If we get lost in a box of chocolates, imagine how lost we get in the creation? Have you ever wondered why eating chocolate, ice-cream, or drinking cappuccino feels good? Why any moment of happiness feels good?
A person may be experiencing sugar in different things everyday butunless they are introduced to sugar how do they know it?Try to describe sugar to someone who has never tasted sugar before, it doesn't work! They have to be introduced to sugar first, then only after experiencing it for ourselves they know what sugar is.
Similarly though we all enjoy and experience being with ourselves everyday 24/7, 365 days a year, if we have never been introduced to the nature of who we are, we can never know that whenever we are happy it is because at that moment we are with ourselves. By remaining a mystery to ourselves we keep stuggling to find happiness everywhere looking for it in everything, never realising that because happiness is our nature we will never find it anywhere.
Urban Vedanta uses what we know already; situations, landscapes, and events we all are already familiar to reveal the absolute truth of who we all are.
This is not some kind of speculation.
Self-Ignorance
Knowing myself is way different from knowing about myself. Knowing ABOUT myself means I have some ideas and information regarding who I am, whereas knowing myself means knowing my true nature regardless of my ideas about myself or what my thoughts are. Position in life, roles, qualification, education, beliefs and upbringing, are all relative, and being relative to me can never be who I am. Being relative in nature to myself how can they be? Before we can identify ourselves in the world and individuality take place, first we have to be there. We are - WE EXIST - we have to exist first or else what identification, what individualisation can there be? Without you no identification or individuality is possible! Therefore already present despite all our identifications all we need is someone to point this out and educate us as to what we are and who is present. In othere words introducing us to the nature of who this 'I' is.
Local Hero
Imagine being the commander of the U.S. Space Shuttle, the most sophisticatedmachine on earth. Even with the most sophisticated navigational equipment on board, travelling out into deep space, when all the lights go down, and the power is gone, left stranded out in nowhere, not knowing WHERE YOU ARE, who do you to turn to? 'Hello Houston I have a problem!' - Can anybody help? So travelling this creation, in a body more sophisticated than any space shuttle, with all our qualifications ideas and beliefs about who we are, using this to navigate our way in the creation when our indivdiuality gets hit an we get into trouble and a crisis, not knowing WHO WE ARE who do we turn? Where do we go? Trying to use our individuality as a map in the creation doesnt work. Its like trying to use a map of New York to navigate Paris and find the Eiffell Tower. No matter what or how sophisticated the technology or map is - using GPS satellite - it doesnt work. It cant work.
That the creation exists has never been a problem. Existing long before we came here creation will continue existing long after we are gone. Creation exisyting is not a problem to creation, its that you and I exist in creation not knowing ourselves, this is the problem. And this will continue being a problem for us as long as we remain ignorant of ourselves and exist in creation. Taking identity and individuality made up of ideas and beliefs that I have created and picked up about myself, to be who I am, which all have nothing to do with creation, anything can come along at any time and threaten my existence putting me in conflict with myself, and then feeling overwhelmed I am finshed.
Like planning any journey, long before I can go anywhere, I have to know WHERE I AM. If not, any direction I go in is going to be the wrong direction, and is going to get me in trouble. So if I want to venture and enjoy being in the creation, surely I have to know WHO I AM first? My being the starting point means I have to get to know myself or it's just a matter of time before I find myself in trouble. Not knowing the recipe of creation, cooking up my own ideas about myself means anything can come up at any time and proving me wrong throw me into conflict and crisis. Anything I come up with is bound to be wrong. No matter how exotic and elaborate my ideas are, or beautiful they might seem to me, the fact is having nothing to do with the creation it's only a matter of time before I end up in serious trouble.
Being in the creation, what really matters? The existence of creation or your existence? Of course your existence is most important - because if you do not exists whether the creation exists or not really doesn't matter. Without you even God's existence doesn't matter! Gods existence and the creation isn't the problem. Neither Creation nor God has a problem with creation. Only we do. We have the problem of not knowing ourselves or what we are doing here. Me not knowing myself - means not only do I have a problem, I am the problem - but this problem only persists as long as I remain ignorant of myself . As soon as I know myself the problem disappears and no longer am I a mystery but creation too is no longer a mystery. Because solving the problem of my on self-ignorance I am no longer a problem to myself nor am I a problem to anybody else - least of all the creation.
