Waking up - Part 1

In the recent articles posted on this blog, we touched (a tiny bit) on the topic of getting to know our True Nature, our Self. 

We elaborated a little bit on the peace and fulfillment, which lies within our Self, but we did not elaborate on how we get to the point of discovering our Buddha Nature, the presence of God within our lives, the pure Awareness which we are, or the Clear Light of the mind. Whichever resonates with us.

It is almost as if we have been talking about chocolate cake, how tasty it is, how happy we are when we can eat chocolate cake, but without sharing the recipe to bake the cake. 

Thus, the intention is to write about how we become aware of our True Nature, and what to do from there. The author intends on doing this in a two- or three-part article, with this one being the first, as one article would simply not be enough - keeping in mind that we do not want the articles to get too long and boring. We don't want to fall asleep reading the recipe, before we even start to bake the cake!

There are of course many ways to bake a chocolate cake. In this article, we shall only cover one or two of these 'recipes'.

Okay, enough said. Let's get baking! 

Not this, not that

When we start the process of Self-discovery, it implies that at this point, we do not know who or what we are, and this 'not knowing' initiates the seeking. It is easy to say that we are Loving Awareness, we are the Universe experiencing Itself, we are God in drag. These statements are easy to make, but they are empty if they are not our experience. 

Therefore, we want to stop believing and start knowing who we are. This is the only way we can know for sure, and the only way we can free ourselves from suffering. Through our own experience. 

One of the most effective methods of getting to know who we truly are, or at least to shatter many illusions of who we believe we are, would be through the process of elimination. What is meant by this, is the Sanskrit term Neti Neti, which we mentioned in previous articles.

We want to remove or eliminate what we are not, and see what is left. Imagine how a stone or wood sculptor starts with a raw chunk of stone or wood. Then, by slowly and carefully taking pieces away from it, the final piece of art becomes visible. We can apply the same process to ourselves.

When we remove everything that we are not, then the bare Truth is all that is left, without concealment!

Self inquire

Another path, is to do self-inquiry. We investigate who and what we truly are. We check up. Investigating as deeply as we can, fine combing our whole experience in search of the real I, the real Self. 

When we do self-inquiry with the understanding of Neti Neti, it is very likely that we can make a breakthrough!

We can start with the physical, and check up.
We investigate, are we our physical bodies? No.
Are we any part of the physical body? And we don't simply answer 'no'. We check up!
Are we any part of the physical body? The feet? The arms? The head? A collection of it all? No.

We can then go deeper, and apply the same questioning to our emotions and our thoughts, breaking it down as fine and as much as we can, in order to see what remains. We also apply the same questioning to any belief we may have, such as that we are a 'soul' or a 'spiritual being' - we can challenge our beliefs with the reality of our experience. 

We can be completely honest with ourselves and answer truthfully. When we say that we are not the body or mind, we need to do so with 100% certainty, being completely convinced. If we are not 100% certain that we are not this or that, we continue to check up and investigate, until we are completely assured of our understanding and nothing can make us doubt. There is a clear knowing.

No place to stand

What we ultimately want to do, is to investigate this idea we have of ourselves, this false understanding we have of ourselves. We want to investigate this, and realize that we are not what we thought we are all along.

Imagine that we are standing in a tree, cutting all the branches off, one by one. We move around, cutting here and cutting there. Eventually, there is only one branch left - the one we are standing on.

And we cut this off too!

This is exactly what we want to do with the ideas we have of ourselves. We want to leave it no place to stand! 

When we apply these methods skillfully, our mindset starts to change. We may not instantly realize our true identity, but our self-inquiry has a direct effect on our lives. We can experience the results very quickly.

As soon as we start to dissolve the false understandings we have of ourselves, all the conflict and suffering that accompanies this false identity dissolve too. Slowly, but surely. We defend or protect this idea of 'me' less and less, because we start to recognize the vulnerability of this idea.

Through practice and through patience, the veil is very likely to be removed, and the ever-presence of God within ourselves becomes clear.

So, the combination of the above-mentioned is one of the potential ways to bake and enjoy a delicious chocolate cake! It is one of the methods we can apply to cut through the illusions and discover our Self. It takes time and patience, because of how strong the mind has been conditioned. Layers and layers of conditioning, but we can definitely undo the conditioning! 

Realizing what we are not would be the first step.
Knowing what we are, the second step.
The third step, would be to live out the understanding and experience of oneness with God, our Limitless Self. A never-ending experience, going deeper, deeper, and deeper. 

When the Self-discovering stops, the Self-exploring starts.
We start to explore our True Nature!

Next article to follow soon ;)

"When we remove everything that we are not, then the bare Truth is all that is left, without concealment!"

Similar articles on this blog:

A familiar feeling - 28 December, 2020
A collection of layers - 14 December, 2020
The ego, the illusion - 30 August, 2020