Knowing Yourself Beyond Concepts
The key to freeing yourself from fear lies in sensing the essence of yourself as consciousness. This power is distinct from egoic power or power over others. It's an internal knowing that transcends conceptual understanding.
The Honey Analogy
Consider the example of honey. You can study its structure, origin, production, molecular composition, and chemical properties, potentially earning a PhD on the subject. You would have extensive knowledge about honey, but would you truly know honey?
Tasting honey offers a different kind of knowing. It's a direct, immediate experience, independent of concepts. This deeper, experiential knowing is more profound than intellectual knowledge.
Applying it to the Self
This concept applies to understanding yourself and others. How do you truly know someone? The journey begins with self-knowledge.
You can know a great deal about yourself - your history, experiences, and stories that make up your personal autobiography. You can recount what happened to you, what you did, and what you suffered. However, do you know yourself at a deeper level?
Letting Go of Narratives
Are you able to relinquish conceptual knowledge and narratives about yourself? Can you refrain from living through these stories, while still retaining the ability to recall them when necessary? Can you access a deeper essence that enables these narratives to exist? Consciousness is necessary for narratives, perception, and emotions.
These narratives, perceptions, and emotions are all objects that arise in consciousness. Your life situation, apart from the deepest level, consists of the arising and passing of these objects within the space or light of consciousness.
The Power of Thoughts
Thoughts can become overpowering, especially when awareness is absent. A stream of thoughts can consume consciousness, leading to complete identification with those thoughts, continuously manufacturing more. Individuals often confuse this stream of thought with their true identity, defending it fiercely. This can lead to conflict between individuals and groups with differing ideologies, rooted in a lack of deeper self-knowledge.
The Eternal Subject
The deepest meaning of knowing yourself is understanding yourself beyond concepts, not through them. It's not knowing yourself as an object in consciousness, but as the eternal subject, which is consciousness itself. In this state, the mind subsides, leaving a sense of still, alert presence, a simple "I am."
Sustaining Awareness
Sustaining this awareness in the background allows for constructive dialogue. You can express your viewpoint, acknowledging that it is a thought, without making others with conflicting views into enemies. You maintain inner spaciousness while clearly stating your perspective, recognizing that your sense of identity is not derived from any particular mental position. You don't have to abandon all mental positions, you just recognize them as thoughts.
Creative Thinking and Awareness
With awareness in the background, you are more likely to think creatively and avoid being blindly influenced by collective beliefs or ideologies. Being aware allows you to see through forms of social hypnosis and think more clearly. You can "step out of thinking" but then when you think, you don't lose yourself completely in the thinking.
The Power Within
When you sense the essence of who you are, there is a vast power within. This power is not about ego, but about freedom from fear. Fear arises from identifying with the "little me" and feeling threatened. Sensing this deeper power allows you to feel connected to something much larger than yourself.
Faith as Trust
This internal power is the deeper meaning of faith: a deep trust in life, not an intellectual belief. It's not simply telling yourself to trust the universe, but a realization of your connectedness to the source of all life.
Letting Go of Concepts
Ultimately, experiencing this connection requires letting go of concepts. In the space between thoughts, you can sense the stillness and presence, which is inseparable from who you are. It is you, and yet infinitely vaster than you, both at the same time.
Creativity and the Silent Power
This silent power is not just a passive force; it emanates intelligence and inspires creativity. Truly creative achievements arise from connecting with this silent power within. Great composers, artists, and scientists often report receiving their breakthroughs almost fully formed, as revelations. Those things that come from that deeper place remain of value.
Bringing Consciousness into Life
While producing great works is a potential outcome, the primary purpose is to integrate this state of consciousness into your life, allowing whatever happens through it to unfold naturally.