OPAN-OTOL-MSOIA-BGMisms: SPIRA A

Friday, 18 July 2025

SPIRA A

Here’s what I found about Rupert Spira’s The Shining of Being and its context within The Essence of Meditation Series.

📚 Series Overview: The Essence of Meditation

The series is a collection of volumes featuring contemplations and meditations by Rupert Spira, focused on the non‑dual recognition of awareness itself—what he calls the essence of meditation (sahajapublications.com).
Volume I (2017): Being Aware of Being Aware—introduces the core theme that meditation is not an activity but the recognition of fundamental awareness, offering readers experiential insight into lasting peace and happiness (sahajapublications.com).
Volume II (2021): Being Myself—deepens the introspection on our essential nature, clarifying how our sense of self merges with the content of experience .
Volume III (2023): The Heart of Prayer—focuses on the direct nature of being through meditative prayer as an effortless recognition of presence (Wikipedia).

🔍 What About The Shining of Being?

There’s no book by that title in the official series. However, Rupert Spira has a recorded talk/teaching titled The Shining of Being, delivered at a seven‑day retreat in October 2022 (Mercy Center, California). It’s a 1 hour 31 minute video/audio session, centered on the nature of awareness as the ever‑shining presence behind all experience (Rupert Spira).
The title appears to be a guided meditation or discourse rather than a published book. He has similar recordings like The Shining of Our Being (2019) or The Shining of Our Shared Being (2024), but none are listed as print volumes in the series (Rupert Spira).

✅ Summary Table

Inquiry	Answer
Is The Shining of Being in the series?	Not as a book—it's a recorded retreat teaching, not a printed volume.
The Essence of Meditation series includes:	Volume I: Being Aware of Being Aware (2017) Volume II: Being Myself (2021) Volume III: The Heart of Prayer (2023)
Theme of The Shining of Being	Exploration of awareness that shimmers behind and within all experiences—pure being.

🧘 Key Teachings from Spira’s Perspective

Meditation, in Spira’s view, is not doing something, but being aware of being aware—recognizing the simple experience “I am.” This inward turning is the essence of meditation and the path to lasting peace (Rupert Spira, Rupert Spira, Rupert Spira, Reddit, Reddit).
He emphasizes that the awareness underlying all sensations, thoughts, and emotions is unchanged by them—it is ever‑present, the constant light upon experience (Rupert Spira).
As one Reddit user reflects:

“Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. … It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing or controlling of the mind.” (Reddit)

A

Certainly. Here's an expanded, reflective elaboration on the passage from The Shining of Being by Rupert Spira:

"The Shining of Being" is not merely a philosophical treatise—it is an invitation.
An invitation not outward into the world of concepts or beliefs, but inward—toward the most intimate dimension of yourself: your very being. Spira gently points us to a truth so familiar, so immediate, that it is often overlooked. This is the truth of “I am”—the primal awareness that precedes every experience, thought, or emotion.

“The intimate, familiar presence that shines in your mind as the knowledge ‘I am.’”

This "I am" is not a personal identity. It is not the name, story, or psychological content we typically associate with the self. Instead, it is the simple, silent awareness of existing. It is being itself—before it is labeled, shaped, or narrated by the mind. Spira's language here is deliberate: your being shines. It is luminous, ever-present, and self-revealing.

🧘 A Still, Silent Core

Rupert Spira speaks of a “still, silent core” within each of us. This core is not something to be constructed or achieved. It is what remains when we stop trying to become, stop identifying with mental agitation or emotional storms.

This inner stillness is not affected by what happens in the outer world—just as the screen is never stained by the movie that plays upon it.
The silent core of your being has never been hurt, never been improved, and never been separate. It simply is.

✨ No Need for Healing or Liberation

“Your being does not need to be healed, perfected or enlightened.”

This is one of Spira’s most radical and liberating assertions. In contrast to many spiritual or self-help paradigms that frame the seeker as broken, incomplete, or lost, Spira affirms that what you are in essence is already whole. The sense of separation—the idea that we are isolated minds in bodies, apart from the world and others—is described not as a sin, flaw, or failing, but as an illusion that naturally dissolves upon inquiry.

There is no need to strive for enlightenment because the self-aware presence you are is already awake.
Liberation is not an achievement; it is a recognition of what has always been true.

💗 The Homecoming of the Heart

“This recognition brings your longing to an end. It is the homecoming of the heart.”

Here, Spira points to the ultimate fulfillment. The spiritual search, with all its peaks and valleys, is driven by a subtle longing—a yearning to return to something lost. But what if that “something” was never lost? What if the seeker and the sought were never two?

The “homecoming” he refers to is not a physical place or even a meditative state. It is the return to your innermost self, your true nature.
It is the dissolution of distance, the end of seeking, the peace that passes understanding.

And perhaps most profoundly, it is not a private peace. It is the realization that your being—the presence aware of these words—is the same presence at the heart of everyone and everything. One being, shining in all forms.

🪞 In Summary:

The Shining of Being offers:

A direct path to self-recognition, without effort or struggle.
A poetic re-framing of nonduality, grounded in everyday awareness.
A reminder that peace, love, and completeness are not goals—they are the nature of who you already are.

epigenetics; where its been realized that mind and emotion are bigger factors than than diet.

DeCarte got it backwards. You have to first be (exist) before you can think. Also, experience (perception) occurs before thought.

It seems very likely that since we’re finding intelligence at every single level that there would be a higher intelligence

TRAJECTORIES OF GROWTH - EXPONENTIAL V LINEAR V HYPERBOLIC

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