Who are you really? Are you your body. mind and personality? Or are you the spacious awareness in which they appear? Questions like these point us to the infinite Presence that is the true source of peace, happiness and fulfillment. Satsang means "gathering together to inquire into our true nature." It is an opportunity through inquiry and dialogue to discover that the peace and happiness you have been seeking is already present, here and now. Satsang is a chance to finally rest from all seeking and struggle, and to experience directly the completeness and perfection of your Being. Nirmala invites you to join him in honoring the limitless love that is our true nature. Together, we will enjoy the sweet richness that is revealed when we give this Truth our undivided attention.

Quotes from Satsang

 

It doesn’t matter that much what you are experiencing in life. What matters is where you are experiencing it from. What matters is what you really are. Is it possible that you really are not the body or the personality or your mind? Is it possible that these are things you experience but they are not what you are made of? Is it possible that you are space—an open and allowing space—that the body and the mind appear in? What if this space is aware? What if it is really the space that is perceiving these words?

 

This space that you are is limitless. This space of Being has no boundaries. If you go on and on forever, what would this mean? What would this mean if there is unlimited awareness available in every moment? Would you still need to be so careful about what you experience and what you avoid? Or could you just allow every experience to have some of the limitless space that you are?

 

What if there is only one space? You are it, and so is everyone and everything. What if you already contain everything you could ever desire or want to experience? What if you already are everything you want to become?

 

What if this space is alive? What if space itself is the aliveness you feel right now? What if this space is full of peace and joy and love? What if this space is already full and rich and satisfying in ways that the experiences of the world have never been?

 

What if this space is you? (From From the Heart, Dropping Out of Your Mind and Into Your Being by Nirmala, click here to download a free copy)

 

What is this Being that you’re always sensing to some degree?

 

Perhaps the most surprising discovery is that the sense of your self is not showing you anything about your true nature. A limited sense of your self is never about who you really are! It’s not indicative of who you are but rather shows you how true your conditioning is. Recognizing this can turn your world inside out. The sense of your self is being shaped and limited by the unfolding of conditioned beliefs and ideas; it’s not a reflection of your true nature.

 

This can be a tremendous relief. All of your experiences of limitation, incompleteness, contraction, insufficiency, or unworthiness have nothing to do with you! Rather, they are accurate reflections of the limitations, incompleteness, smallness, insufficiency, and unworthiness of your ideas, judgments, beliefs, concepts, fears, doubts, worries, hopes, dreams and desires. They have nothing to do with the nature of you. (From The Heart’s Wisdom by Nirmala, click here to download a free copy)

 

Many of the questions and concerns in satsang come in a similar form: How do I get or keep a particular experience? How do I get or keep a sense of awakeness or expansion or openness or freedom or loving kindness or Presence? Or if worldly concerns are the issue, the question is the same: How do I get or keep more health, more wealth, more comfort, more security, more romance? Another form these questions take is: How do I avoid falling asleep or feeling stuck or being contracted or being sick or losing love? They’re good questions. There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re real for the person who’s asking them.

 

Within each of these questions is the assumption that you need to do something—you need to get or keep or avoid something. Right there, in that assumption, is our suffering. The effort to get or keep or avoid any experience is what makes life miserable, difficult, dis-easeful.

 

In satsang, another possibility is pointed to, a way of touching your experience without either trying to hold on to it or push it away. It’s a way of reaching out to your experience and really seeing what’s it’s like. In doing this, the questions become: How open or stuck am I right now? How open or closed is my Heart right now? How happy or sad am I right now?

 

And when the answer comes, the question becomes What’s that like? What’s it like to be expanded or contracted or whatever it is you are experiencing? What’s it like to have an open Heart or to not be in touch with your Heart at all in a particular moment? What’s it like to be filled with love? What’s it like to feel a lack of love? This is reaching out and touching the experience as it is and as it naturally changes. It’s not a static question, but an alive one; you’re never done with that question.

 

In doing this, rather than trying to change life, you’re living life as a question. What’s this like? And what’s it like now that I’ve noticed what this is like? And what’s it like now? And now that it’s changed again, what’s it like? Even your noticing something changes it, so by the time you’ve found an answer, it’s time to ask the question again.

 

We’ve been so conditioned to think that the point of questions is to get answers, that we overlook that the point of answers is that they get us to more questions. The questions are as valid and rich as any answer because every answer is full of questions. You can even begin to enjoy the questions, even trust the questions, as much as any answer that comes.

 

When you value the questions themselves, you just naturally hold the answers more lightly because they aren’t the goal. If the question is just as rich as the answer, then it’s fine if the answer comes and goes. Have you ever noticed that you’ve forgotten everything you once understood? Every insight you’ve ever had has faded, and that’s great because then you’re back in the question. You’re back in this really alive place where you’re getting to find out what you know now, what’s happening now, what’s moving, what’s changing, what it’s like now. What is it like now? You’ll never be done with that question. What’s happening now? You could say that answers are just a temporary side effect of having questions. (From Living Life as a Question by Nirmala, click here to download a free copy)

 

Since you are almost always aware of your body and your mind (because awareness follows your body and mind around), you come to the mistaken conclusion that you are your body and your mind. You fail to recognize that what you are is the empty, spacious awareness that the body and mind appear in. You assume, since they are almost always here, I am the body and the mind.

 

This is a simple and completely understandable mistake. Unfortunately, it is also a colossal mistake and the source of all of your suffering. It is so completely wrong that it is as if you had a fly on your nose that stuck around so long that you decided you were the fly. Imagine how confused you would feel and act if you believed you were a fly. You would spend all day eating rotten food and trying to mate with other flies!

 

Well you are making as big a mistake when you conclude that you are the body and the mind. It is not that there is anything wrong with the body or the mind; it’s just that that is not really who you are. All of the problems you experience are only problems for the body or the mind. The spacious awareness has no problems. How can space have a problem? It can’t be harmed or diminished in any way. You can set off a bomb in space, and when the dust settles, the space will be completely unharmed. (From From the Heart, Dropping Out of Your Mind and Into Your Being by Nirmala, click here to download a free copy)

 

It can be as liberating to find out that a small truth is small as to find out that a vast dimension of Being is a profound truth. In both cases, the nature of truth has been more fully illuminated.

 

Once you realize you can trust your Heart just the way it is right now—however open or closed—you can just rest within the folding and unfolding of all perspectives. You don’t do anything to get rid of the small perspectives, which just arise out of the conditioned parts of your Being, and you don’t do anything to bring on the bigger perspectives, which just arise out of the unconditioned parts of your Being. You just rest in the moment as it is.

 

There is never a need to have a bigger or smaller experience, as Being is still Being even in the small experiences. Its nature is the same, and part of its nature is this capacity to discriminate how true, how complete, a particular perspective is. The small experiences of Being are still an expression of Being’s ultimate nature, just as a single drop of water is still wet.

 

Spiritual seekers often think of liberation as staying in an expanded experience of truth. While expanded experiences are freeing (especially when you’ve been contracted for a long time), the ability to move in and out of many different perspectives is an even greater freedom. Walls are only a problem when you don’t know where the door is and therefore can’t get in or can’t get out.

 

True freedom is when you can move in and out of identification with a small sense of your self. You don’t have to take my word for it. Find out what happens in your Heart if you just let the opening and closing of your sense of self be just the way it is right now. Does this allow your Heart to open? Does it allow you to just be for a moment?(From The Heart’s Wisdom by Nirmala, click here to download a free copy)