Beyond Empty Mind to Fullness of Being

You’re always experiencing being but usually overlook this due to your focus on experience’s content – thoughts, feelings and sensations. The experience of being gets obscured or recedes into the background. Simply soften your attention’s focus from experience’s content. Don’t rest attention on a blank state of mind, as being underlies both experience’s content and its absence. People often find meditation boring because their attention fixes on mind’s emptiness, but behind this emptiness lies being’s fullness where there’s no boredom, only peace. Experiencing boredom requires resisting current experience – a subtle resistance that’s mind’s activity. There’s no resistance in being, just as there’s none in the space of your room. Be aware of subtle expectation, boredom’s counterpart. It’s mind expecting some future experience, something to understand, know or become. In being, there’s no expectation and no future where anything could be expected.

A man asks about Nisargadatta’s statement that ‘consciousness is the body of the supreme’, questioning whether the absolute is always embodied in ‘I am’. Rupert first clarifies terminology differences, noting he uses ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’ synonymously unlike Nisargadatta. He explains that consciousness is self-luminous, knowing itself without subject-object relationship. The ‘I am’ formulation is consciousness’s knowledge of itself expressed through the finite mind, functioning as an interface between infinite and finite. Rupert resolves the apparent contradiction between Nisargadatta (who calls ‘I am’ the seed of ignorance) and Ramana Maharshi (who sees it as highest truth) by offering the doorway metaphor – the same portal leads to captivity when consciousness passes through to become mind, and to freedom when mind passes through towards consciousness.

A woman expresses tiredness with analytical discussions of physics, space and time at a recent retreat, noting she feels more alive when Rupert shifts to poetic expression. She describes difficulty accessing being, experiencing it only as a ‘blank wall’. Rupert uses the analogy of a woman seeing absence of a painting while her friend sees presence of wall – explaining how the mind projects emptiness onto being’s presence. He emphasises that being is not empty but ‘full of itself alone’, always accessible through the simple experience of existing. Despite the woman’s resistance to investigating her current experience of being, Rupert persistently draws her attention to the ever-present experience ‘I exist’, encouraging her not to be satisfied with mere glimpses.

A man describes experiencing the body as pure awareness during yoga meditation but feeling confused during Feldenkrais practice when it seems the body exists independently from awareness. Rupert agrees this is how it appears but not how it is in reality, explaining that we filter reality through sense perception ‘contact lenses’ we’ve forgotten we’re wearing. He uses the analogy of anatomy books being useful maps without representing true reality – like roadmaps corresponding to but not being the territory. The man recognises that anatomy represents a ‘sight perspective’ of the body, while Rupert encourages participating fully in body modalities without being overly concerned with non-dual understanding in those contexts.

A woman asks about Annamalai Swami’s teaching that ‘if you’re truly watchful, each thought will dissolve at the moment it appears’ and whether this aligns with Rupert’s approach. Rupert clarifies that thoughts flourishing isn’t inherently problematic – the finite mind serves necessary functions and shouldn’t be crushed. Only the belief in separation within the mind is problematic. He suggests peace as a better measure of one’s connection to being than absence of thoughts, explaining that initially one goes back and forth between being and experience, but this oscillation diminishes over time. When making decisions, the woman is advised to return to being first, ensuring actions are informed by being’s inherent qualities rather than emotional reactivity.

Following his mother’s recent death, a man asks what remains after the body-mind disappears – what ‘hovers around’ seeking rebirth to reap consequences of past lives. Rupert suggests the mind may not completely end but could coalesce into another finite mind. However, he emphasises that one’s mother was far more than her thoughts and emotions – at the deepest level, pure being that has not gone anywhere. The belief in reincarnation stems from the prior mistaken belief that consciousness is born with and limited to the body. Just as space isn’t in a room but the room is in space, consciousness isn’t in the body but the body in consciousness. Whatever happens to the mother’s unravelling mind, her being remains present in the man’s heart as his very own being.

A woman shares insights from native traditions near her mountain home, describing how native people lived in a ‘paradigm of place’ rather than time. She suggests that while modern approaches like Eckhart Tolle’s emphasise ‘being here now’ by trying to stop time, focusing on place naturally dissolves time. Rupert affirms the connection between time and space, explaining they are the same experience – ‘here’ mediated through perception and ‘now’ through thought. He notes that consciousness’s experience is eternal (out of time) and infinite (out of space), while the mind believes it travels through time and space. Our experience is always ‘now’ and always the placeless ‘here’ where consciousness abides.

