Self-Awareness: how to know yourself? If you intend to get to know yourself because someone told you it’s important, I'm afraid to say it won't work for you.
You need to have an internal intention motivating you towards this approach. It can’t come from anyone.
It’s essential to feel within yourself this need to understand yourself, to see the Truth about who You are.
Some people want to have Self-Awareness, but actually, they don't want Self-Awareness, they want what Self-Awareness has to offer.
We carry within us a psychological, internal condition of deep ambition, and even in a matter like this, the intention is to know yourself to obtain benefits, to gain something, to achieve something.
Here, the expression Self-Awareness, as I put it within this channel, is something a little different from that; it’s not Self-Awareness for you to improve.
You get better through some behavioral changes, some discipline, applying to yourself some human relationship techniques, and changing your way of thinking from negative to positive… However, here on this channel, we are working with you on another thing when we talk about Self-Awareness. We are telling you that the Truth about who You are must be that impulse that moves you to discover yourself.
Here on this channel, we are working with you on the beauty of Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Enlightenment, and therefore, the end to this psychological suffering of this illusory identity, this “me,” this “I,” the “person” you believe to be.
Thus, our meeting here, investigating the importance of Self-Awareness, is for those of you who are looking at this, who feel, at this moment, that you must turn to the Truth, discovering the Divine Reality you carry within yourselves, because that’s what Real Self-Awareness, True Self-Awareness has.
True Self-Awareness is not the knowledge of the “I,” it is the recognition or the realization that the “I” is an illusion, a fraud.
This “I” that sees the world, that sees this world, positions itself in this world, feels itself in this world, that carries the ambition to accomplish things in this world, this is not real.
Here, we are looking inside ourselves, learning from ourselves, and this learning is extraordinary since it’s not something that isolates you from life, from existence. It’s something that brings you closer to life, brings you closer to others, and closer to the world. But not from that old place that is the “me,” the “I,” always centered on itself, interested in itself, to gain something or to get rid of something.
The Truth of the Revelation of your Being, the Truth of the Realization of your Real Nature, which is not the “I,” which is not the ego, not this “me” – that’s our aim here in these meetings, and Self-Awareness is this approach; it is in this sense we use this expression here.
Therefore, how to learn from yourself? How to learn? Observing, becoming aware, and looking at what this “I” represents. This “I” represents the past, a set of remembrances, memories, and recollections; it represents the sense of “someone” present filled with fear, desires, apprehensions, envy, ambition … To look at this, approaching this, without self-condemnation, rejection, without fighting it, but rather just approaching to look at it, in that look without judging, comparing, without self-criticism, without self-condemnation…
This is something you apply to the relationships with the world around you. So, the other constitutes a mirror in these relationships, the world is a mirror in this relationship with it, whatever is emerging, appearing, is a mirror, where it is possible to see the illusion of identity within this experience.
The experience is the contact with others, it is the contact with life; the mirror is what makes you realize that this “me” and the other are not real, this “me” and life are not real, this “me” and the world are not real. This can be seen when you have that look, abandoning that psychological duality.
Notice what we're going to say now. Within you is a concept that there is a you and the world, you and others, and you and life in a relationship. Absolutely not! There’s only Life, only others, only the world! This “others,” “life” and “world” are a single Reality, this Consciousness. There’s no sense of “I” in that experience, there is only that experience, and this experience is one – one single experience. It’s not “the world, life, and others, and I,” it’s one thing, a single one Reality present when this “I,” this ego, this “me,” is not present.
Realizing this here and now is Self-Awareness, because, here, the expression Self-Awareness is the realization that there is no “I.”
The question of Ramana Maharshi is “who am I?” And here’s the answer! It’s not intellectual, not verbal, it’s experiential! That’s why you need to turn to that, not because others have said it’s important, not because you've read it in some book about how important it is to know yourself, whatever the book wants to say about Self-Awareness.
