The human brain is a vastly potent organ meant to do a small set of tasks, process & store input, and assign meaning to what is stored. That’s about it.

Whenever two phenomena in physical reality interact, and at least one of them happens to be our physical presence, the brain serves its purpose. It takes in the raw data, sorts it, stores it, then compares it to other storage to assign meaning. The interaction itself is innocent and lacks any meaning except what the brain assigns.

This happens so swiftly and automatically that we only notice it when the brain is unable to make the assignment from known data. Then, we “think” about the interaction and come up with meaning.

In all of this there is nothing wrong, or negative. It is simply what the brain does, and it is useful and fundamental to our survival. If we did not know that thirst meant we needed fluid we would die of dehydration in short order. There is nothing wrong with assigning meaning, it only goes off target when we assume that meaning means anything.

As we add meaning on top of meaning we build up the safety of an idea of what we are, but that is another post.

The phenomena that occur, any phenomena, including what others do, and what we think in our heads, is innocent and pure until we add meaning to it. Until the meaning making machine does it work the phenomena is pure and without blame. The meaninglessness I refer to here is the lack of blame. It is the occurrence without interpretation. Pure knowledge of the event. Anything else is after-thought.

As humans, we race around and around in the world created by meaning, never seeing that the meaning is what we placed into the world. We make this place. We are accountable. And, even that is meaningless until we assign the meaning.

Moments of “realization” then are actually previous to realization and have been called awareness. Being aware is what we really are, and what is actually happening. What we make of that is just what we do. That is our function. And, it is innocent.

Ramana Maharshi says that the self-inquiry, “Who am I?” is the stick that stirs the fire of awareness  of self, and is, in the end, itself  consumed.  We can see from the above why this is so.  The very question, “Who am I?” begs for meaning.  An answer.  But, its pure looking goes ever deeper until eventually the question itself is beside the point.  Once pure self is rested in, it is before meaning and has no need for meaning.  All becomes meaningless and innocent, and un-separated.  Until that time, we can stir our own fires with the stick of self-inquiry and occasionally get a taste for what we already are.