Knowledge and Religion

Turning Ignorance into Wisdom

Ignorance is a fascinating substance. That’s because it is not a substance at all. As soon as you learn about your ignorance it vaporizes into nothingness. For instance, how long have you not known about this blog, blog.light-up-your-life.com? It was for most of your life, wasn’t it? In a second you learned about this blog and in that second that ignorance disappeared. Where did it go? You can’t really say, can you?

Now even though ignorance is nothing, it can wreak all kinds of havoc. Here’s an ancient story that will illustrate this: As the evening shadows were starting to fall, a woman was walking through the forest on her way home after a long days hike. She only had a few more miles to go. Then she felt a bite on her leg. She turned around and there was a huge poisonous snake. She sat down and started to cry. Now she knew that she was going to die. And she had so much still to do.

Do you mistake a snake for a rope?
At that moment a nun came by walking to the local monastery. She saw the woman crying and asked, “What is the matter?” The woman replied, “I was just bitten by a poisonous snake and am about to die.” The nun looked around and in an instant she saw what had happened. The first thing the nun said was, “Don’t worry; let me see your bite.” Then she said, “See that branch over there with a little blood on it. You were scratched with that branch. Now see that rope hanging behind you. That is the snake that you thought you saw.” At that moment it clicked; the woman realized that she had mistaken a rope for a snake. Relieved that she was no longer going to die, the woman thanked the nun and continued on her journey home.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________

So what happened: ignorance of the rope was the cause of her fear? Not knowing what the rope really was she assumed it was a snake. And the imagined snake was the cause of her fears. With the knowledge of the real nature of the snake it disappeared and she was left with its real form. Discovering the rope the women’s fears disappeared.

Find happiness at its source
Ok, you might wonder, “This is a nice story but how does it affect me?” Do you know what the world really is? If you don’t look clearly into the nature of the world, you may give it a power that it just doesn’t have and then you will be disappointed. For instance do you give the world the power to make you happy? If so, look again. Happiness comes from the place where you actually experience it and that is from you.

As long as you assume that happiness comes from the world you will feel the full force of its motion. Like the waves in the ocean, happiness will seem to come toward you, and then to recede. But once you discover the real place of happiness you will find the substance that the whole universe rests on, and that substance is you. Then seeing things as they are, your fears will disappear.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com.  I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. 
 
Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

The Energy for Liberation

The most important qualification for liberation is the desire for liberation.

Shri Adi Shankaracharya

Seek liberation with the same strength as a person who is drowning seeks air.

Ramana Maharshi

This thing called liberation is your self-nature. That means that you are what you are seeking. Liberation is the one thing that is so close that we overlook it. In fact even thing is a misnomer. Liberation is freedom from the limitations of the things that we see. It is standing in your original nature, naked without form.

As you probably can tell, standing here defies words and descriptions. The only way to know liberation is by being liberation, which means by being your-self. So here’s the question: If you are what you are looking for, why put in the energy to seek your-self? After all you exert energy to get something that you don’t have; not a thing that you already possess. So what’s the problem?

The energy that questions the assumptions
that we live by
The energy for liberation is a different kind of energy; it is the energy to question assumptions — the things that we take to be normal. Assumptions are interesting forms. They can box us in and cause all types of mischief. But as soon as we recognize an assumption as an assumption and not as reality, it disappears. The reason is that this mysterious substance has no form of its own. We are the ones who lend our sense of reality to assumptions. In order to free ourselves from them we have to go back and look at them with a fresh set of eyes. Dullness is living life without questioning these assumptions.  

So what are these assumptions anyway? Essentially there are two types of assumptions. One is public, the ones that we all agree to, like we are limited to a body that lives in a world. The other is private, the views that color how we live and how we react to the individual situations that we face.

First what are public assumptions?
As I have talked about in many of these blogs and in my book “Making Your Wisdom Come Alive,” when you examine your actual experience closely, this world and your identity return to their proper perspective.  And that’s the perspective that came into being before you were born.

To get a glimpse of what this means, think of last night’s dream. If you went around proclaiming to all of the people in that dream, “You are just dreaming,” their reply would be, “No we’re not, we’re awake.” To prove his point, one of these characters hit you on the head, and that’s when you woke up. The dream was gone so totally, it was as if it never came into being. And yet the sense of reality that for a moment seemed to belong to the dream remained just the same. That’s because reality came from you and not from the dream world.

