What it Means to Know Thyself

Post date: Dec 30, 2014 8:8:35 PM

See what Rupert Spira says here about what it takes to know our self:

In order to know our self we do not need to know the mind.  No other knowledge than the knowledge that is present right now in this very moment is required to know our self.

What does it mean to know our self?  We are our self, so we are too close to our self to be able to know our self as an object.  Our simply being our self is as close to knowing our self as we will ever come.  We cannot get closer than that.  In fact, being our self is the knowing of our self, but it is not the knowing of our self as an object.

To say, 'I am', (in other words to assert that we are present), we must know that 'I am'.  Being and knowing are, in fact, on single non-objective experience.  But we do not step outside of our self in order to know our own being.  We simply are our self.  That being of our self is the knowing of our self.  This being/knowing is shinning in all experience.

This experiential understanding dissolves the idea the  our self is not present here and now and that it is not known here and now.

And when our desire to know or find ourselves as an object is withdrawn, we discover that our self was and is present all along, shining quietly in the background, as it were, of all experience.  As this becomes obvious we discover that it is not just the background but also the foreground.  In other words, it is not just the witness but simultaneously the substance of all experience.

Completely relax the desire to find yourself as an object or to change your experience in any way.  Relax into this present knowing of your own being.  See that it is intimate, familiar and loving.  See clearly that it is never not with you.  It is shining here in this experience, knowing and loving its own being.  It runs throughout all experience, closer than close, intimately one with all experience but untouched by it.

As this intimate oneness, it is known as love.  In its untouchableness it is known as peace and in its fullness it is known as happiness.  In its openness and willingness to give itself to any possible shape (including the apparent veiling of its own being), it is known as freedom and, as the substance of all things, it is known as beauty.

However, more simply it is known just as 'I' or 'this'.

...as our experiential conviction that we are not a limited, located self deepens, so our thoughts, feelings and subsequent behavior will slowly, effortlessly and naturally realign themselves with this new understanding.