Adapted from A Meeting with John Sherman
Ojai, California - March 11, 2006

Every true spiritual teaching has at its core, the insight that the only problem is a false belief about what I am. This gets covered up and layered over, explained and understood, and forgotten more often than not, but at the core of every true spiritual teaching, there is this really simple insight that the source of all of my misery, confusion, aggression, self-hatred, self-betrayal, and suffering is that I believe myself to be what I am not. I believe myself to be the story of "me" that is continuously unfolding within my mind. In fact, the story is the mind. There is nothing else to mind but this endlessly unfolding story about me, what I am, what I am not, what I should be; about my past; about what I need to get right, what I need to get rid of to get right; about the nature of presently arising experience and what it means about my story, about why I am good, why I am bad, why I am awake, why I am not awake, why I am, why I am not. Since this story is conditioned entirely on the circumstances in which these experiences occur, it can never stand still. There is never any possibility for me to find in this story of me a satisfactory answer to what is truly the most fundamental question of my existence: "What am I?"

Early in life, this story of me usually takes the form of material yearning for love, for pleasure, for money, fame or power. And maybe this does not happen for all, but certainly for all of us here, there comes a time when the story shifts and I begin to see that for all my efforts in the world, I have failed to get what I want. The truth is that I don't even know what I want, but I do know that I have failed to get it because I'm still wanting. I know there is something still lacking. And the insight occurs to me that perhaps I am looking in the wrong place.  Maybe I need to look in the spiritual realm for a solution to my problem. So I may become religious and religion offers me some solace and pleasurable cathartic experiences but that too falls short. And then I hear about Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta or the Gita, and I get busy working on that.  And for most of us, that is as far as we get. We may change teachers or teachings, as one teacher turns out to be not what we thought we need him or her to be, or a teaching is exposed to be really not right for us. We do practices, japa, mantras, visualizations, spiritual therapy; we get big experiences, we go to see gurus, we get huge experiences of hearts broken open, bliss, peace, no-mind, no-thought, emptiness, experiences of enlightenment and oceanic consciousness. And we get these experiences and we know, "This is what I want. This is what they are all talking about. This is what I need to keep." But these experiences have something in common with all the other experiences I have known: they are here today and gone tomorrow. And they may be so huge and so pleasurable that I fall in love with them and I want them badly. I remember them and I know there are things that I can do to trigger them. I hang on to those things and if they don't work, I move on to something else to try to get back, to make permanent what is revealed to be always, absolutely impermanent.

And so, this spiritual business ends up being just like any other business. The new boss turns out to be just like the old boss. It leaves me wanting and not getting; getting and losing, wanting to have it back. And somewhere along the line I have forgotten the simplicity of the fundamental spiritual insight that got me here in the first place: "My only problem is that I believe myself to be the story about me." But if that belief is the only problem, then clearly the solution is not to be found in anything that I do within this story that I have believed myself to be, no matter how spiritual, no matter how beautiful, wondrous and mystical it may be. Clearly, if the problem is that I falsely believe myself to be this story about me, then the solution is simple and it can be nothing other than to find the truth of what I am; to know consciously, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what my actual nature is.

And how hard can that be? We make a lot of noise about it, but how hard can it be?  Here I am. I am never absent. Experiences come and go, consciousness comes and goes, but I am never absent. I have never changed, not the slightest. I have never been touched, affected, enhanced or degraded by any experience that comes and goes within me.  I am permanent. I am so permanent and so never absent that I am profoundly, fundamentally ordinary. I am the essence of ordinariness, which is the very reason why I overlook myself so steadfastly.

If it is true that my only problem is a false belief about what I am, what does it take to be rid of that? Certainly this false belief cannot be eradicated by taking on some new belief about what I am -- God-consciousness, awareness, Buddha-mind, the light of love or any other new belief about what I am, no matter how wonderful that belief might be. 

The power of the offering of Ramana Maharshi is the absolute simplicity and ever-present reality of self-inquiry. Just decline to attend to all your other practices and, for a moment, taste what it feels to be. You don't have to eliminate your current practices; they can't do you any harm. You don't have to transform them, change them, or do anything about them at all.  Just decline to put your attention on any of that and instead, look and see what it feels like to be. Just taste of this that has never moved, has never changed; this that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be me. This that makes it absolutely impossible for me ever to deny that I am here.  This certainty that is always here, always overlooked.

