Hunting the I

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The way self-discovery taught by Robert, Ramana and Nisargadatta is to abide in the I Am, but what does this mean? What is the I Am? How do I abide in it? How do I practice self-inquiry?

One of the books I recommend that provides a method for abiding in I Am is that by Michael Langford.

Michael writes that he practiced various self-concepts of self-inquiry for 27 years with poor results. He was no more self-realized than when he started. So he “thought” about the meaning of pursuing I Am and states he made rapid progress using the method he teaches in his book.

Michael never was able to latch onto a feeling ‘I Am’. He found a method and concept that being aware of awareness itself is abiding in the I Am; the method he discovered, or I should say he rediscovered is Soto Zen meditation called Shikantaza. He will deny his method is Shikantaza because he believes he discovered awareness watching awareness method of self-inquiry, but his method is no more or less than Shikantaza, sitting in silence, doing nothing, merged in emptiness. This is not easy. It takes a while. The mind has to settle and become quiet.

One other main self-inquiry method is to tease out the real I Am feeling and abide there. This is generally not easy either depending on many factors.

If one practices Shikantaza first, and attains many, many samadhis over a long period, one gradually finds release. However, the practice must continue because the I Am has not been killed. The I Am still resides as a remnant of the personal you.

The fastest way to kill the you, the I Am, is the abiding in the I Am as taught by Ramana and Nisargadatta. When this is done, the I dies forever; with Shikantaza there is a too early identification with the totality of consciousness and that which lies beyond.

If release is found by the first method, for it to become a permanent release, the I Am must be found again and followed.  This is extremely difficult if one has dwelt in emptiness for years. It feels like going backwards.

Many people have written to me they were unable to find a personal sense of I even after years of thinking and meditation. Many have dwelled in emptiness for years and begin to feel angry because they have found no happiness or release. They have skipped the destruction of the I Am process which means it is still alive but unfelt, covered by the focus on emptiness. They have become lost in emptiness and attained nothing.

Ken Wilber is right; you cannot skip steps. It is best to start with the following the I Am and complete that task. Then abiding in the emptiness of the divine witness, the absolute, is effortless and permanent.

I once saw a book entitled “Hunting the I.” This to me is a perfect description of the self-inquiry process, hunting around in the internal phenomena that one associates with existence, identifying the I, then latching onto that first-person sense.

Of course, the latching does no good because that I phenomena will disappear after some time because it is not really I Am, it is a phenomenon, a false self. Then one must hunt again and again, identifying false I's then dropping them, until the ultimate false self will die a final death.

Is any ‘practice’ necessary for self-realization?

This is where the concept of hunting the I becomes a workable method.

One looks within to find the I Am. Every few days, weeks or months one discovers what they believe is the really “true” I Am; the subject.

Sometimes it is the self-luminous light of consciousness, sometimes illuminated space-like internal emptiness, sometimes it will be a feeling wholly based on the body sense. That is, some will feel that the sense of I Am as a sensation in the heart area of the self-perception of the feeling of the body. Others believe that they are aware of the body as an internal visual sense which is really an object in imaginal space and thus unreal. That is, they will discover the inner sense of infinite (or non-infinite, limited) inner space.

Sometimes the searcher will continue to dive down into the sense of an internal, self-luminous space and can do so for years believing that imaginal spaciousness is the I Am, the true self.

This search can go on fruitlessly for years, for the self is not a thing, object, state or anything that can be found or experienced. You may already understand this.

What to do?

At this point you must become aware that there is something that is aware of the self-inquiry processes. That “something” is the Self. That something I call the ultimate observer or the Self.

Then the “new” practice becomes looking at the looker, not at some body sensation or false I in imaginal space. You are already aware of the looker, but not that the looker is the true you. You have been caught in the misunderstanding that the looker may find the true self, when in fact, the looker is the true self. The looking "for" is the problem; the looker is already complete and at rest. Therefore, join the looker.

When this is understood you have a clear way to abide in the self: just look towards the apparently internal sense of looking, not for a nexus, or an emptiness, or a heart sensation or any other sensation or experience. These are preliminary practices and steps before you discover the Looker.

In a way, the looker feels like a sensation, but it is not a physical sensation as is awareness of a body sensation or awareness of a thought.

The practice is to turn inwards towards the source, the looker.

I have no idea of what you will experience; it appears different with different people.

But ultimately you will understand (see, experience) is that there is no looking inside or outside. There is just one consciousness. The looking within was to counterbalance a lifelong habit of looking outwards.

I want to emphasize that the phrase "look inward" is a lie. There is no inward--or outward. This distinction only lasts while you think you are a body. The phase "look inwards" almost sounds like a command to look into the inner emptiness of imagination, as inside the body. It is a bad instruction. It reinforces the idea of the reality of inner and outer, inside the skin and outside.