A man seeks clarification about non-duality, the Direct Path, and self-inquiry, wondering if experiences like appreciating beautiful music constitute the Direct Path. Rupert explains this is actually the indirect path – going via an object back to one’s true nature. He contrasts this with the direct path exemplified by their opening meditation of simply being aware of being, which doesn’t require enquiry. The man recognises how identifying as ‘I am [my name]’ creates separation, with Rupert explaining that the primary experience ‘I am’ precedes any qualification. He uses the metaphor of a newborn infant who experiences being before receiving a name, noting that same pristine being remains unaffected by life experiences and forms a basis for making decisions from peace rather than ego.

A man begins describing how when attempting to go to the roots of experience, he notices identification with bodily sensations that are quieter than perceptions and thoughts. Rupert affirms this as a valid stepping stone on the indirect path – using neutral bodily sensations as intermediate stages between agitated thoughts and pure being. He specifically recommends focusing on neutral rather than pleasant or unpleasant sensations to avoid losing oneself in them, with breath being the most transparent sensation closest to being. Rupert notes it’s just one small step from the transparency of breath sensation back to the presence of being.

A woman enquires about energy phenomena like Kundalini and energy healing, wondering if they are merely expressions within the dream of form or pathways to recognising the self. Rupert confirms they can function as expressions in form and also as pathways back to true nature via the subtle energies of body and mind – examples of the ‘indirect’ or Progressive path. The woman describes energy work as providing direct access without mental interference, offering ‘a deep wisdom or recognition’ without words. Rupert affirms this as tracing back to true nature through the subtle energies of the body, while others might use self-inquiry through the subtle energies of the mind. When the woman contrasts her experience with a rigid Vipassana retreat, Rupert describes his own retreats as deliberately opposite – emphasising conversation, friendship, celebration and gentle transmission of understanding.

A man asks whether only humans are capable of true presence compared to animals, and if being present is his destiny as a human. Rupert clarifies it’s not a human being that has the experience of being – only consciousness is conscious; only awareness is aware. He explains that animals like cats are instinctively one with experience without separating themselves as entities or reflecting on their experience. Humans uniquely possess the self-reflexive capacity to investigate their true nature. Using the King Lear analogy, Rupert illustrates how the mind (King Lear) can trace back through layers of experience but upon reaching the threshold, stands revealed as consciousness (John Smith) – the mind can approach but not cross into pure being.

A man challenges what he perceives as a presumption at the heart of Rupert’s enquiry – that one’s experience of being is being itself. Rupert reformulates this as ‘my experience is consciousness itself’, with consciousness’s experience of being being consciousness’s experience of itself. When the man suggests this remains an unjustified assumption and that being might not be exhausted by experience, Rupert questions whether he actually knows he is. The man acknowledges he doesn’t currently have the experience of being (though he recognises it from past experience), claiming there’s ‘no abiding feature’ to his experience. Rupert suggests the man is imposing an interpretation by moving from ‘my experience of being is my experience of God’s being’ to ‘my experience of being is God’s experience of being’.

A man references Rupert’s ‘fast forward’ experiment showing being remains unchanged throughout life, sharing his own similar realisation from fifty years earlier when he suddenly knew with certainty ‘the same I who is sitting at the table will be the same I who will be dying’. This created fearfulness that there’s no real connection to anything dear – if one is the same now as at death, all relationships seem unreal. Rupert offers an alternative interpretation: being’s untouched nature doesn’t indicate separation but rather reveals its infinite quality – the one being from which everything derives existence. He suggests the man is superimposing a limiting belief onto limitless being and encourages experimenting with the possibility that at the deepest level, his being is shared with everyone he encounters.

A man briefly shares two powerful experiences from early 2025: while meditating, he felt ‘an incredible feeling’ that he was not the doer of anything, that everything was flowing by itself; simultaneously, despite not coming from a family of believers, he felt God’s presence – ‘God is doing everything, taking care of everything’. This experience relieved him of his sense of responsibility. Having no specific question, the man simply wanted to share this transformative realisation.

A man struggles with reconciling two paths: the non-dual path representing being (‘I am’) and the dual path representing existence (‘I exist’). Asking if they’re equally valid or ultimately the same, he expresses feeling he must ‘fight for existence’. Rupert explains that being precedes existence as screen precedes movie – ‘existence’ etymologically means ‘to stand out from’ something, requiring being as its background. However, when anything seems to exist independently, its true nature remains infinite being. He clarifies that strictly speaking, the an doesn’t exist but is – everything that seems to exist (tables, chairs, people) only seems to, while in ultimate analysis there’s just ‘one infinite, indivisible whole, whose nature is indescribable’ but might be referred to as consciousness, being or love.