Silence Is Key

Silence is the crux of this teaching. I remember once I was being interviewed on the radio, and I sug­gested to the host that we be silent for a few minutes before we started speaking. She was appalled, “You can’t have silence on the radio!” she said. I replied, “Well, let’s just try it. Let’s see. We won’t blow it up.”

In fact, it was really beautiful, partly because it was so unusual. There is a natural beauty to silence itself, but in a place where it is assumed there can be no silence because that would be “dead air,” it was discovered to be truly alive. And the silence made the discussion that followed have even more depth and more aliveness too.

So, at any point while you are reading this, or at any point throughout your day when a moment arises, you always have full permission to just stop and be silent. That’s what this whole teaching is pointing to.

I met my teacher, Papaji, thirty-six years ago. After I had been with him for a short while, he sent me out to meet you (by which I mean anyone who is reading this, or has found a connection with these teachings in any way). He sent me to meet anyone who might be interested.

At the time I was sure he was making a mistake. I remember saying to him, “What do I say? What do I do?” Because I hadn’t studied the teachings in abstract or intellec­tual terms. He said, “Just be yourself and people will catch fire. Those people who catch fire will ask you questions, and then you will answer those questions.” And that has always been how I teach.

I don’t know if you have caught fire yet, but there is a fire burning that is inviting you. It is your own consciousness, the life force that goes by your particular name. It is that life force I am speaking to and to which your mind can be in service.

The Awesome Power of Mind

Our minds are an awesome force. Our ability to think, to act, to make art and music, or to make war and create suffering, is an unimaginable power. We assume that what is going on in our minds is reality, or a commentary or distillation of reality. We are very busy figuring out how to deal with reality. But our minds are more like what we know today as AI. Our minds are extensions of this intelligence that comes from the beingness that we are. And like the fears we have of AI (and maybe we have these fears about AI because we know our own minds), we fear that our minds will take over, start running the ship, and steal our life force.

That is generally what happens. There are some people blessed with quiet minds who are naturally at peace, but most people in the East as well as the West have become victims of their own thinking, of their own mind’s power.

The Discovery Beyond Thinking

When I met Papaji, I asked him in all earnestness and read­iness as I thought, “Please help me. Please show me where freedom is.” He said, “Just be still.” Since I had practiced meditation for some years, I assumed in my mind that I knew what “just being still” meant. I assumed a meditative posture, and I became quiet. And he said, “No, no, no. Not that. Closer than that.”

I recognized he was pointing me to the stillness that is already present, that the mind stream comes from and returns to in a moment of meditation, or between thoughts, or in a moment of falling into sleep. He was pointing me to that, as I am pointing you. You have your own capacity to actually stop your mind.

In all of the meditation practices that I had attended, I had never considered stopping my mind. I was most enamored with Zen meditation, which is about becom­ing aware of the mind and aware of the thoughts. But the idea—the thought—of stopping the mind was totally for­eign to me, and I assumed it was in fact impossible. That is, until Papaji said, “Stop. Just be still. Don’t follow that thought, whatever that thought may be.”

At first, there was a kind of struggle. We are profoundly conditioned to follow our thoughts, or to go to war with one set of thoughts using another set of thoughts, often some­one else’s. I had never considered what he was saying: just immediately, in this moment, don’t follow the next thought.

When I allowed that in I met the fear that arose, the fear that if I didn’t follow my thoughts I would be in trouble, or in danger, or I would regress from the place I was in—all of which, of course, was composed of thought. When I was just willing for a moment to not follow the next thought, I recognized that who I am doesn’t need to be thought. It is here. It is already free of thought.

Worshipping the False God of Thoughts

Thoughts can be beautiful. They can be enlightened thoughts. They may also be complex and earth-shattering, or life-giving. They may be horrific thoughts of punishment, or torture to ourselves or others. They may be war-like thoughts. Thoughts are our artificial intelligence, and as thoughts they have no soul. The soul is where you are.

Thoughts can, of course, reflect the truth. But when you be­lieve them to be true in and of themselves, then you are worshipping a false god. The worship of that false god will turn into unnecessary suffering.

Whether that makes sense mentally or not, somewhere you must know that I am speaking to you about your own capacity to recognize the truth of your inherent awakeness, freedom, or love. I know you have certainly tasted that and perhaps realized it. But if you rely on thought to keep that alive, it will fail you. It will turn that pure truth of yourself into an image or thought of yourself. And thatwill have reams and reams of thoughts that follow it, both positive and negative. And from that there will follow some war-like tendency, either toward yourself or toward another. That is how thinking coopts the peace that is naturally present.

It Is the Mind that Wakes Up

I had been interested in peace for many years, and I had looked for it in lots of places. Until I met my teacher, I never considered that peace is already here. I looked for love in lots of places, in lots of ways of being, never considering that love is already here.

I looked in lots of places for my version of enlightenment, which I thought would make me be happy all the time, never even considering that true enlightenment is already here. It’s the light of your own nature. Your mind, which is the generator of thoughts, can recognize that and surrender to it. So it is your mind that awakens to the futility of its thoughts and returns home to the source of it all.

