Self Discovery and the Promise of Freedom

Life brings moments that reveal these discoveries:

The paths we have pursued have not delivered what they promised.

We can become cynical about this discovery.

We can allow futility and skepticism to overtake us.

We wonder what to do with our lives and we can come to understand that the problem is in us... a new path can then unfold.

This is a path of self-discovery that turns us in a new direction.

We ask: What is the "culprit" in me? What creates this unhappiness?

True self-discovery does not have in it a "known" end to fear.

Fear is constantly scanning for some reason to be afraid -- this is called "self protection" but is self-perpetuation instead.

We can't protect ourselves from a fear in the way we do now.

Fear is all about keeping the self "safe." But we can't have a spiritual life and be "safe."

The self that seeks safety can never know a relationship with God.

Acquisition (knowledge as well as objects) cannot create wisdom and freedom.

The same self that wanted to build a physical life sets about to build a "spiritual life."  It thinks it can acquire enough knowledge to succeed.

It is impossible for a human being to be a self-protecting self and to also be a spiritual being. That self is really trying to prove itself, not to discover itself.

No one can discover him/herself who is also trying to prove and protect the self they think they are. i.e. trying to prove he/she is what she pretends to be.

What we think we want to discover is a WAY to be free, but what we need to discover is that there is no one there by our name that isn't free. The first protects, the second has nothing to protect -- for it is in the moment without any other reason for being.
The nature that seeks safety produces the fear.

It is only real discovery that changes the world, not repetition -- the self we live from repeats and repeats thinking it KNOWS what it is to discover.

When we glimpse something ungainly in ourselves, we jump to not see it through blaming others or self-loathing.

We need to discover our lives truly; real discovery isn't about thinking -- thinking thwarts discovery -- we need to remain with ourselves and be with the problem, not our solutions to the problem.

Self-discovery has no future, but the self that "will be" perfect is all about time and future. The mind is so hungry for "food" and stimulation so it can feel useful and necessary. Because of this, we want more knowledge -- but knowledge kills our spiritual understanding. We have become "knowledge collectors" which rhymes with "garbage collectors."

Story: Monks in a monastery bring out stale bread that their Master had baked long ago - Man finally says, "This bread is terrible! You should bake the bread!"  Meaning: We must do our own spiritual work through "being with" ourselves in the process of discovery - with all of its torment, ambition, fear, etc. That's what discovery is all about.

But when an unwanted moment comes up, we look up to find the right "application" to "fix" the ailing self.

What must be discovered has no "front runner" -- nothing before it. But thought is always "rolling out in front of us" with its answers.

We need only see, not think about, the moment before us. We grow "stale" in our hearts through following the prescriptions of thought. Thought is only giving us reconfigurations of the past; The Truth is always fresh and new, unlike thought.

The Truth of oneself is only in the moment of discovery of oneself. There is no Truth apart from that. But we separate the Truth of ourselves from the moment of ourselves. But instead, we invent a new "truth" to solve the self. We must let the moment unfold into the self-discovery that lies within the self. Not uphold a separate idea creating more images of ourselves.

The "Now" moment is our life in actuality -- our life is drawn from it. We live in this moment and is our lifeblood, but as we are now, we live from the archives of the known.
When the new moment unfolds, there can be no one there who is letting it unfold - there is no "sense of self" that can think back over a moment and give it a name and form. We are always searching for a way to explain the "same old thing." That is nothing but resistance.

The cost is to let go of thinking about ourselves, the past, our images. We need to see that we live presently from these images, protecting and building them. As long as our life is derived from thought, we will never know freedom. We will then be always dependent on having the moment "interpreted" by "the thinker." The true moment is contaminated by the past, which is part of thought. We always want something between "me" and "life."

Self-discovery is the abnegation of knowledge. We need to "cut the tether" of thought. We can "be" in the moment without "the interpreter." But this feels "risky" to us because we want to know where we are going -- we can't know where we are going and know where we are going inwardly. This is "the tether."
Meet the new without the old.

Stop looking for "how to be safe" and "how to succeed spiritually." The whole thing has to go. Life is Now and discovery is the relationship with that.