| | Hi Tina,
I'm so glad you asked! One very good way to get in touch with this eye that sees but cannot see itself is to ask the question "Who am I?" Dispensing with whatever discursive answers the mind comes up with, e.g. "I am Tina, I am a woman," etc., see if you can find out, directly, who or what it is that knows about this experience. There is, in every moment of experience, an awareness that knows the experience. By asking the question "Who am I?" you keep pointing the mind back toward itself. Eventually the answer comes back, "I, I." This is what Ramana Maharshi called the "I AM." It is the eternal witness. It's always looks the same, so you can find it by noticing that while everything around it changes, this sense of "I AM" remains constant. Ramana's core instruction was "Let what comes come. Let what goes go. Find what remains."
In each moment of conventional experience, there is some intelligence that knows about it. But it isn't you, per se. The "I AM" is a transpersonal intelligence that has no stake in whether Tina lives or dies. As such, it's a tremendous relief from our usual neurotic state. Later, when even the witness dissolves, there is only pure, non-local awarness, which pervades and is not other than the entire manifest world. This is what the Tibetans call rigpa, or buddha-nature. It is the happiness that has no opposite, the happiness that is independent of conditions. But you don't have to be in any hurry; if you can first discover the witness, you will have made an enormous step toward freedom.
Kenneth |