NTI Luke 7 says:
There are expectations in your mind regarding truth, but these expectations are based on what you know within your slumber. They are not based on knowledge or Life. They are based on interpretation, or death.
What do you expect of Me? Where is it that you think I am leading you to?
Free yourself from these thoughts, and open your mind to Me unfettered by expectations. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of Me.
Inner Ramana teaches that the way to awaken from the dream (from delusion to true perception) is to break the attachment to mental chatter. As today’s message points out, that includes breaking the attachment to mental chatter about spiritual ideas.
If I think I know what enlightenment looks like or how an enlightened one behaves, then I think I know. If I think I know, that means I think the mind is me thinking.
Thinking I know anything that doesn’t come from pure observation is identifying with mind. (Observation is not pure if it is interpreted through mental chatter.)
This is difficult to accept when we are heavily identified with mind. It’s hard to accept this, because of the underlying belief that giving up attachment to mind is giving up me. It feels like the ultimate sacrifice.
As inner wisdom said to Lanae last week:
To sacrifice the self is to request remembrance of the true Self.
We cannot be attached to ‘me’ and know the true Self too.
That is demonstrated in today’s message by the difficulty I had hearing Inner Ramana on the day this message was written. As soon as Inner Ramana started talking to me about my desire to think about and talk about Self, I had trouble hearing Inner Ramana.
Why?
Because the mind started to chatter about when I think about and talk about Self. As soon as I listened to chatter as me thinking, the voice of inner wisdom faded. I could not be identified with mental chatter and hear inner wisdom too. In order to write the message that you will read today, I had to continually, repeatedly break the attachment to mental chatter and return my attention to inner wisdom.
This is very important to understand.
When we think we know something, inner wisdom is blocked. When we think we can figure ‘this’ out, inner wisdom is blocked. When we are lost in mental chatter, inner wisdom is blocked.
To know the Self, including inner wisdom and intuition, the self (our identification with mind) must be sacrificed.
Before going to today’s reading, contemplate this definition of sacrifice:
An act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.
Thoughts of Awakening # 310
Devotion is an act of silence.
It is a decision
to stop the flow of thoughts
and return to the wisdom of stillness.
Thoughts shall start again,
and your attention will drift to them
if you are interested.
But if you are also interested in devotion,
you can again make the decision
to return to the Heart.
In this decision,
thoughts are not fed.
That which is not fed
must eventually die.
From our Holy Spirit
Homework for this week
- Practice daily meditation for 30-60 minutes each day.
- Practice the “Loving All” Method.
- Thoughts of Awakening, 309-315
- Read the following messages from The Teaching of Inner Ramana: Clarity on Practice, How to Awaken from the Dream, How to Awaken from the Dream Part Two, s/Self-Inquiry, The Love of Discipline, Truth Made Manifest, Extinguishment of “I” Thought.