The world, your inner state, your searching, your imagination about what self-realization is like, will all disappear and you will understand that everything you have experienced until that moment is imagination.  You will be free of all concept and imagination. In this you must abide for a long while, but self-abidance itself does not become continuous for a long time.

At some point, “everything” will disappear as unreal and you will be left in silent mind existence. It is hard to explain this, but this does not disappear as if you floated in endless aware space, but rather the world will cease to exist as an apparent object. The I will disappear as an apparent subject too. There will only be oneness with no separate observer of the world or self.

Later even that will disappear as one realizes there has been witnessing of this whole process in the background. There is this "thing" that has cognized this entire process, has cognized the body, personal self, the world, the waking state, the dream state, and also the process of understanding.

Regarding this “state” one can say nothing because no attributes exist, and to state attributes or what it is like will lead you astray form the real practice. This is not a state, it is that which observes all the states.

Now, this is one way of explaining the awakening process. Michael articulated his way, and both Robert and Ramana articulated their methods. Notice that Robert, Ramana and Nisargadatta rarely talked about the “experience” of finality, only the method and Advaita philosophy that entirely obscures the goal by adding a conceptual impediment.

Ditto Langford every other teacher. They provided only distracting phenomenology and philosophy, artificial stories to lead you to their articulation of a method and your practicing it.

I do not want to lead you too far astray, but all these methods are what I called before, “massaging the go,” and themselves have nothing to do with the finality, yet to apparently practice is a must for all, even for those who claim no method or practice is possible or needed.

When one awakens, it will bee seen all methods miss the point, they are something the ego is doing, but it is a doing that at some point may result in the sense of I-ness to disappear.

MY OWN METHOD

Robert taught the who am I self-inquiry process only because SOME people felt they needed a method or way to occupy their mind. All methods, Robert taught, lead to silence. Deep silence, the "deepest" is not only where the absolute is revealed, but also is the absolute.

All of the above "methods" were those I practiced for years with no real change. They resulted in all kinds of experiences and new understandings, but there was no release or death of the I-ness. Only little deaths.

When I met Robert I just surrendered after about year two. I knee deeply that any method I practiced was only in the mind and could not destroy the personal I-ness. I was just massaging the ego--the mixture of imaginal "gases" I call the imaginal space or world.

But, even this trust and surrender lead to release. When Robert left for Sedona I felt completely alone, abandoned.

However, the process of getting Robert packed and moved was quite chaotic and nerve racking that I started just relaxing and listening to Eastern sacred music, especially that of Muktananda and Yogananda.

I would just lay on a couch for hour after hour listening to and being carried away by the music. My body relaxed most of its tension. I did almost nothing except eat and do some walking. I began to feel blissfully happy.

They, one day, it happened in the form of the shower experience I describe elsewhere on this site and call the first awakening.

I can hardly recommend this to anyone else. I loved sacred music and chanting. I also loved dwelling in emptiness and silence when listening to the chanting. Therefore, few would benefit that were not so disposed.

One similar method that might work better for you would be to take all of Robert's recorded talks, put them on an MP3 player, an iPod, an external speaker system, or an MP3 or iPod playing clock radio, and just listen to them. Just listen to the talks whenever you have any time. Have sacred music in the background.

All of Robert's talks are always directed towards getting you to enter silence. His talks will repeatedly bring you to silence. The music will/could cause bliss. Both together allow complete relaxation, a melting of the sense of self--individuality--into a complete sense of happiness. You might say this is the easy way, but only if you are ready for it.

By the way, the alarm on some clock radios can be set to pick a specific talk by Robert or a random one. You might want to be awakened by his instructions on how to practice self inquiry.

If you read the biographies or autobiographies of the great teachers, each will describe a different process and may actually recommend processes which were different from their own because they see the idiosyncrasy of their own processes.

Probably one "method" closest to this spontaneous method, I describe as "falling backwards into the self."

I lost of people identify the "feeling" of self as the feeling of the totality of the body. Actually, it is not, but it feels that way.

The method is to feel that sense of self as initially manifest as the body sense, and then imagine or feel yourself falling backwards into it. Falling backwards by relaxing more and more into the comfort of those apparent body sensations. It is quite blissful and settling.

Almost all of these methods will produce useless experiences and understanding that will go away but which will seem world shaking at the time. So, don't stop. Keep going.

I want to be quite clear: None of these methods will produce awakening/enlightenment/self-realization or whatever you want to call this state you do not know yourself. All methods are on the level of mind.

Long practice of a method does not produce awakening, but, you might say, allows it to happen.

I think that Nisargadatta said it best when he said someday the I Am lets you go.