Should you eliminate identifications before focusing on the perceiver? (Self-Inquiry)

[AlphaAbundance]

It was said (in Advanced Self-Inquiry Tips and elsewhere) that you must challenge or eliminate identifications before focusing on the perceiver/awareness otherwise you are wasting your time.  Is this true? How do you challenge or eliminate identifications? What else must you do before focusing on the perceiver? What are some good resources for self-inquiry? Does anyone have a step by step method of what you must do in self-inquiry?

Also what do you do or in what manner do you question after you get an answer of what your identification is? (I am the body, I am those thoughts). I tend to argue with my myself like "Ok even if I am perceiving it, it can still be me", "Why does me perceiving something mean it can't be me", "That logic is just one of the million ways one could see this". I think it might be better to just focus on the perceiver while avoiding thinking and let it reveal itself but I am concerned that you must challenge identifications first otherwise it won't be effective.

[winterknight]

5 minutes ago, AlphaAbundance said:

Also what do you do or in what manner do you question after you get an answer of what your identification is? (I am the body, I am those thoughts). I tend to argue with my myself like "Ok even if I am perceiving it, it can still be me", "Why does me perceiving something mean it can't be me", "That logic is just one of the million ways one could see this". I think it might be better to just focus on the perceiver while avoiding thinking and let it reveal itself but I am concerned that you must challenge identifications first otherwise it won't be effective.

With your objections above, you are confusing a philosophical/intellectual question with an investigation into your experience.

For example, suppose you were in a room, and someone asked you to find the light by which everything in the room was seen. You see a couch. Now, if you examined your experience, you would say "I see this couch because of the light -- therefore it is not the source of the light."

Now philosophically you could say, "Well, the couch is matter, but matter is really energy, and light is energy too, and isn't all energy one thing, and is there really a difference between the couch and the rest of the room, etc." -- you could bring up all these objections...but experientially you know perfectly well what is meant.

In the same way, you're looking around the room of your individual perspective and you are looking around for the "light source" by which you know all of your experiences in that room. You know perfectly well that if you experience something, you know that "I experienced that," and that means a division between "I" and "that," and that you are looking for the "I" portion of it. You can bring up all the philosophical objections, but they are beside the point. You know perfectly well what is being asked.

[Preetom]

@AlphaAbundance

I think Winterknight said it as well as it can be said. I'll just leave one more contemplative question you can use when you feel confused or tangled within a really convoluted objection or experience. Silently ask yourself this question and ponder the implication of it

''Am I aware of this 'thing' or is this 'thing' aware of of I?'' - put anything in place of 'thing' depending on your current experience.

You'll very quickly re-orient yourself and exactly know who is what.

[AlphaAbundance]

@winterknight @Preetom Ok should you eliminate identifications before returning to awareness or can you just return to the awareness and it will reveal itself. Also, how does one know they are actually in emptiness and not a subtle sensation or thought or whatever.

[winterknight]

5 minutes ago, AlphaAbundance said:

@winterknight @Preetom Ok should you eliminate identifications before returning to awareness or can you just return to the awareness and it will reveal itself.

There is no such thing as deliberately "eliminating identifications." And it's not returning to the awareness. It is trying to seek the I. Read my guide about it carefully.

Quote

Also, how does one know they are actually in emptiness and not a subtle sensation or thought or whatever.

You must inquire into who has this question.

[Inliytened1]

What did it for me and others here was Leo's enlightenment videos where he goes into self inquiry.

Start with his first one and go from there.  They cover and answer all your questions.

They have awoken or led to mystical experiences for multiple people on this forum.  They're that powerful.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Inliytened1

[tedens]

@AlphaAbundance I listened to these films several times and contemplated what it was all about. You have to raise your consciousness, discover it to yourself so to say.

[Preetom]

12 hours ago, AlphaAbundance said:

@winterknight @Preetom Ok should you eliminate identifications before returning to awareness or can you just return to the awareness and it will reveal itself. Also, how does one know they are actually in emptiness and not a subtle sensation or thought or whatever.

We have made a very simple practice into a very complicated intellectual thing. This is what Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj meant as self inquiry.

Do you feel yourself as one or many?

Notice that no matter what, you always feel that I am one and whole. That subjective, singular feeling of I is your target for self inquiry. Self inquiry is not about one I looking frantically for another second I, a godlike liberated I. As if one day you will discover a new I as an object. Or one I disidentifying a second I from other objects.

To illustrate this point, Ramana Maharahi composed a funny hymn which is something like this

"Compare the man who mindlessly asks who am i? Whence am i? To the drunkard who repeats who am i? Whence am i?"

I know where all these misconceptions come from. Leo in his enlightenment guide framed this entire practice which makes it seem like a very intellectual and complicated process with dozens of existential questions to ask and issues to parry and resolve. But that is not what the sages meant as self inquiry. Those existential, intellectual questions, insights and understandings were the last thing they would want you to think about.

The fact of the matter is this:

That singular, subjective feeling of I is already the liberated Self. But due to inadvertance, that sense of I mistakenly seems to be stuck inside the body as a limited entity.

One's job is not to argue with oneself and try to convince oneself that the I is not an object but it is the supreme God, that would be brainwashing.

Ones job is to simply be with it, be more interested in it and the truth of it will be revealed by itself. Usually we forget ourself all the time and attend to everything alien to us. That self forgetting attitude is what self inquiry tries to correct.

If you keep on forgetting yourself, that I will keep on wearing that illusory mask of being the body-mind. But when you keep it on your radar, you eventually discover its truth.

And as final note, that singular feeling I at first might seem like a sensation in the body, so that doesn't mean you'll now keep on focusing on a particular part of the body forever. The moment you clearly see the sensation, you'll also see that I is separate from it.

So basically you wont grasp the I as an object ever. Its sort of like following that I feeling around, keeping it in your radar instead of forgetting it. But remember, its not about mindlessly roaming around either. You know that subjective, singular feeling I right now. Thats the scent you wanna keep on gently trying to lock on.

Its all about more and more deeply feeling, being and settling down into oneself instead of superficially thinking, arguing with oneself, asking questions or any activity of the mind.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Preetom