“Life is often complicated, and complications have their beauty, but in a moment of real inquiry,  finally there is no complication. There is simply the willingness to open to whatever is here.”

Participant: Hi Gangaji, I’m so happy to be able to speak with you.

Gangaji: Welcome. I’m glad that you’re here.

I want to experience what I’ve heard other people say after speaking with you, that they now have peace and joy inside. I want to stop living in fear all the time, stop worrying if I’m making the right decisions, and stop suffering from all the pain I see in the world. If you can lead me there, I would really appreciate it.

Well, let’s start with what you are feeling in this moment.

I feel like life is full of grief and sorrow, broken dreams, people that I care about getting ill, children that are now adults who aren’t reaching the dreams that they wanted. I’m a therapist by profession, and I hear people’s problems all the time. It just feels so heavy. It feels sometimes that I lose hope of ever being able to help them.

Everything you said can be, and still you can discover something deeper that is reliably, paradoxically, always true, even in the midst of the horror and suffering in the world. There is no need to deny that horror and suffering, no need to sugarcoat anything. All that is needed is the willingness to open and tell the truth.

In this moment, when you check inside, what are you experiencing?

I’m feeling fear and sadness mixed together.

And are those emotions located anywhere in your body?

A lot is in my throat and in my chest.

That’s just right. Is it possible to be aware of those feelings in your throat and in your chest while also being aware of any inner narrative you might have about those feelings? Perhaps you are judging those feelings, deciding they are wrong, that they should leave, or that you’d like to get away from them. If so, without denying those feelings, can you simply stop any narrative about the fear and the sadness?

So just let them be there?

Yes, and even more than that, I am inviting you to open to them, to open your consciousness. By that I mean, with your conscious attention, enter the fear and the sadness in your throat and in your chest. Normally, for most people, the attention is on the narrative of what is happening and why it should or should not be happening. As soon as you’re aware of the narrative, for a moment, simply suspend that narrative. You can always go back to it. I guarantee it will always be waiting for you.

For a moment of inquiry, simply turn your attention directly inside these feelings in your throat and in your chest, with no judgment, no hope of escape, no idea of transforming anything, just meet them openly, with curiosity.

And now, what are you aware of?

(Pausing …) Well, now they are starting to dissipate some. It actually feels better to not resist or try to move away from them.

Yes, that’s the first insight. It actually feels better to give up trying to escape, to stop all the mechanisms of escape, which can be exhausting. Equally, it feels better to stop indulging in the emotions, if that’s what you habitually do. To stop the drama of the emotion, or the drama of denial, of trying to ignore what’s happening inside. Instead, you can choose to simply open to the emotion.

Your emotions are not separate from you. When you try to keep them separate, you make them either right or wrong. You decide that they should go or that perhaps they need to be transformed somehow. But when you are willing to allow an emotion to be here and to be naked to yourself in those emotions, you can investigate even more deeply into the truth of the matter. You might discover another emotion layered underneath the initial emotion. You might discover inner beliefs that are unconsciously driving those emotions. And always there is the possibility, if you are open to it, of discovering the peace that is always present regardless of any emotion.

Right now, as you open even more deeply to what is here, what do you experience? Fear and sadness might still be present. Maybe the sensations are still in your throat or your chest, and maybe they are gone now. It can change very quickly.

So, essentially, you’re saying to let them be here without judging them?

Yes, I am asking you to suspend your inner dialogue and open to whatever is here in this moment.

It’s such a relief to not be judging myself and thinking I’m doing something wrong.

Yes!

Or harming myself.

Yes, when you do that, you are actually contributing to the world’s suffering.

Exactly.

You are judging yourself as wrong, as not doing it right. You should be feeling a certain way, you should be thinking a certain way, and since you are a therapist, you should certainly know better than this.

Yes, exactly! (laughing).

Yes, it’s laughable. That’s it! You get the horrific joke of it. It’s like, “Oh my God, I am torturing myself.” Maybe this pattern appears because of the way you are structured emotionally, or maybe you take on energy from your clients, from your neighbors, from the news or from anything else in the world. But in any moment of true inquiry, you can stop that pattern of suffering and self-torture. When you simply open to what is here, you are not adding to the suffering.

For a moment you stopped trying to get rid of the fear and sadness. You stopped fighting, you stopped dramatizing, you stopped ignoring. You were able to open to your emotions because something is calling you from deep inside those emotions. I don’t know what that may be. It may be another, different emotion, or it may be the wonder that’s showing on your face right now of the peace that is always present regardless of emotion. If we know ahead of time what we think should be here, then we don’t have a direct experience in which the discovery is fresh.

Yes, everything just suddenly opened up, and I felt like smiling, which was a surprise.

Yes, you did smile. It was beautiful.

 I know!

I know the experience. Suddenly, the waves part and the scene is cleared. What you are discovering right now is what is always here underneath every emotion, inside every emotion, without denying or ignoring emotions, or dramatizing or trying to fix emotions. The secret is simply the willingness to open and to inquire, which is counter to everything we have learned.

Life is often complicated, and complications have their beauty, but in a moment of real inquiry, finally there is no complication. There is simply the willingness to open to whatever is here. In that openness, discomfort may be experienced, but then there is the willingness to open into that discomfort.

 So, is inquiry really just the willingness to accept myself and everything else?

Inquiry is the catalyst that stops the narrative about the fear or the sadness or the suffering in the moment. Inquiry is the willingness to simply open and discover what is here in the core of every emotion: vast, eternal, indefinable consciousness, conscious of itself. Then you may freely have all emotions without them defining you.

“The moment of truth is the willingness to open so deeply that all hope and all searching for escape are completely abandoned.”

People engaged in the spiritual search often proclaim that they want to open, they want to surrender, they want to let go, and yet true inner surrender remains rare. Why is this? Because there is something else going on. The truth is, if you really want to open, you will recognize that the core of your being is already inherently open. Openness is your true nature. And in this recognition, letting go is effortless.

