Why Does Meeting Our Self Seem Such a Challenge?

So, this seeming quest for self realisation, to find myself, there must be some strange inability not to be able to meet our Self. What’s the trouble, actually? Let’s look. We meet so much in this world, we meet so many people, so many things, we meet all these states: waking state, dream state, sleep state. So many emotions, sensations, perceptions. But how come to meet our Self seems such a challenge? Are we able to look without judging, able to look without concluding, able to look without trying? Are we scared of what we may find?

This is good, what he says. He says it is such a paradox. And it is full of this paradox because we may be trying to do something, then we hear that there is nothing to do, then we try to do that ‘nothing’. It is like, how do I try to do that ‘nothing’? So, dropping or picking up — all of this, all of this confusion is there. But we can step back from this confusion or jump over it — it doesn’t matter whatever terms we use because the confusion does not contain you. It is only that we have used what arises in this box of intellect to define us. But you are never limited by it. You are never defined by it. That’s why I keep reminding you this: What if there was nothing to be solved? All of this doing and not doing are just made-up ideas. This is a doing, huh? [Waves hand] This is a doing? The breeze is flowing, the tree is swaying — is that a doing? Both are movements in our perception. But one, we say, is a doing — I am doing, I am speaking, or you are doing, or you are speaking. But the other we don’t give any agency to; we don’t say there is a choice-maker. Now, you will say, of course, you are moving your hand. But this one that is moving the hand is not to be found. Nobody has ever found this one. So, when our perception is separated up into all of these categories — doing, not doing, wanting, not wanting, good, bad — then all the struggle comes, and all of these come with their opposites, so, therefore, the paradox is built into the label itself. It is not possible to escape the paradox. And, therefore, not possible to escape the anxiety of the paradox. Once we are caught up in that paradox, it comes with inherent anxiety. That anxiety is built into it because we have got used to wanting to settle. But because the paradox is inherent, therefore you cannot settle there, and it seems so forever shaky. So, this is okay because to see that when I get mixed up in these conclusions, these notions about the world, it is filled with this confusion and dissatisfaction and anxiety. But when I investigate into just what is, or when I surrender, let go — when I inquire or I surrender — all these ideas, they fall apart. Now, the funny thing is that when we come to the dissolution of these ideas also, we may experience even this as some sort of anxiety. It is like some fear of heights or something. When you notice yourself without boundary, the same reaction that we would have if we were on a big ferris wheel or something, can also come sometimes. You feel like you want to come back to safe ground, limit yourself again. Because sometimes we may just be broadening out. Recognising what is truly here, it can feel like no, no, that is too much, I was liking seeker much better than this. So, let me return to my comfort zone of [joins hands]: I am looking for freedom, sir, how can I find it? And then I say let go, no reference point, nothing to hold on to. So, first there is sort of an anxiety of being a limited person not knowing what to do because if I do this then the opposite is also there and I can never do it properly anyway. And then, when we open up, then the seeming discomfort of the dizzying heights of your Self. How can I deal with this? This is too big. Let me return to my limited idea about myself. Now, I don’t often speak about this, but here faith or devotion is very helpful. If you go on this big ride ferris wheel scary thing, and if you are holding mother’s hand, it feels a bit like you will be okay. In the same way, devotion to the Lord, devotion to the master, devotion to your own divine presence can be very helpful — if it is there. That’s why in many of the traditional paths, the first ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, could be used to inculcate this trust in the master, this devotion in the master. And, in a way, to weed out those who cannot have it. Who cannot have it — they can get weeded out, in a way. Because as you meet your own true Self, you might feel anxious about what you are actually discovering about your Self. And if somebody reminds you that this is good, you are not failing, you are not falling, and if you can trust such a voice, then you can see through this temporary air sickness. But if we only trust our mind, our mind has no true concept about this Reality, and it will lead only to further confusion. So, this ‘Be the cow that jumped over the moon,’ as Guruji [Sri Mooji] says, is this quantum leap over the mind, to come to the edge, or beyond the edge, of our objective knowledge and in a way to rest in that, to remain in that. And, of course, these things are just metaphors that I am using because there is no actual jumping or leaping happening. You are That already. But it can seem that way. The mind tries to define what you are and it can seem like you jump over all of these definitions into something that cannot be defined — your Reality, your Truth.