Sunday, July 4, 2010

Recognizing the Self. Questioner: What am I looking for?

In seeking, we find our true selves.

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“All self-liberates and returns to the Source. It is the bottomless 
ground, the conscious awareness of all existence, the simplicity of 
the present moment. It is the no-thing of absolute potentiality. 
This explains why Emptiness creates the space for all to manifest. 
An open void, a receptive vessel without boundaries, this is what 
we are." 
~Bringing Home the Mountain-Finding the Teacher Within.

Questioner: While I intellectually know this to be true, I have not 
experienced emptiness. What am I supposed to be looking for? 
Where is the Source, the Self? How can I experience emptiness?

"No matter where we are or what may be happening, connecting 
with the Self, our True Nature, is readily available as the in-breath." 
~Bringing Home the Mountain: Finding the Teacher Within. 

In my book, “Bringing Home the Mountain-Finding the Teacher Within,” 
I write about the specific practices and experiences that led me to 
these realizations. My journey to the Heart was devotional, and 
closely followed a path of self-inquiry as Ramana Maharshi taught. 
Know this emptiness, our true nature, isn’t complicated to find. 
The greatest challenge is to not miss it because of its obviousness. 
The paradox to the spiritual path is that our search for something 
greater than ourselves—for God, or an attribute we pray for Grace 
to bestow upon us—eventually brings us back to our true self, 
the Self, the Heart, the one that created the search to begin with. 

What we seek is our own awareness. This sense of awareness, 
of who we are, we already know. All we need to do is trust our 
own experience, drop below thought, and feel the expanse 
of our own hearts. By following our breath with single-pointed 
attention, slowly relaxing into the sense of our own being we 
can taste this emptiness. Seekers will often pop out of this space, 
thinking there is nothing there. This is when faith in the 
spiritual journey, the Mystery, is called for. This nothingness 
is emptiness and contains everything. It is the Self. The more we 
are able to find then simply relax into this space, we discover 
the Truth, which is our true nature just waiting to be recognized.

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