This Is a Living Inquiry

When Papaji sent me to speak to people, he didn’t tell me particular words to say. He said, “People will ask you a question and you will see where that takes you. Just speak from your own experience.” For these thirty-six years I have been doing that. It is always fresh for me. It deepens my re­alization, and it deepens or awakens anyone who is listening closely or reading these words.

That is why your questions are an essential part of this teaching. Naturally, the conversation that arises from question and answer involves our minds and enlightens them, allowing our minds to stop so that we can recognize where this light is coming from, where this light always is. So that we can recognize true Home.

I welcome you here as part of what Papaji promised me would occur: that people would catch some spark and appear with questions. I invite you to ask your spiritual questions. Of course, if you have no question, that is fine too.

I invite you to a deeper discovery of yourself, to fall into yourself while awake, not waiting for tonight when you go to sleep, but fully awake, right now—to fall into yourself, to recognize the spaciousness of your own beingness.

A kiss is a transfer of energy; it’s a transfer of life. A meeting of Self to Self, consciousness to consciousness, heart to heart, core to core. It’s a meeting of equals.

Self-Love and the Open Heart

This series of blogs has taken us into some of the deepest and most raw and uncomfortable places inside ourselves, the ones we often try to avoid. The point of this inquiry is self-love and the open heart. Finally, at the core, it is all about heart opening.

It’s impossible to be loving to anyone else if your heart is closed to yourself. And you are probably the last person you want to open your heart to because you know the horror that’s in there. You know the abuse that’s been perpetrated. You know how you’ve corrupted the truth, sold yourself out, and betrayed what you know in your heart of hearts.

Every inquiry in this course has been pointing you and invit­ing you inside to meet what is not wanted to be met—self-hatred. Self-hatred is our ultimate defect. We hate ourselves for the raw fact that we perceive ourselves to be separate from God, from goodness, a human being with all our human failures. We hate ourselves for our ignorance, for our behav­iors, and especially for the way we treat one another. This is what has to be met because it is at the root of our unneces­sary suffering, the continuation of the horror of the human condition. We are at war with self-hatred, and we project that war onto whoever mirrors it most closely.

Are you willing, once again, to experience this self-hatred—not just the edge of it, but all the way into it? I can tell you that, miraculously, you will find self-love. And self-love is capable of embracing anything and everything, however tainted or unwanted.

Self-love is whole. Self-hate is fragmented and shattered. No matter how much work you do to put the pieces back together, they just won’t fit. It is your great good luck that they don’t fit. It was my great good luck that they didn’t fit. Most people, with enough glue and string, patch everything up and coast through life. But that is not what you’ve chosen, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

Kissing the Toad

We’ve hated and cursed our self-hatred and tried to get rid of it, cover it, or dress it up. In Australia, they actually dress up the really big cane toads that can be as large as dinner plates. People put little scarves on them to dress them up. But underneath, it is still a cane toad. If you squeeze it, it’s poisonous. But if you kiss it, that’s a different matter.

In the ordinary, not-born-enlightened human being, there is a toad that’s repulsive, poisonous, and ugly that must be kissed to awaken from a dream. That is a kiss that is endless… When the ugliness is met and kissed and embraced all the way, it is news that’s unbelievable, endless, and all-inclusive.

Love Is Not Just a Four-Letter Word

We have great examples like Christ or Buddha who have gone before, but it finally gets down to you. When Papaji sent me to bring you his message, he was thrilled that it would be passed on in Western vernacular language. So we are speak­ing to one another as brothers and sisters in the same boat, the same earth boat.

But the word “love” can seem like such a paltry word: L-O-V-E, like Bob Dylan’s song, “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word.” It has become polluted.

It is only really love itself that can clean up such pol­lution, the polluted-ness of our souls, of our lifetimes, of our genetic strains, the history of humankind. All of that can only be cured by love. And that can happen for you, in your lifetime.

We are here to discover what’s here inside each of us regardless of anything else, to kiss that and to be embraced by what’s waiting from that kiss. Deeper, always deeper, al­ways closer, always unexpected, is love.

If you are reading this, it’s time. It’s your time. Your name has been called. What supreme luck! And it is the supreme challenge of a lifetime. It is a divine call of Grace, and it can be rough at times, but that reveals deeper grace. I promise you that. I guarantee it.

“In the core of the horror of self-hatred is the absolute truth of self-love, the grace of truth.”

“I’m inviting you to discover what is deeper than any pattern, deeper than personality, deeper than success or failure, deeper than worth or worthlessness. This radiance that is undeniable is always present. It’s the truth of who you are.”

Experiencing Worthlessness All the Way

We lie to make ourselves look like we’re worth something, or we dramatize our worthlessness to seek support for it. But what is being avoided is actually experiencing worthlessness. Real worthlessness. Not worth anything. When all the lies are uncovered, you are left with this raw, ugly, unlovable, worthless thing. Then you can tell the deeper truth. If you stop there—I am this raw, worthless, unlovable thing—it is intolerable, so you begin lying again, or you go to a self-help class, or give yourself some good affirmations. That’s all fine. It’s all part of animal behavior, too.

