takes ego. And something else that is important here that's been mentioned before is that without the ego there is no will to survive. It's the ego that is, and not only that, but it's part of who we are. In the grand scheme of things, it may not be the totality of who we are. In fact, I'll put it to anybody that we don't know the totality of who or what we are. We don't know, we can't know, and yet I sense that I can know. I might even say that I can sense that I have known, but I have come back to this physical plane. You know, I've only said this a couple of times, but to become complete, to become whole, to become holy, who and what we are, whilst the lung breathes or is being breathed, then I must integrate, I must integrate the soul, the spiritual essence, the truth of who I am, whatever way you want to put it. I must integrate that with the ego, the will to survive, not the false ego per se, and yet I might even have to interact with that. In other words, when people say to me, what's your name? I will have to say Xander. I can only talk about my own experience. I know nothing other than that. During that video clip, Sidney Banks said that the reason people meditate is to get a clear mind. I'm going to briefly, quickly say how this happened for me. Very, very quickly and briefly. I was trying to get to sleep one night, my mind was in a roll and quagmire of thought, a storm, and what I noticed was that it was the same thoughts over and over again. The same thoughts about the same two or three problems over and over and over. Eventually, in the silence, under my breath, I said, right, that's it, enough, stop, it's time to stop, just turn it off, was the key word. Turn it off, don't try it, it won't work for you, it worked for me and I didn't even know I was doing anything that might work. There's no technique in this. I gave myself, I gave my thinking mind, basically, I gave my thinking mind a row, it's time to switch it off and what I've always said is, whenever I've related this story, is that the next thing I knew I was waking up. I was waking up the next morning and I had had a sound sleep. I then began to practice that quiet mind in my waking hours. That became a meditation practice for quite a few years, probably more than I actually remember and eventually I stopped meditating because I realised I don't need to meditate in order to have that quiet mind. That's how it happened for me. There's a part in the literature of a particular 12-step programme that says that, among other things, we will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. That's what happens. I'll tell you something else that I think may be true, certainly seems to have been true for me, is that all the time I was striving for a quiet mind but I did have periods. I mean, I'm talking very, very early on in this quest that I now call my quest for truth. I used to think it was a spiritual journey. I won't go into that but all the time I was chasing quietness, solitude, striving, it was not obtaining. There was always another thought waiting to come in. When I say that, I mean more of the same disturbing, troubling or conflicting thoughts. When I had experienced, most prominently in 2012, when I had experienced the quiet mind, which is when I actually stopped meditating, stopped searching for the quiet mind, that was when I began to see more and more the solutions to situations that used to baffle me. One particular experience is when I was sitting in a bus quietly minding my own business and someone, a gentleman, we'll say, slightly intoxicated with alcohol, tried to pick a fight with me and I remained quiet. I remained several years prior to that. There was another person who tried to, way long before I heard about the three principles, there was another time when someone tried to pick a fight with me as I was as I was waiting for a bus and he got a reaction. I reacted and the only thing that stopped me was a sense that he would quickly gain the upper hand so I decided to err on, although I wanted to, because he had laughed, irrelevant, but I reacted. So what I think, what I'm trying to say here is that when the mind, again I'm not trying to teach anyone anything, I can only speak from my own perspective and my own experience. As I've said, there is a quiet that is not a quiet mind but is more quiet. I can't hear it if my mind is in thought. There's no guarantee that when my mind gets quiet that I will notice it, that I will be aware of it. The quiet mind is like finding that quiet mind, that quiet, quieting the thinking mind. Well it's like opening the, it's like opening the first layer of a Russian doll. You know those Russian dolls that, one inside the other. There's nothing to connect to. It's the quiet, silence that is prior to existence, any existence, all of existence, mindless, thoughtless, mindless, thoughtless, consciousness, is, it's not silence, it's the absolute, which is what I normally call it, the absolute, or it is the absolute absence of, or maybe just absolute absence, and then that absolute absence which is obtainable, obtainable, even that's laughable. I can know it. Let me rephrase that. It can be known momentarily. It may be maintained for a short time but I always have to live in this phenomenal physical plane which will always offer distraction. Everything is a distraction.