I have found in speaking with people from every walk of life, that the biggest obstacle to opening is fear. As you start to open, you might also notice that excuses immediately arise—why you can’t open just yet, not right now, or some other strategy of blaming your circumstances or someone else for keeping you closed.

It is the fear of death that drives all human conditioning and gives rise to the mind’s attempt to control all situations. The fear of the unknown. The fear of not being who you “think” you should be. Even if you think you are a horrible person, at least there is some security in the hope that this could one day change and there will be release. But your hope is invested in the thought of you changing. This “you” that you think you are is an illusion. It is not real. It only arises in your mind to cement the survival imperative of your body, your DNA.

The truth is that all our mental strategies to avoid the fear of death are what keep us from the experience of eternal life. All spiritual teachings that point to the eternal also point to meeting the fear of death.

You might hear in certain spiritual circles that liberation is the result of the death of the ego. Yet who is it that wants to kill the ego? It is only the ego that wants to kill the ego. The ego splits and says, “Okay, I get it, what I want is for my ego to be killed so that I will survive forever.”

The moment of truth is in the willingness to open so deeply that all hope and all searching for escape are completely abandoned. This includes the search for knowledge and understanding. It is the willingness to simply open to that which has been avoided. In this moment you  stop running from death. Then there is no longer a discussion about surrender—when, how, and why you can’t—or whether it's a question of personal responsibility, free will, predestination, or God’s grace.

In an instant the discussion is over. All discussion is only a continuation of the belief that you as an entity must at all costs avoid the experience of non-existence. And what a cost it is! It is the possibility of a conscious life, free from the fear of death, that is being paid.

As a boy of sixteen, my teacher’s teacher, Ramana Maharshi, found himself suddenly overtaken by a fear of death. The shock of the fear of death drove his mind inward and he inquired within: “What is death? Who is it that dies?” He lay on the floor and dramatized his death. He stretched his arms and legs out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in, imitating a corpse so as to give greater reality to the inquiry. He held his breath and kept his lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, no word could be uttered. He questioned inwardly, “With the death of this body, am I dead?”

As he inquired within, he experienced the inner “I,” or consciousness, quite apart from his inert form, and it flashed through him vividly as living truth that the body dies, but pure consciousness itself is not touched by the death of any form.

The radical invitation of this lineage is to experience death before the body dies. To let go completely, right now, in this moment, no excuses, no postponement. You can open your mind and your heart to receive the nectar of what is and has always been here, needing nothing for its existence—eternal life—the truth of who you are.

The Willingness to Open - Part II

“Our most prevalent form of suffering is in seeking to avoid emotional pain, and this is the search that needs to be called off. There is nothing wrong with pain. Pain is simply part of the texture of life, and it can be opened to.”

Participant: Hi Gangaji. I often find myself cutting off from others, withdrawing and separating myself. My question to you is this: “How do I stop?”

Gangaji: The powers to withdraw from others and to separate yourself are powers you have learned and practiced. Perhaps there have been times when these powers were appropriate, but for the purposes of our investigation right now, are you willing to give these powers up?

Yes, I am certainly willing. It’s why I’m here. It’s causing me a lot of depression.

Wonderful! You have become aware that although these powers may give you some safety, or sense of safety, ultimately, they also cause you suffering. This level of maturity is necessary for seeing that the power to separate yourself is limited, and what you truly want is more than this power can deliver. The answer to your question, how do I stop, is simple. When the temptation arises to reclaim your powers of withdrawal and separation, you just don’t touch it. You don’t engage with it. To support that choice, it can be helpful to investigate exactly how this strategy plays out. Are you aware that these powers of withdrawal and separation take some doing, some steps?

Oh yes. First there is jealousy, and then maybe some comparison.

Okay, that’s perfect. First are jealousy and comparison, and then what?

Inadequacy.

Yes, a story of inadequacy. And, I would also suspect there is some insecurity and fear.

Yes.

Then what happens?

I guess there is an avoidance of feeling the hurt.

Yes, that’s right, there is an avoidance of feeling the hurt. Now, let’s go deeper into that. What are the steps in avoiding this feeling of hurt? What do you tell yourself? There must be some kind of inner mantra that goes along with that.

Yes, I want to avoid that feeling, so I become defensive. I want to hit out.

What do you say inside yourself?

You know, it happens so quick I don’t even think about it.

Yes, but now we are slowing… it … down. We are in slow motion so that you can see it very clearly. It happens quickly because you are very practiced at it. You are adept at it. Just like when driving a car, you don’t think about what the steps are except when you are teaching someone else how to drive a car. Then you realize, “Aha, first this has to happen, and then this, and then this.” Now I am asking you to teach me how it is you withdraw. What are the steps? It seems so natural that it “just happens,” but it doesn’t just happen and now you’ve seen the leadup to it.

Okay, well, it’s like I say to myself, “I just want to go blank here.”

That’s perfect, the first step is to go blank, and then …?

Then I am going to withdraw and move back.

Okay, now I am withdrawing and moving back. Then what has to happen?

Then I want to run away.

Yes, that makes sense. I can do that. (Gangaji pulls away.) And then what?

That’s good (laughing) And then I get a lot of adrenaline.

Okay, lots of adrenaline. And where does that adrenaline come from?

How do I generate that? Umm, I’m not sure.

Well, let’s see! You’re teaching me, remember?

Okay, yes! Then I have to get really angry.

Angry at someone who is causing me to run away?

Yes.

Perfect. Now I’ve got an inner story of running away based on a story of inadequacy, along with some comparison and feelings of jealousy. But now the trick is to involve somebody else who caused this story.

Yes, because they deserted me.

They deserted you. Now I can start to feel the story right in here (Gangaji clenches her hands over her heart in angst). “They have deserted me.”

They did! This is not hard after all guys (looking at the audience and laughing). Now, where were we?

