Three Glimpses into the Heart of Being
AUG 28, 2025 (transparencyofthings.substack.com)
I’m delighted to let you know about the publication of my new book, The Shining of Being, the latest volume in ‘The Essence of Meditation Series’.
The Shining of Being has emerged from nearly five decades of exploration into the nature of our essential self. This book distils the essence of meditation into its most direct form – not as something we do, but as what we essentially are.
The book traces a simple journey from our most intimate knowledge of ourselves to the recognition that this same being is the reality of all existence. Allow me to share three passages that illuminate this understanding.
The ‘Water’ in All Our Experiences
When we drink tea, coffee or wine, we are mostly drinking water. But we don’t realise that we are drinking water as the water is mixed with various flavours, sweet or bitter. It is the same with our self or being. In every experience we have, whether pleasant or unpleasant, we are experiencing our being.
This simple analogy reveals something profound about our daily experience. Right now, as you read these words, you might say ‘I am reading’, ‘I am curious’, or ‘I am thinking’. In each case, notice how the sentence begins with the same ‘I am’ – this is the water, the essential ingredient in all experience.
The flavours of our experience are constantly changing – sometimes pleasant like honey, sometimes bitter like medicine. But the ‘I am’ that underlies them all remains unchanged, like water that can take on any flavour whilst never losing its essential nature as water.
When we recognise this in our own experience, we discover that what we’ve been seeking – peace, fulfilment, love – is not hidden in the flavours of experience but shines as the very ‘I am’ that experiences them all.
The Moon That Reveals the Canvas
Let us take another analogy:
Just as the full moon in Turner’s paintings seems to be an object in the landscape but is in fact the white paper showing through, so the knowledge ‘I am’ seems to be a thought in the mind, but is in fact the awareness in which all thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions appear.
This watercolour technique employed by J.M.W. Turner offers a perfect metaphor for understanding our essential nature. At first glance, the moon appears to be painted into the landscape – just another object amongst the trees and fields. But closer examination reveals it’s actually unpainted paper, the very background upon which the entire painting exists.
Similarly, the knowledge ‘I am’ might seem like just another experience in the mind – a thought, a feeling, a sense of self amongst others. But when we investigate it directly, we discover it’s not an object of experience at all. It’s the aware presence in which all experiences appear and disappear.
This awareness – this ‘I am’ – is like the white paper of consciousness. It’s the unchanging background that remains present whether we’re thinking or not thinking, feeling happy or sad, perceiving the world or resting in deep sleep.
Just Be
Simply being is your nature; abide as that. In other words, don’t mediate; just be. Simply being is the origin, the path and the goal.
Here lies the radical simplicity at the heart of the deepest spiritual understanding. Most approaches to peace and fulfilment assume we must travel somewhere, achieve something, or become someone different. They offer practices, methods, and stages of development.
But what if what we’re seeking is not a destination to reach but our very point of departure? What if peace is not something to be acquired but the very nature of the one who would acquire it?
This recognition – that being is already our nature – transforms the entire spiritual search. We don’t need to manufacture peace through techniques or discipline. We need only recognise what we already are and remain as that.
This doesn’t mean we become passive or disengaged. Rather, we discover that all authentic action arises spontaneously from this recognition of our essential nature, just as light naturally radiates from the sun.
The Essence of All Meditations
The Shining of Being reveals that all spiritual practices – whether progressive paths that focus on objects, direct paths that investigate the subject, or the pathless path of simple being – ultimately converge in this recognition of our essential nature.
The book itself emerged from decades of meditation meetings where this understanding was explored experientially, not just intellectually. Each chapter guides us back to the most intimate, familiar experience there is: the simple fact of being, the knowledge ‘I am’.
In a world that often feels fragmented and uncertain, this understanding offers something unshakeable – not as an escape from our human experience, but as the very ground in which all experience takes place.
The essence of meditation, I suggest, is not to retreat from life but to remain as being in the midst of all experience – to taste the water in whatever wine life offers us.
The Shining of Being is available here. Each chapter can be read as a complete meditation, and the entire book serves as a guide for those drawn to the most direct recognition of our essential nature.
