16 Jul I Am That – July 17 2018
Posted at 19:04h
in Daily Thoughts
|
Q: Is self-realization so important?
A: Without it you will be consumed by desires and fears, repeating themselves meaninglessly in endless suffering. Most people do not know that there can be an end to pain. But once they have heard the good news, obviously going beyond all strife and struggle is the most urgent task that can be. You know that you can be free and now it is up to you. Either you remain forever hungry and thirsty, longing, searching, grabbing, holding, ever losing and sorrowing, or go out wholeheartedly in search of the state of timeless perfection to which nothing can be added, from which nothing – taken away.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That Most of us come to spiritual practice because we feel something lacking within, or because we find ourselves too much in pain and fear and the suffering of a life – career, romance, family – that just isn’t working out the way we thought it should be.
Whichever the reason, the answers to our life ‘problem’ lie in our relationship with the Self within, that place we find that is beyond all suffering. This is the place of pure consciousness.
Consciousness is all there is. It is all I am. It is what we will experience when we stop listening to the endless yammering of our minds, the constant mental comparisons of what is with what should be. To find that which seems to be lacking, or to find freedom from pain and fear is as simple realizing the Truth of our nature, that place within that never changes. The place of I Am.
Simple. Sometimes not so easy. But really, what else is there to spend our time doing?
Today I will sit in meditation, twice, morning and evening, and before or after each I will allow myself to imagine what it might feel like to be free of pain and fear and to know myself as something so vast that my thoughts and feelings become simply ripples in the stream of life that I am.
|
Fountain, Studio City, CA
All original material copyright © 2018 Jeff Kober |