We are unwinding the story that was so tightly wrapped you didn’t even know it was there. It seems like something that just happens, but now we’ve gotten to the point of seeing we are victimized in two ways: First, I feel victimized by this feeling of jealousy that arises in me. Secondly, someone else is to blame for it. Now, we’ve got to escape. Teach me the steps to escape. What happens physiologically in my body? What happens in my emotions? How do I go blank? How do I withdraw? How do I hide?

I stop talking.

Okay, I stop talking.

I clench my teeth.

Okay, the teeth are clenched. What happens to the eyes?

They’re like stone.

Stone eyes.

Very cold.

Yes, very cold. And my body, is there a posture that goes with it?

Yes, slumped, like a victim. Slumped and round-shouldered.

All of this takes some effort, doesn’t it?

It does! (laughing) There is a lot of energy that goes into it, and I am tired also of fighting the depression.

Then what’s the solution? You see all the steps. I’m sure there are many more steps, but those are at least enough to see that at any point along the way you can say to yourself, “Stop. I am right now in this moment giving up the power to close down.” Then, you sit up straight, you open your eyes to this person, and you say, “I am feeling hurt,” or “I am feeling hurt and I’m blaming you,” or perhaps, even, “I love you.”

(Participant visibly relaxes.)

Isn’t this easier?

It is.

Yes, it is! This is the truth we don’t want to tell because we have so much invested in these powers we’ve developed. We think they are so special. We think they are protecting us, and to give them up means we will be unprotected and will have to experience this pain. Now you see that in protecting yourself, you still experience pain. What a bad joke you have played on yourself. If this protection actually worked, it would be another matter, but the protection only augments the pain and turns it into suffering. The suffering is in seeking to avoid the pain, and that is the search that needs to be called off. There is nothing wrong with pain, which you will realize when you stop seeking to avoid it. Pain is simply part of the texture of life, and it can be opened to. If the preciousness of life is being lived in avoidance of hurt, the result is a dead life filled with unnecessary suffering.

Let’s say, as part of the human experience, there is the pain of jealousy. You can diagnose the jealousy and spin a narrative as to why it should or shouldn’t be there, or you can simply feel the jealousy. You can recognize, “I feel jealous. I feel hurt. I feel fearful. I love.” Then what will you do? Withdraw, hate, close off? Or just hurt and love?

I recommend hurting and loving.

There is a beauty, then, to this hurt, this most human emotion. An experience of hurt is simply an experience of hurt. Then the love is not covered. Then you don’t have to go stony, collapse, blank out, strike out, or withdraw. You simply hurt and you love.

Part I  - What Keeps You from Opening to the Truth of Yourself?

“To open your mind to the source of your mind is to open to yourself."

Opening to the truth of our own essential being is simply a matter of receiving. But because of our conditioning, often this doesn’t seem like a simple matter. There are usually complications and fears surrounding simply receiving, simply opening. We are conditioned to fear the unknown depths of ourselves, suspecting the worst. Yet there comes a time when we can and must meet this primal fear.

The capacity to receive is natural. When we are babies, we receive what is given. Unless there is some defect, this is the way the infant naturally forms and develops. Nourishment must be received for the organism to grow. Then, as we grow and our minds develop, there comes the revelation and the knowledge that receiving certain things actually causes harm: to receive food that is spoiled or poisoned is harmful to the body; to receive a parent’s lack of love is emotionally destructive; for the mind to receive any indoctrination that teaches hate is harmful brainwashing. Gradually we gain the insight that it is not useful to receive everything that is offered; from that, discriminating wisdom is born.

In the world we live in, much of what is offered is not useful, and it is often potentially poisonous. As we recognize this possibility of harm, we can shut down our natural capacity to receive. With the eventual recognition that our parents were not the powerful, benevolent ones we envisioned them to be comes a disillusionment regarding our capacity to open and trust.

As we grow up, we experience that even our friends can betray us, can lie to us. We experience in ourselves the capacity to lie to our friends, our husbands, our wives, our teachers, and our governments. We find that our own thoughts can deceive us or torture us; they aren’t trustworthy. Our own emotions can get out of control. Our bodies cannot be trusted: they stumble and fall, they get sick, they age, and they die. The message we receive is often not to trust, not to open; opening is dangerous; it can hurt. And with that conviction, a kind of hyper-vigilance of the mind develops to try and collect enough information so that if there is ever a time when it is safe to open, we will know when that time is. In service to this fear, most of our mental activity becomes about collecting. No matter how much is collected, there is still more to collect. We collect teacher after teacher, training after training, book after book, tape after tape, in a frantic effort to collect the information we think we need to stay safe. Throughout it all, we have a profound yearning just to be open. This is often phrased as the yearning to “return home,” to return to the innocence of a child, to enter heaven. But by this time our mind is no longer a child’s mind. Our minds, our bodies, and our emotions have experienced many rough events.

Maybe in a moment of grace you open to your wife or your husband, your child, your lover, or your teacher. But then the habit to close arises very quickly because memory, whether conscious or unconscious, reminds you that hurt can follow opening.

I am not suggesting that you try to open, or that you try to forget about the past, or that you try to receive. That will only create more struggle. What you can do is simply observe when your mind is open and when your mind is closed. You can observe when you are open to receive and when you are rejecting out of habit. Simply tell the truth— not as a means of gathering more information, but as a path of self-discovery.

Telling the truth about any feeling, thought, or circumstance lays the ground for the power of self-inquiry. Inquiry is like shining a light into a basement where a creaky old furnace that you never even knew existed is spewing noxious gases all through the house. Inquiry opens the door and shines a light in the basement, so you can see and realize, Oh my God, no wonder I feel sick in body, mind, and spirit. In that recognition, without even thinking, the natural course is to turn the furnace off and open the window. That comes from your own innate intelligence. You also see that you have within you an endless capacity to open the window of your mind and receive the freshness of what is truly pure. Along the way is the recognition that even with the experience of wounding and damage, there remains a purity of being. The core of yourself is still whole, no matter what fragmenting has been experienced around it. It is not that people won’t betray you. It is not that your heart won’t break again and again. Opening to whatever is present is often a heartbreaking business. But if you let your heart break, your breaking heart reveals a core of love unbroken.