Once I make sense of myself, everything makes sense. Making sense to myself, creation too makes absolutely perfect sense. Thereafter wherever I find myself in creation makes no difference to me.
Getting to know my 'self'.
You may be the top businessman, lawyer or doctor of medicine with untold wealth or knowledge at your disposal, but say illness, or bankruptcy hits you making a mincemeat out of you, who are you then? Finished. Say your business is taken from you, or your particular knowledge or expertise gets superceded by a newer fancier system of knowledge making you obsolete, what then? If money is your security and someone hacks into your bank account, or the world economy crashes, without my money, who am I? What happens to me? With all my security gone I'm finished. Beginning to question, if I'm lucky I begin to realise these were all only things I had relative to me. Thinking job, money, career, education, position in life or degree and knowledge are who I am I am making a huge elimentary mistake. None of it is me. None of it can ever be me. Me relying on these things of course when they go, I am gone, because when they go, I have nothing left. So now whats more important? What I HAVE, or WHO I AM?
Not knowing who I am in the creation I am poorer than the poorest; dumber than the dumbest. In the eyes of creation me not knowing myself means I am Dumber than the dumbest - dumber than a donkey.
At least as a donkey, I think, but as a donkey I dont know that I am thinking. As a human being though I know that I think, (or should know) and therefore I also know that I exist. Yet in spite of me being conscious of myself, the nature of my experience is that I don't know myself. In the language of creation therefore, I am dumb. And not knowing myself I may just as well have been born a donkey!
Vedanta | The meaning of the word 'I'
A teaching is something that shows me something I never knew before. Not only that, a teaching is not available through any other means. Whatever a teaching shows me, once I see it for myself, knowing the truth of it, it is never subject to change.
Its like mathematics. Though mathematics exists, until I meet the right teacher and get to know methematocs, for ne mathematics cannot exist.
Like Table Mountain. Suppose you visit Cape Town for the very first time, and while you are there rain clouds cover the mountain. Although it is right there in front of you, and everyone knows it, because for you clouds cover it, they prevent you from seeing the mountain. Not knowing it, you have no way of knowing it. Coming home from Cape Town someone says 'Hey. How did you like Cape Town? Did you see Table Mountain?'
'Table Mountain?' you ask. 'I never saw any mountain. What mountain are you talking about?' 'What are you mad? You go all the way to Cape Town and don't see Table Mountain? Its huge, how can you miss it? Its one of the wonders of the world. Everyone knows Table Mountain?'
So for everyone Table Mountain exists, but for you, having never seen and been introduced to the mountain, Table Mountain doesn't exist!
Say you decide you have to visit Cape Town again just to see the mountain. Unable to get the thought out of your mind you can't believe there it was the whole time but you never saw it. Frustrated the thought of the mountain is bugging you. The thought of the mountain begins to haunt you. You read books and see photographs of it until finally arriving in Cape Town again for the second time a few weeks later, again its cloudy! Aah No! No mountain. Finally on the very last day, early in the morning, the sun breaks through the clouds and the mountain reveals herself to you - Table Mountain! As you look up at the mountain and it begins emerging from the clouds you cannot believe your eyes. This huge mountain - there all the time, yet for you it did not exist. It could not exist. As you stare up at the mountain your brain freezes and all thoughts are suspended as your breath gets completely taken away. Taking the cable car to the top you climb all over the mountain and revel in her beauty. Your happiness knows no bounds as sitting on top you look out at the view and see for the very first time the curve of the earth and all the wild flowers like a rainbow rippling over the summit.
Now think. When you could not see Table Mountain, hidden beneath the clouds, not knowing it, did Table Mountain exist or not? Of course it existed, but for you it did not exist and could not exist.
It is the same thing when it comes to ourselves. In spite of experiencing being with ourselves 24/7, sleeping, eating, dreaming ourselves; being with ourselves every minute of every single day, 365 days a year - caught up in the cloud of our own self-ignorance we just don't know it.
Having no way of knowing our true selves or who the 'self' is - this is the irony. Just like being shown the mountain, until someone who knows the mountain shows us the mountain, we cant know it. So in the same way someone who knows 'self', is able to introduce us to ourselves. Otherwise until then, we cant know ourselves, we remain a mystery to ourselves. Even though we use the word 'I' the whole time in referring to ourselves, we dont know its meaning, and 'I' remains secret and we cant know its meaning until we are introduced to the mystery that is ourselves. Why? Because just like looking at a menu in a restaurant we only see what we want to see, and order what we want, so in the creation we see only what we want to see.
