“the seat of realization is within”
We would do well to develop as much awareness as we can about our True identity in order to enhance our experience of a life consciously lived. As James Baldwin observed: “People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.”[i]
“Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self-Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened—at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right!”[ii]
Insight # 100 comes to us from Ken Wilber (b. 1949), an American teacher and writer. He is often referred to as the “Einstein of consciousness studies.”
“The seat of realization is within and the seeker cannot find it as an object outside him. The seat is bliss and is the core [the ultimate depth] of all beings. Hence it is called the Heart. Entering the Heart means remaining without distractions. The Heart is the only Reality. The mind is only a transient phase. To remain as one’s Self is to enter the Heart.”[iii]
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Additional Reading:
- Self-Realization, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
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[i] Nevins, Jake. “Essay/True Lies.” The New York Times Book Review. May 17, 2020, p. 19.
[ii] Maharaj, Sri Nisargadatta. I Am That. Durham, NC: The Acorn Press, 1973.
[iii] Wilber, Ken. Sex, Ecology and Spirituality. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc., 1995, p. 307.
