In my pursuit of enlightenment I came to a paradox. I realized that I didn't need to feel enlightened because whether I felt realized or not, I was unavoidably That. This is a paradox because I felt a need, a driving force, to understand enlightenment. And yet I had the counter intuitive thought that it wasn't necessary because I was That. I was what I was looking for!
This seems to point to the fact that some part of me knew I was That, while another part was in denial. Perhaps we all know deep inside that we are in essence That which is existence. It is our mind that wants assurance. The realization seems to be when the mind comes into agreement with the intuition. That is, when we know that we know.
2 comments:
Good question Maury. In what follows I want to stress that I am what Ramana Maharshi would call an "ajnani", i.e. I have not as yet attained Self-Realisation.
I think that without realisation, we are always prone to fear of one kind or another, because we identify with a limited body and mind which are subject to threats from the external world and ultimately to death. Very intelligent people, whose identity is very bound up with their mental abilities and ability to use them, often say too that they fear a disease such as Alzheimer's which would rob them of their memory, vocabulary and reasoning facilities.
(We may have identifications other than those, such as youthful beauty which we fear losing as we grow older, or a well-stocked bank account which we could lose in a financial crisis, but the same principle applies.)
With realisation and the knowledge that we are not our body, mind or bank account etc., we are no longer fearful of losing those things because we know they are not who or what we really are.
This a great post! I came to a similar end in my seeking when I arrived right here.
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