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See For Yourself
Let it happen. An unnecessary instruction in a way because it's always happening but one that pops up in Mind from time to time. Kind of free-floating and innocuous.
In this consciousness game, where awareness awakens to itself, a pivotal aspect involves shifting perceptions, shifting points of view. One outcome of changing ones point of view is that something that was hidden becomes visible. The shift may involve simply moving my head a few inches, moving my body a few feet or even a few thousand miles.
I stand directly in front of a house and see only the front. I move ten or fifteen feet to the right and I see the side of the house. I walk further along side of the house and the garden in the backyard comes into view. I get that.
But how do I "travel" from "conceptual" understanding to "non-conceptual" understanding?
I've read and heard about how my "beliefs", "assumptions" and "expectations" can act as "lenses" through which "I" view the world.
But when I look closely "I" see that every "word" regardless of what it is - "God", "Consciousness", "awakening", "enlightenment", "love", "fear", "suffering",
"mind" - is not "real", is essentially "imaginary", and is as intangible as formlessness itself.
When I look at the world around me, I don't see any "beliefs" or "assumptions" I'm looking through like blinds on a window I can open or close so I can see the outside or prevent others from seeing me inside here somewhere. So these "filters" I'm looking through are as invisible as spaciousness itself. "Mind" is as imaginary as "awakening". And "I" is simalarly "unreal" as well.
Metaphor, generally speaking, is using language to compare one thing with another in an attempt to enhance understanding. But when language itself is a medium of "imaging", we end up comparing an imaginary "this" to an imaginary "that".
In this way we can find ourselves talking about "direct perceiving" and "indirect perceiving" as if that made sense. And of course, the strange part is that it can.
We assume we have a "mind" without ever having any direct evidence of it or being able to hold it in our hands. And we "know" that the "brain" is not "mind". And it is this "mind", the "Master Story Teller" and "Dream Weaver" that is the primary "lens" through which most of "us" view the world.
So here is "mind" as empty and formless as consciousness and space, yet we can talk about a "fragmented" mind, an "open" mind, a "rigid" mind or "flexible" mind "as if" they were real and recognizable phenomena. And of course, somehow, they are.
So I sit back with all these imaginary thoughts swirling around this imaginary mind of mine and say, "Now what?"
What is this "imaging" that is "imagining" that is "imagination" all about, or even partially about? It's about, in part, "illusion" a "picture in the mind", "make believe", "magical thinking".
So I'm told I live in the world of Samsara, the illusory world. But if I take this illusory self that I think I am and place it in the middele of an intersection, as an illusory car is barrelling through at 50 MPH, I'm pretty sure that illusory car is going to send me to the hospital, where doctors and nurses will temporarily mill about my guerney muttering, "What was he thinking?"
So maybe I shift my point of view and look at "illusion", "Samsara", through another "lens" - "pretense". Maybe we are not confronted with the illusory world of a hologram through which we can pass our hand, but the illusoriness of a "movie set" where there are "props" and "costumes" and "roles" we get to act out.
It looks "real" but we know it's not. And we "pretend" to be "husband", "wife' "employee", "boss", "brother", "sister", "doctor", "lawyer", "lover", "wastrel", "addict", "meditator", "spiritual seeker", "consumer", "victim" or "victimizer". The roles are endless.
And in fact we all have our "costumes" and "roles" and those who expect us to act our part(s) accordingly. I guess in a way we can say we're all participants in a Reality Show with exceptionally elaborate sets and props, is world-wide, partially scripted and partially improvised, partially "conditioned" and partially "unconditioned", where some of us are "dream walking" and some of us are "awakened" or "partially awakened"?
This is just another angle on Samsara, where the Oscar goes to those who convincingly appear "authentic" versus "inauthentic".
But really, this Mind of ours can take us only so far in this journey of awakening, whether we are awakening to our true nature or awakening from mind's gravitational pull.
This human form is a "keyhole" which formless awareness peers through to see Itself in a limited fashion. And what it sees is THIS. Open your eyes and see. For yourself. What is real and what is unreal.
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After 10 years of practice using the mantra, Who Am I, one day there was the answer.
There was an aware knowing yet all thought was gone there was an intelligence that had nothing to do with thinking.
The answer was truly beyond thinking.
