Meditation and yoga

Ramana Maharshi's famous question takes you back to who you really are. The question may seem banal, but the wordless answer tells you more than anything else. It points to the most basic - the one that you truly are. Beyond all thoughts, feelings, experiences.

The question or self-inquiry, as it is usually called, should not be repeated like a mantra. It is about that you really want to know. It is an existential situation. This is the most important of all there is. If you don't know who you are, what do you know eventually? Otherwise there is no basis for your life.

The question can be asked in different ways. Try what suits you best. For some people it works best with "What am I?" to stress the impersonal.

In guided meditations I usually ask the question in two steps. In a meditation like that I usually start by pointing out how we experience different things. There is thoughts, feelings, physical sensations. These experiences come and go. It is important to first see this. Then ask the question "Who experiences this?" (or the thoughts, feelings or whatever experience you might have - like Who experiences these thoughts?). This question delimits your attention and gives focus on what comes before the experience. It is an aid to calm down the mind. It might happen that you will go all the way to Presence through this question. Whatever is the case, when you have asked the question just wait for a while without doing anything. After that you ask the question "Who am I?" and just wait. No mechanical repetition. If there is only silence remain in the silence and let it spread or permeate you. When other experiences begin to take over, you first notice them, and then you ask the question in two steps as described in this text.

To discover who you truly are is what it is all about. When you really know comes a process of deepening and relaxation before the Presence. All your fears, suppressed emotions, tensions the body has carried and gathered throughout the years display themselves in different ways to be released. The tendencies or vasanas that are present in your personality are released. But the process in different now. Everything happens within the Wholeness and what you are is not moved even an inch. There is no longer separation, but the experiences can be very powerful and you might have periods when you feel that you are not functioning - maybe sometimes you feel completely out of order. Maybe you will go through strong physical changes when the tensions in the body are released.

Trust grows. But what you are going through is hardly a spiritual pension or vacation. Here you can be helped by talking with others who have gone through this process before you.

I have chosen to to stress the Who am I-question because it takes us directly back to the real. In my case I found if first inside and later also in the outer. The inner and the outer melted together and there was no longer anything inside or outside. No me, you, or the world.

The awakening as I want to describe it happens in an instance. (All I write comes from my own experiences and I can't really say anything about anyone else's experiences or about how it will be for you.) The heart is opened and you become everything and everything is in you.

But from having lived in the world of words and concepts life is opening and the heart even more. There is an emotional maturing process where every need for confirmation, approval, experience of success in what you are doing, that you want life to be as you want gradually disappears. It is enough just being you without a future or history. How you live, where you live, with whom becomes uninteresting. You are taken care of in an infinitely lovingly way. Much more complete than you could ever imagine. You learn more and more to really receive and look upon every moment as the best that ever happened to this personality. This deepening runs ever deeper even to include the physical existential.

The fear of being physically molested, tortured, killed - the body's feelings connected with survival - are dissolved and replaced by freedom. When these fears disappears your life becomes uncompromising. You don't give way for anything - you become immovable. You are no longer interested in the effect of your actions or what they might result in. It is no longer you that act but life that expresses itself through you. Things just happen all by themselves.