Self-Realization...

"Self-Realization" is essentially a very comprehensive understanding, a profound, direct, experiential realization that "who I am" really has nothing to do with a concept about who I am. The basic realization of who you are, who you REALLY are beyond all concepts, roles and images of a "you", is simply who you are in direct experience and not "who you are" conceptually. So, lets investigate this a bit. Who am I in my own immediate, direct experience in this very instant, right now? Who are you? What is the direct, most basic experience of "being" which we all experience?

One way of pointing to this basic experience of "being" that we are all experiencing all the time, is to use simple grammatical terms that we all learned as children. The first person singular, present tense of the verb "to be" actually points to this reality of simply being. This verbal phrase is the first person, singular, present tense of the verb "to be" and NOT the verb "to do". It is not a doing but a being. The first person singular, present tense of the verb "to be" is: "I Am." This is simply, basically, essentially just "I Am" with no adjuncts or additions at all. It is not "I am a woman" or "I am a Man" or I am a butcher, a baker, or a candle-stick maker. Nor is it even about the idea or concept, "I am enlightened" either! Can you see how the statement, "I am enlightened" and the conceptual beliefs and personal identification with that statement are just the formation of another concept about who you are, or who you or others seem to believe you are?

This is just a "spiritual" concept, but has no more relationship to who you really are in your direct experience than any other concept like, I am "smart" or "beautiful" or "rich" or a "saint" or a "sinner" etc.....On an absolute level, there is no "me" or "you" that can claim "enlightenment" as a personal possession. It's a lot like the statement, "I am humble." Actual humility is just not being so self-referenced. It is a matter of not making a big deal about yourself. It is about a very natural un-self-consciousness that what we call a "humble person" just spontaneously radiates. The "humble" are not "full of themselves". They are not "a legend in their own mind"! Can you see how a person that sits around thinking about how humble they are and is constantly congratulating themselves on their humility, somehow loses their humility in the process?

Likewise, a person who sits around thinking about how "enlightened" they are and makes a big deal about this belief, and has a lot of identification with this idea of themselves, and is often out to prove how "enlightened" they are to either themselves or other people, is just trying to add something yet again to the basic sense of being "I Am", which is the authentic essence of what we call "enlightenment". To take this a step forward; In order to simply abide in the "I Am' of essential being, in the true "enlightenment", you must renounce the idea of yourself as "an enlightened person". Even if you have seen the "I Am' for a minute, or a day, or a week, that does not mean you have actually "realized it" in any kind of stable way. If you glimpse it and it goes away again, "realization" has not yet taken place, but perhaps "practice" has. Even if you get an authentic glimpse of this "I Am" and then hold onto an idea or concept or identification with the thought, "I am enlightened"....you are then covering over the bare "I Am" with the "enlightened" concept and so are obscuring the natural sense of en-light-en-ment, that has always been present.

If you have an identification with the belief, "I am an enlightened one" you will end up trying to maintain an image or role of enlightenment just as human beings all over the planet try to maintain various roles or impressions. Then you must always try to conduct yourself in a way that fits your own or other's ideas of how an "enlightened person" must act. This becomes a silly game that will actually serve to eventually wear you out (!) and quite effectively obscure your own simple, natural sense of "I Am', which has never left you in the first place. Just let go of all your concepts about enlightenment and return to this most basic sense of being "I Am" again and again. Then maybe you will finally discover what the REALITY of "enlightenment" is, the true seeing in light/clarity about the real nature of reality. This Reality is entirely beyond any words or concepts or beliefs you could ever possibly form about it.

The point of "Self-Realization" is to actually see this and then allow that seeing to inform one's whole life. "Self-Realization", like any authentic spiritual insight, is a door through which you walk in order to enter a "new room" spiritually speaking. When you walk through a door to enter a room in the physical world, you don't then sit around thinking about having walked through the door do you? No, you walk through the door and forget about it. Walking through the door is a beginning not an ending. Once you walk through the door you go on to explore the room you have walked into, you don't sit around thinking about how wonderful and special it was to walk through the door.


Francis Bennett