To open your mind to the silence that is the source of your mind is to open to yourself. That conscious silence is already open. You are already open. Allow your mind to stop gathering information, to stop imagining the future, and to stop strategizing for survival. Let your mind simply be held by its source. Recognize that the capacity to open to the truth of your being is always here.

Whatever questions arise for you, the most immediate answer to that question is simply to open. You do not need to understand the words. Just open your mind to where the words are pointing. The open mind reveals the open heart.

If you find opening difficult, you can examine whatever “story” makes vulnerability seem difficult. It’s possible that there is a story you believe about how you cannot or should not open. The truth is that nothing is easier than opening. This may sound simplistic or abstract, but it can be concretely actualized every moment of your life.

In the instant of simply opening, you experience that whatever you were struggling with is no longer here. True openness reveals that the struggle—the problem, the bogeyman, the demon, the wound—is actually non-existent. The story is not transformed by openness; it is revealed to be actually non-existent. The only thing that holds the story in place is the resistance to opening. What remains, when what was feared or fought with disappears, is the openness of existence itself—the truth in the core of your own heart.

“The truth is that who you think you are, and who you think everyone else should be, is essentially untrustworthy. But peace itself, the space of pure presence, is absolutely trustworthy.”

Participant: Hi Gangaji,

Gangaji: Hi, welcome.

I’m having a problem with trust, because so many of the people who come into my life disappoint me in what I think they should be.

Perhaps it is your thoughts of what they should be that are ultimately untrustworthy.

So you’re saying my thoughts are the problem?

Yes. I guarantee you that your experience of disappointment is generated by your thoughts. Once this is recognized, then you don’t have to list all the disappointments one by one: first your mother, then your father, then your husband, then your son, daughter, lover, etc., and then God. All of those thoughts, all disappointment and blame, are based on past concepts of what needs to happen for you to be happy, for you to be at peace, for you to even be. The truth is you are still here, you are still yourself, regardless of all those failed expectations.

So am I supposed to wind up trusting others, or do I just give that up?

Right now, give up any thought of what anything should be. Give up the trust in your thoughts. Just right now, as an experiment.

But what about the trust—

—No wait, I’m saying give up your thoughts right now, just as an experiment.

Okay. Then I will just go to sleep.

Really? Go to sleep then … (pausing). Are you asleep?

No.

That’s right, you are not asleep. You were putting your trust in the thought, “Well if I do that, then I will go to sleep,” and that turned out not to be reality.

The truth is I have no idea what will happen if I stop trusting those thoughts.

That’s right! That is the beginning. Now here is an opening. You’ve realized you have no idea what will happen. Excellent. Now you can begin to see the habit of these ideas about what should happen, what once happened, or what will happen. You don’t have to trust those thoughts. Not as a religion, but just as an experiment, as an open investigation. Why not? Haven’t those thoughts failed you over and over and stolen your happiness?

Yes.

Yes! This is telling the truth.

Well, then I am utterly clueless.

Good. Cluelessness is a place of innocence.

And now I also feel afraid.

Yes, I understand. Fear can arise because innocence has been abused in the past. But right here, for this moment, give yourself even one second to be absolutely, completely clueless, to not know anything. Then tell the truth about this space of cluelessness.

The space is empty.

And where are you?

In that space of emptiness, I could say that I am not here, or that I don’t exist, but that is not true.

Yes, it’s obvious that you exist, is it not?

Yes. You are consciousness itself; how could you not exist?

But I need to trust somebody, or something … (sobbing).

And if you get that, what will it give you?

Then there will be something stable to rely on. Then there will be peace.

And where is peace right now?

Where is peace?

Yes. Your thoughts say that someone else has your peace, and they will give it to you if you just pay them some trust.

Yes… (laughing.)

Now you can see the absurdity of this. You betray your own peace and then project that out onto others. It is your own lack of trusting the peace that already exists inside you. All that is needed is to take this one moment to stop and experience the unconditional peace that is already here, having nothing to do with anybody else or any particular circumstances.

Yes, it’s true. When I stop, peace is here.

Now you can bow to all the people who have proven they cannot be trusted to give you that peace. No one can give peace to you, and no one can take peace away from you because it is already here, already you. The only one who has the power to take it away from you is yourself. You have that mind power.

Can I really stop betraying myself?

That is a very good question. What is the answer? Tell the truth. Can you stop this betrayal?

I can right now, but then what about tomorrow…?

I am always only speaking of right now. This is the only time stopping can happen. Now has nothing to do with the future and nothing to do with the past. Are you willing to stop this betrayal, right now? The moment you get into, “Yes, but what about tomorrow? I haven’t been able to do it in the past. What about so and so …” this is the betrayal. The betrayal happens in this moment only, and this is the moment of stopping.

You just demonstrated how simple it is. This moment is all you have, and in truth there is only ever this moment. Then the truth is obvious, the lie is obvious, and your addiction to betraying yourself, to placing trust outside yourself, is obvious. It is all part of the same package. The good news is that you are sick and tired of it because it is sickening, and when you stop feeding on what is sickening, then you are no longer sick.

Yes, it’s exhausting!

The truth is that who you think you are, and who you think everyone else should be, essentially is untrustworthy. But the peace itself, this space of pure presence, is absolutely trustworthy. It does not come and go. It is always here. And the only thing that is in the way of your experiencing peace in this moment is some thought that it is someplace else.

The spaciousness that is the truth of your being, the purity of your own consciousness, is absolutely, completely trustworthy. Thoughts of who you are, feelings of who you are, and conclusions of who you are, appear and change and disappear. That is the experience of being incarnate on this planet. Who you truly are is changeless peace. To trust that, to trust yourself, is to not trust any image of yourself or any thought of yourself. It is to trust the truth of yourself, which cannot be thought.

