Living in agreement with our heart and our intelligence

Ai Summary

A Philosophical Conversation with Francis Lucille on Consciousness, Time, and Presence.

This conversation explores deep philosophical concepts about consciousness, time, and presence between two speakers (likely a spiritual teacher and a student/interviewer).

Key Points on Time and Reality:

• Only the present moment (the “now”) is real; the past no longer exists and the future doesn’t yet exist
• People often live in “dreams” of past and future, forgetting that only now is real
• The separate self/ego exists only in relation to past and future
• In the present moment, there is no separate person—we are one with whatever is being experienced

The Nature of Psychological Time:

• A sense of lack drives us to seek resolution in future events (desire) or fear future events
• This creates “psychological time” which is intimately connected to the belief in being a separate entity
• True presence transcends the limited “phenomenal now” which has zero duration
• When we move from the elusive phenomenal now to presence, we move from instantaneity to eternity

Two Types of “Not Knowing”:

1. Meditative not knowing: Not knowing what we are while still having access to practical knowledge
2. Absolute not knowing: The childlike view of rediscovering everything freshly (described as “the artistic view”)

The Sacred Experience:

• The experience of consciousness by consciousness feels like joy, happiness, and enthusiasm
• This is described as “the experience of God,” “the sacred,” and “true love”
• The speaker encourages living in alignment with one’s heart and intelligence
• Activities done with enthusiasm and joy are sacred, not distractions from the divine

The conversation concludes by distinguishing between enthusiasm (the experience of the sacred) and attachment/despair (the experience of ignorance), with an encouragement to protect one’s enthusiasm and live in agreement with one’s heart.

We have to understand what the experience of consciousness by consciousness feels like. And it feels like joy, happiness, enthusiasm. Yeah. And that’s the experience of god. That’s the experience of the sacred.

That’s the experience of true love. I feel some attachment. And then if I think this is only now, and then, you know, like, everything just opens up. And, yeah, if you could talk about about it. Yes.

The first comment I would make is that, obviously, reality is experienced only now. The future doesn’t has not come into existence, and the past doesn’t exist any longer. So that which doesn’t exist any longer or that which has not begin begun to exist cannot be experienced, really. So only the now is real. That’s the first.

And as a result, we forget the reality of our projections into the past and to the future that are only thoughts. And in a sense, we live in a dream. That’s the first observation. Second observation is this, is that the separate entity we believe to be exists only in relation to the past and to the future. In the now, there is only what is in the now.

There is never a separate person in the now. In the now, we are one with what is whatever is being experienced, and whatever is being experienced as a result is what we are. And the third comment I would make is this, is that as a separate entity, as I said, we we live into the past and into the future because we in ignorance, we what is now is deemed to be insufficient, is deemed to unsatisfactory. There is a sense of lack, and this sense of lack seeks its resolution in the future in the form of an event that is going to happen, That is going to bring a resolution to this sense of lack. Or in the case of fear, the desire for an event not to happen in the future, which will bring a resolution to this sense of lack and fear and desire.

So that is are the three aspects of time. The second one and the third one are intimately related to the belief to be a separate entity, and they are what would be could be called psychological time. The first one, this realization that reality is only experienced now, this, in a sense, a pathway to reality itself. I say it is a pathway because if what is now is envisioned only as phenomenal experience, We forget the numinal part of it. We forget the consciousness aspect of reality.

Since reality is only in the now, in the now, there is consciousness. So consciousness and reality are in the social experience. But if we forget this presence, then the now is truncated, is reduced to the phenomenon. So the path to reality is twofold. First, the understanding of that past and future are not real shrinks the possibility of reality to the now.

But then this now can be envisioned in two ways, either just the phenomenal now, which is very elusive, or the full enchilada of the now issue, which that includes our presence. So from this phenomenal now, then we move to presence. And presence is not limited to the phenomenal now. The phenomenal now is a limitation of presence. It’s that which gives presence which gives the now its, elusive quality, like, of zero duration.

You see, of zero duration. When we move beyond from the now to presence, we move from the apparent instantaneity, this elusive quality of the now, which has zero duration, to eternity, to presence. And presence is then no longer conditioned by time. You see? Presence is beyond time.

So consciousness reality is beyond time, experientially. So then we understand that our true nature is timeless. And that’s why, for example, in mindfulness, it’s very focused in the phenomenon now. Right? Like Yes.

That’s a problem. Eating or whatever, but, you’re missing the presence. It’s only it cannot achieve kind of once the first step of reducing, you know, or understanding that past and future are not real, But it doesn’t take us beyond. You see? So then it then it requires an effort.

You know, I in the old days, there was something that was in fashion, you know, which was, macrobiotics, but it came with a kind of philosophy of mindfulness with it. And so mindfulness is this in attention to the to the phenomenon now. So let’s say I am drinking, some tea, so I am very aware that my hand is grabbing the cup. Right? My hand is grabbing the cup, and then I’m taking it to my to my mouth.

