Knowledge and Religion

Now what do I do?

Oftentimes in my blogs I talk about meditations, or you can call them inner experiments so that you can experience the place that these words point to. For instance I ask you to discover where you actually experience happiness, or I ask where do you actually experience the world, over there or in here? If you carry out these experiments you will discover that your experience is richer and more amazing than these words can convey. Also, you may notice that sometimes your actual experience is beyond what your thoughts can capture. That’s why it is possible to completely overlook what you are experiencing and to only notice the experiences that seem to fit in with your thinking.

Because of this I often get the question: Now that you explained all of this, what can I do to get there? Remember this is a blog on self-knowledge. So you have to wonder: who is the one who stands separate and attempts to get there?  The assumption here is that you are somehow separate from yourself and have to get to it as if you were an object. In fact this question assumes that you are an object.  This object can take on many forms. For example it might be the doer of actions or the thought “I”.

You Know yourself because you are Your-Self _____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory.

See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:
Amazon.com

________________________________________________________________________
But here is the thing that sets self-knowledge apart. You do not know yourself in the same way that you know an object. You know yourself by direct experience, because you are yourself.  Like the sun, you shine by your own light. You do not need a separate light to know the thing that you already experience, your own self-nature.

At first this may seem very subtle. But once you actually stand here it becomes the most obvious thing that you can imagine.  As Ramana Maharshi said, “A day will dawn when you will laugh at all of your struggles. That day is here even now.” So here is an ancient Indian story that illustrates this. 

The Tenth Friend
Ten friends were on a holiday from school. So they decided to walk through the forest  to the local monastery where they hoped to learn how to meditate. On the way, they had to cross a stream where the currents moved rapidly. Just to be safe, when they got to the other shore the leader decided to count each friend to make sure they were all there. She was shocked to find that there were only nine friends. 

As the leader counted again and again, the friends got more and more worried. Where could the missing friend possibly be? They got soaked as they searched the river bed. When an old man walked by he found the despondent friends and asked what had happened. The leader cried, “We started out as ten and now we are nine.” In an instant the old man grasped the situation and saw what had happened. He asked the leader to count her friends. When she counted the ninth friend the old man tapped her on the head and counted ten. The friends were relived because the old man had found the tenth friend. They thanked him and went happily on their way.

Finding your self is simply being yourself
So what happened? The leader forgot to count her self. And what did the leader have to do to find the tenth friend? Did she have to do pertinence for many years at the monastery, or work really hard, or think the right thoughts, or read the right books?  No, it was just a matter of knowing that it was just a mistake, the tenth friend was never really lost.  With that knowledge, all of the sadness and fear turned into joy.

So when I ask you to experiment a little and to notice where you experience happiness, or where you experience the world anyway, it is not the beginning of a long impossible journey with a million steps. When you take a fresh look at your experience you will have done all the doing that is necessary. That’s because you will find that the thing you are looking for, you never really lost. That’s because even now you experience yourself. Since you don’t see yourself like you see an object, it is easy to overlook your very identity and mix it up with the things that you see. Self knowledge is just a matter of returning your sense of consciousness, reality and bliss to the place where it comes from anyway. Although you don’t see yourself, you know yourself because that’s what you are.

When you discover what you really are, it will be like coming home. You will find that the security and joy that you were looking for in a million different places, actually comes from you, and not the thing you hope to find.  Best of all you will have found the still place on which even birth and death rests.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

The one Advantage to Self-Knowledge is the Freedom that you Are

I love it when questions become a conversation and I can sense a person getting clearer. Here is another question from Bill:

Thank you for the reply.
        I got your book about a week ago. I had already been studying various religions and had tons of stored up knowledge but wasn't so good at applying it to my life and you do a great job with that! I thought about what you were saying about the different goals for meditation and saw that my view of it was off. Because my first real experience with meditation was of the energy type I assumed that's what it was supposed to be. But that's not at all what I want. I led a life full of suffering and family trauma so I never really appreciated life.

And also equally I have the desire to have the words or actions for the people in my life to impact them when they are going through tough times. I've noticed as I become closer to my core my words just carry more "weight". And I am noticing the beauty of the world around me and life in general more as I stop worrying so much about the different paths and where they might lead to. Practicing the meditation you gave me and going through your book I can see the words point towards the core which is like a mirror which reflects the mind back at itself. At times the mind doesn't really like what it sees. I definitely had an experience of being sick in my stomach and chills up my spine disgusted that I had let that happen as I got a clear view of some of the frameworks that make up my mind.

I more often have moments of an inwardly centered nature where things seem very still inside and very "real" for lack of a better term. But I guess it all just seems kinda sketchy to me and I won't stay that close to my core for long. I still seem to carry large amounts of energy most of the time and it seems like it wants to break free like out of restraints as the mind cries sketchy! The other thing of noticed is that most of the time my mind is drawn inward toward the core at the level of the eyes, like where Hindu woman have the dot. Then I carry a lot of real heavy feeling energy. Sometimes it seems to draw through more in the middle of the forehead and that is a lighter feeling energy. I guess I have been pursuing crazy energy experiences and stuff for a while now but have now seen that is the last thing I actually want! Any feedback would be much appreciated and thank you for writing the book it is extremely helpful at applying all the head knowledge I have been accumulating.
                               -Bill

 

Hi Bill,

Thanks for getting my book. For all of your studying, one thing is really good: you did not become an intellectual, mearly memorizing lots of information. Rather you go by your direct experience. Starting with your experience you will soon discover how amazing your direct experience really is.