Right now, if you are thinking yourself to be peace, drop that thought. That is not peace; that is a thought of peace. The immediacy of everlasting peace is before thought. Peace is always and only right here, always and only now.

 

"The instant that the mind surrenders, you recognize you are one with ever-present and all-inclusive space. Without that space, mind and thought cannot exist."

Gangaji: Welcome. 

Participant: Thank you so much. I feel so blessed to be here. The question I have is …

First, before you ask me your question, let me ask you mine. Regardless of what I say, where will you find the answer to your question?

... Within me, I think.

Exactly. So, before you ask it, just check within yourself: what is the answer?

When I ask myself the question, the answer I get is, “Let go and trust,” (laughing). but I wanted to hear it from you first.

That’s a profound answer, isn't it? “Let go and trust.” Then you’re not thinking, “I want to trust. I want to let go. When the moment is right, I will trust and let go. I will discover what is here.”

What if, in this moment, you followed your own directive?

During today’s meditation, it almost felt like the heart is a wide-open space, and I'm holding on to the thoughts in my mind, not willing to let them go. The first thought that came to my mind was, “It's so peaceful here; I should try to hang on to this.” And then I realized that I don't need to hang on to this. 

It’s not possible to hang on to it.

I need to let go of all the hanging on I'm doing.

Exactly.

If I just drop everything, then I drop into this space.

 This is a deep understanding. This is trustworthy. 

Yes, but ...

This “yes, but” is actually the opposite of trust, isn’t it? We are trained, of course, to use our minds, and our mental evaluation of things can be very useful—except when it comes to this wide-open space of the heart you are sensing is already here, already at peace. In the instant that “yes, but” arises, the mind has made itself separate from that space and believes that separation to be real. In truth, this space is ever-present and all-inclusive.

The instant that the mind surrenders, you recognize you are one with that space. Without that space, mind and thought cannot exist. But because of our cultural conditioning and the power of learning, the mind tries to isolate that space and make it a thing, as if that space is separate from everything occurring in it.

Then how do I do this? How do I let go and trust? 

Only the mind asks “how.” You can’t do this. This has nothing to do with doing. This space that you are aware of simply is. It is here, now, permeating everything. It has to do with trusting isness, even though it can never be grasped or understood by the mind. Rather than the mind trusting it can do it, it’s the mind that surrenders to trusting what already is. There is plenty you can do, but you cannot do Reality. Reality is what is and has always been here.

Thank you, thank you so much.

Thank you. I'm so happy that you're here.

 

Silence is Always Here

When I was first with Papaji, we spent most of our time in a humble little room on the banks of the Ganga River in India. The walls of his room were old and mildewed, yet to me they were beautiful. Everything was shining. The quiet and the presence within that room was all-pervasive. I thought to myself how ironic it is that in the West we have visions of God sitting on a golden throne in heaven. Here I was in a humble little room with strange smells and sounds coming up from the street and I realized, Here is God. Here is God! This is heaven. I am in heaven, and who would have expected it in such a poor place? 

The next day he took us for a walk in the marketplace. Such noise! Such smells! Such grabbing and yelling! Not aesthetically pleasing at all, and I wondered why he’d brought us there. It was so perfect back in that beautiful little room with the only sound being the whap, whap of the ceiling fan. After internally complaining for a moment or two, I looked up and happened to catch his eye. With startling clarity, I seemed to hear him say, Here too. In that instant, all noise was penetrated by eternal, abiding silence. The beauty was seen. Even the beggar whose body had been eaten away by leprosy was seen in his beauty. Later I realized that whatever the noise level, I am here also, and I am silence itself.

Perhaps you have been graced with an unexpected glimpse into your true nature. To be true to that grace you must explore it. See if it truly ends. Does it end when you step into downtown Denver or Manhattan? Does it end in the daily noise and lights and activity of a prison cellblock? If the peace that is your true nature (and the nature of all) seems to leave, be willing to retreat for a moment to check and see. One millisecond, and you will see that this peace of being is everywhere, emanating from everything. 

Honor this instant in your life when you recognize beauty, peace, and silence to be the truth of who you are. Honor revelation by taking one millisecond to check when you assume it has been lost.

It is very usual to honor thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Be unusual and honor that which is deeper than any thought, emotion, or feeling. Let your life be an unusual life of fulfillment, regardless of circumstances, regardless of moods, regardless of discomfort.

“A split second of the mind truly stopping reveals the peace beyond understanding.”

The Right Use of the Mind

Participant: Hi Gangaji, this is a continuation of our conversation yesterday. You are going to slap me when I say this, but it’s okay if you do. I am here for it. Yesterday, I think I thought my way out of thinking.

Gangaji: Now this is a thought worth thinking! This kind of thought is enlightened thought, enlightened mind. It a result of a true investigation into the deepest truth.

Something you said yesterday stuck with me. You said, “What you want most is not separate from who you are.” So, I let that rest, because it didn’t make sense to me immediately. In these meetings, we talk a lot about self-inquiry, but to me self-inquiry seems to be a process of the mind. If you are saying that we can’t actually think our way to awakening, then how does self-inquiry, which is a practice of the mind, fit in? What became really clear was that self-inquiry is just the process that leads you to the precipice of actually realizing that there isn’t a way to go from here.

Yes, which was really the crucial part of our conversation.

It’s as if I have a flashlight in one hand and a microscope and some binoculars in the other and I’m looking for a needle in a haystack with a bungee cord attached to my back. I am looking and searching for a shiny tiny object, but I’m never going to find it because it isn’t a shiny tiny object; it’s something that has never been seen or imagined. So, what is the use of a sharp mind or a bright light if you don’t actually know what you’re looking for or what it is supposed to feel like, and you can’t even imagine it?

Well, it takes a very sharp mind to be able to say that.

It seems like an exercise in futility because no matter how much you think your way through it, you can’t actually know what you are thinking your way to.

