What is Self?

“Often in spirituality, there are teachings that assert the need to focus atention on given objects of perception. You may have been taught to focus your attention on a goal, a mantra, your breath, the third eye, the hara, or on sensation, but it is the very assertion of focus and the assertion of the focuser, the “me,” that keeps you forever at a seeming distance from the root of attention: your Self as pure Awareness.

In your natural state as Oneness, there is no need to focus in order to discover yourself – any more than point A can know itself by focusing on point B. Point A can only know itself by letting all focus, attention, and searching subside back to its origin.

This is an open invitation for a simple resting, a return to the ground of being you have always know.

- Mukti – “Don’t miss the Stop Sign”

“When I call on the light of my soul I come home.”

If they see
breasts and long hair coming
they call it woman,

if beard and whiskers
they call it man:

but, look, the self that hovers
in between
is neither man
nor woman

O Ramanatha

I have visited in my wanderings shrines and other places of pilgrimage. But I have not seen another shrine blissful like my own body.

When I see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see that I am everything, that is love. And between these two my life moves.

How would Freud answer the question, What is Self?

Or what about Jesus or Marilyn Monroe or Eleanor Roosevelt or the Dali Lama? How would they answer the question?

Check back frequently (or sign up for the RSS feed)…new “answers” from artists, atheists, children, famous people, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, spiritutal teachers, theologians, writers and others will be posted as they are discovered.

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You can post in comments or send your stuff by email to lanell [at] breatheonelove [dot] com.

Fun!