Just One Look Forum Archives

Dear John and Carla,

Hi both, hope you are well, and my sins are I am a taxi driver/gambler. I started spiritual practice and self enquiry just over a year ago including Holosync meditation and reading a number of different books including Maharaj and Maharshi and various Advaita related material. Of course in the early months I guess it was all, When am I going to get something from this? and the expectation of some results which as we know is just the 'ego' doing what it does, and the million questions that arise such as, Should I try to find a Guru? Am I doing this right? Am I changing? etc, etc.

Watching your 'The Last Resort' on YouTube a few nights ago I really felt like I had taken a quantum leap in understanding because you put it across so clearly and I thought to myself, Of course I Am here. I have always been here. All the pain, all the pleasure, every experience my whole life I AM HERE and it seemed so obvious. In the 3 or 4 days since then I have just tried to sit in that 'me-ness' whenever I can and I feel peace. My meditations are so much more enjoyable as I can just sit in that presence. Of course the ego is still comes back in every chance it gets.

I realise also that it's the ego that is also feeling like it has found something, some new joy or pleasure, and it is staking claim to it somewhat, I guess I should just let the ego do as it will and ignore it? So John, I guess what I want to ask is, What now? (bloody ego again!) Will this sense of 'me-ness' continue, become all consuming until total realisation? I guess I should just let things be.

Anyway thank you John so much for your message and I hope you can reply and we can meet someday.

Love and Respect,

J.S. (UK)

The problem of human misery has nothing to do with ego, its motives, its stupidity, its brilliance, or its persistence, and the solution has nothing to do with gaining anything. The actual problem is a deeply hidden false belief about our nature and our relationship to life, that is dissolved when the beam of conscious attention is brought to touch our actual nature by looking inward and striving to get a momentary taste of what it is to be just you. It is, so far as I can tell, actually not possible to sit there, and any peace that might appear while in the act of looking is entirely coincidental.

The belief that what must happen for me to be free of the feeling of being trapped in my life is for some new experience of realization or freedom to happen is a big part of what makes it so difficult to see what is so clearly in our face at all times. The idea that there is something wrong with my life, with the content of my conscious mind, with my motives or my understanding, with my emotions, my attractions, my aversions, etc., is just wrong. This life, with all of its incomprehensible wild wonder, turns out actually to already be the self-realization we seek.

But there is no need for you to believe this, or anything else I may say about these matters. If you will just try with all your heart to get just a split second of contact with what it actually feels like to be just you, all else will be revealed to you naturally, over time.

Please keep in touch. Forgive me for taking so long to respond.

in love,

John