The Truth of Who You Are
The truth of who you are is bigger than any concept you have about who you think you are.
How to get the most out of these Wisdom Quotes:
Put aside everything you think you already know.
Open your mind and heart to receive something new.
Take your time going through each point.
Return to any points that particularly touch you.
In the coming days, listen carefully to the wisdom within you.
1. Stop and Put Everything Aside
"It is with great honor and joy that I extend to you this invitation, this moment in your life, to stop; to retreat from everything you have ever learned, ever - worldly or spiritually, everything you have ever attained, worldly or spiritually, psychically, every power you have ever developed.
To take one second and retreat from it all. And in that to tell the truth of who you are.
If you are enamored with powers, you can always go right back to your powers. If you are enamored with techniques and strategies, they will be waiting for you. You can pick them up and run with them.
But at least there will happen one moment where you could directly experience that the truth of who you are is whole and complete as it is.
Your body is not whole and complete as it is, it is an imperfect thing. Your concepts of reality are not whole and complete, they are imperfect and limited. Your emotions are also imperfect and limited. Your circumstances are imperfect and limited. Your understanding is imperfect and limited. And all of it always will be imperfect and limited. That’s reality right there.
Nothing wrong with imperfection, nothing wrong with limits. The task is not to make what is imperfect perfect.
The task is to discover what is already perfect and to realize that as the truth of yourself and to realize that now. Not tomorrow, not next year, not next lifetime, not yesterday, not when you wake up…
Now, only now."
~Gangaji, from the video: How to Become Enlightened
COACHING NOTES:
Here we have a very clear picture of what is imperfect and limited: our body, our concepts, our emotions, our circumstances, and our understanding. This realization can bring great freedom if we see that all these things have nothing to do with who we really are.
We also have an invitation to stop and put aside everything we think we need in order to improve all these imperfect and limited things. There's nothing wrong with all our techniques and strategies, but our reliance on them can be a hindrance.
Always begin with being open. Open as much as you can and be willing to put aside everything you think you already know.
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2. Thoughts Do Not Define Who You Are
"The world is not as you think it is. You are not who you think you are. I am not who you think me to be.
Your thoughts about the world, yourself, and me are based on perceptions. Whether they are inner or outer perceptions, they are limited. Recognize that, and you hear the invitation into the truth of yourself, which cannot be perceived or imagined, and yet permeates everything.
When all mental activity around who you think you are or what you need for happiness is stopped, there is a crack in the authority of perception, in the structure of the mind. I invite you to enter through that crack. Come in through that opening.
When you do, the mind is no longer filled with its latest self-definition. In that moment, there is only silence. And in that silence, it is possible to recognize absolute fulfillment: the truth of who you are.
Any thought that you have had about yourself, however deflated or inflated, is not who you are. It is simply a thought.
The truth of who you are cannot be thought, because it is the source of all thoughts.
The truth of who you are cannot be named or defined. Words like soul, light, God, truth, self, consciousness, universal intelligence, or divinity, while capable of evoking the bliss of the truth, are grossly inadequate as a description of the immensity of who you truly are."
~Gangaji, The Diamond in Your Pocket
COACHING NOTES:
Gangaji tells us to: "hear the invitation into the truth of yourself, which cannot be perceived or imagined..." How can the mind look at something that cannot be imagined? It can't. This invitation into the truth of ourselves doesn't actually involve the mind.
For some of us, this idea is mind-blowing. All we have ever known is our mind and what it told us. It has been our entire world. But here we are entering into something different, something deeper than the mind and the content of our thoughts. Could it be that we are deeper than all that? Consider.
If, on the other hand, you feel you are familiar with this concept of going beyond the limited mind, and have experienced yourself as the space in which all things happen, I invite you to open even more to find new clarity as we explore our true nature.
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3. Truth Is Untouched by Any Concept
“However you identify yourself - as a child, an adolescent, a mother, a father, an older person, a healthy person, a sick person, a suffering person, or an enlightened person - always, behind all of that, is the truth of yourself. It is not foreign to you. It is so close that you cannot believe it is you.
Instead, you have taken on the conditioning of parents, cultures, and religions as the reality of yourself rather than what has always been with you - closer than your heartbeat, closer than any thought, closer than any experience.
The truth of who you are is untouched by any concept of who you are, whether ignorant or enlightened, worthless or grand. The truth of who you are is free of it all.
You are already free, and all that blocks your realization of that freedom is your attachment to some thought of who you are. This thought doesn’t keep you from being the truth of who you are. You already are that. It separates you from the realization of who you are."
