Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Each of us has a sense of Self, at least we unless our childhood ws too horrific to allow an integrated sense of Self to form and grow.

And, in most people, this sense of Self becomes covered by the enforced  matrix of family upbringing and societal learned norms.  We become creatures of our past with a mind that operates out of that past.

This is why many teachers emphasize emptiness or silence so that you can get out of your mind and find depths within until the mind np longer lives you.

What I teach is a little different.  Instead of looking inside, finding different experiences, checking your experiences against those mentioned by various teachers, or asking what those experiences mean, I just say, “Stop!  Feel yourself!  Feel your heart area.  Feel your gut, your legs, your feet, etc.  Feel the shower water hitting your body.  Taste the food, not scarf it up. 

Watch someone you love without using words.  Stare at her.  Feel your love for her. Feel your hunger for her.  Feel your surrender to her.  Vice versa if you are female.

The same holds true for your cat or dog.  Look at them with fresh eyes then feel them with your heart.  Melt your heart towards them.

Listen to sacred music.  Feel your heart melt, and maybe a crazy energy arise from within.

This is the way you gain entrance to deeper worlds within than the mind.  The mind is really superficial.  The world of feelings below is much deeper.  Intuition is deeper.  Faith is deeper.  Grace is deeper.  The sense of presence is deeper. And the Witness is deepest.  This is the ultimate knower and experience.

But just before you get to the Absolute witness which is not of this world, you will find your own sense of self, the human sense of self which one could call ego, and the divine sense of Self called Atman, or the Manifest Self.  This is the Self that Ramana realized as the I Am, his sense of presence, and what he called “the full power of my personality,” which was not the body, but deathless spirit, Consciousness.

Nisargadatta found this I am, the Self through devotion, and later branded that Self, the Atman, beingness, as an illusion, because he moved on from his identification with the Manifest Self, to an identification with the Witness, the Absolute.

My own point of view is that realization of the Manifest Self does not take you beyond the world, but embeds you in it more deeply, with love, compassion, and realization that everyone is just like you.  You and he or she are your divine brothers and sisters closer to each other on a heart level than you could ever have been with your real brothers and sisters in the past before you have known Self.  Once you know Self, every other sentience being from human, to puppy, to worm are all you in spirit, as deathless spirit.

It is this realization that I teach—Self-Realization.  Not Kundalini awakening.  Not energy work or astral projection.  Not transcending the world, ego, the mind and staying in the silence of the Absolute.  Not just loving the other or surrendering to God.  I ask people to open their hearts to their own Self by feeling within, feeling emotions, listen to sacred music, fall in love, love your cat.  Just stop.  Sit in a  chair.  Listen to sacred music, then look and feel within to discover all that you are, and not stopping at the belief you are only a body, mind, energy, etc.

You are so much more than that.  So very much more.