The question «Who am I?» appears so often in our lives and yet we turn away from it. There are many times when we feel prompted to ask: «What is life, who am I?». Perhaps we have felt, since childhood, a vague longing for something «more,» a divine yearning. Perhaps we feel that the true reason for our birth eludes us, passes us by. Possibly we have become bored with all the’ ways we have used to try to give meaning to our existence: the accumulation of learning, experiences and wealth, religious pursuits, compulsive affairs, drugs and so on. Or perhaps we are facing a crisis in which we no longer feel able to control the situation. Perhaps we are simply terrified of death. All of these events are opportunities not to be missed. They come from life itself, inviting us to look, because life knows that when we really see it, we cannot help but admire it….
The first step in self-inquiry, therefore, is to see how cowardly we are, how we avoid every opportunity to really investigate, how we shy away from the longing or the sense of lack. We may recognize it intellectually, but we do not accept it. As soon as we admit this reaction, we will feel that life is urging us to always explore. The question is always there, underlying our compensatory activities.
Once we have accepted the challenge of life, we need to know how to formulate the question so that it has power, can be effective and does not disappoint us. We must convince ourselves that the question will lead us to the answer. Our questioning must serve a purpose. The real search begins when this not knowing ceases to be an agnostic concept and becomes a living experience. This happens suddenly, when the cessation of mental efforts is really felt at all levels, that is, when it becomes an immediate perception instead of a mere cognition.
When the state of «I don’t know» is accepted as a fact, all the energy which up to that moment was directed «outward» in its search for an answer, or «inward» in its search for interpretation, is now released from all projection and conserved. In other words, the attention is no longer directed towards the objective aspect, but returns to rest in its organic multidimensionality. This manifests as a sudden orientation, a shift in the axis of one’s existence, the end of the search for answers outside the question itself. Allowing not-knowing to be fully explored introduces the inquirer into a new realm. It is a new way of living. It is a state of expansion on all levels, an opening to the unknown and thus to the all-is-possible.
I invite everyone to read Matías’ post with the theme of the day
El Arbol de la Vida - Tercer Ciclo 