Is the waking world like a dream?
If you experiment a little you will see that this waking world is similar to a dream. Yes this waking state seems to last longer than the dream, but that’s only if you use waking time as your measurement. Remember the dream too can seem to last for hundreds of years. Of course when you wake up with a startle and look at the waking clock, only a half an hour of waking time went by. As you can see, even time is more flexible than we could have imagined.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________

Another experiment that will make this clearer is to ask, “Where do I experience the world? Is it over there or is here?” Of course if it was really over there you wouldn’t see it. I hope you can see that if you have some fun and experiment a little, whole new vistas will open up before you. And the world will turn out to be different than you ever could have imagined. If you can put in the energy to question our common assumptions, you will find the very source of reality and bliss.

So what are private assumptions?
Now as I promised there is another type of assumption and that is your personal view of the world, your mind, and your-self. An example of this type of view is that the world is a scary place and you have to defend yourself against it.  Another famous example is the thought, “I can’t,” a lousy definition for your mind.

As you may see these assumptions govern your reactions to the world and how you live in it. You may feel as if these views are just natural because you had them for most of your life. In fact you may think that this is just the way things are or just the way I am. Now they may seem so close to you that you don’t even notice them. But you do see them and that’s why you live by them. And that’s why you suffer from fear, anger and all kinds of suffering. The clue that these private concepts aren’t natural is that they cause suffering and suffering does not feel natural.

So what is the energy that you need for liberation? It is not the kind of energy you need to lift weights or run around the block. It is the kind of energy to look at the world, your body and your mind afresh. It is the kind of energy that recognizes concepts as concepts and not as reality. With the knowledge that there is a way out, you want to challenge suffering.

The secret to destroying assumptions
Now here’s the secret that many of us overlook: destroying concepts is not a matter of changing your mind. Any change in the mind will not be permanent. An example of merely a mental change is, now I get angry, when I am free I will never get angry. The secret is that when you recognize the views of the world and your mind that cause the anger you are free. At that point you are standing outside the concept. Standing outside your concept, the changes that happen in your life will surprise you. After the situation that usually causes you to blow your stack, you will look in amazement and think: “This situation didn’t bother me at all!”

Then life will then become a real adventure. What you thought you knew becomes sparkling and new. The same world with the same experiences will become distinctive and unique. So the energy that you put in to destroy concepts is the energy that empties into unbounded joy, free from the least trace of suffering. That’s what you want out of life anyway, isn’t it?

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com.  I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. 
 
Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

Michael, do you want everyone to live in poverty?

You often hear me talk about finding happiness at its source, and its source is the place where you actually experience it. Happiness does not lie in the things that you see. So now you are asking, if people aren’t constantly hankering after more things, won’t we all be poor? After all our whole economy is based on buying and selling things like cars and houses etc.

Before I can answer this question we have to look into the purpose of life. It is of course to find happiness, coupled with the assurance that this happiness won’t slip away in the next moment. We accumulate more and more things with the hope that we can find the lasting happiness that we intuit life has in store for us.  In order to make sure that this happiness lasts, we build walls around our house and hire guards with the hope that thieves don’t snatch our happiness away.

We long for happiness that will not disappear
And yet the little things that snatch our joy away are insidious. They seem to attack us from inside of our walls. For instance no matter how thick the walls, they cannot keep out old age and diseases like cancer. No matter how much wealth we have, we cannot bargain with death. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________

Moreover we fear that the thoughts in our mind will invade our walls and sabotage our happiness; thus we attempt to keep our mind occupied by travelling the world, and piping music and four hundred TV channels into our living room. However we begin to find that no matter how much money we spend on travel and entertainment, we do not find the satisfaction that we want. We squirm as we lie by the swimming pool that we own, unable to relax in our own skin. And yet even in our dying days we long for the happiness that does not disappear.

The Secret to finding lasting happiness

Diving into the Unknown

I am curious to find out why many of the people that I talk with and write to hesitate to take up the path of Self Knowledge. After all, when you look into it, you find that the source of happiness and the Consciousness that lights up the world come from you and not from the world. Another way of saying this is that wisdom and happiness come from the place where you actually experience them, not from the things that you see.  

