#24 (22c) Who is the Real You?
So 22c follows 22b and 22a and 22 ! So if this doesn't make sense as it stands -kindly review those.!
Have you glimpsed the Real You ?
If you haven't seen the Real You -here's how -you're in for a treat!
STOP! Stop doing everything you are doing right now. Imagine your body has just died and all this lifetime's concerns are no longer relevant. What's left of you? If you imagine you are a spiritual being stop thinking that. STOP everything you believe. Now look inside yourself and see what's there -who are you? You may not have an answer. But this is the Real You -you may find there's 'nothing' there -yet it's Huge or even infinite. Just STOP doing and being something or anything, stop believing anything and thinking anything -what remains?
Once you 'come home' to the Real You you may see things differently. Returning to thinking only consider what was not the Real You - no thought? no emotions? no time? no distance? no male or female?......no worries ?!!! he he.
Do not trouble the mind with what the Real You is -you will find no answer in the mind -and try to get the mind comfortable with that!
It's an amazing thing discovering who you are is not who you thought you were!
I feel the Real me is sort of the blank page upon which my personality and life is written. The space in which I make the 'myself'. But there's much more to it than that -and this you may see all in one go :)) You may find that the Real You - is Everything. Everything ! :))
If you did this stopping thing and saw the Real You -congratulations - you just 'awakened' :))
It's sooo simple people miss it.
You don't have to attain anything like enlightenment to be You do you? -It's who you are !!!
(all 'enlightenment' means is the mini-self-person-John or Jane-thing - has fully realised the 'Real me'......Kind of - it's not something one can define with a thought as I hope you begin to see.)
There is no reason you cannot get this and be Enlightened right now.
What I have written above is the entire method ! There's nothing else to it.
This is all Ramana Maharshi did, when he was just 16 !!!
He rarely spoke but when he did he called the real me , "The Self" and thus you can see how the mind or the written or spoken word can only merely point to It, but cannot actually describe or define It.
Anything you hear or read about it is just more words, words that are lovingly offered by a few to break through to the tough cases such as myself (!) who think too much.....lol
.My 'journey' -following on from #22,#22a,#22b.
I sort of got stuck with the latest thing of not labelling thoughts as 'thoughts'.
The thoughts seem to flood in and it became a fog.
So I returned to Gangaji on youtube!
And somewhere in the many things she said -the clarity returned.
I
have looked without thought and I have glimpsed the Real Me. More than
this I have had moments of wonder looking at the most ordinary objects
almost like seeing them for the first time.
The Real Me I discover more and more.
Today it seems Vast and yet Nothing -but most importantly for seeking Peace it seems Empty. Empty of thought or emotion or anything I thought I was- a definition of me that is in the mind as thought.
I can look at desires and resistances -which I mention first as I've found these have a lot of mental suffering associated with them.
Where is the desire or resistance in the Real Me?
It is not there!
Any thought, desire, resistance, belief, worry, doubt, question, emotion that arises can be observed and felt or greeted.
But these are not Me- I can see them but there is no thought, desire, resistance, belief, worry, doubt, question or emotion in the Real Me that sees these things.
These things may be within Me -but they do not define Me.
Thus the Real Me can sit with suffering, even be steeped in it and yet be unaltered - perhaps in the same manner in which one can enter a blue room flooded with blue light and yet ones skin cannot turn blue!
I can watch 'wars' in the mind. Some of these look like "I am this or that and I should not be this or that" -which is false, I am Nothing.
The witness to these mental phenomena, the Real Me is without the labels.
I am Me.
The mind seems to have the habit of defining 'me'.
But there is no mental definition because the Real Me is bigger than the mind.
After long moments sitting without thought , I often emerge to a barrage of questions in the mind.
"Am I everything?" 'What are other people really" etc, etc.
But there are no answers here in the mind. Only questions, questions without answers except for more thought and mental activity.
There are no questions in the Real Me.
The Real Me and the Real You is right here -look no further than yourself!
We are the poor beggar that spent a lifetime sitting on an old wooden box who at the final moment of death thought it might be opened -only to discover it was full of gold!
How the Great Philosophers missed this beggars (!) belief.
I begin to feel that I have been 'touched by Grace' -that I too might ascend - a wish perhaps only previously granted to the truly Great.
.Finding a Guru.
All the Gurus, and your guru - are within you - you only have to look :)
It has been said that a Guru will appear when the student needs one.
I have found Ramana Maharshi. Ramana became self realisized at 16 years of age and spent the rest of his life at first in caves at the top of Arunachala a holy hill in Southern India and later on it's slopes which grew into an Ashram. He rarely spoke and those that sat with him described questions arising in the mind and then being answered by his silence. Others talk of a 'spiritual cleansing'. Ramana died in 1950. One of his follows Papaji can be found on youtube -yet he too fell silent in 1997 when he also passed. Papaji's student, Gangaji survives today and she give talks and writes and through her perhaps we can learn of Ramana's Silence. (Gangaji is ..er.. a Texan grandmother!... and so talks 'our language'.)
But Ramana is within me and I sit with him in meditation still!
I feel like the children of that time who would climb the hill and quietly sit in front of him without thought of play or mischief.
Sitting with Ramana in The Silence is the most wonderful thing -the mind settles down the colours deepen, the shapes sharpen and sometimes I have a tear of joy.
It is His Silence I feel so appealing -I have studied enough and written here an elsewhere to excess! Enough of words!!!
Here in front of Ramana my worries melt away and all is well with the world.
I can see Ramana and his amazing eyes.
We sit all together, him and his followers past and present, and we know who we are!!!
The Presence of Ramana Maharshi enriches the present and will touch many peoples lives for eons to come. To imagine him dead is indeed a great folly.
I will continue to work, to research.
There is the looking
There is the asking "Who are you?" , "What are you?"
There is the discovery of who I really am
Your Researches:-
Have a look on youtube and the jolly old www. - there's hundreds of hours of low stress 'enlightenment' videos to watch!
and books like this:
http://www.maharajnisargadatta.com/I_Am_That.pdf
"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need"
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (hooray!!)
Love
'The Lightened' (an expression stolen from an Second Life friend)
Paloma Porta
17th May 2012