Here, I put the word Self-Awareness not within the language of psychology, sociology, or philosophy, but here Self-Awareness is something very simple: it is realizing that when one thought is present, this is the other; one feeling is present, this is the other; a present sensation is the other, this is an experience.
If there is this “me,” then we have the other, but if there is no “me,” this “I,” the present thought is just a thought without the thinker, the present feeling is just the feeling without someone in it.
That goes for perception, sensation… To look without the observer, to be in direct contact with the thought without rejecting the thought, without fighting the thought, without wanting to do something against the thought. When you approach any thought in this way, you have a real, legitimate approach to Self-Awareness.
People say “my thoughts disturb me.” They disturb you because you give them identity. Thoughts have no identity unless you give identity to them, and you give identity to them when you mistake yourself for the experience of thought, when you put an identity, which is the thinker, separating and trying to fight this thought; then there’s you and others; then, this duality occurs, presents itself, shows itself at that instant; and in this duality, we have conflict; in this duality, contradiction is present.
Then, there is always this struggle of the thinker trying to master thoughts, control thoughts, hold on to thoughts or get rid of them. In this illusory duality, the sense of the ego remains alive and present. If this is upheld, there is no Self-Awareness.
This is the condition of humans. They have no real approach to themselves, to investigate the egoic movement, to investigate the movement of the “I.” So, there’s no such clarity that this “I” is an illusion.
As for a feeling, it’s the very same thing! When there is a feeling, there is always the idea of an “I” in the experience of feeling. So, the feeling finds an identity because there is this belief, this idea, this illusion. Approach it carefully.
We have been conditioned and programmed to live in this model of ignorance, of illusion, without a vision of the Truth of what is here and now.
Reality is this Truth that transcends the “I,” it is this Truth that transcends this “me,” transcends the thinker, the experiencer, the observer. And when there is an end to that thinker, that experiencer, that observer, there is an end to the ego, to that “me;” and when it ends, the thought ends, the feeling ends, that psychological pain disappears along with that thinker, that observer, that experiencer – this is the True Meditation.
People go to different practices, they apply themselves to different meditation practices, intending to have momentary relief from the weight of this “thinker” that is chattering all the time inside their head. Then, they’ll meditate so that they can get relief from this psychological pressure, this inner chatter. They’ll meditate to relieve themselves of this emotional tension, this emotional stress. So, the intention is relief. Then, they go to a particular meditation practice.
This meditation practice is therapeutic; it is the meditation practice that has a self-hypnosis function. Then, momentarily, they feel relief from that pressure, from all that volume of thoughts with which they mistake themselves for all the time; that emotion with which they mistake themselves for; that story… all this is coming from the past, it’s something linked to memories, to recollections, to this psychological weight, and there is a temporary relief.
Here, we are talking about Meditation in a new sense for you. Here and now, at this instant, with Self-Awareness, you have this contact with this disidentified observation of whatever is arising. This observation, this vision of Reality ends this sense of duality, this sense of separateness, so there are no others since there is no “me.”
This is straight from Vedas, from Advaita Vedanta. In Vedanta, we have the expression Advaita, non-duality, non-separateness between you and God, you and life, you and others, whether the other is a person, an experience, a sensation, an emotion, a thought… Yes, I mean sensory perception, whatever is arising – there’s only this Consciousness!
This Consciousness is Oneness, Love, Peace, and Freedom. When that State is settled, some people call It Spiritual Enlightenment or Spiritual Awakening – it’s the end of that ego identity, the end of the illusion of “I.” Other people call it the God Realization, the Realization of your Being.
So, this impulse has to come from within you, you need to be burning for It, feeling this impulse, this real interest in discovering the end of psychological suffering, of the illusion of this “me,” this “I,” this ego.
This is the subject we deal with here on our channel. If this is something that makes sense to you, leave your “like,” and subscribe to the channel… I want to remind you: we have online meetings too, and face-to-face meetings, including retreats.
If that touches you, we can work this out together, Ok?
See you next meeting!
No comments:
Post a Comment