Self-knowledge sets the meaning of life on its head. Meaning in life does not come from what you do or what you can get; meaning comes from what you are. It’s just that we are so close to our self-nature that we look right past it and identify with the things that we see like our body and the thoughts in our mind. And thus the path of Self-Knowledge is the discovery of the most fundamental quality that gives meaning to life; this quality is what you really are.

What you are is greater than any thought _____________________________________________________________________________________

Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________

So where’s the hesitation? Your mind cannot conceive of your Self-Nature. Mind just draws a blank. That’s because you see your mind — but you mind doesn’t see you. The steady unwavering flame of Consciousness which lights up the mind is your real identity. Unchanging and without motion, it is however, impossible for your thoughts to grasp. And thus you have to know yourself in a different way: you know yourself by standing as yourself; not by creating a structure in your mind.

This makes self-discovery an adventure. That’s because you can’t preconceive or theorize about your identity. All that you can do is experience it; and it is by this direct experience that you know your self-nature. Do you know what you discover? Your self-nature is much better and much more inclusive than you would ever have thought. If on the other hand you try to think your way to your real identity, you will never get it right.

Usually you think of an adventure as traveling to an unknown place. But this is discovering the place that you know the best. And yet when you discover the place where you really stand, it feels completely new. As I told you, it doesn’t fit into a state of mind.

Let go of limitation and find your real home
Here’s why I think that people fail to take up the path of self-discovery in earnest: First, if you stand as the thoughts in your mind you may think, “This self doesn’t really exist.” That’s why I write this blog; to show you and prove to you that your real home is beyond the thoughts in your mind. Or second, you may encounter fear of the unknown. And that’s why I write that your self-nature is the source of the happiness that you hope to get in a million different ways. Rather than scary, your self-nature is a very friendly place.

But there comes a point where you have to put this blog aside and dive inward to your very core. To dive deep, let go of the things that you are used to identifying with like the body and mind. If you can find a way to let go of the limitations that you see, you will be in for a surprise. You will find that which was never born and will never pass away; that you are the steady flame of wisdom. Although you will have finally come to rest in your true home, you will not find the words to describe you newfound joy. Still you will know for sure that you are standing in the place where everyone hopes to be.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com.  I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. 
 
Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

The Secret Meaning of Easter

You may wonder why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter. Shouldn't these days be days of morning? After all Jesus just died a gruesome death on the cross. I think that after reading this blog you will see that there is a secret meaning to dying and then rising up. Understanding this secret, you will know why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter.

The key can be found in the Nag Hammadi library. Although the Gospels in the Nag Hammadi library didn’t make it into the standard New Testament, they give a clear sense of the inner life of Jesus and his disciples; and most important they point to how anyone who desires this secret can find that which was never born and will never die.

I thought I would start this blog in celebration of Easter with Jesus introducing himself as he really is. He is not pointing to something that you can comprehend with your mind. You know the truth of these words in a more direct way. You understand these words because this is a description of what you are. Notice that Jesus is describing himself in the third person. Now from the Nag Hammadi Library:

Matthew said to him, “Lord no one can find the truth except through you. Therefore teach us the truth.” The Savior said, “The one who is ... is ineffable. No sovereignty knew him, no authority, no subjection, nor did any creature, from the foundation of the world, except himself.

For he is immortal. He is eternal having no birth; for everyone who has birth will perish. He is unbegotten, having no beginning; for everyone who has a beginning has an end. No one rules over him, since he has no name; for whoever has a name is a creation of another. He is unnamable. He has no human form; for whoever has a human form is the creation of another. He has his own semblance-- not like the semblance that we have received or seen, but a strange semblance that surpasses all things and is better than the totalities.

It looks to every side and sees itself from itself. He is without end; he is incomprehensible. He is ever imperishable, and has no likeness. He is unchanging good. He is faultless. He is everlasting. He is blessed. He is unknowable, while he nonetheless knows himself. He is immeasurable. He is untraceable. He is perfect, having no defect. He is imperishably blessed. He is the “Father of the Universe.

From: Eugnostos the Blessed
Translated by Douglas M. Parrott
The Nag Hammadi Library In English
Copyright © 1977 by E. J. Brill Leiden The Netherlands

The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. The texts were rescued just before they were about to get burned up for firewood. They were obviously edited out of the New Testament but contain the highest wisdom.

