Understanding Oneself

Contents:

Chapter 1: What is Self-Understanding?

Chapter 2: Insight into Movement of thought?

Chapter 3: Explosion of Love

Excerpts:

Observing the world around us, from the clearly evident to the most subtle layers, we can see that our life is part of an extraordinarily complex web of physical and psychological relationships with all aspects of the cosmos. In order to engage in these relationships in the right way, it is absolutely essential that we understand ourselves. Without understanding ourselves, not only do we live in a perpetual state of inner confusion, but we also act as a source of disorder and chaos to the world at large. So how do we approach this delicate subject of self-understanding? 

... Thus, in order to understand what is, we must observe what is, which includes the movement of thought as well as the movement of memories of the past, and hopes for the future. So, what we are discovering together is that self-understanding is not a static set of conclusions about oneself that one carries about. Self-understanding is an action only of the present moment: it is the act of observing oneself as one is, in this moment right now, always.

... In silence, the mind begins to see clearly all the movements within and without. It discovers the deep inter-relationship of the outer world with the inner, coming into a completely new relationship with everything it interacts with, a relationship in which the separation between the inside and the outside dissolves. The mind listens to another silently, observing all the movements in itself and the other without a boundary between the two. It looks at a mountain, a flower, a bird, a face, or a sunset without grasping for words, quietly. The mind stops grasping for experience and begins to rest in what is.

... The wonderful news is that we have already begun this journey, and can sail onwards as we look at a tree silently, listening to the wind sifting through its leaves, smelling the fragrance of its bark, touching the life that throbs in its trunk, and tasting the essence of the cosmos in its entirety, one moment at a time, moment by moment, in every moment, including this moment.