Travis Eneix

“To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’.”

~ Ayn Rand, 20th century philosopher from The Fountainhead

Everything we do in life is built upon one foundation. Every thought, every action, every experience, every story comes down to one seed. That seed is “I.” Everything in existence, that we are involved in, springs from or is directly related to, “I.”

This “I” comes before every thought we have about ourselves. Every opinion we profess. Every name we give. It is at the forefront of whenever we see a form and assess its nature and purpose. In every relationship of every kind, whether to ourselves, an object, or another “I”, is founded on our thought of “I.” We can say nothing of ourselves without this “I.”

This is all a no-brainer, and painfully obvious, and not terribly interesting because it is so ordinary and banal. I am an “I.” Yeah? So what? No big deal.

The big deal comes when we realize that we have no idea what this “I” is. All of our self-identifications come after this “I.” “I am cute.” “I am a tech support rep.” “I am a good driver.” “I am am loyal friend.” All of those statements, the ones after the “I”, don’t actually say what that “I” is, they tell a story about that “I.” I can go to great lengths describing Sarnath in India to you, but you will never know it until you have been. And, of course you will then only have a new story in relation to your “I.” This “I” is our basis, but we go through life telling stories about it, rather than finding out what it actually is.

Since it is so much the basis of our lives, I think that this quest is the most basic (and important) one available. Without knowing this “I”, the root of it, the source of it, I will never be able to do more than tell a story about my “I”, to myself or anyone else.

We live our live trying very hard to make the story that comes after “I”, acceptable, useful, successful and beautiful, without really knowing what this spring board is.

What is this “I?”

That question (in hundreds of forms) forms the core of almost all spiritual paths and is the heart seed of Atma-Vichara (self-inquiry) as given by Ramana Maharshi. The answer to that question is the final goal, the only goal that concerns reality. Without it, we live our lives as stories only, never knowing what “I” am.

Two Ken Wilber Quotes -

If you are having a dream and you think it’s real, it can get very scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and you realise it’s all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know isn’t real. When you realize it’s a dream you can afford to play.

The same thing happens when you realize that ordinary life is a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don’t become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it’s all a dream, it’s all pure Emptiness. You don’t feel less, you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it’s all your dream.

Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical effervescence.

and

But, egoless does not mean “less than personal”; it means “more than personal.” Not personal minus, but personal plus–all the normal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints, and sages–from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhaya. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers–from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years. And they did so, not because they avoided the physical, emotional, and mental dimensions of humanness, and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations.

I have often felt at odds with the conventional view of the meekly smiling enlightened one who allows all to be as it is, and is unmoved by the world to lift a finger.  I am not sure where that image crept into my assumptions and stories about people with spiritual development, but I do know that such a person strikes me as fundamentally ineffectual and at odds with the dynamics of my Western upbringing.   I much prefer Ken Wilber’s take on the subject.  Who was Gandhi if not a 78 pound man who shook the world to its foundations?

Live free, and as big & mighty as you are called to do so.  If life happens such that you live a quiet life of serene contemplation, spreading a message of possibility with a sweet half-smile, so be it.  But, such women & men will not climb to being CEO of Fortune 500 companies with strong dedications to social activism and environmental protection.

Live as you are, not as you think you should be.

I got to “attend” John Sherman’s latest online satsang.  Quite wonderful.  I also got to speak with him this time.  I wanted to share the recording with you.  You can hear me speaking with him about 53 minutes in.  I think he’s quite an amazing teacher of the self-inquiry given by Ramana Maharshi, and I have been working with him for the last year.

I hope you enjoy the piece.

Cheers!

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.

- Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Who can argue with the smile of the simple?  Who can argue with someone who dos not conflict?  Our modern barometer for success is too dependent on achievement and gaining at other’s expense.  The successful person is the one who dies without guilt or misgivings.

One of the most basic facets of meditation practice is the conscious act of becoming an active witness to your own mental processes.  In our every day lives, we tend to habitually identify ourselves as the thoughts circling through our head.  In meditation we quiet down and take a few moments to look at ourselves constructed from these thoughts, as an object, rather than from ourselves as subject.  As we see what we held to be ourselves as an object, we become disavowed of the idea that it is us since we must be the ones seeing it.  Our identity becomes an object of our consideration, and we naturally broaden our perspective, and this allows us to recede into ever deeper, wider, higher realms of conscious consideration.

As Ken Wilber would put it, the subject of one level becomes the object of the subject of the next level.  It’s a constant process of fading farther, and farther back to our true selves.  Into the ever present, unchanging reality that the great sages of old have described to us painstakingly.

But, if it’s true that our true self is this ever present, unborn, changeless perfection then there can be no stages to its development.  It must have no moving parts.  So, the idea of moving farther into the unchanging self we are seems to be incorrect.  For me, the effect this line of thinking has is a sudden skip of tracks.  The whole process of infinite regression, “it’s turtles all the way down!”, of ever more profound subjects becoming the object of the next more evolved subject reveals itself to be purely a mental construct of that very object; the chain of increasing development of the experiencing mind is a product of that very mind.  That mind is not changeless.  It is not the true self.

The true self is aware of this whole process.  It is present during the whole affair, the ground upon which it is all built, the source of its power, and the object of all the mind’s striving.

In that clear moment of seeing the whole process as play, one is catapulted onto the other side of the game, out of the game and into naked reality.  At least until the laundry needs folding.