That’s right. That’s intelligence speaking.

Then I thought about bungee jumping, and how you can’t actually see the cord attached to your back. So if my mind and thoughts are arising from something that is deeper, and I am inherently still attached to whatever that is, then wouldn’t it be far easier to just stop pulling my weight against it and flailing around trying to find that needle in a haystack? If I just let go, then the elastic cord will naturally snap me back.

Exactly. Perfect insight. Why would I slap you for that?

Because I thought my way through it.

You thought your way to the precipice, and then you stopped this game of tug of war. It takes a mature mind, a harnessing of intelligence, to be able to recognize that when it comes to realizing the truth of your being, the mind has its limit.

Even though all the great spiritual masters talk about this truth, it didn’t make sense until I thought my way through it.

You used your intelligence to see the truth of the matter, just as philosophers have throughout time. That’s the right use of the mind. First, there arose within your mind, from your heart, some deep desire to know the truth. Then of course you did what you knew to do, you tried to figure that out. But what you are speaking about today is the key. You have the intelligence and the honesty and the self-respect to tell the truth: “Oh I can’t get it.” Yes! Then it gets you as it's always had you.

Thank you.

Whenever I use the word “stop” or suggest that for at least a moment you stop your train of thought, it doesn’t mean that I am anti-thought. Thoughts are an incredible, miraculous, mysterious arising of consciousness. But if the thoughts are spinning uselessly, trying to figure out what can never be understood by the mind, thoughts generate suffering.

This is an invitation to recognize that your thinking mind can surrender to your pure intelligence. You have that capacity. Whatever your past, whatever your practices, whatever your intellectual power, you have full capacity to discover that your mind comes from pure intelligence, and that intelligence is pure consciousness, infinite awareness, the deepest truth of self. All that stops you from immediately discovering that is some attachment to the power of your thinking. It’s not that the power of your thinking is wrong, but you will never recognize the source of your mind until you are willing to surrender that power, to stop the tug of war. You can simply be willing to see what happens when you stop pulling and allow your awareness to sink deeper into the depths of being. Deeper than any concept of enlightenment or un- enlightenment, deeper than any concept of me or you.

 

Pain is sensation in the body at a particular time, brought on by physical injury or disease or by an emotional shock. Suffering, on the other hand, is spread over time and must be accompanied by some story or narrative about the pain. The story can  have infinite strands and arrangements—who caused the pain, why, when, how, the metaphysics of it—but the particulars of the story only serve as a distraction from, or resistance to, or indulgence of the pain itself.

Most people aren’t willing to give up their investment in mental and emotional suffering. When there is the willingness to stop the suffering, which means to stop the story about the pain, the pain can be experienced just as it is. What has been previously thought of as unbearable can be experienced with an open mind, because the mind is no longer closed around some idea about the experience. The mind is open. It has dropped all definitions. When pain is met with an open mind, then pain, like every phenomenon, reveals truth at its core.

Suffering is the mental, emotional, and physical contraction around pain, and the history, justification, blame, sentimentalizing, and dramatization of the pain. In the willingness to simply and directly experience any kind of pain, just for an instant, you will discover that the essence of pain is actually intelligence, clarity, joy, and peace—the same essence as bliss! The truth of yourself is revealed even in the midst of pain, and pain is revealed to be another vehicle for truth. In following the story of the pain, this vehicle is overlooked, and the potential gift of pain is wasted.

Let me emphasize that wishing to alleviate pain is natural and appropriate. Medications, the embrace of a loved one, communion with nature, the rhapsody of music and art, are all used to alleviate pain. None of these is a problem. The problem is that the choice of meeting the pain, of stopping the resistance to pain, goes unrecognized.

That you have the freedom to stop and intimately face whatever is tormenting you, at any level, is generally unknown. The lack of recognition for such a choice keeps you bound as the victim of some tormentor. The surprise that awaits this choice is the discovery of what is alive and waiting in the heart of everything—spacious consciousness, love, that which heals all, even death.

Who can say what pain will come into your life? Certainly all of us have experienced pain of one kind or another. If you have had the experience of surrendering in the moment that pain arises, of actually opening your mind to pain, whether it is physical, emotional, personal, or worldly, then you have discovered a secret wisdom. In this discovery you are no longer preoccupied with personal pain. What a relief! When the story of personal pain no longer has prominence, then you might become aware of pain you had no idea existed—your neighbor’s pain, your parents’ pain, your children’s pain, the pain of the universe. In opening to a universal level of pain, you are no longer making war with what is painful or hiding from potential future pain. You are living a life open to meet whatever is here. Then pain, as any experience, is to be bowed to as none other than truth itself.

 

Suffering Is Not the Problem

Although it may sound surprising, I do not intend to help anyone get rid of their suffering. Suffering is not the problem. Rather than trying to get rid of suffering, it is more important to inquire into the suffering itself, to investigate the sufferer. Inquiry is the front door.

The inquiring mind is an open mind, willing to deeply explore. In that openness, it can allow the presence of suffering without rejecting it or trying to escape it. This can be just as powerful, just as terrifying, and just as profound as facing your own death. When you inquire into suffering, you meet suffering, and when you meet suffering, it is possible to discover that suffering is not what you thought it was. In a direct meeting between subject and object, sufferer and suffering, both disappear. Both are discovered, in reality, to be non-existent.

I will make an even more precise and outrageous statement. I recommend that you consciously suffer. What is wrong with suffering?

Willingness to suffer fully, even for an instant, without trying to escape or be saved, means that suffering is no longer an obstacle to full surrender into the mystery of existence. Relief from suffering stops being the goal.

I have heard it said that according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, “When you know how to suffer, you do not suffer.” The “how to” of suffering is to suffer all the way. It is to suffer with full consciousness. To consciously suffer is to consciously recognize the impulse to escape and instead face directly whatever is appearing, be it grief, horror, extreme loss, or sadness.

