When it comes to Self-Realization and enlightenment, for all intents and purposes, your mind is the enemy.  The mind replaces “realization” with knowing, which is head centered rather than heart centered.  Heart-centered should not be romanticized and transformed into the idea that it means love-oriented.  Actually, heart-centered awareness means that it “feels” like your center of gravity has moved a foot downwards from the middle of your brain into the region inside your body around where the physical heart resides.

The center of your beingness, your existence moves downward into your chest, or with Zen, even lower into your gut.  You “live” rom those areas as opposed from your thinking brain.  Thinking can go on and on, but it becomes just background noise unless you need it for some functioning.

People who come into spirituality inevitably begin by reading books and later going to teachers, but all of this head-learning has to be let go of in order for your center of gravity to drop into your heart.  This is the first step into enlightenment, realization of deeper bodies than the one created by your brain, including the energy body, bliss body, emotional body, one’s sense of the divine, the knot between the divine and the personal known as the Atman, or the I Am sensation.

To dwell here you need to let go of ALL understanding, realizing that accumulated knowledge keeps you in your head, locked into various concepts, spiritual ideologies, and the known, not spontaneous, but studied., and instead “FEEL” within your chest for the I-Am sensation. 

When found, dwell there, abide there is the I-Am feeling, the core of your awareness.  Listen to sacred music, chanting, as often as possible.  Practice loving-kindness to all beings, human and animal.  

Using this base, start loving your sense of Self.

What causes this strategy or method to fail, is reading too much, taking ideas and sayings from Osho, Nisargadatta, Krishna Menon, Ramana, Jean Klein, etc., then thinking about these ideas, criticizing and judging others too much, keeping yourself in your brain and mind.

“Experts” on terrorism, especially Jihadist-style terrorism, are now stating that somehow we have to create an anti-Jihadist ideology to counter ISIS and other such organizations.  They say ISIS recruits by bringing in youth who have no identity and feel rootless and lost, and give them an identity of being part of a religious crusade or world-wide stretch.

These experts say the problem is a lack of identity among the young who feel lost, confused, and see the utter inequity and injustice of life, and see ISIS as bring the world to justice under the one God, one faith, and one flag of ISIS.

I see one “correct” anti-ISIS “ideology” being one not of an opposing philosophy so to speak, but a turning away from thinking and identification in a conceptual way, with using a “feeling” introspection of our inner worlds in order to discover God within, Christ Consciousness, which is no more than an awareness centered in our spiritual hearts.

I call this realization of the Manifest Self, one’s own heart-center, which changes everything.  No longer caught in mind, concepts, ideas, one lives from the heart in total, open acceptance of everything that arises from within and without.

The problem is that there are so many conflicting spiritual paths with so many contradictory ends, definitions of enlightenment or self-realization, that this simple path and end, without the garnishment of complex spiritual philosophies and definitions of inner states such as Turiya, Samadhi, Sahaj Smadhi, Nirvakalpa Samadhi, Causal Body, Parabrahaman, etc.

If an ideology is to be grafted onto this style of self-realization, it can be simply described as realizing one’s divine self, Christ Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness, or one’s true self, deeper than mind, and within which mind is submerged.

That is, we replace an ideology of war, a religious war/crusade to fight injustice, with one directed towards self-understanding, self-realization as an affective-feeling-awareness rather than a murderous “thinking” identification with radicalism.

TWO NEW EMAILS FROM MY FAVORITE FAN Swami Chetanananda once said when you become a spiritual teacher you walk around with a target on your back for receipt of all kinds of projections of hate, insanity, despair, and disappointment. MESSAGE #1

“Back to your self degrading ARROGANT SELF BEHAVIOR. Attacking other teachers, judging the neo's as if your an authority on everything. Whose on Facebook you are ,your addicted to it, you cannot exist without your arrogant, demented view of those that don't agree with you. Your no doubt are bipolar and should see a psychiatrist for some help. I don't buy a word you say.Hate just emanates from your ARROGANT SPIRITUAL EGOTISTICAL MINDSET.You only know how to attack.DESTROY and manipulate. The women 's groups also attest to this with your attitude toward your remarks IN PRINT THAT THEY ARE TO BLAME. ALL NEARBY WOMEN ORGANIZATIONS WILL BE NOTIFIED. YOUR A ARROGANT CON ARTIST. YOU PUT YOUR NAME WITH OTHER TEACHERS THAT YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO, TAPING NICOLE 'S phone call.breaking up marriages. Your so so HATEFUL WITH NO REMORSE, A PIG, I TAKE THAT BACK A PIG IS BETTER THAN YOU.you have no idea ,only expirence,s and how to destroy, consciousness will NOT GO AWAY IT WILL KEEP ITS DILIGENT AND WATCHFUL EYE ON YOU. TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT PEOPLE YOU HAVE DESTROYED WITH YOUR HEARTFELT ARROGANT. BEHAVIOR.” MESSAGE #2

"That was spontaneous, consciousness at play.you ed the snake oil salesman of the century. The most ARROGANT SELF RIGHTEOUS, WOMEN GET WHAT THEY DESERVE PSEUDO GURU .NAH YOU GIVE GURU A BAD NAME.GO TO A DOCTOR AND GET HELP LET THE WORLD ALONE, BELIEVE ME IT WILL DO JUST FINE WITHOUT your ARROGANCE" bo szendel Email: jerrypesh@aol.com

Even worse from my point of view are former students who previously confided in me their deep and abiding love and devotion. Then one day they feel disappointment, or maybe feel ignored or even demeaned, and suddenly they flip, and to them, you have become the worst person in the world, maybe that has ever lived. Then they share their hatred to other students who are friends of their with exaggerated stories of how they were wronged, and a whole bunch of people respond believing the accusations.

