Being: Satsang February 13, 2005 Questions and Answers -2

[Guest guest]

Another Q.: I have been having so much worry and story-telling. It is

an incredible array of suffering and thought blows that I have been

giving myself. I know what I am not, but I still become lost in that

and those thoughts. My thoughts are just complete suffering most of

the time. I know what I am not, yet I still can't get who I am.

 

N.: Who you are is nonobjective, so how do you suppose that you are

going to obtain it? If you really know that you are not your

thoughts, you will not be lost in them. If one really knows that the

mind is nonexistent, there is nothing in which to be lost.

 

Q.: So, the knowing has to go much deeper that right now for me?

 

N.: Self-Knowledge must penetrate to the core. There is not much

sense in saying that you know that you are not your thoughts, but

still they bother you all the time.

 

Q.: Yes.

 

N.: If we really know that what we think, we are not, we are neither

bound by those thoughts nor will we continue to conjure delusive

thoughts. You have seen, though, that outer conditions do not create

the mind's suffering. The mind suffers over its own productions. This

point distinguishes a person who moves in a spiritual direction, in

contrast to being worldly-minded. With worldly-mindedness, or

extroversion of mind, one assumes that the external things are real,

that they determine her, and they determine her happiness, and

consequently her sorrow. A spiritually-minded person knows that

happiness is within, in which case there is no longer any

superimposition or outer environment upon one's own experience. The

world neither gives you happiness nor gives you suffering. In truth,

the world is not even real. Happiness, reality, and your sense of

identity have their origin in you. If you overlook your True Nature

and suppose yourself to be something else, you confound the Real and

the unreal, imagine happiness to be elsewhere, and consequently

suffer.

 

Turn your mind inward. Know the place of happiness. That place is

within. Within is the Self. So, one-pointedly seek the Knowledge of

yourself. If you know yourself, you know Reality, and you no longer

dwell, suffering, in an unreal dream.

 

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Not two,

Richard

 

Material from SAT's "Reflections" Magazine, March/April 2005.

www,satramana.org