But what I am inviting you to is the experience of this seemingly essential worthlessness all the way. Without that, you cannot know the absolute truth of who you are. You may have glimpses of it in moments of grace, or in nature or meditation, or being in love; but to realize the truth of yourself, you have to tell the truth all the way down, to where it exists as who you are. Not exists as something you’ve learned you are, or hope you are, or have written out a hundred times that you are, as in, “I am worth something. I am God’s child. I am worthy of love.” What has to be faced is the worst of what you think yourself to be, and without the lies you have told to cover it.

No Thing at All

If you’re willing to tell the truth all the way down to the depths, you meet the abyss, the huge hole that you have been running to avoid all your life: the intimation that really you are worse than worthless, you are nothing at all. The extraordinary discovery at the heart of this is, in reality, you are nothing at all, and everything about you as a something has been a lie. Your identity, whatever it may be, based on your body, your intellect, your emotional depth, or your spiritual attainment, is a lie. When you get down to this abyss, you are no thing.

This is the point at which most people flee back up to the top, back into the lie, because the lie is more comfortable. The lie has more hope. It has more promise. But if you are sincere in your intention to really know the truth, even though knowing the truth gives you nothing—no happiness, no release, no universal love, just itself—if you want the truth that badly, then you will be willing to fall into the abyss. When you meet that abyss with your full attention, you discover the truth is that you are nothing. And this is a great revelation.

In our minds, nothing means non-existence, absence, death. In our minds, when something becomes nothing, it is vaporized, gone. If we are nothing, that means we don’t exist, and that is terrifying. So, we would rather exist as something worthless that could perhaps someday develop some worth than to exist as nothingness.

That is the challenge of this invitation: to see the lies, and drop your consciousness through them, to feel the burn, the pain, the ache, the horror, the delusion, the lie, the cheating. And to think, “Oh my God, I’m worse than all of that. I am nothingness.” And there is the secret. This is full circle.

The extraordinary report from everyone who has met that abyss of nothingness, including myself, is that no thingness is who you are, awake, conscious, in love; it is freedom, self-recognition, everything you have been looking for in defining yourself as somebody worth something. What you have been seeking is right here in the depth of your being and has been here all along. This is coming home.

“Whatever the distortions of your personality or dysfunctions of your physical, mental, or emotional life, the ground is the same consciousness, radiant in itself.”

The Great Discovery Inside Self-Hatred

When I invite people to trust themselves, often what gets touched upon is self-hatred. People feel that because they have failed themselves or failed others, they cannot therefore be trustworthy.

In the past when I would look into myself, I didn’t like what I saw. What I was looking into was really my personality, and it was a mess. There were wounds and concrete blocks, and all kinds of ugly stuff in there. It was like, “Oh my God.” The thrust for me was to try to escape that or fix it, to get help for it. I spent years learning many different ways to escape and fix. But in whatever way I fixed it, it seemed there would always be something bubbling up from the depths to destroy my efforts.

Finally, I had to recognize that it was my own self-hatred. For me, the particular form of self-hatred was about my body and its limitations, its seeming inherent ugliness and filth. For others, the object of self-hatred may be different. Maybe we feel ashamed of our actions, or we are afraid that we have failed others, or we suspect that deep down we are stupid, or just not enough.

Like the fear of death or non-existence, self-hatred can be a horrific gift, one that seems to come with most humans who were raised by most parents. It gets inbred in us: bad girl, wicked girl, stupid girl, mean girl, selfish girl. And we think, “Well, that must be right.”

When you trust yourself, you have to be willing to penetrate self-hatred and discover what is underneath it. We have tried to deny it, to get rid of it, or to dress it up. But until it is fully met, it remains in the shadows. The by-product of that meeting is the liberation of this wicked, ugly, filthy bad seed, this throwback. That is what gets liberated. Trust is opening to what is underneath. But to get underneath, you have to discover what the barrier is: the disbelief, fear, self-hatred, horror, and all the proof that the worst is true.

When I was finally able to penetrate self-hatred, I was aware of a dark, murky energy. I had already met the frantic, hysterical energy that was an attempt to escape the dark, murky stuff. When I saw it, I thought, “Oh my God, not that! Anything but that.” But here it was. I had spent much of my life avoiding it, circling it, dramatizing it, fixing it, and hating it. But blessedly, I finally just opened, and I invite you to open too. I experienced it. I felt it move through my body, like some kind of energy moving through me, and then it was gone.

Opening is Trustworthy

Can you open to self-hatred? We mostly just want to bypass that part and get straight to love. Love is the refuge. From that refuge, you can simply open to whatever else is here. If there is self-hatred or if there is dark, murky energy, can you simply open? If not, perhaps there is some kind of internal discussion that gets in the way of opening: “What will happen if I open? What will be the result? Yes, but… I opened already, so why is it still here?” Recognize the complications of the discussion and the simplicity of opening. And you will see, opening is trustworthy.