Death and Birth into your own Nature
Now, in celebration of Easter it is time to talk about dying and being reborn. Not in the physical sense because if Easter was about what happened to a man who lived 2,000 years ago it wouldn’t have much relevance for us today.

If on the other hand dying and being reborn is a description of the potential for each and every human being then it is relevant for us even today. So what is the nature of the death that Jesus was talking about? This death was dying to limitation. That’s when he discovered the truth that was before the universe, behind the universe, and the remainder when the universe perishes. As Jesus said: “He is without end; he is incomprehensible. He is ever imperishable, and has no likeness. He is unchanging good.”

Dying to limitation
By the end of this article you will see how it is possible to die to limitation. And when you die to limitation, you are automatically born to eternal life. Now you will understand why Easter is a celebration. That’s because even now you are unlimited. It is only an assumption that you are limited by the things that you see. Death is destroying this assumption and returning to what you really are so beautifully described by Jesus above.

The reason we seem to be limited is that we overlook our essential nature and take our identity to be limited to the objects that we see. That’s because all of our senses are directed outward towards the world; there is no sense that can look back and see our real nature.

You are the light that shines on limitation
So we have to know our self in a different way. This is by direct experiential knowledge. You know yourself because you are your self. In fact it is because you are Consciousness that you even know about limitation.

If I told you to go outside with a flashlight and look for the sun you would think that I was crazy. That’s because the sun is light. You do not need a separate light to see the sun. In the same way you are Consciousness; you do not need a separate consciousness or mind to know yourself. You can know yourself directly.

But you see your body and you see your mind, you see your roles in the world, and you take these objects to be yourself. And by their nature bodies are limited by birth and death, health and sickness. Your mind is also limited by its condition and its ability to know. But fortunately these objects are just that, objects in your Awareness. They are not you and they do not define you.

Are you just a thought?
The most subtle object that you see is the thought “I”. Just because you think a thought with “I” in the subject, doesn’t mean that the “I” is you. Here “I” is just another object that you see. This “I” is sometimes called the ego. The ego is also the little connection that attaches to limitation and makes it seem as if it is really you. When your ego dies there is no place left for limitation to rest. As for you, you can rest in your true home. Is this the inner meaning of the crucifixion?

Returning to your home
When by your deepest and most direct experience, you die to the limitations that you thought were you, you wake to your real identity which is the space like Consciousness that was never born and will never pass away. Here you get to abide as the source of wisdom and joy.

Now you see why we celebrate Good Friday with joy and not with the sadness of a funeral dirge. It is a celebration of dying to our assumed limitations where the ego falls away. And then Easter celebrates rising up to our innate freedom where we can rest in peace eternally.

Other resources available to you
If you need a more basic understanding of this Self-Knowledge or if you just want support for your practice, go to www.light-up-your-life.com and read down the main column. Also check out the different links that we provide as resources that can help sharpen the focus of your meditation practice.

Another resource that we have is the book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive , a step by step guide taking you from your everyday experience to the highest wisdom and truth. To find out more, click on the link below: http://www.light-up-your-life.com/wisdom.html. 

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman
www.light-up-your-life.com

On viewing a dead body

Last week my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the wake and final viewing of the body of a friend. The body was fixed up perfectly, his hands where red as if the blood was still flowing through them, and he even seemed to still be breathing.

Perhaps this final viewing is a symbol of the hope that we have that people don't really die. For us it was an opportunity to meditate on where does life come from and where does it reside; where does our sense of existence go when the body passes away? Is death more like a phone line getting cut, where the person remains at the other end.

Fortunately we know a secret so that we don’t have to approach this meditation on a mere mental level based on just hope or faith. This means that we can actually have the direct and immediate experience of what we know. It is not the discovery of something new. Rather it is the discovery of what we are.

Our aim is not to leave the body
At first it may seem reasonable that we are limited by the confines of the body. But if you are willing to investigate this a little, I think you will be amazed as to what you will find. It is just a flying rumor that we are limited by the body, which is just another object  that our senses capture. And even if everyone were to disagree with us, we still have the freedom to investigate this matter for ourselves, to see if we are really limited by the physical body.