Just as no matter how many stories we hear about Table Mountain or how many photographs we look at, it is impossible to know the mountain. So no matter how many books we read, or how many teachers or teachings we go through, or practices are given, we may be hearing all about self, but without the right teacher or teaching we are wasting our time and have no way of knowing ourselves. Just as seeing - having darshan of Table Mountain - our experience of Table Mountain takes place immediately, so on seeing and have darshan of our true selves, it is impossible not to know ourselves. In seeing- having the truth pointed out to you- the knowledge like any knowledeg takes place instantaneously. In the relative world knowledge happens when name and form meet. Putting name together with form, the knowledge of something takes place. Nama rupa. Once we see it, and it is named, we know it. Thereafter nothing takes that knowledge away. Nothing.
In the case of ourselves which is that in which all is relative, that in which all is seen, and experienced, experiencing it all the time as ourselves we cannot see self, and cannot know it. It not being relative, being that in which everything relative, self can only be known through a means of knowledge which is not relative in nature. This is why traditionally there are teachers.
The meaning of the word 'I'
Who I am is not an identity. Who I am is not a name, not a degree, a profession, nor a belief. I don't need a belief to be myself. These things like beliefs and ideas are all relative to me, happening in the presence of myself. Who I am is independent of name and belief, including the belief I have about myself. Who I am is existence itself, independent of any beliefs that I have for it is in my presence that all names, and beliefs are assumed and have their meaning.
Having already concluded that I am a name, or a position, and that I depend on things for my existence like, career, qualifications, roles, and beliefs, I cannot understand that when it comes to knowing my true self none of this is necessary. Already in the dark, I will continue to be in the dark, until someone who knows comes along and points it out to me.
That I am none of these, and that I remain lost in my own self-ignorance no books, spiritual, or religious ideas, and rituals can ever show me the truth. In reading and doing so called 'spiritual practices', all I end up doing is finding refuge in another identity, thereby reinforcing my ignorance of myself, covering myself up with new ideas. Creating stronger and stronger identity, and individuality no matter how spiritual the identity, it is still just another way of taking refuge. Therafter having accepted all these ideas about myself, accepting anything else becomes extremely difficult. It takes a bulldozer, or whole demolition squad to remove the huge ediface I have built up around myself. In the end it is only my own ignorance of myself, brought on through the virus of individuality, that keeps me in the dark and ignorant of the truth. Ignorance prevents me from knowing my self. In this darkness of ignorance, how is wisdom ever going to dawn?
What is truth.
Before someone sailed around the world proving it was round, everyone thought it was a flat Earth. What was once a thought to be true proved upon further investigation to be false. Some stars still shining in the night sky are no longer existing, only their light remains, the star itself is dead having vanished millions of years ago. The sun we see rising everyday has never risen, it actually remains still, it is only the earth that is moving revolving around the sun that makes it seem that the sun is rising. Thus what we see as facts and as the truth, prove on further investigation to be false. Upon investigating ourselves, with the proper means of investigation, we soon discover the truth tha we too are not we first imagine. Truth is that which is never subject to change. Upon investigation, and verification, truth always remains the truth.
So who am I?
Being brought up believing in everything other than ourselves, through upbringing and education, identities get thrust on us which have absolutely nothing do with who we are. On being born a name is given and then, based on some ideas we get given as children, our identities form, and get elaborated on as we grow older. As our identity grows becoming more exotic, and elaborate and our sense of individuality grows and establishes itself, so too our sense of isolation sets in. Education, degrees, careers, relationships, ideologies, religious beliefs, all getting dragged onto us, forming our personality, our individuality, and identity, it is which ends up excluding us, and isolating us from ourselves and the totality of creation, leaving us feeling isolated, separate and apart. While all this is going on, we fail to see that at any time, any one of our primary roles that we assume to forge a path for oursleves, can get thrown into turmoil, and falling into a crisis, threaten our individuality, and we are finished. As we grow older, becoming adults, the threat to our individuality can come at any time, and in any form. It can come in the form of bankruptcy, or the loss of a partner through divorce, or death, or though an injury, or sickness. Only then, when we are forced to question ourselves, do we ever consider our reality, and who we are, until then, we continue believing our false identity is who we are, believing that in it we find security. If you stop to think about it, this is all a huge accident waiting to happen! While establishing individuality, our true self though there all the time, co-ordinating and managing every thought and action in every moment is ignored. Without it, not even our individulaity would exist. Until we get in a crisis who we are really remains a mystery, and we fail to see that it is in our presence that all our individualisation, and identification takes place to begoin with. In our absence nothing has meaning, whereas in our presence everything is meaningful.
