Question & Answer with Enza Vita

The Courage to be what you are

• ENZA: The teachings of RamanaMaharshi, one of the greatest sages of

this century, is the teaching of self-inquiry through the question, “Who

am I? Many of us think we need to find the answer to that question,

but the answer to “Who am I?” is irrelevant. What’s relevant is the

looking. His teaching is simply to look at ourselves, to look at the sense

of “me.” Whatever your sense of me is right now, just look, listen, and

feel that. You are here. Look at that sense of “am-ness,” the sense of

existing here, now.

Q. For four years I have practiced RamanaMaharshi’s method of self-inquiry, asking myself “Who Am I?”

However, I am still unable to receive an intuitive sense of who I really am.

• Self-inquiry is a method to get you to look at yourself. When you look

at yourself, without trying to know or understand anything, you realize

that you have always been this simple presence that is looking though

your eyes and hearing through your ears right now and always.

• This you is the same you that was peering through your eyes when you

were a baby, a child, a teenager. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs, ideas,

practices, and mental states have all come and gone endlessly, but the

fundamental experience of beingness remains always constant, always

steady, always here.

• Asking the question, Who Am I?is like holding up a mirror to try to

look at yourself, yet no matter how much you look, nothing appears in

the mirror. The I can never be found. In order to clearly see this,

however, the mirror has to be truly empty. If the false I, the egoic self,

shows up in that mirror through our beliefs, ideas, and concepts, then

all these diversions prevent us from seeing the awareness that is our true

nature. This causes an (apparent) obscuration. In actuality, the real self

has never gone anywhere. Nothing can make it disappear, just like the

sun is a constant even when there are clouds in the sky. But from the

viewpoint of the false ego, an obscuration is apparently taking place.

So, how do we fix this?

• The question,Who am I?points you back to the inner center of yourself,

the place where you are so present you can truthfully say, “I AM.” You

have to be completely and entirely present and aware without

distraction. Then you can directly see the difference between

experiencing “I am” as a concept and experiencing “I am” as

presence/awareness.

• When you ask yourself the question Who am I?you will immediately

notice a vast space, and that vast space is the answer. You, your

natural state as presence/awareness, is the answer. This is all that there

ever was, is, and will be.

• Ask the question, and then stop there, at the edge of a vast aware space

of not knowing. Go no further. Allow the answer to reveal itself. This is

not an intellectual knowing. If you just continue to pursue the question

rather than paying attention to what is actually there, thoughts and

ideas will continue to flood in to try to fill that unknowingness. You

will never find the answer in the realm of the mind, because the mind

seeks always to fill in the space with ideas, concepts, and imaginings.

Why? Because the mind, the false self, is uneasy with not knowing!

Generating fantasies gives the mind a reason to exist.

• You know that you exist. You know that you are. It is not just a

thought or a belief. The verb “to be” is expressed as “I am,” and this “I

AM” is the basic expression of presence/awareness. When you think

that there must be more than this simple presence/awareness, that there

is something more you need to know about it, you are continually

chasing thoughts round and round in your mind. Stop.

• If you keep going back to this core, you discover the presence/awareness

that is the ground of your being, the place where happiness, fulfilment,

and meaning are found.

• First there is a seeker, a body-mind, a false I. Then there is a finder, a

witness, universal consciousness. Finally what is revealed is what you

are before being either.

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