The Pathway of Subtraction

photo by Lutz-R. Frank

We often perceive growth and development as a process of addition. We learn new skills and techniques, acquire more knowledge, understand deeper truths, read more books, attend more seminars, search for more spiritual teachers, and so on, but the pathway to awakening doesn’t play by these rules.

The “enlightened you” that you are looking for is actually the one who is looking and thus as long as you are looking for something to obtain or an understanding to acquire, you’re missing it. It is the seeker who is the one being sought.

Awakening is a process of subtraction.

What am I?

Am I the mind? No.

Am I the body? No.

Am I the beliefs and personality? No.

Am I the temporary role that is being played of the seeker, father, mother, son, teacher, or anything else? No.

What you are is realized by cutting away identification with that which you are not.

Strip away all false ideas which cover up Truth and the Truth of your being will become radiantly apparent.

It’s impossible for the Real You to not be, for it already is. All that’s necessary is for the self to quit making up stories about what it thinks it is and to just Be.

The more one can surrender all false ideas, the quicker Reality will be realized.

What you are looking for already exists here and now, not just as some potential reality that will come about if you change your thoughts and beliefs to believe you are enlightened, but if you literally drop away all those thoughts and look at what’s left.

I know nothing. Nothing except that I am.

With the stripping away of that which I am not, the Reality of that which you are automatically comes rushing in. What you truly are is everything, but this is only realized by first stripping away that which you are not. This understanding arises automatically, not deliberately. It can not be taken by force.

Love says “I am everything”. Wisdom says “I am nothing”. Between the two, my life flows.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj