Get Serious

If we are at the point where we have had enough, where we really must get to the bottom of it, where this is no longer a hobby but it takes over, then the rest is easy.  We no longer really need to inquire as that will happen on it's own, naturally.  We no longer really need a teacher or guide as that natural intelligence will find the way.

However until that point we are sort of stuck - stuck in a maze where we're an individual trying to reach the end of the individual, or an individual trying to see that there is no such thing as an individual.  It's ludicrous, it's a farce.  There is no way you, from the standpoint of the individual, can find the end or the non-existence of the individual. 

If we think of a race, with a finish line - once we cross the finish line, there is no individual there.  That is - to cross the finish line is for there to be no individual.  So you're the individual - racing along towards the finish line.  So what has to happen to cross the finish line?  Where should that individual drop off?  Because IF it drops off anywhere along the way, then you cross the finish line before you ever reach it.  But if that individual remains in-tact -then you just go around and around and never see the finish line.  What a ridiculous thing this is.

So it seems we must seriously look into this idea of an individual - what do we mean by it?  We must know exactly what we mean - what we believe-we-are, yes?  We must realize what that means and how that impacts our idea of the world, of reality, of our existence.  But we just read all these pointers about awareness or something and then sit, as that individual, and wait for something to happen.  Then when we don't have some amazing blissful event we sit in frustration.

Come to a clear understanding of what this idea of an individual existence really means - and how it impacts your idea of reality.  It really means that you came into existence as something independent.  And now you are searching for either the end of that independence or the realization that this independence is false.  So we must seriously look into this idea, question it, doubt it, see if it holds water, see if it makes any sense upon inspection.

We must turn over all these rocks and see what is growing underneath - see what that unchallenged and unexamined idea is.  Challenge it.  Examine it.  It isn't that you came into existence and then, as that separate existence, will eventually find the answers.  It is that your idea about what you are is false - you did not come INTO existence as some independent existence.  You ARE existence - only patterns OF that existence come and go.  You have simply identified yourself with a pattern, then seek to be free of it.  

You were never bound by it to begin with.  That is the realization.