We are accustomed to this idea that there is something that will fix me and we bring it along with us into the spiritual realm. Therefore, we look for practices that will have some effect on our other practices -- the practices of seeking what we cannot have, trying to get back what has forever vanished, etc. When we hear of this absolutely simple practice of self-inquiry, our expectation is that if we look in this moment, and see what it feels like to be, that is the magic trick that will wipe it all out, because the only thing I know to look at for confirmation about my actual state is the story about me.  So, when I come to spiritual meetings, my expectation is that I will receive something that will once and for all put an end to the stupidity of my story; that will once and for all bring clarity where there is confusion; that will once and for all put an end to my ignorance or the ignorance that is such an inherent part of the story that I run about me.

And I tell myself, "Yes, I see. Yes, I am here. Ah! I am here. Okay. Now, am I awake?  Am I enlightened now? Has the story vanished? Is mind no more? Has thought disappeared? No. Well, I'd better look somewhere else." 

But here's the thing: the story about me has no meaning. The practices that I engage in to enhance and to do something about the story of me have no meaning either. Nothing whatsoever that I have ever tried to do has had any effect at all on how the story unfolds. So, all of my practices -- religious, spiritual or worldly practices -- are of no consequence.

The offering of self-inquiry has nothing to do with saying, "Okay, this is the real deal.  Now you must stop all your other practices. This is the real thing you need to believe. Now you must stop believing everything else." The offering of self-inquiry is simply, directly, in this moment, in any moment, the possibility to see this certain knowing of my own nature that is always here. And by doing so, to gradually eradicate my false belief in the story as being what I am. Gradually.

So, what I ask you to do is just this: don't try to stop anything you're doing, don't try to throw away your spiritual practices or your worldly practices. Whenever possible, whenever it occurs to you, in the midst of all of your other practices, stop for a second and look to see, What is the basis for the absolute certainty that is always present within you that you are? Just do that, whenever it occurs to you, repeatedly. What Ramana says about this practice is that if you will do this, all will turn out right. He doesn't say that if you will do this, you will become enlightened. You are already awake. You have never, not been awake, not for a nanosecond.

You don't have to have any idea of what I mean by this, but if you will merely do this, taste yourself whenever it occurs to you, everything will turn out right. All will be well. The very nature, the flavor of the individual consciousness that consists only in the endlessly unfolding story of me is gradually transformed by the rising tide of realization that comes from the eradication of this false belief. The story changes, that's what stories do. But it's not that it changes and suddenly becomes Saint John instead of inmate John. It's not that it changes and suddenly becomes God-consciousness instead of the ordinary, every day story-telling about me, and what's going on with me, and what I need and what I should have and so forth. The change is much more fundamental and subtle than that. The change comes with the loss of the idea that anything whatsoever that happens in this mind has any meaning; that any of that can hurt me, help me, change me; that it can do anything about me.

I have seen that I am not what I think I am, and that I am permanent, never absent, never changed. And then, I see that this life, which is the story about me, is and always has been sweet and easy, without regard to its content, without regard to its shape, color, intelligence, stupidity, hardness or softness. This life is sweet, it always has been. And that's my experience and the experience of many that I have spoken with about the consequences of this inquiry. It is not something that you will even notice for awhile. There is the subtle dawning of this joy; the dawning of this growing, invisible realization within ego-mind itself of the actuality of its nature, its source. Unspoken, undefined, indefinable, just this knowing, just the conscious consciousness of this ever-present knowing, that's what grows.

So all I ever have to talk about is this: Who are you, really? What are you, really?  What is your actual nature, in which all story, all suffering, all wonder and horror are appearing? What are you?  And to point out again and again, as often as I have the opportunity to do so, that it is very easy to know what you are, since you already do know that. Since you are always here, it is laughably easy. It doesn't require initiations. It doesn't require understanding. It doesn't require anything.

© 2006 John Sherman. All rights reserved.