It is not that I am recommending walking through parts of downtown or the prison yard and just opening to whatever dark and murky energy may be out there. I don’t advise that. You don’t have to go around being “open,” saying “Oh, hi!” to everyone you meet. I tried that. But that’s another form of escape. I thought if I could make enough friends, make enough allies, get enough people to love me, then that would cleanse the murkiness. Then I would be rescued. Jesus would save me, or a teacher would save me.

When I met my teacher, Papaji, he said, “Stop searching.” I heard that as, “Stop running away, stop running toward, stop running against, stop hiding.” So I stopped. It is a sober moment when you are willing to actually turn and open to what it is you have been running from. It is not child’s play. It is for an adult. It is ruthless. It is rigorous. And it is simple. In the core of self-hatred, there is love, and that love is trustworthy.

The Heart Can Bear It All

I can’t even begin to describe the by-product of the heart opening: the self-confidence that naturally follows. I don’t have confidence in my body, or my personality, or my ability to speak what can’t be spoken. But I have absolute, total confidence in the truth of who I am. And that is available for you, because it is the same I Am. Whatever the distortions of your personality or dysfunctions of your physical, mental, or emotional life, the ground is the same consciousness, radiant in itself.

The heart can bear it all because the heart is the living expression of this consciousness, naturally imbued with the capacity to bear anything and everything. It is possible for all that arises to be met and embraced in each one of us, in an embrace that is always deeper, always closer, always unexpected. It is the endless discovery of the love that is naturally alive within you.

Some years ago, as we were approaching the end of another calendar year, I was asked what my New Year’s Resolution would be. I stopped for a moment, and said, truthfully, “My resolution is that all being live in peace and harmony.” As soon as I said it, I realized that somewhere inside me was a flicker of belief that this was not possible.

When we look at the way humanity is programmed and human life is conducted, the obvious conclusion of the mind is that it is not possible. The very programming of the survival of our species appears to preclude peace and harmony. And the belief in that conclusion is what keeps us from fully and completely resolving ourselves to peace and harmony.

So, obviously, there has to be the desire and the willingness to override what the mind says, to resolve fully and completely that all being everywhere, in every situation, live in peace and harmony. It is the resolve to be true, not to what you have become, but to who you are. This resolve, that all being live in peace and harmony, is not a trivial kind of resolve. The history of the world, the history of survival, is filled with both beauty and horror. Our history is filled with stories of crimes perpetrated, and of revenge sought for those crimes, of children and children’s children seeking revenge on and on and on. It is who we have become as a species.

It is essential not to hide from the horror or be in denial of that horror. It is essential to meet it straight on, eyes open. This is not about just putting on a happy face. There has to be the willingness to meet, straight on, all the horror.

It begins with you, with your own mind. Rather than projecting the horror over there or finding blame over there–an enemy, an other, a them–there can be just the willingness to stop and to see it. Peace is revealed, harmony is revealed as your own self, your own nature. Not what you have become, but who you are.

What you have become is a mix of the beauty and horror. We like to think that we are just the beauty, and they are the horror. Or, in some cases, we flip it. They are just the beauty, and I am just the horror. But that is what one has become, not what one is.

The possibility is to discover what you are before all becoming and after all becoming–what you are now: the vast, undiminished innocence at the core of all being.

To be true to that takes huge resolve. It is the resolve that all being, all being–no one excluded, no tribe left out, no nationality excluded, no species denied–all being live in peace and harmony.

When you resolve this fully, then you are the proof. You yourself are the proof of the possibility, you are the willingness. I invite you to join me in this immovable willingness. What else would you rather be doing?

This coming week it is Thanksgiving in the States. However commercialized any holiday becomes, or whatever the truth at the root of any holiday may be, we can use each holiday that we have, wherever we are, as a point of reflection. Thanksgiving in particular is a great point of reflection.

When we experience gratitude, we are at peace, we are in love. Sometimes it can be extremely blissful. But at the very least, there's a contentment that comes with gratitude.

It's interesting because one of the teachings of this era is gratitude. You can be taught to make gratitude lists and to find out what you have gratitude for. That really reveals love, and it's beautiful. The only problem with doing something to experience gratitude is that usually, we're trying to experience gratitude so that we feel good. It becomes linked to cause and effect—if I do gratitude, if I find out what I'm grateful for in any moment or any day, I will feel better. As beautiful as that is, and I'm not saying this is wrong, it's often limited. It's based on a sensory expression rather than really just being based in gratitude. And then whatever sensory expression comes, just comes, and it is usually a beautiful experience. Then that is the temptation that gets us back in the loop—I feel horrible, and I want to feel good. I remember there's a trick I can do. I can look around for what I'm grateful for, and then I won’t feel horrible anymore. That can work for a while, but in general, after a while, it gets tarnished. It's gratitude to get rather than gratitude for what is already here. Nothing needs to be gotten from what is already here, not even a feeling of gratitude. You are simply in love with being here. Gratitude is an expression of that love.

So, on this holiday, I invite you to recognize this gratitude that is always here.

