Wednesday 26 September 2012

Different Stories, Same Pointing: SELF-INQUIRY

 
Dear Readers,

Hello.  I write to you in late September.  We have had such beautiful September weather here on the West Coast of Canada!  It seems that with shifting climate patterns August-September is becoming the new official "summer" in this part of the world.

Distributing my first book is becoming a fascinating adventure.  Thus far I have had some very encouraging feedback, including: "Those who are led to this little book will be lifted to their own recognition of what is inherently at peace inside them."

This is great news for the writing!

A number of people have asked me: "What was the most challenging aspect of the writing process?"

After reflecting on it the first time I was posed with this question, an answer came naturally.  The trick has been to present the same idea over and over and over again, but with enough diversified vocabulary and richness of literary style to give flow to the repetitiveness of the message, creating an enjoyable and relevant experience for the reader.

This little book is fundamentally about Self-Inquiry.  Self-Inquiry is the practice of returning to yourself, over and over and over again, until getting caught in believing temporal concepts of mind gives way to abidance in your eternal, ever-present, boundless True Nature.   Looking directly at This—becoming familiar with It by just being It—takes practice in the face of our busy, conditioned mental and emotional constructs.

Sounds simple, right?  It is simple, but not always easy.  This is why the message that What you actually ARE is Infinity Itself must be driven home again and again and again until we recognize it without a shadow of doubt.  Until we surrender ourselves to it.  Until we stop contracting around the hallucination that "I" am a separate, individual ME limited by my body, my thoughts and feelings.

One of the few texts that Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great sage of India, ever explicitly endorsed as an aid to Seekers of Truth was the Ribhu Gita, otherwise known as The Song of Ribhu.  It presents itself in a similar way to that which the Maharshi's teaching was so compassionately delivered over the span of his entire life—never wavering from one single, uncompromising message.  It is a great blessing that this book is now widely available to Western Seekers, having been translated from the original Sanskrit to Tamil, then to English.



The beauty and the challenge of this particular scripture is that it fills 765 pages repeating THE SAME THING!

Here are a couple of stanzas to give you an idea:

17:29
Oneself is, indeed, the Light that shines as itself.
Oneself is, indeed, the joy that is established as itself.
Oneself is, indeed, the Truth of being oneself.
Oneself is, indeed, That which is the complete, the perfectly full.
Oneself is, indeed, the Peace that has no equal to itself.
Oneself is, indeed, the thing that has nothing apart from itself.
Oneself is, indeed, the Absolute Supreme Being.
By such steadfast Knowledge, you, yourself, become the Absolute Supreme Being, which is oneself.

26:36
That which is verily of the nature of the pure Absolute,
Which verily is of the nature of the mass of Bliss,
Which verily is of the nature of the subtle Supreme,
Which verily is of the nature of the self-luminous,
Which verily is of the nature of the nondual,
And which verily is of the nature of the meaning of the undifferentiated—
That, indeed, am I.
By such conviction, be in the Bliss of ever being That itself.

(For any readers who may be interested out there, you can take solace in the fact that, at 73 pages, The Selfward Facing Way is a major time saver.  Plus I never use the word "verily.")

The following quote from B.V. Narasimha Swami on The Song of Ribhu's back cover sums it up perfectly: "Page after page, nay line after line, of Ribhu Gita merely goes on rubbing into one the Reality of the Self."

This "rubbing into" is what eventually opens the mind's capacity to stop believing in something other than what is truly real.

This is the sole purpose of my writing and my work.

I extend many warm wishes on your path of blissful Self-Discovery,
Sal




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