Now the first thing that you should know is that we are not trying to get out of the body. Attempting to leave the body assumes that you are in it to begin with. No, just rest in your usual place and begin your exploration. Here are a few suggestions:

Meditate to discover how free you really are
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________
First of all everyone reading this article has changed immensely since they were a tiny baby, then a child, a student and now some of you are adults and even advancing into old age. But for all of this change do you feel as if you have changed? When you look at your direct experience do you feel that you have grown up and are now old, or is there something about you that is always the same. Perhaps you can find this sameness in a quality of seeing, hearing or knowing that has not changed. In your meditation I think you will find that this feeling of sameness is closer to what you are than the ever-changing body.

Let’s try another experiment to see if the thing called a body, the thing that you are supposed to be, is the real you. We all know our experience is supposed to be that of a body. But let’s dive a little deeper and see if “supposed to be” is really true. In your meditation close your eyes. Do you really feel a body there? Of course you may feel a sore back or a stiff neck. But does that add up to a body? What do you actually feel? Although words may not be adequate to describe it, you will we pleasantly surprised by the depth of your actual experience.

The final viewing of an old friend
I know that many people conceive of spiritual experience as being way out there somewhere. But if you are willing to look afresh, you will find that the thing you value the most is right here. It is your true identity. Standing here in your new-found freedom, you will view your body like the final viewing of an old friend.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com.  I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. 
 
Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

On Atheism

The other day someone asked me what I thought of atheism. Some people believe that God is way up in the sky somewhere, and we are way down here and never the twain shall meet. And where God and people don’t meet, there’s nothing left but belief. And where there is merely a belief that cannot be backed by evidence, there is plenty of room for non-belief too. Belief and non-belief are both based on the same fictitious story.

But here’s a question for you: what if you didn’t have to hold your breath, put your reason aside, and just hope that God is somewhere up there? What if you could use your reason to find the direct and immediate experience of God? Wouldn’t that completely take you out of both sides of this faith verses non-faith argument?

Where is God not? _____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________
It seems like reasoning is impossible for something that you can’t perceive, isn’t it? Fortunately there is a way out of this conundrum. If there is really One God as monotheistic religions claim, and everything is nothing but that God, then God would have to be you too, wouldn’t he or she? Here’s another way of putting it that might make this clearer: before there was anything, if God wanted to create a world, She couldn’t have gone to the local hardware store to get the necessary supplies She needed. That’s because hardware stores didn’t exist yet. So like a spider creates a web out of himself, God had to create the world out of Herself. Indeed even the stuff that you see created in this universe is nothing but God. 

Albert Einstein and the Theory of Everything

We often think of the universe as an entity separate from us: but if you read through the article below, I think you will see that if you don’t know the nature of the observer, your view of the things observed will be skewed. That is true for a brilliant scientist like Albert Einstein. It is true for us as well. On the contrary, when you know yourself, you know the nature of this universe too. Although this is a reprint of a blog that we published before, read it again with a view towards self-discovery. Then you will see how when know yourself, you also know the nature of the universe.

The Theory of Everything
Einstein was looking for the general theory of relativity, a theory that includes everything in the universe both large and small. His general theory said that the laws of physics should be the same for any observer no matter what velocity and direction he or she is going in. In order to accomplish this Einstein devised a theory where space and time would bend. So even if it seemed that an observer was not going in a straight line, relative to the space time continuum the observer was going straight.

Although he got his theory to work for large objects, it never quite worked for the smallest objects in the universe, including electrons, quarks, and neutrons. To Einstein these objects seemed to move in a random way that he could not accept.  And thus his famous statement, God does not play dice with the universe. Einstein died before he could devise a theory of everything that worked for both large and small objects.

So what is the nature of the observer?
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

 ___________________________________________________________________
But the one thing that Einstein forgot to investigate was the nature of the observer herself. If he would have looked in this direction, he would have discovered some amazing things that would be right in line with his beliefs. When you look carefully, you can see that the thing that Einstein took to be the observer was just another moving object and not the observer at all.

But in order to clearly see what I am referring to you have to separate the observer from all the objects that he or she sees. This type of experimenting is called inner experimenting, and that means discovering what you really are. Since at first this may not be obvious, it is easy to mistake the observer for an object that is in motion, and that's how Einstein saw it.