There are lots of things that we aren't grateful for, and I'm not suggesting that you cover those or deny them. I’m not suggesting that you don't have deep concern for those things, whether they're personal or societal concerns, global or environmental. Whatever form they may take, those concerns deserve to be examined, and the feelings that come with that may be uncomfortable, may even evoke deep grief. There's nothing wrong with that. There's room for all of that. In the willingness to experience whatever is evoked by whatever situation, to experience it all the way home, you find love, which is gratitude. You don't get love, you don't generate love, you find that love is here, and gratitude is another word for love. It's your nature.

As people age and as they come to the end of their lives, they often experience a lot of things that are not necessarily the source of gratitude. But what is always a source of gratitude is that I am. I am, regardless of my body, regardless of my society, regardless of my world, whatever the outcome may be. I am. Even on a deathbed, this recognition of the preciousness of being can flood the dying person with gratitude, with love. Gratitude that I have been.

So right now, you still are. How precious is that! But since you are, you may be tempted to take it for granted, and want to be more, or better, or keep away something that you don't like, rather than just taking a moment—this moment—to recognize that at the core, in the beingness itself, you are. You are what is present.

If you stop all of your means to get what is present, all of the exercises, all of the thought forms, all of the meditations, all of the practices, and simply tell the truth—what is here that is always here? What remains when changes and concerns and moments of bliss or misery appear?

This is the point of our meeting. This is what Papaji sent me out to invite you to. Not to teach you, because the truth is, this cannot be taught. If you are learning something, you're actually acquiring something you don't already have, which is wonderful. We can learn any number of things, and may we learn and continue to learn. It's a great offshoot and celebration of being.

But being is first. Being is total. And you are that being. I meet you in this gratitude for that.

"In a moment of grace, an instant out of time, there is the realization that who you truly are has never been touched by any concept. This very instant of realization is, in fact, what the concept of enlightenment points to."

Throughout the millennia, spiritual seekers from all parts of the world have pursued enlightenment as a means of transcending human suffering. What is enlightenment really? What do we really want when we are chasing elusive and transient states of mind? In our willingness to simply be open, it is possible to directly realize our true identity, closer and yet beyond any concept of ignorance or enlightenment.

The word enlightenment is such a beautiful word. It means “filled with light.” Yet we have taken the simplicity and the purity of that definition and tainted it with a complicated list of delineations and proofs as to whether one has, in fact, discovered the light.

Many schools of thought have been developed, both religious and metaphysical, that follow particular definitions of the word. When we drop the word enlightenment, and actually are willing to experience the clear light of our own consciousness, then we discover what is free of any evaluation, any levels, any measurement. Enlightenment is, in reality, so vast that it cannot be measured. And if we stop using particular emotional or circumstantial states as proof of anything, good or bad, then our emotions and our circumstances are discovered to be like the weather passing through the vastness of who we truly are. Emotions are phenomena that come and go while the clear light of consciousness remains unmoving, revealing itself to always be here.

I invite you to experiment with being aware of how you may have conceptualized your own or others’ enlightenment and then just drop that conceptualization. Not substituting a new conceptualization, but simply dropping all ideas of what anything means, for just a moment.

Concepts can be quite useful and appropriate for certain endeavors, but they are in the way when we want to directly experience the always-present truth.

It is ironic how something so precious, fulfilling, and eternal as the clear light of consciousness can subtly get turned into another object of the mind.

When the insight of clear light first arises in a life-stream, it is a revolutionary point in that life. As that awareness continues to emerge and grow, the longing for enlightenment or liberation from false ideas is fueled. Finally, there is the resolve and the courage to begin to turn one's back on the forces that support ignorance and turn toward the force that reveals the truth of awakening.

By some miraculous, mysterious grace, there eventually comes a time when, for an instant, you are struck dumb of all words, all concepts, all searching, all striving, and all identifying yourself as either ignorant and unenlightened or free and enlightened. In that moment of grace, that instant out of time, free of concept yet fully conscious, there is the realization that who you truly are has never been touched by any concept. This very instant of realization is, in fact, what the concept of enlightenment has always pointed to.

The habits of mind, of course, are very strong, and they are likely to reappear: “Oh, I got it, I'm enlightened.” This habit of mind already presupposes that you are some entity separate from the wonder revealed in an instant of the mind ceasing its parade of thoughts. Then, of course, following that is, “Now that I am enlightened, what can I do with it?”, followed closely by “Oh, I lost it, I am ignorant once again and unenlightened.”

The truth of who you are has no need of, no desire for, and no fear of either ignorance or enlightenment. Who you truly are is free of any mental concept. Enlightenment points to realizing that, and ignorance points to not realizing that. The workings of the mind, however, can be subtle. In the moment of clinging to any concept of ignorance or any concept of enlightenment as reality, you are already in the experience of ignorance again.

The great gift that my teacher, Papaji, and his teacher, Ramana Maharshi, offer you is the possibility of simply being still, of not looking to thought as the reference point of who you are. When the mind is still and free of thought, what can be said about what is revealed in stillness? Nothing that has ever been said has truly touched this reality. Words can only point to it. Words such as enlightenment, realization, Self, Truth, God, or Grace all point to the infinite and indefinable pure beingness. Yet the moment any of these words is conceived as a thing, they point away from that.

