Who Am I? Over 100,000,000 people seek an answer to this question each month. This would indicate there's a widespread lack of connection with the Self in our world. How does this happen you might ask?
If we look at our lives from birth onwards we will most likely find some answers to the question of how we became so disconnected from ourselves. From birth we are constantly told how to live, what to wear, how to behave, how to think. Our main stream schooling system promotes conformity to what's considered 'normal' behavior, thinking, clothing,etc. By the end of our time at school we're popped out like mass produced 'entities' totally unable to connect with our own inner knowing or guidance. We desperately seek our answers on the outside, looking for reassurance through what we own, our clothing style, our job and so on.
Is it any wonder that so many tertiary college degree courses are never used by the people who have completed them? How many people have left school, taken up a course that looked 'acceptable', 'profitable', a 'good idea', but when they discover what it's like to live inside that career they realize they have no interest in it at all.
If you want a quick way of accessing who you really are, there is a very simple process that takes about 5 minutes to complete. You'll need a friend to do the process with you. Maybe you can do a swap - one of you has the opportunity to do the process, then the other.
So, here's what you do... You and your friend will sit face to face about 30cm (1 foot) away from each other. One person will close their eyes and the other person will softly and quietly start to ask the question "Who Are You" over and over. The questioner asks "Who Are You?" and waits for the other person to reply. Then again the questioner asks "Who Are You?" This process is repeated throughout a 5 minute period of time.
The important key to the answering process is to answer with the very first thing that comes to your mind. Don't labor over your answer trying to find some acceptable or 'normal' answer. Be as childlike and spontaneous as you possibly can.
In my first experience of this process, I started out answering things like - bus, chair, room, car, house. In a very short space of time my answers started to change and I experienced increasing peace. Very quickly I started to experience myself as this vast energy being. The truth of me was not bound to my physical body. I experienced myself as everything - everywhere at once, unbounded by the body, limitless, vast, all possibilities!
The reason why the answerer needs to be
totally spontaneous in answering the question "Who Are You?" is
because the mind needs to be totally free from efforting or concentration. The
mind has to be allowed to rest, float freely and just be observed as it darts
here and there. By spontaneously saying the first thing that the answerer
observes, the mind lets go of controlling the moment and enters a space of
peaceful observation.
In this free floating space of simply
observing the mind moving, we start to experience our self as pure energy/presence.
You will begin to experience yourself as being one with everything you thought
you were separate from previously. You will see that everything you see, touch,
experience 'out there' is actually 'the same stuff' as yourself. For perhaps
the first time in your life you will experience yourself as pure energy -
unlimited by boundaries. You will experience that in behind everything in your
life there is this peaceful, eternal, present observer. This process will lead you
to a direct experience of your true nature quickly and easily.
After 30 or so years of daily meditation, I was amazed at how quickly this little process could bring a person to direct self realization. This direct experience of inner peace that I'd labored to find through daily meditation appeared so effortlessly in 5 minutes! I have done this process with people who have done no "inner work" and watched as these people were transported into a state of absolute peace and expansion and a consequent elation about their life. It has been life changing for these people to have this first hand experience of their true nature as their former limited and restricted view of life opened up to greater possibilities and more peace.
Here's a video from Gangaji on this topic...
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