Rather than an elaborate shadow we think we are, we are the light in whose presence all light and shadows are apparent and meaningful. It is in this presence, the presence we are effortlessly, that all identities seem real and become relevent.
Blessed by creation, I have no idea how blessed until I learn the truth about myself and the meaning of the word 'I'.
As human beings what are we reaching out for all day? What is our ultimate goal? What do identities, religion, secular or religious beliefs, career, job, house, car, marriage, and possessions of all kinds offer that we dont already have? What does stockpiling huge amounts of everything, where nothing ever seems enough do for me? Security? Surely these are the last thing that make us feel secure? Surely with more possessions all we become is insecure depending on all this stuff? Surely we just become more dependent and vulnerable to their loss? A cyber crime expert with a click on a computer, can wipe out our bank account and all our security can be lost in a split second. Thinking I am secure and independent depending on things like money, or gold, or having loads of possessions is stupid. The bigger the house, the bigger the mortgage, the more possessions I have, the more I stand to lose when these things are gone! If security is what I'm after then, I am going about it in the wrong way. Things, objects, situations, investments, relationships, can't ever make me secure, because they don't have security in them to give. All these can do, is make me insecure and miserable giving me sleepless nights thinking what I'll do if it all gets taken away!
Looking for Happiness.
Looking in the world for happiness is like being in a kitchen not knowing how to cook. Rarely things turn out the way we want, and mostly our recipes for happiness turn into a complete disaster.
So what are we human beings on the march for day in and day out? If whats been said so far means anything, and you are still reading this, then stop and think; in everything we do, what is our main motivation? In gathering things, relationships, and experiences what do we hope these bring us that I don't already have? Having a house, a car, a wife, a holiday home, what is another house, another car, another holiday home in a new exotic location going to give me that these, the things I already have can't? The fact is, in gathering all these things, what we are all looking for and what we believe we get form them, is ultimately HAPPINESS. Because of our conditioning, we are conditioned by society to think we want the object, situation or relationship because it will bring happiness! From childhood learning to associate happiness with objects, situations, and relationships, in grwoing older we keep attributing happiness to things, and in the end happiness we believe can come in any form. It can be a car, a house, sex, ice cream, or a relationship with another person but ultimately we all see these as things we can use to invoke our happiness. SO HAVING ALL THE THINGS. CARS, HOUSES, LOVERS, LOADS OF MONEY. If money makes us all happy why arent the billionaires who have it happy? If gold makes us happy, then why aren't the people who love gold and horde gold happy? Everything we all do as human beings has but one purpose; one goal; to make us happy. Then why if we ultimately do everything we do, because of happiness, are we not happy? The mistake we make is to equate happiness with objects, situations, and relationships, thinking in these things we will find our happiness. Because we have grown up equating things and situations with happiness; we worship any situation, or object, seeing it aas our source iif happiness. These are the gods of happiness. Get a new car be happy. Get a new relationship be happy. Get a new house be happy. Worshipping these we sacrifice ourselves on the alter of our happiness, dedicating ourselves to these gods, be it money, fashion, sex, a personal relationship, rock stars, or film stars, sports heroes, lifestyle, food, possessions of any kind, sports, practices, any object situation or possession, believing in it we find, and invoke our happiness, dead to ourselves wwe stumble through life mesmerised, and under the speel off THINGS. Some of us are happy with a lot, others are happy with less, one person wants a castle, another a hut, but the truth is, no matter who we are no one wants the object for the objects sake, we all only want everything for the sake of happiness.
H A P P I N E S S.
Where can we find permanent happiness. What is the address?