The reality of being is utterly simple and profound, and this is what has kept it the deepest secret. Eventually, all striving, all practicing, all taking notes, all comparing yourself with others, is realized to be worthless. In this moment of realization, there is ultimate freedom. If there is the slightest mental clinging to even that, then there is once again misidentification.

You will never realize true freedom by searching for it in thought. You may have intellectual understanding, but you will never be satisfied until you open your mind to what is beyond understanding: the absolute truth in the core of our being.

This gift from Ramana through Papaji to you is the possibility of stopping mid-thought and recognizing the deepest truth. You can't make stillness. You are stillness. Be who you are. Be still. Absolutely, completely still.

Make Yourself a Target

From the time we are children, we are trained to manipulate and build the necessary skills for survival in the world. We learn to manipulate and control our natural functions. We learn to manipulate and control our brains so that we can focus and learn. And we make progress in all that. We grow and we learn and hopefully flourish. Yet when we apply the same techniques of learning to spiritual endeavors, we find them to be ultimately useless.

We also attempt to “manifest” what we want in the world, and we may have some success in that, but true spiritual inquiry has nothing to do with manifestation. Manifestation has to do with bringing something here and then keeping it here. That can be useful in terms of power, but it is useless in terms of self-realization.

In the endeavor to discover the truth of who one is, the first, foremost, and final activity needed by your mind is to discover what comes and goes, and from that discovery, to realize what is always here.

Good states and negative states come and go. You are happy, you are sad, you've got it, you've lost it. These are all states. The truth is that any state of mind, whether a state of bliss or a state of unhappiness, will, by the nature of states, come and go. There was a time when it was not here, a time when it is experienced, and a time when it is gone.

In one millisecond of an absolutely still mind, realization, which is already inherent in your being, recognizes itself and infiltrates your mind. Effortlessly, your mind recognizes its source and explodes in wonder at that, falls in love with that. And yes, the byproducts of that recognition can be tremendous. But if we reach for the byproducts, we are reaching for what comes and goes.

Yes, there may be great bliss, but that bliss comes and goes. There may also be an experience of great equanimity, but equanimity, too, comes and goes. There are yogic practices that can train your mind to keep the bliss or the equanimity for longer periods of time, but that is not what I'm pointing to here. Realization, the discovery of the truth of who you are, is not a practice. For this, all you need is to have the desire for it. When that desire, that longing, becomes a raging fire, it will fuel the discipline to tell the truth about what is always here underneath any idea of yourself, any idea of what you want, and if you get what you want, any idea of what you think that will give you. Underneath all of that, you are craving to know the truth of yourself. That craving is necessary, and because you are reading this now, I believe it is present in you. Now, the challenge is: can you make yourself a target for that truth?

When you are absolutely still, the ground of truth can’t be missed. You are saying, “Here I am.” Then the truth has you.

Also available: Enlightenment, a compilation audio for download.

Papaji said, “It takes one twelfth of a second, and then your life is never the same.”

Our spiritual search often begins with a causeless moment of true revelation that stops us in our tracks. In just a split second one’s true nature, already whole and free, is immediately recognized. As the powerful feelings, insights, and emotions connected with that sublime moment subside, we often begin our search again, hoping for the impossible— to repeat that experience. As the following exchange with Gangaji demonstrates, inquiry can show us the way out of that mental maze to discover what doesn’t come and go.

Participant: I have a very active mind, and I have a lot of anxiety. I can get easily stressed out. I’ll lay in bed with my mind just going and going. Sometimes it feels like too much, and I’ll think, “I'm going to forget who I am right now. I’m just going to drop it all.” Immediately, it’s like a huge weight is lifted off me.

Gangaji: Yes, in that moment of innocently forgetting who you think you are or what you've learned about yourself, you are free.

It certainly felt that way, and it was so simple.

Let’s just take a moment to recognize what an important moment that was and to celebrate that. In just one split second of innocently forgetting who you think you are or what you've learned about yourself, you are free. In that split second, you experienced a weightlessness, a spaciousness, and the result was immediate, wasn’t it? The feelings you experienced in that moment might be gone, because feelings come and go, but in the moment of forgetting to obey a certain persona you had decided yourself to be, there was freedom. You didn't have to forget who you think you are and then work on getting to something else. It was just immediately apparent.

Yes it was.

I should say it is immediately apparent because, and you tell me, has that freedom you realized in a split second really gone anywhere? That lightness of being? That experience of complete unburdening?

Well, in all honesty, the stressful thoughts just came rushing back.

When the stressful thoughts come rushing back, does that underlying truth that was revealed in that moment actually go away? The personal storyline will come back, the self-definitions, the karma of all we have done and thought, yet when all of that comes back, we often neglect to see that the freedom that was revealed in that moment is actually still here.

Right now, take a moment to check, is that lightness of being still present even though all the rest has come back?

It's like I'm thinking about it, and I know that’s not it.