Suffering is a huge temptation that supports your belief that you are not whole, and the recurrence of suffering time and time again becomes the proof that you are not whole.

See if any of your mental, physical, or emotional energy is bound up in resistance to suffering. If you can tell the truth about that without analyzing it, you will recognize in an instant that you have the choice to drop every defense and actually meet the suffering. What is revealed is very good news, but it can only truly be known as good news when you discover it yourself. And it can only truly be discovered when it is discovered for the first time, each time. Otherwise, inquiry becomes just another technique of the mind to avoid suffering.

If you find that self-inquiry becomes just another subtle technique to build a barrier against suffering, then it is important, first of all, to tell the truth about that, and secondly, to broaden your notion of what true self-inquiry is.

When you meet suffering head on, you make the exquisite, paradoxical discovery that suffering holds the very jewel that was sought in the attempt to escape it. It doesn’t matter whether the particular suffering is individual, national, or planetary; that jewel is here now.

Whatever action may or may not follow that meeting is irrelevant. If you are a social activist, a health professional, a hospice worker, a parent, or any other person who helps alleviate suffering, you will be better at your work when you yourself have met fully what your clients and patients are struggling with.

Meeting suffering has to do with the willingness to be absolutely still, to tell the truth regardless of the intensity of the experience. In the core of suffering is revealed the jewel of what is real, what is true, who you are.

 

“When you fully experience any negative emotion, with no story, it instantaneously ceases to be there. When you truly experience any positive emotion, it is endless.”

The questions I am most frequently asked are related to emotions. Many people seek to be free from difficult emotions such as anger, fear, and grief, and want to attain more of the pleasant emotions such as joy, happiness, and bliss. The usual strategies for achieving happiness involve either repressing or expressing negative emotions in the hope that they will be pushed from sight or released. Unfortunately, neither way reflects the truth of one’s inherent self, which is an unmoving purity of being that exists deeper than any emotion and remains unaffected by any emotion.

There are certainly times when it is appropriate to repress or express an emotion. But there is also another possibility: to neither repress nor express. I call this “direct experience.”

To directly experience any emotion is to neither deny it nor wallow in it, and this means that there can be no story about it. There can be no storyline about who it is happening to, why it is happening, why it should not be happening, who is responsible, or who is to blame.

In the midst of any emotion, so-called negative or positive, it is possible to discover what is at the core. The truth is that when you really experience any negative emotion, it is not there. When you truly experience any positive emotion, it is endless.

Because there is not much in our culture that confirms this truth, we spend our lives chasing positive emotions and running from negative ones.

When you fully experience any negative emotion with no story, it instantaneously ceases to be there. If you think you are fully experiencing an emotion and it remains quite intense, then recognize that there is still some story being told about it—how big it is, how you will never be able to get rid of it, how it will always come back, how dangerous it is to experience it. Whatever the story of the moment may be, the possibilities of postponing direct experience are endless.

For instance, when irritation is experienced, the usual tendency is to do something to get rid of the irritation or to place blame as the cause of the irritation. Then the storylines around irritation begin to develop. It is possible to not do anything with the irritation, to not push it out of awareness or try to get rid of it, but to directly experience it. In the moment that irritation arises, it is possible to simply be completely, totally, and freely irritated, without expressing it and without repressing it.

Direct experience reveals something deeper. Irritation is perhaps just a ripple on the surface. Deeper than irritation, there may be rage or fear. Again, the goal is neither to get rid of the rage or the fear, nor to analyze it, but to directly experience it. If anger or fear is revealed to be under irritation, then let your awareness go deeper; let yourself be absolutely, completely angry or fearful without a narrative about the anger and fear..

Fear is often the biggest challenge because it is what most people habitually attempt to keep away. Of course, as they try to keep it away, it grows even larger, threatens even closer.

What I am suggesting is that you can actually open to fear, you can experience being afraid without any need to say you are afraid, and without following any thought of being afraid. You can just simply experience fear itself.

Participant: A couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with more fear inside me than I have ever experienced in my life. At first, I got mentally involved with it, and I thought, Okay, where did this come from? How can I explain it? Finally, I just let myself be with the terror, and it just kept coming and coming. Gradually I had a sense of falling through it. I was just there, and it was moving through me.

Gangaji: And this morning, what is your experience?

That fear can come and go, and there is a part of me that is separate from fear.

What is that part?

It is what is here when fear is present and here when fear is not present.

So, there is a part of you that is independent of fear, that exists whether fear exists or not?

Yes! There is a wholeness that is whole whether fear is here or not.

Excellent!

There is a very useful Buddhist term, “skillful means.” Skillful means is the right use of emotion. The skillful use of fear or any difficult emotion is to meet it consciously, undefended. Then that emotion naturally reveals what is whole, what remains when that which passes has passed. These are natural insights. They are not learned, they are not theoretical, but are directly discovered.

Skillful means is the capacity to recognize and be fully aware of the emotions that underlie our behaviors and our beliefs about who we are. This is what you are reporting. To consciously meet whatever appears fully and completely is awakening, because meeting anything fully and completely reveals true Self, what is always here. Whatever is being met is revealed as something passing through that which is permanent. This meeting reveals stillness, and when stillness is met, it reveals itself to be infinitely present. The revelation, the insight, the realization that arises from this meeting is what all spiritual practices throughout time are pointing to.

When it comes to our emotions, most of us still live in superstitious times. We imagine ourselves to be sophisticated and realistic, relegating superstitions to another era, to a time when people would see a solar eclipse and, thinking that God had left them, would cry out, “What have we done? What do we need to do to get the darkness to move off the sun?” Then, after performing certain rituals, sure enough, the darkness would move off the sun, and there would be great rejoicing and release. Those rituals would then have to be performed over and over to keep the darkness from coming back. When the darkness eventually did come back, new rituals would have to be devised.

It is easy to see the superstitions of the past, but we are often blind to the superstitious practices of today. One of the superstitious practices is the relationship we have with our emotions. Often, they are clung to as if they were signs from God. Signs of either anointment or of being sent from the Garden. This superstitious relationship is the cause of much unnecessary suffering.

