Self-inquiry Question

[cle103]

Hey all,

I wanted to share some of my questions concerning self-inquiry. Currently I am meditating for one hour every morning, normally as a "stong determination sitting".

Here is my usual process:

1. doing a body scan and becoming aware of my breathing 

2. doing self-inquiry (mostly something similar to the Neti Neti method)

3. go into "do nothing" until the hour is over

I do not really struggle to "get through" the hour although I doubt that that is the purpose of this meditation (Eckhart Tolle). My "problem" is that I cannot really maintain doing self-inquiriy for more than 20 minutes. It just feels like my mind is completely closed. At the end of my inquiry I ask "who am I?" over and over. When I get silence I try to "bask" in it and enjoy it but then my mind jumps in with thoughts. Every couple weeks there seems to be a "crack" and I get to a really profound "wondering stage" but for the most time I am just banging my head against the wall and waiting for the hour to go by. 

Should I attempt to ask myself the "who am I/who is aware/...?" questions for the full remainder of the hour even when my mind goes berserk again? Or should I rather go into "do nothing" when my mind seems shut?

Any feedback is deeply appreciated. If need to clarify some points let me know.

Cheers!

[cetus]

@cle103 I have never done a lot of self inquiry as a practice so I don't know if this will be much help. I do start meditation with getting a good sense of self, than I shift that awareness on the breath only. A sense of self slowly diminishes and pure awareness slowly becomes the overwhelming presents with me being less relevant and only a "very" silent observer. I just came out of 25 mins. of meditation and it was really deep. All sense of self vanished and there was only pure awareness that was no longer localized at the body location. Pure awareness had entered a dimension of it's own that was beyond time and space (me).  What I'm saying is. if I had been doing mostly self inquiry, maybe there would have been no experience like that because I feel it would have kept me grounded in mind. My practice is to transcend mind at all costs. If you find self inquiry to be useful, try this, do it until there is a strong sense of self (however long that takes), than purposly let go of that sense of self and head in the opposite direction toward no-self. I would think the contrast between the two extremes would open up some huge insights. **Take everything I say here with a grain of salt because I only know from my experience of what works for me.  I hope you find some of this useful.

[key]

Your mind will run rampart regardless, watch it, if you ever get lost, stuck, frustrated, just go to a place of watching, noticing, not controlling, just there, happening, every new moment, spawned out of nothing, don't grasp, let go. Your thoughts expire as soon as they arrive. It's going to purge, it's going to suck. But why dwell on a past that doesn't exist anymore.

Ask yourself your questions, watch where your mind leads you, get lost in mazes and find your way out, it's all a fruitless game, it just takes time.

Edited May 16, 2016 by Kenya