FIRST STEPS

It is always interesting to read books of talks of great spiritual teachers like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Robert Adams, Ramakrishna, the Platform Sutra of Hui Neng, etc.  But you have to realize that what you are reading is usually their final teachings at the end of their lives.  You strain and strain to understand what they are talking about when they talk about the Witness, Parabrahman, Consciousness, awareness, Turiya, the Causal Body etc.  Finally, maybe after five or ten years you understand their teachings and you become a Facebook teacher, or start your own Sangha.

You don’t realize that true spirituality is not a matter of understanding, but of being, resting in an area of your awareness “deeper” than the thinking mind.

The absolute first step in any deep exploration of your Consciousness, your first step towards self-realization, is to discover the emptiness within your self, the so called Void nature of the mind and of the world.  You do that by cultivating the light of Consciousness, and also by “looking” with your mind’s inner vision, inwards, into the darkness you find within.  That inner vision coupled with cultivating the light of Consciousness is the essential first step towards enlightenment, especially towards understanding any aspect of Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta.

The easiest way inwards is to look inwards for the sense of I or I Am, usually eventually located in the heart area of your body.  Just do it twice a day for 30 minutes at a time in a formal sitting position with a straight back.

The other practice is to look within for any source of inner light, often first found in the area of the Third eye, behind and slightly above your two physical eyes.  This too is an “inner vision,” part of turning your attention inwards rather than outwards towards the world.

Now rest your attention in that spot of light and daily it will get larger. In your imagination you can begin to “push” the boundaries of that inner light and expand it into your inner Void, so that the emptiness of your inner world becomes visible.  Gradually expand the light everywhere within until you can “see” the entirety of the Void.

Going inwards is the essential step towards a real spirituality prior to and beyond any understanding of the mind. No effort to look within, even without a method, is ever wasted.

Going inwards reveals the complexity of your inner world, the Void, the Light of Consciousness, and later inner energies, Kundalini, one’s sense of presence or the energy body, the Causal Body of Consciousness without an object, Turiya, where the sense of I originates, and then the place beyond the I, beyond Consciousness, beyond, or better, “prior to” the Manifest Self.

These are also the areas within which you find experiences of the divine within you, of God within, the Atman, of your sense of Self being equivalent to the experience of God.

Here to you acquire the experience of the totality of Consciousness without a sense of I, having no identification of anything, without a sense of separation, of witness versus the world and one’s own body.

It is also the area where you can find bliss washing your body and sense of Self for day after day, month after month performing a kind of inner purification.

Read the stories of the great spiritual figures and their practices and experiences.  They tread a long path, but any meaningful path begins with uncovering and becoming aware of both the Void within and the emptiness of phenomena, and also discovering and cultivating the Light of Consciousness which illuminates that Void.

With this step completed you will be able to understand the most essential Suta of Zen Buddhism, the Heart Sutra, which is chanted at least twice a day in all Zen temples and monasteries. 

This is why a true teacher is dto discover, because they speak of experiences and understandings entirely beyond the world most people know, an inner world of joy, light, expansion, bliss, and the divine.

You really won’t discover these worlds by reading Robert Adams, Ramana, or Nisargadatta because they spoke from one end state, from a position of having experienced a 50 year path of inner exploration which will be entirely opaque unless you experience similar states in baby steps  by looking within.

Almost all that read Ramana, Robert, etc., never discover the necessity of meditation.  They do not emphasize it, or  may refer to self-inquiry of following or finding the I-thought, from where it comes, and where it goes.  But this is just one way of practicing self-inquiry.

Instead, you need to read the books and learn of the experiences pf those who write or speak of their paths and their experiences along the path, such as Muktananda’s book, the Play of Consciousness, and learn about the astral worlds within through Autobiography of a Yogi, and read my book on discovering the Manifest Self of inner energies, bliss, and discovering the divine within in my book, Self-Realization and Other Awakenings.

Do not listen to anyone who says there is nothing to do and nowhere to go; you are already divine and perfect.  This understanding will mean nothing to you until you have spent a long time in self-discovery.  This is a kind of end-teaching that really is misleading until you better know yourself.  But it is this sort of end teaching of doing nothing that is so popular in spirituality, because it frees you supposedly of a life-long path of inner investigation.  You find so many of these kinds of teachers on Facebook, or giving Satsang throughout the western world. Beware of these teachings because they are only of the mind, and not even an “inch” deep in terms of your inner world.

                    ****ADDENDUM****

RESPONSE TO SOMEONE WHO CLAIMS THE VOID IS THE ABSOLUTE AND IS PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS

There are inner senses and outer senses. When it comes to the inner senses most people are only aware of the usual internal objects such a thoughts, memories, images, and feeling the muscles and organs when they hurt, from the inside.

But the inner light and the Void it exposes is an internal visual sense that all long-term meditators are aware of.

Later, one develops a deeper and more refined "feeling" of one's own subjective world and Void, which reveals a more refined awareness or emotions, moods, internal energies, one's energy body or sense of presence.

These are preliminary to going even deeper. There is a spectrum of one's inner awareness that coexists with one's experience of the world.