Mooji challenges the idea that awakening requires elaborate spiritual practices, arguing that the only real training is learning to rest as the witnessing awareness rather than following the mind's movements outward. Through repeated confirmation that one is the unchanging observer of all that comes and goes, the seeker naturally outgrows the habit of identifying with mental noise. Mooji says this is not a technique but a natural recognition that deepens, on its own, into direct conviction.
Transcript
[music] So in answer to your your question or request I would say just keep confirming even the small things whatever is coming and going the habit is that the attention runs out to it runs this way runs this way reporting about what is going on but from the real place Nothing is going on. You see, keeping confirming this over and over again corrects the bad habit of feeling that it is you who go. If you stay with it, if it resonates with you and you keep looking and [clears throat] confirming gradually what happens is that you stop hemorrhaging energy to the things which are momentary coming and going and everything stays right here. Your energy field is not broken. You're simply here. So in the day that the forest of the mind burst [clears throat] into flames, you are not touched. And this is your training, you may say, and a training that becomes more enjoyable. It's enjoyable to feel your expansiveness. It's enjoyable to feel that there's something growing into truthfulness. It's enjoyable to feel and to come to a point where it becomes a natural conviction within yourself that what you are is timeless or eternal. If someone merely teach you this, you perhaps will not grasp it. But if you pay attention to this which is unmoving rather than the things which are always moving, you will come to that natural conviction. Actually, you will even go beyond conviction. It is not simply by saying I am not what I see. I'm not what I see. I'm not. Don't turn it into a mantra unnecessarily like this. It is actually understanding and confirming but I cannot be that. It is coming and going. If I was that then when it went I would also be gone. But I'm here to watch its appearance and disappearance. Who or what can I be? [clears throat] Not merely just ideas. Now, experience and prove it's very easy to feel some resistance or laziness here. It is part of the mind's conditioning. You see, we have a lot of energy for foolish things also. But for that which reveals your true nature. Uh [groaning] so do I like this? No. Which is also perceived. Does it matter? Does it have any power that we are saying? But all these things are perceived. That which sees everything. Listen please. That which perceives everything. All your life you have been perceiving and making some record. Pressing save. Save. Delete. Delete. [laughter] Save. Replay. We've been doing. Okay. No one else is really deeply contributing to your movie. Okay. That which is perceiving everything, every sensations. Even there are some sensations which are so subtle. There are no names for them. [clears throat] Still they are perceived in your consciousness. So that which is perceiving everything which sees everything. Okay. Can that itself be perceived? That which sees everything. And by seeing I don't mean only the visual seeing perceiving as in the feeling, sensing, knowing, being that which is behind it. Can that itself be perceived directly? Please look and try and if it can be perceived by what can it be perceived by another? Does it have a story? Does it have parents? [laughter] Does it have a seeing diploma? No. So what is it? If I say that which is perceiving everything, where is it? Where is the location of that which perceives inside and outside simultaneously? Where is the location of it? And what about you? Where are you in all of this? Are you object of perception or subject of perception? It is mostly through habit why we place ourselves as an in the position of an object of perception. It is fine but it is not fine if you're not also the subject of perception. You follow or not? >> Yes. If you are only a leaf blown about by the wind, but what knows this leaf being blown by the wind? Another leaf somehow within the within the blown leaf must be something which is not blowable, not moving, not subject to the the movements of the wind. And you you're asking now like this uh what happens during the tsunami? Tsunami means crisis moment. Crisis moment. Intense experiencing. In those moments we tend to uh panic. Panic is also perceivable. But maybe in that intensity of emotional [sighs and gasps] roller coaster or whatever. No, our ability to perceive is it diminished necessarily. Why is it then [clears throat] that we feel somehow not now not now I'm going to I'm all caught up in the in the noise of the mind. We identify the the strength of our identity with the body mind [clears throat] determines the strength of your ability or corresponds with the strength of your ability to perceive it. They directly relate. If you're strongly identified with your body mind functioning and personal identity, you will feel unable to witness it and stay out of that noise. Many beings through their practice you may say or so, but largely through understanding which is what I'm presenting to you. through understanding they come to recognize their correct position in this and they honor it. They begin to honor it. What do I mean by honoring it? They pay attention to that. They're very keen to observe this movement and to see, wow, wa I I'm watching this. And maybe after a while of watching it and not identifying with it, you lose interest in it also. And if you lose interest in a thing, it doesn't get registered in consciousness anymore. Which effectively mean experientially it didn't happen. Now we can say we are um we're editing maybe the things that we don't like we try and get rid of them and the things we do like we try and keep them. But even if that were true, the one who wishes to keep or to get rid of is also perceivable. Who feels to give some attention to this from now? That is pretty good. Because if indeed you do this, the fruit of your looking, you will never be disappointed with. If you as you if you obey your hand, [clears throat] [laughter] okay, then say okay from now I want to give that this is really interesting. I like to sit with it more and and and really try to understand what is happening here because in the past I feel I'm very easily distracted. Some people they even satang they say I'm very easily distracted. Somebody says something and I'm really right in the middle of that story or I'm really here and someone clink clink and and something is gone. Well for you also you can do this. You can watch the sense of going and see that which observes the sense of going. Did that go and find out what happened? And such a joy, such a silence, such a stillness, such a steadiness is discovered. You see and tremendous confidence come also that you can keep on like this and transcend all this negative influencible influential noise that we entertain. We entertain that we are very complacent with many bad habits and they can quickly be overcome actually. [clears throat] So many wonderful things await you. So many wonderful things await you. meaning that uh we are not accessing the great part of our potential also we don't know anything about it but in starting here paying attention learning to observe and I can tell you that there are now a few people who have been sharing these things in prisons around the world now and prison business. Many of them are going "Wow wow, I thought I had no control over that." But just the ability to observe and not to be pulled into the reaction that even now actions, reactions, interactions are observable and I find in the midst of all this I'm still you know what that means that their prisoners locked up in jail may be much more free than you. You surprised that people that the bodily restrictions even sometimes it even amplifies their inner freedom. So simply keep checking in. We are recording this talk today. It's free for you to listen to. try and apply that to yourself and look and you see but is that true? I mean it's just something come and go. Even you don't have to spend so much time trying to prove if it's true or not. You can it tells you it's not true. You stay put. Get used to your own stillness. Get familiar with that natural state of emptiness. Meaning empty from the noise of life. Be aware of yourself in this way. And from just being silent without being silent, you discover silence. You don't make silence. Many wonderful things are waiting to reveal themsel in you [clears throat] and it keeps expanding. And yet this expands this expandingness is also taking place against the background of unchanging awareness. At the same time, a paradox you may only experience. [clears throat] >> I said it's a paradox that the truth of it you must experience it. If you only think about is ah it doesn't make sense. That's what many people do. But I'm hoping that you will take it and look look for yourself because simply in this if you've chosen this of course you know your bad habits and the mind is going to rebel against what we are sharing. energy. It is as though something some power within us doesn't want to go in the direction of elevating the consciousness but rather to keep you in the level of personhood that in 6 years you may be have a beard, you might be bit older, more wrinkles but you've not really grown internally. Maybe our growth is mostly external but here your real growth is internal meaning you're discovering your inner life. Inner life means doesn't say that you have to give up outer life that can go on. You can still have your job, follow your religion, follow your pract whatever. But internally somehow something is deepening in a way that nothing external can give you this joy, this peace. And it's not a peace that you will have or collect or keep. It is synonymous with your own being. [music] >> [music]