~Gangaji, The Diamond in Your Pocket
COACHING NOTES:
Let's take a closer look at that last paragraph:
"You are already free."
Notice your reaction to these words.
"All that blocks your realization of that freedom is your attachment to some thought of who you are."
Could this be true?
"This thought doesn’t keep you from being the truth of who you are. You already are that."
Nothing can stop you from being the truth of who you are. No amount of ignorance, closed heartedness, or lack of any kind changes what we truly are.
"It separates you from the realization of who you are."
In other words, the thought of who you are, your ideas about yourself, your self-definitions stop you from actually knowing yourself. Your concepts, beliefs and ideas are interfering with knowing yourself and experiencing yourself as freedom.
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4. Truth Is Too Big for Thought
"Who you think you are does not have the capacity to realize the truth of who you are. Truth is too big. Who you think you are appears and disappears in the truth of who you are. Who you truly are can recognize this. You have the right to recognize this.
Are you willing to recognize that thoughts are simply thoughts, beautiful and horrible in their scope and power, yet inadequate in their description of who you are? Are you willing to investigate this?
If so I invite you to stop thinking, just for a moment. Not as an act of repression, but as a refusal to continue feeding whatever thought arises, to stop building thought upon thought. Whether it is a thought of grandeur or a thought of worthlessness, stop feeding it and recognize it as just a thought.
What can a thought do? It can define experience. It can classify and relegate experience. It can generate experience. But it cannot be experience. A thought has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The absolute truth has no beginning, no middle, and no end. It does not appear and then disappear; it is always here.
I am not against thought. What would be the point of that? Thought is here. Thoughts can be a glorious expression of creativity and understanding - to recognize thought for what it is, is to be neither for nor against it.
But when you are free of the bondage of believing that thoughts are reality, you are free to enter into the direct experience of who you are.
Who you are cannot be captured through thought. The mind cannot capture its source, because the mind is only an aspect of the source, not the whole."
~Gangaji, The Diamond in Your Pocket
COACHING NOTES:
We have come across many definitions of freedom and we can probably add one or two of our own. But have you ever considered the freedom that comes when you are no longer believing your thoughts to be reality?
Look around you. Who do you know who isn't believing their thoughts? Do you see the bondage that comes with that attachment? Can you sense the smallness of such a conceptual world, built on the culture, concepts and background of each individual? There is no room for freedom here. There is no room for truth.
If there is an openness, a willingness to investigate, "a refusal to continue feeding whatever thought arises, to stop building thought upon thought," then wisdom will rise up in the stillness to reveal the truth of who you are.
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5. Who Are You Really?
"I invite you to let your attention dive into what has always been here, waiting openly for its own self-realization.
Who are you really?
Are you some image that appears in your mind?
Are you some sensation that appears in your body?
Are you some emotion that passes through your mind and body?
Are you something that someone else has said you are?
Or are you the rebellion against something that someone else has said you are?
These are some of the many avenues of misidentification.
All these definitions come and go, are born and then die. The truth of who you are does not come and go. It is present before birth, throughout a lifetime, and after death.”
~Gangaji, The Diamond in Your Pocket
COACHING NOTES:
Consider all the above questions deeply and see how you have innocently identified as something that isn't really you. We all do this. We have all done this. There is no judgment here. Only noticing.
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6. As Close to Knowing Yourself as You Can Come
"In order to know our self we do not need to know the mind. No other knowledge than the knowledge that is present right now in this very moment is required to know our self.
What does it mean to know our self? We are our self, so we are too close to our self to be able to know our self as an object. Our simply being our self is as close to knowing our self as we will ever come. We cannot get closer than that.
When our desire to know or find ourselves as an object is withdrawn, we discover that our own self was and is present all along, shining quietly in the background, as it were, of all experience.
Completely relax the desire to find yourself as an object or to change your experience in any way.
Relax into this present knowing of your own being. See that it is intimate, familiar and loving. See clearly that it is never not with you. It is shining here in this experience, knowing and loving its own being. It runs throughout all experience, closer than close, intimately one with all experience but untouched by it.
As this intimate oneness, it is known as love. In its untouchable-ness it is known as peace and in its fullness it is known as happiness. In its openness and willingness to give itself to any possible shape (including the apparent veiling of its own being), it is known as freedom and, as the substance of all things, it is known as beauty."
~Rupert Spira, Presence: The Intimacy of All Experience
COACHING NOTES:
There is a lot of depth to this speaking and something here for all of us to see. Let the words wash over you and reveal what you are ready to receive.
Remember to keep coming back to these quotes and to allow yourself to see something new every time.
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