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#4184 -
Monday, March 7, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
"Very rarely
will the mind confess to us that it has no idea what
is going on." ~Adyashanti
Due to a generous, generous, donation, ALL of Adya's Internet
Radio Programs are FREE for VIDEO as well as for audio for
this year. Go to www.adyashanti.org
http://www.adyashanti.org/cafedharma/index.php?file=radio
FREE VIDEO Broadcast
Wednesday, March 9
5pm PST - Pre-program Music
6pm PST - Live Broadcast with Call-In
To check Pacific time in the San Francisco area,
visit www.time.gov
or http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock.
During this program, Adyashanti will offer a live talk followed
by
answers to emailed questions and then invite callers to dialogue
with him.
Authentic
Inquiry
What is inquiry, really? This is a good question. And like most
really
good questions, it is very basic. Authentic inquiry is allowing
yourself to
care, to take on the weightless burden of caring. Everyone knows
what
it’s like to inquire out of intellectual
interest—asking for the sake of
asking or because you think you should. This is not caring. When
you care
about something, it gets inside of you. It gets inside the shell
that keeps
you from being affected or bothered, the shell that keeps
anything really
new from happening.
So in the beginning, to deeply inquire about anything, you have
to care
about it. You have to care enough to allow it to get inside that
shell.
What do you really care about? What pulls you into here and now,
this
minute? What is the most important thing to you? For real
inquiry, it is
important to be asking about something you sincerely care about.
The
question needs to be personal, not about a spiritual teaching or
something
that’s outside of your experience. It needs to be something
that’s coming
from the inside.
When you care, you care from the inside. Many people impose ideas
from
the outside upon themselves, but this isn’t inquiry. When
you really care,
you enter a love affair with what you care about. Sometimes it
draws you
into bliss, sometimes into confusion. You don’t know what to
do. You don’t
know where you are going. You feel a bit out of control.
You’re letting
this caring get under your skin. To find out that you care like
this is the
most important thing; otherwise you can spend your whole life
caring
about what someone else says you should care about.
Like many people, you may be afraid to find out how much you care
because that caring could just steal you away. What is the one
thing that
will matter the most at the end of your life? Without it, you
would say:
“That’s what it was all about and I missed it.” If
you had the best job,
lots of money, the perfect lover, or whatever your ideal is, and
suddenly
your life was over, what would still be left undone? That’s
what it’s all
about.
When you find that kind of caring, inquiry has some power behind
it. You
also find your own inner integrity. You find something inside
that’s
stable. There’s a place inside you that is willing to be a
little
crazy—crazy enough to take inquiry seriously and hold
nothing sacred.
Holding nothing sacred means that nothing is assumed to be true
and all
of your assumptions are fair game. The more spiritual they are,
the more
they are fair game. Ultimately it is your most sacred and
unquestioned
assumptions about yourself, others, and life that are most
important to
question.
Many people find their spirituality taking them outward. They
think they
are going inward because they have heard the spiritual teaching,
“Inquire
and look within.” Meanwhile, they are out in the stars
somewhere looking
for someone else’s experience, looking for the right
experience, or
looking for the experience they believe they are supposed to
have. This
is spirituality going entirely in the wrong direction. Inquiry is
a means of
taking you back to yourself, back to your experience.
When inquiry is authentic, it brings you into the experience of
here and
now, bringing you to the full depth of it, pulling you into it.
The question
pulls you back into the mystery of your experience. “What am
I?” takes
you right back into the mystery. If your mind is honest, it knows
it
doesn’t have the answer. You ask, “What am I?” and
instantly, there is
silence. Your mind doesn’t know. And when it doesn’t
know, there is an
experience right here, right now, that is alive. You bump into
nothingness
inside—that no-thing, that absolute nothingness which your
mind can’t
know.
The answer does not come in the form of a description or phrase;
it is a
direct experience. And this experience, your livingness, always
transcends any words or intellectual answer. In fact, the truth
of your
being is eternally transcending itself. As soon as it projects
itself out as
something, even as a profound insight, it has already transcended
it. So
eventually the inquiry wears itself out. You wear yourself out.
You wear
your ego self out. You wear your spiritual self out. You wear it
all out.
You’ve inquired yourself out of this whole thing, and
you’re disappearing
faster than you can put yourself together.
As Nisargadatta Maharaj said so brilliantly and beautifully,
“The
ultimate understanding is that there is no ultimate
understanding.” When
it’s in the head, it’s an impressive piece of
understanding; when it’s in the
heart, as the Buddha said, it’s extinguished. You find a
living experience
of being, empty of content, empty of you. This is where spiritual
awakening begins. This is the living answer of authentic inquiry.
© Adyashanti 2007
http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=writings_inner&writingid=32