The Evergreen Teaching
A Webinar Conversation about Time, Happiness and the Freedom to Be
A Living Teaching
Schedule permitting, I host weekly Zoom webinars as an opportunity to connect more personally with members of this community. These conversations often confront me with questions I have never heard before – questions I may never have asked myself. In responding to them, the understanding is drawn out afresh, shaped in real time by the needs and circumstances of the moment. In this way, the teaching remains alive – unfolding spontaneously rather than being repeated from memory. It is not a fixed body of knowledge handed down from the past but a living enquiry, renewed with each encounter.
This exchange with Whitby during a recent webinar was particularly illuminating. It touched on several essential themes: the nature of time, the source of genuine happiness and how recognising these can transform the way we relate to others. Her enquiry began with a beautifully articulated observation – that time is ‘the way thoughts are organised’ – and it led us to discuss how both past and future, though inaccessible, still seem to echo within our present experience.
Infinite being has no dimension – nothing lies outside it, and nothing takes place within it in the usual sense of space and time. Everything that could ever appear is already enfolded within it in potential before taking form. However, to speak of this, we must borrow the language of time and space even though they do not truly apply. What is whole and ever-present is refracted through the mind’s lens, becoming the unfolding drama of time and space.
Happiness Beyond Time
The conversation then shifted from the philosophical to the more personal implications of this understanding. If time is simply the mind’s way of organising experience, then our happiness need not be invested in the past or the future. We explored how happiness is not something acquired through events, achievements or relationships but is the very nature of our being – always present, always available. When this is recognised, the search for happiness in external circumstances begins to falls away. The future is no longer a pursuit but a space in which the peace and causeless joy that are already present can be expressed. You now use your happiness in service of the world rather than using the world in service of your happiness.
This understanding has a quiet but radical effect on relationships. When you no longer look to others – subtly or overtly – to make you happy, you release them from an impossible demand. In place of expectation, you offer the gift of undemanding presence: a space in which others feel free to be themselves without pressure or control. As Whitby recognised, this loops back to her original reflection on time – for when happiness is no longer tied to particular outcomes, it matters less whether imagined futures come to pass.
Perhaps the most liberating insight of all is the recognition that you are already free of both past and future. You do not need to struggle towards freedom nor heal your way to wholeness. As I shared with Whitby, ‘You are now free of all the traumatic experiences you have ever had. You don’t have to liberate yourself from them. You are already completely free of them. You are whole, at peace, fulfilled – now.’
Freedom and the Evergreen Teaching
These webinar conversations continue to reveal that the non-dual understanding is not merely philosophical – it has deeply practical implications, transforming our experience of time, happiness and relationship in the most ordinary moments of daily life. They also continue to draw the teaching out of me in new and unexpected ways. In this sense, they fulfil something my first teacher, Dr Francis Roles, once said to me: ‘The teaching has to be reformulated with every generation.’
The essential understanding remains the same, but its expression must continually adapt. Each generation brings its own language, questions and concerns, and the teaching must meet them in ways that are alive to the present moment. Only in this way can it remain relevant, resonant and free from becoming a static system of concepts, beliefs or practices. It is in this ongoing reformulation that the teaching remains evergreen.
I was thinking...the questioner is probably referring to that the dopaminerelease is bigger when anticipating than it is when remembering, that’s why she finds the so called “different times” feeling different. She talked about the “caracter happiness” which often depends on dopamine. Rupert talked about the happiness of the Self, which is constantly happy and is not due to dopaminerelease.
Interesting perspective on time and trauma. I find myself contemplating “what is trauma?”. And when I abide in my Self I only find. “I don’t even understand the question”. In other words, trauma is a non issue when abiding in myself. I don’t understand the question. But when I change perspective to my character and ask the same question I find a lot of “talk”, a lot of “answers” and a lot of ways to dig this question from different angels. One angle is “it depends on how you define ‘real’”.
So I go back to my Self again, and resting there, I ask the question again “what is real?” and I find the same answer again “I cannot understand the question”. Again, my Self finds the question of “real” just a not relevant discussion, no real question, its like asking a mumbo jumbo question, so it has no real answer, due to the question having its conceptual nature.
It is really interesting this “abiding in the Self” anyway. I mean, what is abiding? When I ask my Self this question- it again answers “I don’t understand the question”. It’s like ...laughing at the question, in a kind way. Like its mumbo jumbo again. A lunatic question. Why? Because we cannot not abide in the Self...
So much of our experiences becomes “unrelevant”, for a better word, when feeling, thinking, asking from the Self. In fact, one finds there really is no questions left. It just feels like a mysterious peaceful and quiet smile inside, something that asks no questions, and need no answers.
I am often surprised how many ‘a ha’ moments can happen when listening to these dialogues. And some I have watched several times before, soaking in and washing over, to find saturation. Space and time, the paradox of being…the mind struggles.