From the very beginning my work has been to understand the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi.
I have waited many years to acknowledge this publicly because until very recently I had no personal insight into the actual nuts and bolts nature of self-inquiry.
I knew all along that the gift of the love of life that I had found was entirely a result of the desperate wrestling match I engaged in with Ramana’s simple advice while in solitary confinement in prison. But having won the prize with no real practical understanding of how it had come to pass, I was not willing to inflict on people a half-baked message and offer no practical instruction on what to do.
Now, after more than twenty years, I do have a clear understanding of these matters which has grown in me entirely due to the patient willingness of many hundreds of people who have endured my failed attempts to say what I really wanted to say.
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John, from my outside perspective, I cannot see the shift in your understanding. You have been talking about Ramana, and how you wanted to copy his approach in prison but initially did not recognizse that you suceeded, for a long time. And the instruction of the looking have not much changed either. I also find your 2007 book still valid and helpful. Maybe I miss something?
What you may be missing is the first twelve years of our work, the period between 1998, when I left prison, and 2010, when that book was published. Carla and I started travelling all over the country in 1999, offering satsang anywhere we were invited, always trying to find a path to authenticity within that framework. In 2006, driving home from Chicago, we held a satsang in Boulder, Colorado. We later came to refer to that meeting as our “Escape From the Spiritual Ghetto.”
From then on, I was consciously trying to find a way to say what I saw directly, with as little reference to the spiritual agenda and terminology as possible, and much of the language I have used since then has proven to be the best I can do to say what I see directly and without resorting to spiritual jargon.
What has changed in that sixteen-year time is that I have gained confidence in my expression because of the abundance of reports of good results that have come and continue to come to us. That confidence took some time to take hold. In fact, it is only since last year that all the remnants of my hesitation have flown the coop.
The content of the book Look At Yourself, which is adapted from retreat meetings in 2007, was edited by Carla before being published in 2010, so as to reflect the state of the evolution of our understanding and expression at that time.
We continue to watch for new ways of expressing what we see in the manner of ordinary human affairs, concerns, and activities. We strive to be practical, immediate, and ordinary.
Our greatest source of inspiration is our relationship with people like yourself and all those who have been generous enough to communicate with us about their own view of the nature and results of the act of looking.
Thank you.