When people feel suffering they start looking for the devil to find the cause of their suffering. Now you should know that the devil comes in many flavors. Some people call it the subconscious, negative thinking, and conceptual thinking to name just a few. While there is a place in spiritual practice for looking into assumed limitations and concepts, I wouldn’t suggest beginning your meditation practice there.

Let Your Experiences Carry You

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory.

See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:
Amazon.com

________________________________________________________________________

Rather you are starting to have new experiences that you describe in your question as appreciating the beauty around you, and a deeper connection with the people around you. The way you described your family and upbringing, I would bet you didn’t have much chance to experience these connections. Before getting into obstacles take some time and enjoy these experiences. See if you can bask in them and enjoy the place that they are coming from. Let your actual experience reveal itself by itself. Be adventurous; don’t assume that you know how things will turn out; be ready for some surprises.

Here are four comments that could help as you sort things out:

First, as you go deeper in your practice it won’t necessarily mean that more people will start accepting you or liking you. The only sign of this wisdom is more clarity, more peace and more joy. If you look to people in the world to affirm your experience, it is like asking the reflection in a mirror to affirm the mirror, or the dream character to affirm the nature of the waking one. It won’t always happen. You have to know the waking one directly, because that’s who you are. Sometimes you will find that as you go deeper and become wiser, you start to attract friends who are deeper and wiser too. But the only thing that happens for sure is that you discover what you really are.

Here is a verse I meditated on persistently during my practice:
Praise and blame, loss and gain a yogi is the same.

Second, your experience of the core as a mirror which reflects the mind back at itself. Watch out for having too many moving parts careening through you mind: The core, the mind, and a mirror reflecting back on itself, and a separate thinker in there too who likes or doesn’t like what he sees; too many parts. Don't deny this experience, but as you go deeper you will move towards oneness and simplicity. Just note that your experience is probably pointing you to something deeper that you haven’t fully seen yet.

Third, don’t attempt to repress energy experiences. That would be a misunderstanding of what I said. If they are meant to come let them come; they can teach you many lessons that are hard to put into words. The third eye is a doorway to white light experiences.

Fourth, if you do look into limiting frameworks that you lived by, do so without judgment. Remember when you see limitation you are on the verge of a new found freedom. That’s because you are the seer of limitation, not the one caught in it.

Please let me know if this answers your questions or brings up more questions.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

Is Happiness Connected with your Circumstances?

When I had my own business in the 80’s, I noticed that my happiness and peace of mind bounced up and down with my balance sheet. I would get a big job, work on it and make some money. But I wouldn’t have time for sales and then my income would plummet. But I had a sense that my peace and joy shouldn’t be going up and down like the stock market. So I felt that I had to do something about this. Fast forward 30 years and things that affect your life and your business are moving even faster. Now they seem even more out of control.

For instance every time you attempt to make a decision about your life or business do you have to consider the economy, the job market, competition from the internet and a rapidity expanding array technologies that you didn’t even know existed. Because you have no control over these factors, do you feel like a soothsayer trying to predict an uncertain future? And all you can think of is: I hope I don’t lose everything that I worked so hard for and starve.

It’s not your circumstances it’s you!
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory.

See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:
Amazon.com

 

_______________________________________________________________________

You can see why today many people find life stressful, as they look for peace and security in this rapidly changing world. So in the midst of all of this change, where can you possibly find security and lasting happiness? To open this door, you have to turn the door knob to the right instead of the left.

Today I want to share what I found; by shifting the place where you are centered you can find the vast unseen harmony that really makes the world go round. When things get tense and you feel as though you are fighting for survival, you might lose sight of this harmony. But did you ever consider how many systems in our body have to function at a high level just so we can live. Moreover we have eyes and there are things to see, we have ears and there are things to hear, a sense of touch and there are things to touch; that we get hungry and there are things to eat, and we need to breath and there is air.

The same harmony that runs the universe also runs our life

How did we get here, a different view of time?

On the 200 Year Birthday of Darwin

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Darwin I thought that I would republish this blog: How did we get here, a different view of time? As you will see, sometimes your direct experience can be different from your thoughts about it.

The Theory of Evolution
As most of you know, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a theory of how we become human beings. According to this theory life stared as simple cells that gradually changed and became more complex, until these cells became entirely different species such as monkeys and apes. From there, as these species evolved, human beings were born.

The theory supposes that random mutations occurred in the genetic code of an organism. The beneficial mutations were preserved because they aided in survival. Other organisms died out. This is a process known as natural selection or survival of the fittest.

Are we limited to two choices?