May 19, 2022
I drive a car. I sit in it, start the ignition, grab the wheel, put it in gear, press the accelerator or brake as needed, travel in it, turn right, turn left, feed it fuel when the tank is low, fix it when it breaks, maintain it preemptively, navigate a labyrinth of highways and byways, spend time and effort in using all of its inherent capabilities to attain a given destination--am I this car? To say that I am is akin to identifying myself as my body, which, like my car, is simply an object. However ingeniously they are conceptualized and assembled, both my car and my body are simply products born of and fueled by the elements. Yet we completely identify as our bodies and throughout our lives suffer the ramifications of this ignorance. Even those born into so-called handsome, healthy and strong bodies inevitably disintegrate into dust. As the mechanic says in the movie Bonnie and Clyde, "there's dirt in the fuel line." No escape.
Now think of the mind, the other magnet of self-identification. This, too, is a constantly purring means of orientation and navigation. It conjoins the body through five senses, decoding from them the very world around us. It stores this data, memory, and crunches it like a computer into fresh encodings, concepts, all of them colored by conditioning or judgment born of circumstance. Of course we can take this mind-computer analogy much farther, but the purpose here is simply to bring us to the same question we asked of car: am I this mind? If so, then who is at the wheel or the keyboard, whose fingers manipulate the touchscreen?
And all of us answer throughout our lives "I am." And all of us need to ask upon deeper reflection a more pointed question: "who am I?" Because we are surely not a physical vehicle, nor are we a computing device no matter how ingenious. Even the most brilliant AI is in the end artificial, just as even the most beautiful man or woman is in the end merely dust. So again, "who am I?"
I'm here to tell you, you are far more than intelligent dust. In fact you are nothing that can be objectified, quantified or qualified at all. Nor am I saying this out of some personal belief or someone else's book of religion, both of which are born of that intelligent dust. After four decades of trial and error (not error, persay, but jnana "not this, not this") I am now wide open to the direct experience of what I truly am, and more and more I am established here in what always was, is and will be this predominant and pure state prior to body-mind existence.
Huh? Well what is it, you say, what's it like? And I must tell you that any words or metaphors I come up with only cast shadows over it, wake up the mind into smothering it with hypothetical concepts. Well shit then, you say, why should I bother to seek after something inexpressible and unobtainable? Two reasons: 1) You are already that and simply blind to it, of which your life's purpose is to correct this, and 2) Do you want to spend the rest of your life limiting yourself to intelligent (from your perspective) dust when you can experience the true and everlasting peace that can only come from finally answering "who or what am I?" And I will also add that with this experience of self-realization those old bugaboos of birth and death dissolve into illusory speedbumps--this alone merits some earnest investigation!
I know this is not for everyone. Unfortunately we are taught from infancy to attach to our body-mind. Breaking this deeply embedded habit requires a desire to do so. We need a state of deep dissatisfaction to drive us toward liberation, and the world mutes this desire beneath all manner of transitory satisfactions. So off we go, ever onwards with that nagging restlessness and discontent. Deep down we can't deny this. My own life has been very tumultuous. In retrospect I see how this was necessary to propel me towards meditation, and eventually meditation in accordance with Advaitan sages such as Shankara, Ramana and Nisargadatta. It propelled me to puzzle through what at first seemed cryptic and to trust that direct experience--not tenuous faith--awaited my earnest seeking. I was also driven by what Nisargadatta might term consciousness seeking itself. It is found.
Yes, Sue is going to holler through that door and I'm going to feed into her anxieties and she into mine, especially when the diabetes raises its ugly head (bless her good heart and incredible patience with me these many decades), but I am open now, open into pure consciousness at last, and in this I abide first and foremost forever. It's all good now. Death is fast approaching--no matter--my worries are few. The long dream will end just like the short ones and this very prodigal son will return to his source.
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