It’s good to see that thinking about it is a dead end, because the truth is beyond thought or what can be apprehended by the mind. You actually had a moment where this preciousness was revealed. Papaji, said, "It takes one twelfth of a second, and then your life is never the same."

Normally, when we have these moments of true revelation, they are connected with an emotion or an insight, and when that emotion or that insight passes (because they are all subject to passing), we overlook the substratum that they are passing in. This substratum does not come and go. In this moment we’re calling it “lightness of being,” but it's not limited by any name. I'm saying it is still here, and I'm inviting you right now to check and see, regardless of what you're feeling or thinking or have experienced in the past.

Closer than your personality or your history, closer than who you think you are, inside the depths of your being—what is here?

I know that is true, but …

How do you know it is true?

I just know!

Yes, you know that you know without needing any other authority. It's not that you read about it somewhere; it is that you directly experienced it. In that moment your experience was in alignment with what you know without knowing how you know. This is a beautiful experience! An essential experience. And yet all experiences are subject to coming and going. In this moment, I am pointing your attention back to what does not come and go. That is always here. When the old thoughts come back, or as the new experiences come in, what remains stable, present, unmoving?

With everything in me I know that this is true, and yet still I get lost.

Twice now you have said with deep conviction, “I know that.” Maybe you don't remember the way home right now, you're in a maze, but you know that home is home. You know it. What I’m saying is that even if you don't know the way out of the maze, you can still be at home and rest in that. Home is always here.

Many of us are born in mazes, live in mazes, and never get a taste of what it means to work our way through the maze and be home. But you have tasted it, however brief that experience may have been, and I am confirming that in you. One twelfth of a second is enough. Then, regardless of what you are feeling or thinking, and without being able to capture it or even define it, you can still be true to that. You can open your arms to that. You can surrender to that. You can say “yes” to your own self.

Yes, that is really what I want to live from!

What do you think you live from?

A lot of dysfunctional patterns.

Okay, let's say in this moment that is true, you are dysfunctional, neurotic, and traumatized. All of those are like waves on the surface of the ocean. What is in the depths? Once this is recognized, it is undeniable. It doesn't mean that in the next hour you won't have a dysfunctional personality. All that matters is that you have recognized what is real and what is always here. If it comes and goes, it is not real, it is subject to change. It can be made better or it can be made worse.

What is always here that is unchanging? This is the inquiry that I invite you to make a part of your life.

Before I met Papaji, I had had several serious spiritual practices, and I won't ever talk negatively about them. They were beautiful. I still do breathing and silent meditation practice because they are beneficial for my body and my nervous system. Yet none of these practices had actually pointed me into what is already here. Those practices were all about attaining something or getting rid of something so that I could be a better something than what I thought I was. They were useful for a time, but before meeting Papaji, I just seemed to be spinning my wheels. Finally, I prayed for a teacher who could set me free, who could help me get unstuck so that I could go to the next level.

To my surprise, Papaji didn’t give me another piece of scaffolding to stand on, and he never spoke of “levels.” Instead, he pulled the scaffolding out from under my feet. He said, "Stop, be still, stop everything,” and that terrified me. I didn’t want to become the person that I was at the beginning of my spiritual practice. He said, “There is nothing you need to do, simply make the distinction between what comes and goes and what is always here, and then tell the truth about that."

At first I was afraid to discover what might actually be here. I had told him that I wanted freedom, and yet I was also aware I was afraid of what that might mean. Once I was able to really open my mind and drop everything I thought I knew, what is always here was immediately self-evident. The truth of what is always here is so profoundly simple, so effortless, so obvious that we continually go through our lives overlooking it. Finally, I was able to tell the truth about what is here that has always been here in this lifetime. Instantly, there was and is release, rest, fulfilment, peace.

Because of my own experience I know that you also have full capacity to say yes to the truth of yourself. You don't have to do anything. You just have to be willing to recognize what has always been here. In this moment you can stop and inquire, What comes and goes and what is always here? It takes just one twelfth of a second. Will you say “yes”?

Yes! It’s why I’m here. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your willingness.

“Since we are trained to look to our thoughts for self-definition, we continually overlook this most intimate experience of free, unthought, eternal awareness.”

The profound good news is that the truth of who you are is always inherently free. And since you already are this freedom, you have the full capacity to recognize yourself as that.

Most of us spend our lives not recognizing the truth of our inherent freedom. We spend our lives searching everywhere outside ourselves for what is fundamentally and already who we are in the core of our being.

When I use the word freedom, I don’t mean freedom from unwanted circumstances. I don’t mean freedom from your thoughts, your body, or your emotions. I don’t mean the freedom to do what you want whenever you want. I am speaking about a freedom that stands alone in its freeness. A freedom that is unconditional. A freedom that excludes nothing. A freedom that is always right where you are.

A common misunderstanding is that it is our thoughts and feelings that determine reality. As a result, we begin our search for freedom, or fulfillment, in our thoughts and feelings. If we are feeling good, we think we are good. If we are feeling bad, we think we are bad. If we are feeling enlightened, we think we are enlightened. If we are feeling ignorant, we think we are ignorant. Feelings give power to thoughts, and thoughts give power to feelings.

