STYTS: Stop Taking Yourself Too Seriously

You've heard the advice: Stop Taking Yourself Too Seriously! 

Enjoy life, eat, drink and be merry. 

But if you can't find happiness,  ask who can't find happiness, if the one who can't find happiness was absent, would there be unhappiness?

Hundreds of spiritual masters, priests, pundits and new age gurus are misleading seekers by simply renaming self with consciousness, awareness, observer and yes, Jesus and God. It kept tripping me up for decades. Liberationunleashed.com finally gave me a simple option. Why not start with the simplest option? Look and see what you can tangibly find. If you can't find anything, may be there is nothing to find. No self, no observer, no awareness, no God just as there is no Santa, no unicorn no superman. It was too simple but everythime I checked I found it to be true. 

Now, I can't promise that like me you wouldn't hold a secret desire and admiration for an all pervasive nothingness which some may call God but you will find as I have that starting from ground zero, literally believe in nothing, is a good place to hang your hat and carry on life. One beautiful outcome of this is that suffering becomes just like taking a crap, a momentary discomfort and sometimes a great relief.

Just to remind you of the techniques, close your eyes and do the touch expereiment and see that there are no finger tips, no skins, no hair and no self and no observer. All just labels mind loves, nay needs to attach to things to function. Once you see that there is no one, it will try to label it to awareness like some other guru is talking about. But that too is bullshit.

Someone Never Suffers

Look inside, outside, around and in imagination. Look everywhere and  find moments when all is serene within you, around you before you and after you. Try meditating, sleeping, exercising, loving or even holding your breath. Shiva taught this technique eons ago. Idea he had which is evergreen is that once you have tasted this moment often when there is no suffering, you will realize that all suffering is transient. Since something that can disappear for a moment, can disappear forever. If you know the magician's card trick, can he really pull that ace out of the pack again and wow you?

There is someone that never suffers. Why can't that be you and forever?

Reality

Not much is real, at least that can be reported by the feeble instrument called body and mind.

Reality is a word which by definition means, that which is not fake or unreal. 

As soon as you move, even a thought, the illusion begins. So the only way to even barely sense reality is to be very still, not move. And then you get a glimpse of the peace and joy that can be felt, even though it is second hand. 

Prior to memories being recorded right after birth, the only memory you inherited was at a cellular level from million or even billion years of evolution;  some call it incarnation. There are layers of reality that goes on the base of non existence. Nonexistence must be a precursor to existence. Deduction leads us to reality being complete and absolute nothingness.

We could stop right there, since it is an oxymoron to look for nothing. But mind deduces things based on previous arguments, historical events and current sensations. And the mind having tasted the bliss  when things, feelings and thoughts are eliminated or reduced, projects that reality must be nothingness, stillness, quiet and void.

Is there any point in doing this line of intellectual meditation? Absolutely, every other nonsense you think about leads to suffering. This one actually makes you happy. If you can be happy.

How can you be sure you have seen through the illusion of self?

I, me or self is nothing but a thought construct, an illusion or a story made up by the mind spurred by the society and family from an early age. As I have argued in another blog below that it is indeed a hard task to see through this illusion even though it is clearly a requirement for awakening by almost all masters, scriptures; modern or ancient.

And there are techniques galore. Every one has new twist on it. Our own method at liberation unleashed is a focus on direct experience. Hindus will have you chant Sanskrit slokas and conduct elaborate rituals, Buddhists meditate for weeks on end. Christians require follow the one and only Jesus and Muslims ask to surrender to Allah. Every one, bar none wants you to drop this ego or the I, me or self.

I recently revisited some of papaji's videos and loved his prescription; just be quiet. So I did for almost a week. I am cheating a bit by watching the video and writing this blog. But in another clip he says you have to use a thorn to take out a thorn. Any way he inspired me to contemplate on how can you be sure that you have indeed seen through this illusion?

This is a practical question for me and several seekers that I have come across. There seems to be residual doubt left in many minds that may be we haven't looked hard enough or we may find this I somewhere. It doesn't help that there is an entire group of teachers who float terms like consciousness, awareness, soul and the awakened one. These to me are just promoting the self out of its current existence into a grander one. Still an illusion, for if there is something beyond, mind will never get it and that means we can't discuss it.

So how do you know that you don't exist? The answer lies in suffering. Suffering is the hallmark of self. No self, no suffering. Pain yes, sensations yes but suffering no. Once the illusion of self has been uncovered, suffering should cease. Thoughts of fear, anger, hate and love will still happen but none of them will cause suffering. Unfortunately for most this is not an overnight or instantaneous shift. It takes time even after the event of disrobing the I. But there is a clear shift in the severity of suffering. So, before if you ruminated over the threat of losing a job for days and weeks, now that may only last a few hours.

Life and living is easier since without the debilitating effect of suffering, you can now handle the pain and fear in a proactive manner. You can do something about an oncoming disaster rather than be frozen into inaction. That is a good thing.