Pointers

What is it that is aware of the words that you are reading? What spaciousness is recognizing these sentences before you?


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No amount of wanting or craving can bring you to this understanding. Just take a moment and see the reality of what you are, right here and now. It is that simple.


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Life's ultimate question is not "Who am I?" It is "What am I?"


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This presence of awareness is your natural state. Any attempted move from it--whether by meditation, sitting, silence, chakra-awakening, concentration, and even virtuous acts (that are done for the expressed purpose of attaining some higher state, rather than performed selflessly and spontaneously)--only puts you in a speculative loop. Absolutely nothing gets seen or understood.


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Suffering is based on the belief that you are somehow separated from your unchanging core. Neither the "you" nor the separation is actual. You are pure, nonconceptual presence.


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Take note when your questions aren't directly about self-knowing. Are you asking something out of curiosity or out of a deep need to understand your true identity. Curiosity is perfectly fine. But when it distracts you from your own effulgence, the issue needs to be addressed. And this is easily done by grasping the frivolousness of the question itself.


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See that there is an apparent direction to your knowingness--that your awareness recognizes a thought, feeling, or image. It is not the other way around. Thoughts are inert. Awareness perceives them. You are that awareness.


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Ironically, trust and deep faith have their places in nonduality. These qualities are present (and florish) when seekers and questioners resonate with a teacher's words or being.


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Unquestioning people identify with what is most apparent to them, e.g., their bodies, minds, and ethnic/cultural grouping. Some even distinguish themselves by their jobs and personalities. Then there are the spiritual seekers who aren't at all sure of who they are. So they use such terms as soul, atman, divine spirit, and unitive state for what they hope to be their sacred identity. Finally, there are those rare persons who seek to know the ever-present peace and fullness of their own awareness. There is, of course, nothing rare about presence. It only appears to be so because its simplicity and bareness are so easily overlooked. But once it is seen or understood, there is no going back, no maintaining, and no more questions. As Nisargadatta Maharaj put it, "The picture is complete now...Your recognition abides in the Self."