Just very briefly
talk about how that was for you.
You were asking yourself
'who am I.' Where did that take you in terms of investigation?
To begin with I had a presumption that what I am is this individual entity
and that if this individual entity
practices for long enough,
studies hard enough,
this individual entity will gradually dissolve itself
and of course that's not the case!
The individual entity cannot dissolve itself!
So I reached the stage of complete frustration.
The separate entity trying to get rid of the separate entity
through all this means and it didn't work.
So
a point came when I really stopped
trying to get rid of this separate entity,
stopped seeing it as the problem
and just turned around and asked myself 'What is this entity that is unhappy, that is searching,
that is trying to quiet the mind, that thinks the mind is a problem.
I started to look for it.
And that was a very decisive turning point
when I started to look for the entity
which was initiating all these so-called spiritual activities.
And this in a way
we could call it 'the journey home.'
It's the moment the prodigal son turns around,
he gets to the end of the possibilities of the body, the mind, and the world and he turns around,
faces himself.
So it was a moment when I turned around and said
'OK, no more practices for a while. I am going to stop these practices. They are like bandages(?),
they are not going to the heart of the problem.
What is this one, who is this one that is unhappy?
And as I began to look for this one I never found it.
So you had the feeling of being unhappy
and you looked inside
and what you're saying is that you couldn't find the person or the part of you that was unhappy.
Is that right?
My life and in this case my spiritual life
was motivated by a desire ...
the entity that I believed myself to be
'I' this inside self
want to find happiness or enlightenment.
'I' want to find, 'I' want to be enlightened, 'I' want to be happy.
And this had
I had explored it normally in the world as one does,
then I had begun to explore it spiritually, which is a kind of refinement,
we could say of the worldly search,
but nevertheless it's still a search, more are in the realm of the mind.
In my case stilling the mind, states of mind.
So I had tried all these things,
had got some temporary relief,
but no real satisfaction.
So at some stage I turned around ' Who is this one?
Who is this 'I', this 'Rupert,' that wants to be happy or enlightened or peaceful or whatever?'
'OK, if you are ruling my life, show up!'
'What are you? Where are you?' I want to know you. I want to get acquainted with you.'
And then I started looking.
But we never find that one!
How did you turn it around?
What was your process of turning it around?
It became clear to me that
up until then I had presumed that it is 'I-this-body-mind,'
'I' this entity that knows the world.
but it became clear quite quickly to me that 'No, it's not 'I-this-body-mind' that knows the world,
it's 'I' this whatever exactly I am
that knows the body-mind and world!
In other words, the mind and the body are known.
I know my thoughts,
I know the body.
The body doesn't know,
I mean your cheek is not listening to these words,
an earlobe is not listening to these words, a thought cannot hear!
A thought cannot see!
It became clear in my experience
'No, it's not a body-mind that knows or experiences, the body-mind is experienced, it is known.
But I know that it's known by 'me.'
What is this 'me' that I know I am,
that is present, that is intimately myself and that
that knows thoughts but is not made out of a thought,
that knows sensations, but is not made out of a sensation?
And of course wherever you look, wherever you try to turn towards it
it's always the wrong direction.
If I were to ask you now to stand up and take a step towards yourself,
where would you go?
Every step that you take would be the wrong direction
and yet you could never get away from yourself!
It was like that. I tried to look for myself
'No, I can't find myself in thoughts, I can't find myself in sensations,
images, feelings, thoughts.
So you looked for yourself in thoughts,
you looked for yourself in sensations,
you looked for yourself in feelings.
I said to myself 'Ok turn your attention now toward your thoughts'
and I would make these little exercises up with myself
'Give your attention to your thoughts' - whatever it was I was thinking about -
simple, easy
'what should we have for dinner tonight?'
You give your attention to that thought. Very easy.
Then I would take myself
Now give your attention to
your body
the tingling sensation at the source of my feet.
Easy, I know exactly where to place my attention.
And then I would ask myself 'OK, now turn your attention
towards whatever it is that is aware of this thought
or this sensation.
Because whatever it is that is aware of thought and sensation is what I call myself. It is 'I'
that knows the thought, that knows the sensation.
And so I would say
'OK, give that one your attention, turn towards that one.'
And to begin with - because we are accustomed to focusing on objects. On thoughts, on sensations, on perceptions -
I would begin to look for myself for yet another object, a kind of super-object, a subtle object
and whatever I landed my attention on
was again some subtle
maybe a very subtle feeling
in the body.
Then I would ask myself 'No, don't give that feeling your attention,
give the one who knows that feeling
who is aware of it? Give that one your attention!
To begin with I would go out again towards an object and then it would collapse back.
The impulse to go out again, to find myself as some kind of a thing,
some kind of an object,
the impulse would rise up and the futility of it, the impossibility of it would just automatically collapse the effort.
It was so ridiculous to look for myself as some kind of an object,
because I already was
myself is to close to myself to be found or known as any kind of an object!
So there was a collapse of this looking for myself as an object
and it was replaced by a sense of
'I am myself already!'
I can never know it as an object, but that doesn't mean that I can't
know it intimately in my experience,
not in a subject-object relationship, but it knows itself.
It became so clear that the way to know myself was simply to be myself.
That is awareness' way of knowing itself, by being itself!
And it is always itself!
It became so obvious that I had mistaken myself
for thought or a sensation or a cluster of sensations or an image.
And it became obvious,
to begin with in kind of momentary glimpses,
but over time these glimpses stabilized.
It just became more and more obvious that I
that I was already intimately acquainted with what I was looking for!