Pointers

Full Stop means "This is It"--this is That from which you never move.


**********


Meditation is merely thinking about your true nature. It is a conceptual endeavor that, ironically enough, prevents you from recognizing your ever-present Reality. When you meditate, you put the idea of "enlightenment" (and even your natural state!) someplace in time and outside of yourself. This amounts to a concept pursuing a concept. Nothing can come of this because the results would be only more ideas and cogitation, not a direct knowing of what you are.


**********


Who are you? There is no individual there, no ghost in the machine. Look deeply, and you will find a natural, extraordinary, and spontaneous functioning of nonconceptual intelligence.


**********


Sages as varied as Huang Po, U.G. Krishnamurti, and Nisargadatta Maharaj were consistent and emphatic on using the expression "natural state" for our absolute presence. When one's understanding is clear, one sees that there is, indeed, a supreme ease and timelessness to self-knowing.


**********


Awareness is the spaciousness in which consciousness occurs.


**********


Because you witness consciousness, you cannot possibly be consciousness. Anything that you can observe--from your body and thoughts to your personality and emotions--cannot be your true Self. You can only be that which knows objects and events. You are the unchanging essence of life itself.


**********


Awareness is what you are. The who is merely a conversational convenience, not a reality. Keep coming back to the whatness. Allow yourself to see and--this is vital--to abide in the immediacy of your beingness. More often than not, people move away from pointers too quickly, not realizing how close they are to a clear understanding of themselves. That's why, when reading Nisargadatta Maharaj, you will often see him reiterating--after some choice pointer or response--to "Stay with" the stillness that you're feeling right now or to remain with that "something which was prevailing."


**********


Your mind cannot help you with this. But that's cause for celebration, not woe. Awareness is prior to and beyond any thoughts, labels, speculations, or analysis you might have about it. So instead of approaching the matter intellectually, you now know--from the start--that self-knowledge can only come through seeing or understanding. You promptly put any preconceptions aside and focus on what is undeniably present at this very moment. See that there is a rich, wide-open knowingness to your (seemingly) ordinary awareness. Don't move from what you are. Abide in that stillness until your radiance is perceived. And then you will know that the light was always shinning, and that you were not, for one moment, ever lost.