An Idiot's Guide to Self Knowledge pt. 2

So if I am everything that is – the all knowing limitless Brahman (Brahman means absolute pure consciousness), then how come I seem not to know the truth about myself? How come it seems that I am inside a body, inside a world, totally cut off from everything around me?

Well, in truth there is no separation, there never was any. There is just a misapprehension of reality. Nothing more than a wrong idea about it - the idea that there is me, and there is something else, when in fact there is just me appearing as what I experience, and part of what I experience is a wrong idea about who I am.

It's nothing but a thought in awareness.

The practise of self knowledge is to take the point of view of awareness, because I am awareness, and everything appears in me. I am the substrate, the immovable absolute which lends its being to everything.

How to Meditate

1. Sit down

2. Shut up.

An Idiot’s Guide to Self Knowledge

Advaita (nonduality) is a word that is used to indicate the nature of Reality, which literally means “not two”. It means that, in spite of appearances, there is only one principle operating, and it is the cause and effect of everything that is. You can call it Consciousness, Awareness, God, Being, Love, Intelligence, Knowing, Happiness, Freedom, Truth, or whatever you want. You can call it your Self, because that’s what it is. Because it is limitless words are inadequate to describe it, but that doesn’t mean that wielded by a competent teacher they are unable to reveal it.

Ignorance is the belief that I am small, limited, inadequate; that I need something or someone to complete me. It shows up as any belief, thought, emotion, fear or desire which doesn’t correspond to the truth: that I am unborn, whole, complete, limitless, ever present, all pervasive, nondual, actionless, unconcerned, ordinary awareness; that I am fullness itself. The practise of knowledge is to monitor the mind at all times, and to consistently refute ignorance in the light of the truth, until the ignorance is destroyed. It means taking a stand in awareness, as awareness.

Enlightenment is knowing that I am everything that is. And that’s it, really.

Reasons to be Cheerful #6

The Private Life of Electricity

Electricity, when coming through a light bulb, manifests as light.

When coming through a heater, it manifests as heat.

When coming through a radio, it manifests as sound.

It appears to be three different things; heat, light, and sound. But it isn’t. It’s just electricity. It appears as various names and forms without being in any way different from what it always is: electricity.

There isn’t a separate electricity for each of the apparatus: an electricity for the light; an electricity for the heater; an electricity for the radio.

It is the same electricity that powers them all.

When experienced from the point of view of light, heat and sound, or from the point of view of the various appliances that it powers, it appears to be different; to be many distinct things.

But from the point of view of electricity, there aren’t many things. There isn’t even one thing. There is just electricity.

There is only itself.

Like this awareness appears as the universe, without being anything other than itself.