Essence of Meditation

Being Aware of Being Aware explores our primary, most intimate and familiar experience: the knowing of our own being, or awareness's knowing of itself in us. However, awareness, or the experience of simply 'being aware', has no observable qualities and is, therefore, usually overlooked or ignored. The returning of awareness to itself – being aware of being aware – is the essence of meditation and prayer, and the direct path to lasting peace and happiness.

Everyone has the sense of 'being myself,' but not everyone knows their self clearly. In most cases, our sense of self is mixed up with the content of experience and, as a result, its natural condition of peace and happiness is veiled. Through investigation and analogy, the meditations in this collection take us back to our true nature again and again, until we begin to find our self naturally and effortlessly established there, as that. In time, experience loses its capacity to veil our being, and its innate peace and joy emerge from the background of experience.

The Heart of Prayer explores the highest form of prayer. The belief that we are a separate person, a tiny part of a vast world, leads us to project the idea of God beyond the world, at an infinite distance from ourself. As this person, we enter into a devotional relationship with God; we surrender to God. This is the highest state of the individual, placing it in the right relationship to the whole. However, when the individual is divested of all the qualities that it derives from the content of experience, it stands revealed as infinite being, God's being, the only being there is. As such, the individual does not pray; it is dissolved in prayer. Rupert Spira: "This book, of all the books I have written, is probably my favourite. It comes directly from my heart. In fact, all my books originate from my heart, but most of them are then filtered through my mind. However, this book comes unfiltered, directly from my heart. In some ways, I feel it is the clearest and most accurate expression of my understanding, such as it is."