------ Forwarded Message
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 15:59:07 EST
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: the easy way to do a bit of self-enquiry
rick,
last night i sent a reply to my brother on the topic of self-enquiry and i thought you might like to see it so i'm appending it below. i usually think of enquiry as being hard but simple, but lately i've been appreciating how it can be approached in a way that's both simple and easy.
i hope you like it and will post it on fairfield life.
bax
=
... i think you're right in that having a good understanding of who we are is what makes everything else in life work out.
the main thing to remember about self-enquiry is that we are always dealing with two levels of i-ness. the superficial one is the thought, 'i', also known as ego or mind. it's our enemy in the sense that its birth marks our fall from grace, our original sin.
but it's also our best friend in the sense that it can be used more effectively than any other tool to help us reconnect with the real I-ness deep inside.
in the end, the i-thought (the ego) must go, but not before it has led us to its source. the source of the i-thought is our true Self, the real I-ness at the core of our being, also known as the Heart.
as far as finding time to meditate, i think it's more effective to catch a few fleeting moments in the midst of normal daily activities than to sit specifically for this purpose.
for example, maybe you're watching a good show on tv and you're really lost in it, and then you innocently notice that you are there - that's a moment that can be used: that simple thought/feeling, "i'm back" or, "oh yeah, i'm here and i know it" can be held for a few moments before it slips away.
the difference between a moment right after remembering oneself and right before doing so is just this basic background feeling of "i'm here-ness", the common, automatic feeling of return to self-awareness following a subjective absence.
i think of this as 'commercial-time', because it occurs when life's 'show' stops for a moment and a break occurs. the easy way to do a bit of self-enquiry is to just reinforce the habit of capitalizing on such opportunities when they come to us unbidden.
sometimes, when i find myself in one of these moments and compare the 'before' and 'after' feelings, it seems that when i was 'gone' in a sense i wasn't really alive. some time has passed and i'm 'suddenly' a bit older, but i feel kind of cheated, because it's almost as if i wasn't there to live my life during that time. it seems to have happened all by itself, without me, because it lacked the personal touch of my self-awareness.
this simple return to self-awareness is the feeling of remembering per se, rather than remembering this or that. in fact, the only thing that we ever really remember is ourself, but we tend to assign that special feeling to whatever random thought happens to be passing through our mind at that moment and call this assignment a 'memory' of the object or event that that thought refers to.
if you think about it, this feeling of remembering ourself is the only thing that we ever really know for sure. we know it directly, whereas anything else that we 'know' is subject to doubt and debate.
doing what we can to nurture a budding curiosity about this feeling is more productive than time spent in sitting meditation, because it's immediate and true to what we are innocently feeling in that moment.
it's natural to be curious about anything new that we become aware of. if we meet someone new, we want to know more about them even if we've only spent a few moments in their company. how much stronger is the natural curiosity about our feeling of "here I-amness" once we begin to notice that it's been with us for so long?
i thought of a couple of images for nurturing that natural fascination for the feeling of i-ness and for seeing that it can lead us to its source, the Self. (these are the two "levels of i-ness" that we started with: the "i-thought" and the "source of the i-thought, the Self"). i hope you like them.
the first one is at a wedding reception. a man shows up and enjoys the food and company. the groom's family assumes that he's part of the bride's party and vice versa, so no-one gives him a second thought. but sooner or later, someone starts to notice him and to wonder who he is. as soon as anyone even begins to approach him, he splits the scene.
it's all quite automatic once someone's attention is drawn to him, so that first moment of curiosity in them marks the beginning of the end for him.
it's the same way with the sense or feeling of i-ness. we just assume that it belongs in our mind and so we don't ever examine it, but sooner or later each of us begins to wonder who or what it really is.
soon after we start to look at it directly it splits the scene, leaving us in the presence of the real I-ness that goes beyond any thought about it, the Self.
again, everything happens automatically once our attention first begins to be drawn in that direction. we don't need to have any special attitude towards this feeling of i-ness (such as reverence), we just need to gently demand to know its credentials: who or what it is and from where it has come.
in the end, the I-thought (the ego) will split the scene for good, just like the wedding guest, because it's not really needed in order to live our life.
the second image is that feeling of being alone in a crowd. there's always a lot going on around us, and our bodies, minds and emotions are always in motion, yet we are somehow not able to fully identify ourself as being a part of it all. even inside the mind there's always a lot of busy activity, but the real 'I' is always somehow uninvolved.
if we simply take a look at it for a few moments now and then when it pops up in our mind, we can't help but be drawn inwards because we find ourselves thinking, "if this is the i-thought, then to whom did it occur?", and in we go.
it's great to be able to talk with you about this stuff. i truly believe that real spirituality begins the moment that particular sparkly pebble first catches our eye as we walk down life's long beach, the moment that we first get the feeling of i-ness under our skin and in our blood and begin to be more fascinated by it than by any of the other sparkly pebbles that surround us.
pretty soon it's like that song at disneyland, 'it's a small world after all': we can't get rid of it even if we try, and it will surely cause us to lose our mind.
love ya,
michael
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