For example, when any difficult emotion arises such as fear or anger or sadness, we believe that then love is absent, and so a huge amount of energy is spent in the attempt to avoid or get rid of the difficult emotion. This is superstitious behavior. We want to be free of the so-called negative emotions and so we devise sophisticated psychological and meditative techniques, different escape hatches, for dealing with them. These are all built around the superstition that these emotions actually, inherently, mean something, rather than seeing them as simply weather. A storm comes, caused or causeless. It is most unpleasant, some things get battered, but the storm passes.

When anger or fear or despair arise, there is the opportunity to take a few seconds to simply stop, to not do anything in relationship to it, to not act it out, to not deny it, but to simply be still. Then a wonderful discovery is revealed.

The sun itself is never eclipsed! If a cloud or even the moon passes in front of the sun it appears as if the sun is eclipsed, but from the sun’s viewpoint, the light continues to shine.

When you discover that these emotions, these sensate phenomena, do not in reality exist as you have thought them to exist, then you discover what does always exist, what is existence itself. What a discovery this is! Then whatever emotion arises, you recognize that it does not have to be fought or denied or indulged but allowed to simply move through like passing weather.

 

"Finally, it’s all about heart opening. In its truest meaning, the concept of enlightenment is simply the open heart.”

Participant: Hi Gangaji, I am so grateful to be here and to bring this question forward. I would so much like to enjoy my life and to feel good about who I am. I want to really know that I love myself. How do I do that?

Gangaji: You know the quickest way to get there? Experience how unlovable you are. Stop fighting it and directly experience the self-hatred and the worthlessness, without telling a story about it. Don’t try to fix it, change it, dramatize it, or heal it. Just simply open to it. What do you experience?

Well, when I really look at it, it seems absurd to hate myself very much.

It may be absurd, and it may also be that you’re overlaying a concept of self-love on top of the self-hatred. If you are really willing to tell the truth about being haunted by feelings of worthlessness and unlovability, then let us bring them here to be met. Not by trying to change anything but by simply opening to whatever is here.

I can feel that you’re right about this, and at the same time I’m afraid of it.

Yes, I understand, of course there is fear, and that’s a good place to start. Let’s begin by opening to the feeling of fear. Just let yourself be afraid. It’s alright. You are safe here. As you allow yourself to drop into the feeling of fear, is there anything under the fear that is even deeper than the initial feeling?

A new fear comes up that everything may fall apart. All that I know… all that I’ve ever done… everything gone…

That’s right, everything is lost. In this moment, for the purposes of our investigation, are you willing to lose everything? Really willing? Not knowing where it will take you? What are you experiencing?

It’s as if I can’t think anymore. I can only feel something falling off.

And when you let it all fall, what is left?

Well, then I’m okay.

That’s right, that’s the truth! You are okay. That is so clear. All the rest is a struggle to get okay, to feel okay, to keep feeling okay, and to get everyone else to see that you are okay. All you did just now, in a split second, was to stop and let everything fall off. In allowing everything to fall, you discovered that you are actually okay.

When I was sitting down there, and you were giving these tips, I thought it was all nonsense. But now that I’m looking into your eyes, I know that you are speaking the truth.

I know it doesn’t make sense to the mind, especially the mind that is focused on how to protect yourself, or change yourself, or make yourself more or better. To let it all fall off is to lose everything, and there is so much support in the mind to never let that happen. But because you are an adventurer, you took this one moment to discover for yourself what is here when you lose everything.

Now, tell me, what is left?

Peace.

Peace! Yes, there is more and more peace, an endlessly deepening peace. Peace is your true nature, and your true nature is infinite. Now the opportunity to lose it all becomes even bigger. All you need do is to keep your eyes open and tell the truth: When you have nothing, you are everything, and when you are everything, you need nothing.

Thank you, this feels amazing! (laughing)

Most people suspect that who they really are is the worst thing imaginable. A creature of imperfection and lack and ugliness and stupidity. Even if it is covered with good thoughts or experiences of oneself, under that is the suspicion, the fear, that who you really are is a gnarled, ugly, irredeemably lost soul, floating in space, separate from God. Right? This is the deeply entrenched belief conditioned by most religions, East and West. And you have found that you can never work hard enough or be good enough to finally be reunited. The truth is that to be your truest, most fundamental self, which has never been and can never be separate from God, takes absolutely no effort.

If you will take an honest look, you will see that all the effort in your life, internally, is either about trying to escape yourself and then searching for yourself, or running away from who you think you are and toward who you think you should be. All of this activity is driven by the deeply conditioned belief that who you are is separate from God and your own essential goodness.

This is the dilemma. These are the conflicting forces. There is a deep conditioning and distrust of yourself, along with an enormous cosmic yearning to discover your true worthiness. The spiritual life often then becomes a life of self-torture, a battle between ego and super-ego, between a higher self and a lower self, All of that is simply a mistaken understanding. That is the supreme joke! In the core you already are what you have been searching for.

Finally, it’s all about heart opening. In its truest meaning the concept of enlightenment is simply the open heart, the open mind. The heart can bear it all because the heart is the living expression of consciousness, naturally imbued with the capacity to bear anything and everything that appears in consciousness, including every mistaken idea and definition that you are not that. Heart opening is wisdom and wisdom is mercy. It’s impossible to be merciful to anyone else if you are closed to yourself.

Feelings of ugliness and unlovability finally have to be met, because this is the unnecessary suffering and continuation of the horror of the human condition. Selfishness is present in all of us, and there is a hatred of that selfishness and a war with it and then a projection of that war onto whoever mirrors that.

We meet as sisters and brothers in the same boat, the Earth boat, and together we discover what is here to be met and embraced in each one of us, regardless of all else. That embrace is always deeper, always closer, always unexpected. What is revealed is an even deeper grace, I promise you that.