Shadowing Practice: Is Ultimate Reality Fundamentally Good? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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This morning in the meditation, I was reminded of this passage in Moby Dick.

And of course Moby Dick is a great, I think of it as a great poem of consideration of God.

I mean, that's really central to Moby Dick.

And in it, there's a moment in which the cabin boy is thrown off the boat and he's floating in the sea.

And he says, the sea kept him awake,

I mean afloat, but drowned his soul and he looked and saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom,

which is a beautiful image, God's foot upon the treadle of the loom.

But he came back and he was insane.

And says sort of, God's truth is man's insanity.

And my question is, ultimate reality, it's sort of the, what we call a true nature.

How do we know is not like some

Buddhist ideas I think is a void.

How do we know it is fundamentally good?

I mean, I know good is a very insufficient descriptor, but how do we know is not what happened to Pip?

Well, the way we know that the ultimate reality is not a void is by going to our own experience.

I mean, whatever the ultimate nature of reality is, must also be the ultimate nature of ourself.

and we are not able to investigate the ultimate nature of the reality by exploring the world

because we only know the world through our sense perception.

So our only chance of knowing the ultimate reality is to explore our experience of ourself.

And if we go to our experience of ourself, our ultimate experience of ourself, our essential self, which is what we've been doing this week,

and you remove everything from yourself that is not essential, you do initially come to a void,

the passing away of existence, the absence of experience.

And if you stop there, then you say reality is a void.

But that void is the absence of experience.

If you go one step deeper,

And that absence can only remain with reference to the memory of existence.

If that memory disappears, what previously appeared as a void is now revealed as the presence of awareness.

So it's not enough for existence to pass away.

That passing away has to pass away.

So if we think that previously we thought reality was something, then we think, okay, now reality is nothing, it's a void.

But nothing is only something in relation to something.

You have to go one step further.

So, and if we do that in ourself, and that's what we did for instance,

with this going in the floating tank, removing everything.

And at the beginning of the week, if I had asked you, when you've removed your perceptions and sensations and thoughts and images,

what do you experience?

I think that almost all, if not all of you, at the beginning of the week would have said nothing.

But I ask you now, what do you experience when none of you would say nothing?

You'd all say the presence of being.

So that's the first comment.

How do we know that it is...

How do we know that it is good?

Because if we go to that placeless place in ourself, it is a presence, a field, if we can call it,

of pure unity, there's no distinction.

That's what love is, it's the absolute absence of otherness or separation,

and therefore no evil can come from it.

It's pure love, it's pure...

Unity, pure absence of separation, so nothing bad or evil.

It's pure goodness, not good as the opposite of bad.

There's no enmity, there's no hatred, there's no sorrow, there's no separation, there's no evil.

And that's conceptualized, we conceptualize that by saying it's pure goodness, pure peace.

strictly speaking it's even prior to we shouldn't even call it peaceful or good but

we only do so with reference to their opposites evil hatred and so on

I'm sure there's a line in Milton's Paradise Lost, George, which you may well know.

These are thy glorious works, parent of good, almighty, thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair, thyself how wondrous then, unspeakable, who sittest above these heavens to us invisible,

or dimly seen in these thy lowest works.

Yet these declare thy goodness beyond doubt and power divine.

Thank you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Is Ultimate Reality Fundamentally Good?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: reality, experience, void, ultimate, pure. This video has 60 sentences and 733 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:39. The speaker talks at a steady 110 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
void adjective	/vɔɪd/	Containing nothing; empty; not occupied or filled.
ourself	/(ˌ)aʊə(ɹ)ˈsɛlf/	The reflexive of the royal or editorial we: myself (as used by one who is a monarch, writer or speaker when referring to oneself as we).
conceptualize verb		To interpret a phenomenon by forming a concept.
loom noun	/lum/	A utensil; tool; a weapon; (usually in compound) an article in general.
treadle noun	/ˈtɹɛdl̩/	A foot-operated pedal or lever that generates motion.
wondrous adjective	/ˈwʌndɹəs/	Wonderful; amazing, inspiring awe; marvelous.
float verb	/fləʊt/	To be supported by a fluid of greater density (than the object).
hatred noun	/ˈheɪtɹɪd/	A strong aversion; an intense dislike.
afloat adjective	/əˈfloʊt/	Floating.
descriptor noun	/dɪˈskɹɪp.tə/	A name associated with certain data or documents in an information storage and retrieval system; an index term.
enmity noun	/ˈɛn.mɪ.ti/	The quality of being an enemy; a hostile or unfriendly disposition.
otherness noun		The quality of being different or distinct.
placeless adjective		Lacking a proper place.
unspeakable adjective		Incapable of being spoken or uttered.
drown verb	/dɹaʊn/	To die from suffocation while immersed in water or other fluid.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
pass away verb	To die.
come back verb	To return to a place.
throw off verb	To confuse; especially, to lose a pursuer.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

How do we know it is fundamentally good?
You'd all say the presence of being.
How do we know that it is good?

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 5 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, shouldn't, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: insufficient /ɪnsəˈfɪʃənt/, sensation /sɛnˈseɪʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/
Long words — get the stress right: insanity /ɪnˈsænɪti/, insufficient /ɪnsəˈfɪʃənt/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like void, ourself, conceptualize.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Is Ultimate Reality Fundamentally Good? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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