I feel the contact of that with the mouth, and then, in fact, there is nothing in it. But and then, you see, for every moment to moment to moment being one trying desperately trying to one with the perception. And this desperately trying to be one with the person with the perception is the forgetting that what what we are already one with the perception. You see? Mhmm.

And then then there is a, a letting go of the mindfulness. You know? Because, ultimately, as I often say, mindfulness in many cases depends what it means, but in many cases, it’s full of mind. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Yeah. And and, also, I I noticed that, whenever I I I see reality in this fresh only now way, there’s also, like, this not knowing aspect, very alive, because it’s like I’m no longer, for example, seeing the tree with the information of the past, but it’s just, you know, like beauty and just, Yes. That’s a different okay. And that’s that’s something that, it’s it’s what I call, in fact, the artistic view, the artistic view, you know, because there are two kinds of not knowing. The first kind of not knowing is the one I define it, which which qualifies meditation.

Meditation is when when when we don’t know what we are. So if we don’t know what we are, it doesn’t mean that we cannot play music, that we cannot compose, that we we don’t know what a what a minor scale is, right, and and things like that. We are we have access to all this knowledge, so it’s a very selective not knowing. There is only one thing that we don’t know. It’s what we are.

It’s open to everything else. The second type of not knowing is what I call absolute not knowing, and it is the not knowing of the newborn child. The newborn child doesn’t know anything about the the world, that is appearing to her. Right? Doesn’t know mathematics, doesn’t know music, doesn’t know anything, doesn’t know about distance, doesn’t know about the moon or about the the plastic toy which is, hanging above her head.

That’s absolute not knowing. We forget. We put everything we know between brackets, so to speak, and we rediscover the childlike view. So I call it the artistic view. You know?

Because that’s a position of creativity, of not knowing. And it’s interesting to have this ability to go back to it. It could be, in a sense, a place of rest for us between activities. You you you know? But it is not it should be it should not be understood as being the constant the constant way of living our life.

Because in daily life, we need some knowledge. We need to use knowledge. Right? So it is the the first kind of not knowing that is, the one that is, if you will, is a pre prerequisite for peace. The other one is, as I said, a a kind of default state we revert to, when we don’t require activity somehow.

Yeah. You see? It is a contemplative state. Yeah. And it is it is very important to have the opportunity and the capability to go there.

And especially, it’s it’s such a place of creativity for an artist. Yeah. Yeah. Would you would you say that in some way, if you don’t know what you are, even though you are doing something with knowledge, there’s still this Yeah. Bad problem of not knowing.

You you can be interested in what you are doing. You said you can be fully interested, fully in what you are doing, but at the same time, there is no suffering. Yeah. And the absence of suffering is not because what you are doing is a distraction that takes you away from it. You see?

That’s very important to understand. The French philosopher Pascal, he describes the human condition, you know, as a distraction from god. And he in one of his writing, he he he describes, people playing the tennis or the period. Mhmm. And he describes that as a, he calls, a diversion, divertisme, something that takes you away from god.

But, no, it may be the case if we are in ignorance that in order to forget this sense of doom, this curse, in order to forget it, then we do something. Like, we take drugs. We get drunk, or we play tennis, or we do something like that. Right? Mhmm.

But that’s only if we have if what if our activity comes from a sense of lack. But there is another activity, and that was Pascal’s problem. There is another type of activity that comes from pure joy. Pure and Pascal himself, he was a physicist and a mathematician and a creator and a beautiful writer. Perhaps he didn’t realize that he’s doing mathematics or his writing could be, in a sense, construed as a form of escape.

Right? But because that was there was he he took there was his interest in him, his joy of discovery, of gold digging or mushroom picking, enjoyment, the moment it came from enthusiasm, it was sacred. It was no longer forgetting God in the object. It was more being with God with the object with the object of enthusiasm, with the object, you know, like a child who who loves his toy, and he’s with the toy. You see, there is a the moment there is love, there is God present in this love.

The moment there is joy, there is God present in this joy. Some moments there is enthusiasm. There is God present in this enthusiasm. Beautiful. Yeah.

Absolutely. And and the other thing about time that I that I saw in today’s meditation is that, at what point when you were talking about the expectation and everything, is is like, like, I kind of felt that the the teachings or the spirituality or whatever, it was kind of in the time realm. But, when I was this innocence presence, like, there there was no teaching or something like that. There there was no there was no, yeah, no spirituality or something. Well, in you see, we have to understand what the experience of consciousness by consciousness feels like.

And it feels like joy, happiness, enthusiasm. Yeah. And that’s the experience of god. That’s the experience of the sacred. That’s the experience of true love.

The experience of love is not despair or attachment or no. That’s the experience of ignorance. Yeah. That’s why we we we first have to discover this within, and then we have to implement it in our or allow it for it to implement itself in our daily activity. And and so we have to become very protective of our enthusiasm.

And every time we fear f effort, you know, we feel that our heart is not in agreement with with whatever we are doing, you see, then we have to think twice. We have to try to move away from that. Mhmm. We have to live our life in agreement with our heart and with our intelligence. Thank you.