Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

All spiritual philosophy that can be stated in words is totally false.

We do not live in words. We live in the world and our bodies. Even this is a lie. Even this is not true. It is said only to make a point that the map of thoughts is not the terrain of our experience.

To say all is Consciousness, Brahman, Shakti, One, Nowness, etc. conveys a point of view about our experience, and is simutaneously both a radical over simplification and over-complication. It adds a spiritual "truth" to experiences which have no truth value, either false or true.

Words twist and shape both our ideas about our experience and our experiences themselves as well, as they provide "meaning" for those attached to belief systems, whether religious (God, reincarnation, heaven, eternal life, Jesus, Buddha, etc.) which are myths of emotional convenience.

Words and concepts create categories of reality which are only conceptual, attempting to make sense of our experience.

Science too is just that. The theories create worlds of atoms, quasars, electrons, fission, black holes, entropy, etc. which are "convenient fictions" that help us arrange, order, and control other elements of our experience.

"Our experience" has at least two levels: Our experience without words, and our experience with words, concepts, beliefs, and emotional reactions flowing from these concepts and beliefs.

Almost all of spirituality is aimed at reframing your conceptual systems from whatever they were before contacting spiritual teachers/teachings, into the frame of the new teachings, whether of neo-Advaita, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity, Mohammedism, etc.), mostly for purposes of bringing a sense of security and peace to the converts.

Even the teachings of religions and spiritualities that direct attention to awareness of ourselves or to self-inquiry usually do it with some concept of what you will find when following their methods, such as the instructions of the Diamond Sutra, or of Nisargadatta, his teacher Siddharameshwar, Robert Adams, Ramana, Muktananda, Buddha, etc., who all promise that if you follow their methods of attention direction, you will find what they did, that you will experience what they did, such as "awakening, "enlightenment," "Nirvana," "Sahaj Samadhi," etc.

They all say you are deluded by wrong thinking, but following their methods, you will have the correct experiences, and correct meaning, freedom, enlightenment, etc.

But don't you see, they are all leading you down a path of just reframing your experience, and on a path towards Nirvana, Self-Realization, God-Realization, N0-thought, Choiceless Awareness, etc.

All methods of escape from the network of thoughts appear mostly to change emphasis and meaning within your network, and not to free you from the network as a whole.

Freedom from meaning, the network of thought, past experience, judgments, only come when thinking totally stops, or else one goes deeper into one's own experience than living in the map, rather than in experience before thought.

I call such a state moving one's center of consciousness out of the head into the heart or gut--both different experiences--from where the thinking mind, the network of thought, is experienced as just background chatter, and your awareness is of your own experience alone, not of your experience as interpreted or promised by others.

The way is easy to practice, but difficult to persist, because the mind always seeks assurances, security, and raises doubts, making moving your awareness to the heart or gut very difficult.

The easiest way is to "look" for and "feel" for the I Am sensation somewhere in your chest area, the so-called "spiritual heart" area. Find it. Dwell in it. Accept it. Love the I Am sensation, let it in your heart, swim in that sensation as much as possible.

That alone will work wonders. The sensation will grow, become a sense of presence of the energetic being you are, and everything you are will be experienced over time, until eventually all spiritual experiences, meanings, and thinking will end, and you will be your experience as it is before thinking. And you will find then the wonder that you are, experience you never dreamed of.

n