I hope this is helpful to someone in some way.
I would like to hear more about your experience with inquiry.
I thought that it was interesting in one of our latest videos from Ajati, he related that Ramana's guidance was to ask "who am I" only one time (or once a day). Yet this question was deeply meaningful for you. Here is an excerpt of what he said. Advaitic Science.
Hi Richard
I just watched the entire show mentioned above.
I have read Talks with Ramana Maharshi five or six times and nowhere does it say just asked the question one time a day.
One of the reasons to use the mantra is to block out the constant chatter of the mind, so saying it one time a day would be of no use to the average person.
As far as a realized person doing anything harmful to another person. It would be like the Buddha duking it out with another monk Over the last piece of Sweet potato,it could never happen,or at least it seems that way.
The question Who Am I is ongoing from the time you go to bed to the time when you wake up.
As far as preparing yourself for the answer that also lies in the question Who Am I.
The answer to the question appears in silence, Yet there is an aware intelligent knowing that's hard to describe.
The ego still goes on causing problems as it did before the difference is, When I see this happening I return immediately to my true self,this is now my practice.
Ramana Maharshi said asked the question, Who Am I and that's all I did one day, the answer just appeared.
Thank you Richard
The answer to the question "who am i" is the "question" who am i.
I don´t know that. I am that.
Maybe one could say, that declaration is an expression of this, what i am.
Taking that expression as an object of knowing is pure ignorance.
Ignorance is the mechanism of realisation in creating dual experiences as an experiencer.
For an experiencer there is only a true self, while experiencing a false self.
The other way round ... in experiencing a true self, you must have an idea of a false self.
There is no true, neither a false self apart from an searching entity.
And every "self" is an experience itself - from whom?
Wrong question! There is nothing to find!
I am not perception, but I am that, what perception is.
And that could be no object for a subject because it is subjectivity itself.
The absolute subject is by definition a No-Thing.
All this writing is - for subjectivity, trying to understand it "thru" or as an phenomenal entity, in the meaning of knowing it as some-thing, conceptional and misleading stuff. Nothing else cut it be. Than it is an experience, that is known by someone, in the experience to be the knower of something. There is really no difference in all knowing, since all knowing is ignorance of the knowing that i am (in the meaning of "being" the unseparated knowing).
But the manifestation of "questioning" itself, is all that i am as a phenomenon. The fact, that "i" can´t stop to identificate "myself" with the content of my answers (with my knowing), in addition of simple being the question, is not able to destroy anything. It´s only the dream of ignorance.
If one needs a reason for "his" dreaming, he could take - "for entertainment" - as a good starting point, that doesn´t seem to hurt so much.
If one believes in the idea, that there is something to find (like a true self), it seems to hurt a little bit more.
Don´t trust these words only when you don´t trust these words.
You can´t go wrong.
I guess you could say there is a false self, That being the ego made self based on a lifetime of programming.
Saying there is a true self doesn't quite describe it,you can't say you found something new, because you see that it was always there.
It's really not a big deal. It's kind of a returning back to normal, without being constantly driven by the ego.
john
I think that it is, because that is the kind of equipment that we all have. Some say that they have seen through it, but they live in "continuity" just the same. Only they say that they no longer believe in it.
A) Let's talk pure non-conceptual experience, a perception arises, and the perception subsides. It is creation and dissolution in every moment. Is that okay? If it is, fine, we live in pure awareness. If it is not okay, what happens?
B) Somehow a vulnerability is believed in so that there is a preference, that this particular appearance shouldn't go. We're gonna need it. Then as a fix, we form a concept and store it in the archives, (memory). We grasp it. The effect is that we are now perceiving from the middle of an experience/archives/experience mechanism of "Continuous living images". This is the mind made self in operation, and out of it we get a "me" and an object that is being perceived and a process of how it came into our possession. All sorts of stuff are the side effects, like time and place and relationship, and judgement and efforting and improvement and future.
This is so much of the perceived human experience, even though testimony states that none of it is really happening. Go back to A) for reality. Yet it is so all-prevasive that I take it to be necessary, convenient or comfortable. Anyway, fighting it is more of B). So gradually you can just loose interest in this whole story, just live. If scenario A) is ever going to have an impact, (whatever that could possibly mean) working with B) is not going to hasten it.