Want to Wake Up? Focus Upon the “I Am”

I Am.

It’s so simple. The mind loves seeking, learning, exploring, understanding, and this is all just the beautiful play of the mind. It’s all “food for thought.” It seems that all our reading and learning is great for academia. It makes us excellent students who can say the right words and come up with the right answers when it’s time to take the test. However, it may not be the best strategy when it comes to Self-realization. We need not gain more understanding to go beyond the mind.

“You are too full of gibberish, you know too much. Because of your borrowed knowledge and too many words moving inside you, you cannot see the wordless beauty that can only be experienced in silence.”

-Osho

I Am. Focus on that. It’s simple. So simple. That brings awareness back to its Source, rather than focusing it upon its infinite manifestations.

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realizes its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.

-Eckhart Tolle

Make a friend with the I Am. Spend time with it. Nothing need be created. You don’t need to become anything new. Just be. The inner guru will awaken on its own and you will intuitively begin knowing all that prolific spiritual wisdom we previously sought answers for from books, teachers, and gurus.

“When you stop searching and you calm down and you put your books away, and you confront yourself and see what you are all about, that will bring about bliss faster than anything you can ever imagine or ever do.”

-Robert Adams

I Am.

The “I Am” literally is what you ARE. I Am That I Am, and so are you.

Just Be.

Let’s look at several explanations by different teachers who all point to basically the same thing, being with the “I Am.” This takes us right to the heart of spiritual practice.

Nirmala describes Self-inquiry

It does not need to be complicated. Just simply sense your self and do not worry about inside or outside or going deeper. Sense that you exist right now, and then stay with that sense of “I” or “me”. But do not worry about whether it is the right way of sensing your self. Simply sense your self just as you are right now.

Once you sense your self just as you are right now, simply stay with that sense of your self. If a thought or feeling arises, notice who is having the thought or feeling. Obviously “I” am having the thought or feeling. And so then you just return to staying with that sense of “I.”

That is all you need to do. Just rest while sensing your self. Everything else is up to divine grace, and it is taking good care of you.

-Nirmala

Nisargadatta on Focusing upon the ‘I Am’

When I met my Guru, he told me: “You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’, find your real Self.” I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon!

My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound.

I simply followed (my teacher’s) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being ‘I am’, and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared — myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

Mooji on Focusing up the Self

If you want a practice, if you want a meditation, if you want something to do, there ya go. Just be.