Category: Holidays

Sal strips away every attribute of self — name, form, nationality, past and future — to ask what remains in the absence of the rising I. His answer: “true silence is the absence of the rising I,” not the absence of noise or sound.

Sal addresses whether effort is needed to be on Holiday, your own essential being. Since a Holiday is simply what you already are, no effort is required — the sense that you must try is only the rising I. It’s “just falling in love with being.”

Draws on Krishnamurti’s “freedom from the known” to show that the ego survives by needing the security of the known. Admitting you don’t actually know why anything is dissolves both the need and the phantom I who needs it.

… frames pure being as the Source “hiding in open view” — always the most obvious thing whenever you look. The Prodigal Son who must journey home is just the phantom I; seeking is ended, not satisfied.

… builds on the phantom I, showing thoughts only ever refer to the body while pure being momentarily mistakes itself for them — a “case of mistaken identity.” A holiday returns you to the root, prior to the rising I.

… examines whether spontaneously appearing thoughts indicate a self, concluding ego is born only when the I attaches to thoughts referring to the body. Under scrutiny the phantom I cannot be found.

Distinguishes the “real sentience” of pure being — timeless, alive, without flavor or self — from the mind’s fears, projections and reminiscences. True life is what you are at essence, not the movement of mind.

… describes the “carousels of mind” — the strategies we ride looking for happiness in all the wrong places — and invites jumping off them into pure being. Also recommends not reading the transcript, but simply being.

… points to the immovable, unchanging “I” that has been present the whole life, found by simply attending to pure being. Contentment is inherent here because being itself lacks nothing.

… emphasizes that pure being is utterly simple and ordinary, nothing mystical or mind-blowing. The mind resists this, assuming liberation must be something more extraordinary.