Travis Eneix

I want to start with a couple of points of agreement for a line of argument. If you disagree with any of these points, then that is your experience, but the conclusion will obviously be faulty. If you believe the points to be true, then I believe the conclusion is sound.

Here we go.

All of the great ones, from Buddha, to Lao Tzu, to Jesus Christ, to Ramana Maharshi, to Confuscious say in their various ways that all problems, all suffering, all conflict & pain come from one source: the misidentification of what we are. We mistakenly come to the conclusion that we are this specific type of person, this shape, this job, this life. We do this because we must as a matter of survival, because we need a referent. Our body-mind is structured for survival as a paramount drive, and a mental topography of this versus that serves that drive incredibly well. The power to make distinctions is incredibly useful, but we become enmeshed in it and assign to a subset of the things we encounter our very identity. However, the great ones say that, because it is us that does the assigning, we must not be the things we assign our identity to.

If you accept the above as true, then the next point must flow from it. You do not have to accept it, but for now you can try it on and accept it as so. The next point then is that if it’s true that the origin of all suffering is making a mistake in identification then the cure is the truth of our identity. The way to disentangle oneself from the net of suffering is to know what you actually are.

Now, if that second point is true, and I find it to be so in my own experience and that is borne out by the words of the sages; then it follows that only you can affect your own escape. No one can know for you what you are. No one can have that experience for you. They can know it to be true. They can have their own experience of the true identity, but they cannot have yours. They can even know what yours is, but that does you no good. The truth of what I am, is the truth of what I am, and not of what anyone else is. The same is true for every sentient being, and cannot be any different. No one can give you what you are. And, since it is only what you are, no one can take it from you, hide it, hurt it, change it, or affect it in anyway. You are always what you are.

Now for my actual point. If the above three are true then teachers never teach you anything about this. How can they? They cannot have this experience for you, they cannot give you what you already are. The only things teachers, no matter how great can do for you is remind you of this. At best all they can do is remind you of the problem and its solution, which is always readily apparent and obvious. You.

You are what you are, and the only one that can know that is you.

John,

Thank you so much for your effort in transmitting the teachings of our mutual hero Ramana Maharshi.

You are right, it is so very easy.  All it takes is feeling what it feels like to be, just as you say.  All the fuss after that is story.

A lot of things have flipped over in my life lately, all wonderful, mostly mysterious, and just fine.

For the longest time I was searching for an end.  An end to suffering, and end to confusion, just an end.  As you say, I was searching for a final solution to “fix the mind.”  But, the funny bit was I had absolutely no plan as to what would happen after that.  I had fanciful dreams of the results of what it would be like to reach the “end of the quest” but nothing I could really picture.  I just wanted an end.

Today I see that what I really am has never changed, will never change, can never change.  In the ongoing play of this unfolding life I think of how very long ago life started on this rock, and how very long it was just rocks before that, and burning gases before that.  And, all through it, this same simple being.  Now I can see no end, and that makes me supremely happy.  No doubt that is more story, and no doubt it will pass, but this feeling of being will not.

Thank you.

The problem is, God is so present we lack the faculties to perceive him. Since he is so present, he appears absent. - Father Thomas Keating

We are born into this world separated. Our interface with the world is split into parts, even to the point where a sound seems different from a sight coming along disparate vectors and interpolated through different organs. We see this and that, front and back, black and white. The power of differentiation is incredibly useful for our survival, and it is an ability we seemingly cannot get away from.

When we look for something it is only natural that we would look for it as distinct from everything else. A thing which we can find. Often our first step in finding God is to make God other, and separate God out. This method of searching is not conducive to finding the ultimate suchness of existence, the source and substance of all, which creates and is everything at once across all moments.

But, how can an organ that is made of a thing, using transmissions that are that same thing, be aware of an object that is also that thing? With the eyes of God, using the light of God, how can we see God?

We cannot. What is always, in all directions and is the cloth from which all is spun, cannot be perceived as separate.

However, there is one place where we can look that will always tell us where God is. The one thing that never changes, and which all sentient beings can perceive even if they cannot communicate that perception. That one thing is the simple awareness of the fact that we are. All sentient beings know that they exist, that they are, and they know it without interruption, incontrovertibly. They may not always be sure of where they are, why they are, or even who they are, but they always know the raw truth that they are.

God is ever present, and intimately available as the simple feeling of being which cannot be separated from the fact of being. There is no way to cut God out, and we would do well to stop trying.

It has become clear to me that in the field of spirituality two mutually exclusive areas of development often become hopelessly confused. These two aspects of development are both equally important, both comprise the totality of our existence, and have absolutely nothing helpful to contribute to each other.

On the one hand there is the clearing up of misidentification. Using the language of self-inquiry it is the simple course of getting clear on who and what you truly are. By asking some version of the two main questions, “What am I?” and “Who am I?” one can become, overtime, disavowed of the false idea that we are just these lives. At the base of experience of any sentient being is the simple conviction, and feeling, of being. All the rest may be subject to doubt and interpretation, but on this one point all agree. That simple truth, stripped of all coloration, story and embellishment is what we truly are, and that raw truth is the same from any beings point of reference. We are simply that we are, and that we know it. That is the unchanging, faceless, unborn, uncreated, absolute which you are.
On the other hand we have our day to day selves. These individual instances of existence with all their vigor, voluptuousness, trial, tribulations, tragedies and triumphs. It only makes fair sense that untangling the mistakes in understanding and structure that creep in to all our complexity should be untangled, or refined, or developed. To live good lives, working toward clearer understanding of the phenomenal world and working on ourselves in that arena is the appropriate thing to do.

But, they are not the same. Categorically.

No amount of fixing your mind, or beliefs, or moral integrity will tell you a single thing about what you really are as long as you believe yourself to be that mind. It’s simply not possible. Likewise, no amount of realization about your own true unmanifest being will make you deal with your negative tendencies any better.

These are two completely separate streams of research. They may be complimentary, and in truth it may not be possible to get terribly far along one line without feeling a need to address an imbalance in the other, but they are not the same. And, it seems to me that a great deal of misunderstanding and strife is caused by mixing the two up.

You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, no matter how much you try. The wonderful thing is we have all been given ample amounts of both square and round pegs.

The other difficulty I think comes up is in applying the methods of one front to the issue of the other. Bad business. Both aspects of this paradoxical self need their own methods, and it has been my experience that they are complete opposites of each other. What has been working for me on one front is a disaster if applied to the other. The richness in a spiritual life, in my opinion, comes from the divinely schizophrenic balancing act of working on what seem to be diametrically opposed issues. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

You are the one truth of the one this-here-now ever created occasion, and you have bills to pay. Get to work.