Rupert Spira - Peace, Happiness and Love

Peace, happiness and love are simply the names we give to the knowing of our own Being as it truly is. Normally we imagine that our essential Being is a little, vulnerable, conscious entity located inside the body. As such, it is believed to have been born, to exist in time and space, to be subjected to and dependent upon the changes of the body and to be destined to disappear and die when the body dies. However, if we look clearly and simply at this conscious Being that we intimately and directly know ourselves to be, we find that it has no inherent limitation or location. This experiential understanding may not be formulated in terms such as these but it is well known by all as the experience of peace, happiness and love. The belief and subsequent feeling that our most intimate Being is limited and located within the body or mind veils the peace, happiness and love that are inherent within it and initiates a search in the realm of objects, activities, substances and relationships, in an attempt to recover the original ease of Being for which we long.

At some point and usually as a result of the inevitable failure of this search, we begin to question the very one who is unhappy and in search, and discover that it cannot be found as a separate, limited entity. Instead we find the intimacy of our own impersonal, unlocated Being and with this discovery the peace, happiness and love that are inherent in the simple knowing of Being, are restored. And what is it that finds this ? Being or Presence is itself all that is present in this recognition, to be able to "know" itself. That is, it finds itself. Presence recognises itself. In time and as a result of this recognition, the mind, the body and even the world become permeated with the peace, happiness and love that have been discovered in the core of our Being, and all our activities and relationships in the world are subsequently realigned with it. These activities and relationships do not cease as a result of this understanding. In fact, they flourish. However, they now become the means whereby we express, share and celebrate our true nature of peace, happiness and love, rather than a means of securing it. In our meetings we simply take our stand knowingly as Presence itself and explore the beliefs and feelings that suggest that we are anything less than this absolute freedom and love itself.