On The Path

 The Same And Happy Tao

Everyone stand in a circle. Join hands.

Now I am going to say a few words. Everybody here and everywhere wants to be happy – I would imagine that is true – and I guess everything we do is in some way directed at that goal: the right partner to make you happy, if you’re lucky, the right friends to be with to enjoy and be happy, the right job that you can enjoy, the right place to live, the right weather – everything that we look for is to make us happy. And sometimes we succeed, you have all been happy sometimes, but I want to tell you something, that happiness is your true nature, that it is possible to be in a state where you are not happy because something great has happened but you are just happy. And the way to be happy, in case you are interested…do you want me to go on? (laughter) Well, I look out of the window and I see the sky, the clouds, the sunshine, I see the trees waiting for spring like we all are, and I know the trees are still a bit bare but I can tell you something about them, that they are happy, and the birds are happy, and the animals are happy, because they are just in life and there is nothing to make them unhappy. It is not that they have become happy because they are here in Prague and it is their home, they are happy because it is the nature of life to be happy.

So if one can find that same place in oneself then one will be happy, but it is hard to find the way there for oneself because we use our mind to inform us how to be happy, what we have to do to be happy, and the mind doesn’t know the answer. It pretends it knows the answer and it tells you lots of different answers in your life, but really it doesn’t know how. We try all sorts of different ways that the mind tells us to be happy, and maybe we succeed for a little while or sometimes, but it doesn’t last. So the mind is not going to take you there. When the mind gives you suggestions about how to be happy it is always saying, “If you do this then maybe you will be happy.” I will say that again but this time with an emphasis, “If you do this then maybe you will find happiness. Do this and if that doesn’t work do that, and if that doesn’t work then try this and then try that,” and it is always informing you what maybe you have to do to be happy. But if your nature is happiness then you don’t have to do anything, except find your nature. Your nature is the same as the nature of the trees, the same as the nature of all simple living things that don’t have a mind to take them away from the happiness.

If you can connect with and be one with that oneness with all of life around, and nature is a principal part of that, then you will be in the same place as all that and you will be happy, and when you find happiness that way or another way you will find that you feel at one with all life. All life uninterfered with, allowed to be simply what it is, will bring happiness, and that state that the whole of life is in is a certain energy state, it is a certain vibration of energy, and if you vibrate through some process or spontaneously at that rate then you will be happy. So in what I am doing here, and everywhere I go, there is an attempt to create in you a certain vibration which is your true vibration and which contains the state of happiness.

So close your eyes now, feel yourself standing there, and feel what is all around. You can’t see the trees that I talked about, you can’t see the sky that I talked about, but all of space is also in this state. So stand there and feel yourself, and all around you there is space so see if you can connect and be one with that. And through your hands you are in touch with another part of outside reality, and that is two other human beings. We are all different so there is never a perfect harmony with anybody else on an ordinary level, sometimes there is but then we lose it, so in the way we live there is not a natural harmony between people – but on an essential level there is harmony. When you find this state I am talking about no matter who you meet you will feel that you are in harmony with them, in some way you can find a harmony. So through the hands you are holding I am asking you to make the energies of your neighbours priority rather than your own energy a priority, but if you both open to something that includes both of you or all of you, and it is also part of you, then through those connections with your hands you might also find that oneness that is behind the differences.

So I am going to leave you for a few minutes just to see if you can feel that oneness with the space around you and also see if you can fall into the oneness with your neighbours whose hands you are holding.

(The participants explore the oneness and after some minutes Michael puts on some music.)

Put your arms down and then let your eyes open. Then look out of your eyes at the people standing around without focusing on anyone. I want you to look without looking. Just open to the energies in the room and the people here, and see again if you can find what is common, what is the same where you are and where the other people are. It is not you here and him or her over there, two different things – although we are two – see if you can feel when you look around with your receptive eyes something coming from everybody which doesn’t belong to either of you really but belongs to all.

As you stand there being receptive and feeling around a bit, letting in what is there, once you have done that I want you to let go of the hands you are holding and with whatever you have managed to find, with whatever you have managed to get in this exploration into Oneness, I want you to stay with that and then if there is any movement – with your hands, arms and also your feet – that seems to be spontaneously there from the place you are in, then go ahead and make that movement.

(The participants explore and Michael puts on some music.)

Talk, Prague, 21st of March 2009