As you know, in a day, in an hour, or even in a minute, your thoughts of who you are and how you’re doing can change many times, so your task becomes to find out what does not change, what does not come and go.

Awareness never changes. Awareness is always here. Awareness has the power to recognize every thought and every feeling, and also the power to recognize when any thought or feeling is being suppressed. Most importantly, awareness has the power to recognize itself as awareness, eternally free, pure, and untouched by any thought or feeling.

Pure, unadulterated awareness is radiant—a sacredness, an unspeakable, immeasurable depth that is available for your recognition in each and any moment.

Awareness is not the property of your mind, your body, or your circumstances. Pure, unadulterated awareness is radiant, a sacredness, an unspeakable, immeasurable depth that is available for your recognition in each and any moment.

Awareness itself remains free regardless of whatever thoughts and feelings are arising in awareness. This recognition is the necessary opening of the mind that naturally unlocks the floodgates of your own inherent freedom.

I am inviting you, as you go about your day, to simply be aware of what you are thinking, and to be aware of what you are thinking about what you are thinking. Ask yourself this: Is this a fresh, insightful, creative, appropriate thought, or is it the same old worn out thought? If it is the same old thought, I guarantee you it has something to do with survival—food, money, or shelter. Or it has something to do with sex—wanting it or not wanting it or looking at other or self as a sexual object. Or it has something to do with power—a gain or loss in your perceived position in the herd. Once these thoughts are seen for what they are, they begin to lose their authority over your happiness.

You can choose to turn your attention back to the awareness of the thinking mind. Not the thoughts themselves but the pure consciousness from which the thoughts arise.

Because we are trained so thoroughly to look to our thoughts for self-definition, we continually overlook this most intimate experience of free, unthought, eternal awareness. To rest in awareness is to return to the truth of who you are.

Many people, maybe even most people, are in various degrees of trauma recovery. They are either making peace with their lives as they are or finding ways to numb the lingering effects of traumatic events. In other words, they are finding ways to cope. Although useful and certainly appropriate at times, coping strategies ultimately don’t fulfill our deeper yearning for a life that is truly free from the bondage of the past.

Whether it is from the trauma of being abused or thinking of oneself as abused, of being harmed, hurt, oppressed, or imprisoned, our nervous systems cope and recover as well as they are able. And there are many for whom the nervous system doesn’t cope well at all, and trauma continues to be a lived experience.

But there are people in every walk of life who find that their experiences of trauma ignite within them a call home. Often it is trauma that sets the stage for the search for lasting inner peace and freedom.

When you are ready to acknowledge trauma without running from it, fighting it, denying it, or indulging it, trauma can be a doorway to a deeper realization of true self. Trauma creates a tear in the universe that gives way to rebirth. A freshness is revealed, the promise of new life, of your true life. You survived, and now, as you continue to grow and evolve, you get to live life in a new way. You get another blessed chance to realize who you really are and what you most want for your life.

There are many therapeutic avenues available to process trauma and heal a dis-regulated nervous system. What I am offering here is the possibility to cut right through trauma and discover what has never been affected by any experience of the past. Through direct self-inquiry, you have the capacity to not be defined by anything. This is the healing. Who you truly are in the core has never been touched by any experience of trauma. You may even find that if you stop “working” your suffering-- the telling and re-telling of the story of your trauma--then suffering can begin to resolve itself naturally.

Are you ready and willing to stop defining yourself as the result of traumatic experiences? To stop the masochistic turning of the knife in the wound? In this you are both perpetrator and victim. Are you ready to stop the victimization? You are inherently free, and you always have been. Those traumatic experiences never really touched your true nature as infinite, unchanging, incorruptible wholeness.

Without trivializing the origins of our traumas or the suffering that they created, and with all due respect to the pain that has been experienced, the suffering of trauma can also be exposed as no longer necessary. It doesn’t have to be a life sentence.

The Stopping Is the Healing

When I was a child, my mission was to fix my mother’s alcoholism. It was useless, of course, because she wasn’t interested in being fixed. I would write her furtive little letters and leave them by her bed, begging her to stop drinking. My sense of victimhood was based on “if she were different, if I weren’t embarrassed about my mother, then I could be happy. Then everything would be fine!” She never even acknowledged those letters, and this was part of the central psychic childhood wound that I carried into adulthood.

Eventually, when my mother was on her death bed, I went to see her. She knew she was dying, and at her bedside I saw that I desperately, deeply, profoundly loved her. I also saw with clarity that all along she was never going to change unless she chose to, and that truthfully my life could be free of her choices. As a result of that realization, I could simply be there with her and with the love that was so clearly present between us. When I finally dropped my agenda, I saw her as beautiful just as she was, and that she had taught me so much.

My invitation is to stop searching for relief from your suffering, at least for a moment, and see what is always here. See what has no need of healing because it is already, unbreakably whole.

You are not your experiences; you are the consciousness in which all your experiences occur. Pure consciousness is the truth of who you already are and have always been—not your name, not your body, not your history.