You are complete and not a part of the Wholeness. You are the Wholeness that you seek; It is your very nature. It is only your mind that seeks to become, unbecome, attain, or renounce. Separation is only a dream which brings about the illusion of space, time, and causation.
The Ashtavakra Gita says it plain and simple: you are the pure consciousness, the unaffected witness of the phenomenal world. While you pervade phenomenality, you remain untouched by what happens in it.
The Wholeness is causeless and without attributes. The way you imagine yourself with your imperfections is an image on the screen of consciousness. You are the screen and not the images. The image may appear murky at times but nothing happens to you. The image that you seek to perfect is a continually changing entity – an illusion that propagates further illusions in horizontal time.
This idea is perceived as radical because the modern world is image-conscious and obsessed with ideas of self-improvement and making it big “out there.” Big businesses have been established that teach mindset, focus, mastery, motivation, and self-development – all of it is extremely popular because it is full of hopes and dreams. But a dream is a dream, no matter how appealing, it will never last. No one questions what is this “self.”
Who is trying to improve and what? Where is this “self” that wants to become and attain something other than itself? Is this “self” your continuous experience? If you are aware enough, you’ll notice that the way you imagine yourself keeps changing based on circumstances.
Your perception of yourself keeps changing with time. As a child, you were creative and brimming with joy. As an adult, you remain immersed in incessant thinking worrying about an imaginary future, while bearing the load of shame and guilt of what happened in the past. Which one are you? You remain concerned with What-IF, whereas, the reality is right in front of you as What-IS.
There is something that never changes. Something that, relatively speaking, hides behind a veil and silently watches everything – your successes, failures, struggles, messy relationships, moods, thoughts, beliefs, and every other movement. Even if you “become” your idealized self, it will not be much different from what you are right now because both are a part of the same movement.
It is only your thinking mind which identifies with limitations and creates suffering. This includes the effort put towards spiritual attainments in the name of enlightenment or self-realization. Where is the “self” that wants to realize? And what does it want to retain permanently while itself being a flux?
Below is an excerpt from my book – The End of Me & My Story.
Only humans remain preoccupied with this idea of attaining and grasping a permanent bliss of enlightenment through personal effort. They want to make it look like they have earned it by working hard through decades of penance and sadhana.
It includes the sacrifice of meditating for hours, long days of fasting, performing rituals, undergoing the torture of lifetime celibacy, eating selected foods, abstaining from all pleasures of life, suppressing natural desires, and completely renouncing the material world.
It is the ego-mind’s favorite trick to achieve the desired goal of having no goals. It says, “Once I’m free from all the having and wanting, I will be in the supreme state of ultimate peace and bliss.” Who wants ultimate bliss? Where does this desire for permanency come from?
The End of My & My Story, Jagjot Singh
Free yourself from all limitations. You are not the limited mind-body organism but the infinite being – the unborn and the indestructible. The very fact that you are aware of what is happening is a hint that there is an awareness aware of itself as awareness. Find out what is that.
The idea that you are incomplete and unworthy comes from the achievement-oriented world obsessed with hustle culture. It only strengthens the sense of separate existence, which is suffering. Our belief of being separate entities in manifestation is the cause of our misery.
See around, everything is connected. Every happening is connected to every other happening. Tell me one thing that exists independently in isolation. Life is an interconnected whole. The wars, injustice, racial discrimination, violence, insensitivity, and lack of empathy that we see in “others” is not separate from us. It is simply a larger manifestation of what hides within our own shadow.
We are neither good nor bad human beings. We are the “being.” The dualistic splits are created by the mind for the propagation of illusion. Your imperfections are a part of the creator’s perfect plan. No matter what you achieve or become or unbecome, the afflicting mind will haunt you unless you see it for what it is.
Nothing is to be done. Nothing is to attained. Not a thing is to be changed. Let the one who made “you” worry about the change. No yoga, meditation, or any of the so-called spiritual practices can show you your true nature. You are beyond time and free from what is happening in phenomenality. Watch and let the illusions fall away.
Don’t ask, “How do I watch?” Just watch. There is no way to watch other than just watching. Asking “how” introduces the subject seeking an object; hence, you come back in the loop of forgetting, seeking, and attaining. Do you see the trap? You are the trinity: the watcher, the watching, and the watched. Rest in your true “being.” Be as you are.
