Yes, it is a bit too intellectual. What you need to be looking for are egos; rather than looking at the Centres, you look for the egos. So, if you’re aware you notice a feeling inside and that’s the ego. And then as you’re aware of it, you’re seeing where it is. Is it an emotion for example? If it’s an emotion it’ll usually be around this area [solar plexus]. If it’s lust it’s in the sexual centre, if it’s a thought, well it’s in the mind isn’t it.  The others, they’re just movements and instincts, so you’re not really going to see, a particular centre for those two. So you’ve got three centres.

But what happens is that if you’re aware, then you see what is clouding and altering your awareness. What’s in the way? Because we should just be here and it’s clear; we should just be aware. And if there are any emotions in the way, if we’re daydreaming, that’s what you’re spotting when you’re looking inside. So we’re not just sitting in here thinking “are there any egos in my mind”, you know? We’re not here thinking, “do I have something in the emotional centre”? What we should be doing is being aware, here, and seeing if there is any colouration of that, anything which is altering it.

You know it’s really good along the way because we get to a point and we can actually detach ourselves from the mind – and that’s pretty useful isn’t it, we’re not caught in the mind anymore. We’ve got to get to awareness to make it work; then it’s not intellectual because it’s perception, we’re seeing it, we’re seeing the ego, we’re seeing the emotion, the feeling. Can you see the difference? So what happens if we try to intellectualize it, what’s the difference then?

Student: Then it’s just a thought trying to perceive. It’s not in the present and watching for that cloudiness, it’s just the mind trying to observe…

Belzebuub: Thinking about the ego, thinking about the emotions, but it’s not seeing it, really. And what happens when we do it in that intellectual way is that we move from one ego to another, and we never really see them. What we’re doing is thinking about the egos that are there. Ok we sort of see it, but we’re thinking about it and then the next one comes in and it’s a thought, and we just stay in this continuous line of thinking; we never break out of it. To break out, it’s the awareness.

Ok, can everybody try that now? Just be here and see if there are any emotions present. If there are, clear them, and just be here. Same thing if you’re daydreaming, clear it, and just be here - without getting lost in thinking about being aware.

Student: [Asks a question…]

Belzebuub: Well we would either have the sort of concentration that would mean that we were just single-mindedly concentrating on something, or, it would mean that we’ve gotten rid of the egos, in which case, there’d be no need for retrospection. I’ve never come across a case of anyone having any kind of permanent awareness through concentration. So even though temporarily, someone can be here - through concentration, through just sustained effort - the subconscious is going on underneath, and then once you get back to everyday life, all the same defects are back, all the same egos are back. So, we’re going to have to keep looking at the egos that come up in the day until they’re gone really.

Student: Because there’s egos that are part of the mind, all these things of the past, and if you meditate about the past, it’s seems hard to not get caught up in the mind, thinking of the past - it’s another ego within, retrospecting on an ego.

Belzebuub: Yes. So, when we go to meditate upon an ego, and look back on an ego, what mistake we can make is that we can just think about the ego – we can even feed it like that. Before we know it, we can get involved in an argument or whatever. That’s obviously not meditation on an ego. Again, it comes back to seeing. So if we’re going to see a series of events which are taking place during the day, we’ve got to look at it like a film. You know, look at what happened without getting involved in thinking about it. Once we think about it, we’ve lost it. By seeing it, that’s the information. Then, we get that information and deeply reflect upon it, in order to find out something that we don’t already know about it. And that’s the trick isn’t it? Because when we think, it’s already really what we know. We can work out new ideas, but there’s nothing really new taking place. But we use that information from the perception, which we got, to then meditate upon something, to go to the point when there’s no thought. And then, again, capture something about it.

We can also then have an out-of-body experience, or even if we’re doing the meditation well, we can be drifting in and out of sleep. So we’re sleeping, waking up, sleeping, practising meditation, and then we can dream about the ego that we’re trying to get information about. And in that dream, we can get information about it, new things. You see, falling asleep is not necessarily a bad thing when we’re meditating on an ego, because it gives us the opportunity to get taught from the other side, or to have an out-of-body experience. Meditation is actually quite good for having out-of-body experiences, because we’re concentrating on that reel of film, concentrating on the ego, and we get our mind focused on it; and if we have sleep, then we can have an out-of-body experience. If we’re trying to find the answer to this problem with the ego and there’s no answer that we know of, we can then, go from concentration to a silent mind, and then have proper meditation.

But that intellectualization of the ego is a bit of a problem. Not only in the practice of meditation, but also, in understanding it throughout the day, because we can observe ourselves and we’re just thinking about our state, how we should’ve acted or whatever - that’s not it. We need to see it as it happens, and even see the repercussions of it inside of us, be aware when the events are taking place that that ego is taking us to. Then it gives a chance for remorse to come out a bit more as well, because our conscience comes from our essence, or consciousness. It is that essence pushing us when we are asleep. And it tells us, “well, you need to really do something, you know, you should go to a retreat! See if you can make some changes”.