Logically, no situation, no object can contain my happiness. If this were the case someone would have found the recipe for happiness a long time ago and made a pot load of money out of it. Take ice cream for instance. When I eat ice cream I may be happy, but, can ice cream really contain my happiness? If Ice cream is responsible for happiness then everyone eating ice cream would be happy, but this is not the case. Many poeple hate ice cream. No. The only reason we feel happy at the time we eat the ice cream is, because at that moment, as in any moment of happiness, I am being with myself. It can be another person, an object, situation, its all the same. I am happy in that moment, because at that moment, the moemnt I am with the object, the thought, and need of the object or situation goes away, leaving me to be with myself.
Where do I look for the ultimate happiness?
The beauty of these questions is that as we slowly draw nearer to grasping and touching the truth about ourselves, we realise that happiness never exists anywhere in the objective outside world nor does it exist inside us. Ultimately there is nothing in creation that can grant me my happiness, for as creation is constantly changing, so too my desires are always changing, and therefore things and situations, or relationships, can only make me temporarily happy. One minute they are there next gone. Things cannot sustain our happiness in the long term. One minute a new car makes you happy next thing the new model comes out making you unhappy. One minute you are in love with somebody, the next thing they just look at someone else, and don't want you, and you want to kill them. So love that made you happy turns to hate, and suddenly we end up hating that same somebody. One minute I can't live without them, next I can't live with them.
So ultimately in looking for happiness, in searching for happiness where should we start?
If happiness exists at all, it must exist, and have existed long before all these things came along. So in asking myself where is happiness, I should ask where did I lose my happiness to begin with? Outside in the world or inside myself? Wherever I lost my happiness, this is where I should begin my search. So where should we look in the world where it doesn't exist of should we look at the faraway stars fo rthe answer?
In searching for myself I deny my own existence.
Being with myself 365/24 wanting to learn the truth about myself and the happiness that I am, how difficult can it be? Where should we start in wanting to discover the truth about ourselves? Looking anywhere other than myself is just plain stupid. Truth is simple. Whats your name? Only one right answer. 1+1=? Answer 2. Can there be two correct answers? Likewise to the question 'Who am I?' can there be multiple answers or one true answer? Only one true answer is possible, anything else is false. Truth is simple, lies get complicated! So how difficult can it be?
Like tasting sugar for the first time, someone who knows sugar, shows you sugar, showing you what it is, until that time, you cannot know what sugar is. The truth about ourselves is the same. Irrefutable. The beauty is it is not something we need to gain, as myself, I am already existing, so there is nothing I need or can do to get to be with myself!
In order to gain the knowledge of Table Mountain, we needed the sun to shine through the clouds, revealing the mountain. As the mountain being there all the time only needed the sun to shine through for it to be revealed, so too the truth of our existence, although here all the time, only needs a teacher who knows to reveal the truth, otherwise we can't know it. Like sugar. Someone who knows sugar shows us what sugar is. Words revealed the truth of Table Mountain, and words are used to reveal the truth about sugar, and of who we are as human beings. Up until the time we heard about the mountain, and sugar we had no idea about them.
So like the ship in the fog out at sea, waiting to come into harbour. The Captain of the ship~ you~ may hear the fog horn telling you that there is land and a harbour up ahead but, even with the fog horn saying 'Auuham Auuhauumn', you can't see the harbour or land in the fog. There all the time. You need the harbour pilot tug to come and steer and pull you into the dock to dry land. We can be told something is there, but unable to see it, finally we don’t want to see it, until someone or some crisis in our lives wakes or shakes us up to reality.
Searching for my wallet, or thinking I've lost my car keys, finding them in my hand or pocket. There all the time, only we just do not know it. Searching for the sunglasses that are on the top of your head. You are the owner of the glasses thinking they are lost, in searching for them we the owner are denying that we are the owner. Who is lost? The glasses or you? All it takes is for someone who can see my glasses on top of my head, to point it out! In self-knowledge its the same. Looking for mysellf thinking I am lost, someone who knows and sees the truth, sees my problem and reveals the truth to me about myself. Like losing your keys inside the house you go looking for them on the pavement outside. Someone sees you and asks 'What are you looking for? ' 'I lost my keys inside my house.' 'Why you looking for them outside? Surely they are there inside where you lost them?' 'I am looking outside because here there is a light on the pavement. Inside there is no electricity!'
Until someone turns the lights on, trying to see ourselves, by ourselves means we keep on stumbling around seeing only the darkness of our own self-ignorance. If you are ready, take it! If you are still busy thinking the experience of sweetness is in the sugar, what to do. Angazi! :)
