Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Below is an email I sent to a student who had been practicing very strongly over a period of time. He had many conceptions of what spiritual progress and practice were all about, and one after another was shed.  But he abruptly disappeared for a time giving lifeless excuses.

Ed:

Where the hell have you gone?

Be honest.

Ed

J:

OK, Edji.

The truth is that you pretty much put the final nails in my coffin -- if you know what I mean — and I haven’t been feeling the need for satsang.  To be honest, I’ve been feeling like the crying woman in the Mooji video that you posted.

Contrary to you having done something I didn’t like, you gave me just what I needed whether I liked it or not.  Short as our correspondence was, your insights and “zingers” pushed my buttons to a degree that you may have been unaware.  You pushed me over the edge (no pun intended) and freed me from my dependency on the teacher, which I realized was rooted in a belief, strangely enough, that the Master was somehow going to magically complete my sadhana for me.  Of course, the teachings are invaluable, but the “inner” guru is guiding the ship these days.

I’m sorry that I wasn’t more straight about the reason for my absence, but it felt awkward to confide this to you as if I was making some pronouncement about having attained realization or enlightenment or whatever label you want to give it.  Let’s just say that now I know what has always been so, and the only thing I can do is basically stay the fuck out of the way.

I am forever thankful to you, and I would like to keep in touch.

Ed:

Hey,

Explain further please. What is the insight you gained?

Ed

J:

Kind of a tricky question.   “I” didn’t really “gain” anything.

But, of course, we are stuck with language as the only means to communicate such insight.

The realization is that there is no such thing as enlightenment (or whatever you want to call it) because there is no one to be enlightened.

I am not.  

There is no “I”.

This thing — the Self -- and this state — Realization -- that I’ve been chasing after, pursuing, searching for all these years simply does not exist.    

All that exists is Consciousness, and I am not even that.

All the seeking and the questions and the experiences and the insights, though made of Consciousness, were only layers, veils, walls obstructing my experience or understanding or awareness (I don’t really know what to call it since no word really does it justice) of the Truth that is prior to Consciousness and essentially served only to keep the “I” alive.

What is weird is how obvious the Truth was all along and yet how egregiously it was missed, overlooked, ignored.

Now there is no more “inside” or “outside”, “past” or “future”, “you” or “I”.  It is everything and It is no thing.

I realize this sounds like a greatest hits list of Advaita cliches.  But how else does one put it?

It is as it is, which essentially is not.

Hope that helps.

Love,

Ed:

Yes, you have had the original first awakening into oneness. No 'I'.

The path is now lighted.

But this is only the first step.  Do not run away so soon.  Why run?

When I had this first awakening, I ran closer to Robert, not away thinking I knew or felt everything. I knew only that I was nothing.

Something in you though chose to feel you had already gotten all that there is to get.

This is just the beginning of your journey.  Everything before this was warm up.

If you are true to yourself, there will be another, second major awakening wherein even consciousness itself, oneness is seen to be fleeting, unreal. It is not enough to know it, you have to feel it totally. You say that you know this already.

Then comes the trip back into emotions and humanhood.  This is the hardest part of the journey.  The trip between second base and home plate. reowning your humanity, feelings, love, anger, jealousy.

This is the trickiest because the belief that there is no self any more can be a complete defense against feeling deeply or believing nothing more is to be done.  As Soen Sah said and has warned, “You have seen 180 degrees, the emptiness of all things, but now what?  Is this all?” This is only half way.

Robert also warned it is so easy having attained identification with emptiness to lose all love and attachment, and to become a cold fish. Don’t allow this to happen to you.

And of course there is an enlightenment. The “real you” has seen through the identifications of the mind.  You can’t find yourself as an object, or an ego.  Your spiritual intelligence has been awakened. But really, when you go deeper, you know that you are the subject, and a reality more real than what you had accepted as true before is revealed.

The next step is of the movement of the heart.  From now on, all the movement needs to be in your heart.