I find it hard to express how much the enquiry has changed my life.

Hi John,

I find it hard to express how much the enquiry has changed my life. I saw a little video clip of you recently saying that in your experience everything is John and realized that this has also become my experience in recent months. To say that life has become like a dream would have some truth to it but wouldn't be the whole story. Perhaps its best to say that there is a deep recognition of the spiritual writings without really being able to explain in words exactly what that realisation is. I've heard Tony Parsons say that when this is seen you have a "love affair with life" and that's what it feels like more and more each day.

Perhaps you would appreciate this more coming from me if you had known me a few years ago when I was truly miserable. Almost everything that was heavy and serious has become more light-hearted and playful. There is so much space, joy and love in my life now. ALL of my relationships have benefited from this investigation. I seem to be able to speak about past difficult family situations without the deep sense that they are so serious and needed to be blocked off. I feel in a way in love with people, even strangers, and feel like I can really breath them in these days, even when their stories are ridiculous :)

It really is as you say, this realization kind of creeps up on you. It really has crossed a point where I can no longer lie to myself about how my life has changed with this. I seem to be able to open and honest with people more and more and don't need to have this big guard up. Like I no longer need to act one way with my mother, another with a stranger and another with my girlfriend. There is a real sense of ease and truth about that. I notice changes to the life in small things also like when I played football with my brother yesterday I no longer cared who won. I just enjoyed playing with him and when he was behind I even found it strange that I cared more about him doing well than me. That serious, competitive edge that was there before with people seems to have disappeared and been replaced with playfulness.

I hope I'm not making it sound like my life is some magical paradise but the truth is it just seems to get easier and easier as this enquiry permeates my being more and more. I feel like I don't have to pretend anymore to know more than I know, to be better than I am or any of that sort of thing.

I have to be honest and say that I wouldn't rush out to all and say that self-enquiry is the easiest thing in the world. I spent two and a half years asking the question "Who am I?" as diligently as I can imagine any human being could and have to say it seemed like there was minimal success from it. I would have probably given it up except I was so desperate at this stage that I couldn't possiblly think of any other practice to go back to doing. It seemed like it was having very little benefit on my life even though I seemed to have a firm mental understanding of things. Then one night about 6 months ago I guess you could say there was an "awakening" experience where the I was seen through totally and it was seen without a doubt that what I am is not this I thought nor anything of this material world. Since then nothing really has been the same and everything false has been falling away rapidly, which is pretty much every thought or self-image, good or bad, I've had about myself. The I thought is still taken to be what I am at times but less and less. There is less and less of a sense of life having to be any different from what it is day to day. I take more pleasure in the simple things.

And the truth is it feels like even this letter itself is a play, written mainly just for the joy of writing it. There doesn't seem to have to be some other reward out of doing things in life other than the satisfaction of doing it. Isn't that so strange?

All my love,

D.

Cork, Ireland   
December 10, 2008

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