I-dentity – 09.09.10

“We are all beings of bliss. Do you experience that? Bliss is our natural state,” provides Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But once the Self, that is blissful, mis-identifies Itself with the physical organism and with the ego image, the ego complex, you could say, then It loses Its bliss. . . . So have you ever bought a new car, and soon after you drive it off of the lot it gets dented? And suddenly this new car that felt very heavenly, that made you feel wonderful because you bought the car you really wanted, and everything was perfect—the first dent takes all of that away. . . . So all of us are living with that: we go from an ‘I’ to an ‘I’-dentity; the ‘I’ gets dented. And once we have an identity, then we are filled with [a] sense of hurt cause when you're dented, you're hurt, and you don’t feel perfect; you feel defective. You feel used. And even abused. And so most of us are riding around in these vehicles, these car-bodies, creating karma, and feeling more and more abused, and more hurt—and more like we’re lost and don’t even know why we’re in the car or where we’re going, or what this whole journey is all about. And as long as we’re in the car we can’t figure it out. And as long as we’re identified with the car, we can’t get out of the car.”

“And so Sri Ramana, who is one of our inspirations in Sat Yoga, always says that the first question has to be ‘Who am I?’ and to realize that the ‘I’ is not the body and it’s not the mind and it’s not the ego and it’s not the self-image—and it’s not any of the things that you have attached yourself to in order to anchor yourself in an i-dentity. And that’s all that we have to do is to let go of that and to abide in the Self, to rest in the ‘I’ prior to the dent. . . . And so it is necessary to rest, just as you do in deep sleep, to rest in presence, without the fear of the death of your identity. And know that in that peacefulness, there is release—and it will be eternal release if you allow it—into a vast state of presence in which the fear of death will be completely dissolved. And the fear of life. And then, this world becomes a heaven.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 9, 2010.