When you know the observer, the rest of the universe falls into place

In your quest for self knowledge be a sculpturer

The other day I heard an interview with an old friend and I kept on wondering, “What is missing here?” The words seemed right, but something appeared to be off. Then I realized what it was: you don’t go looking for yourself. After all who could stand separate to do that? You are already the Self and that is self-evident. But when you take your self to be an object that you see, your identity appears to be bound by limitation. So your job in this spiritual practice called self-knowledge is to chip away at the limitations that appear to belong to you. Even before the last shard of stone falls to the ground, you will wake up to what you really are, space-like and free.

To get a better sense of this practice, you are not a painter, painting over the canvas. Rather you are like a sculpture chipping away at a piece of stone until the image, hidden in the rock is revealed. In this same way, chip away at limitations until you find the freedom hidden right in their midst. The secret to self-knowledge is that when you see limitation as an object, and not as your identity, you are free of it. What you are doing is separating the subject, you, from the objects that you seem to identify with. This is called self-inquiry. So you may wonder how deep this inquiry can go. At the end when your true formless image is revealed, you are free of old age, disease, death and any type of suffering that can occur in your mind.

What do limitations look like?
So let me give you an idea of what a limitations looks like so you will be able to recognize them when you see them. Limitation is like the thief that you know. Once you see it, you will think, “I knew about this the whole time and just overlooked it.” For ease of understanding, I like to divide limitation into two categories:

Public limitations are the things that until we wake up we all agree with like happiness comes from the things that we want, we are what we do, we are limited to our physical body, and the thoughts in our mind. As you inquire, you will begin to notice that this is a list of objects that you see. This is not a list of what you are.

Then there are private limitations, the desires and assumptions that apply to us as apparent individuals. They govern how we act and react to various situations. Private assumptions often frame your view of the world, your mind, and your identity. An example of a private limitation is the thought, “I can’t do math,” a view of your mind. If you take this thought to describe reality, you might struggle with it and attempt to counter it with the thought, “I can.” But once you see that your thoughts will never come up with a good definition for “I”, you can just let both sides of this struggle go and look at math afresh.

There is more to you than you could have imagined
Will you now be able to do math …. Who knows; but at least you won’t be bound by your thoughts about math. When you can let go of the frameworks that seem to limit you, you will get to see life, the world and your mind afresh. In fact it will be so fresh that you won’t be able to predict what will happen. Here words and thoughts fall short. But you will know one thing for sure: there is more to the world, your mind, and your identity than you could ever have imagined. We stammer to come up with words like space-like and oneness to describe that which you have to experience to know.

And you’ll never again catch yourself babbling about your self-nature when you are still caught by assumptions and looking through limiting frameworks like a glass darkly. That means you will be standing in the place that you talk about. And even if you stammer as you try to find words to describe your experience, your words will describe what is true. That’s because you’ll be standing in your natural freedom. Then when you talk about your natural state, it will not seem like a bunch of unexamined concepts. Rather it will be your natural unbridled freedom, transmitted through your every pore.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off . I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. 
 
Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

Born to Eternal Life

It is in dying that we are born to eternal life

You might recognize this as the last verse in The Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. This verse is a description of enlightenment, so you may wonder what it means.  Does it mean physical death or is Saint Francis talking about another type of death that you can experience now even while you’re alive? Today I am going to describe what it’s like to die before you die. Let me assure you that even if I describe it here, when you experience this, you will be surprised.  That’s because it’s beyond the mind’s ability to anticipate this death. But that being said, it is well within your ability to experience dying so that you will be born to eternal life, and never die again.

The reason that this type of death may seem subtle is because of what you really are. You are not an object; after all, objects are things that you sense, they are not what you are. Moreover, compared to eternal life, objects are too limited. When you take them as your identity, they are like a shoe that doesn’t fit, they become irritating. When you die to limitation you finally get to feel the relief of coming home.

The relief of coming Home
If you take your space-like boundless identity and project it onto the things that you see, then you will feel limited by these things. This is like assuming that a clear crystal is red because you see it against the back-drop of a red curtain, or assuming that the nature of water is brown because it is mixed with mud. But here’s the secret that most people overlook: the one thing that you can’t see, that is what you are.