Know Your Self and Be Free
by Atman Nityananda
The Knowledge of Our True Nature
The most important thing in our lives is to discover and realize who we truly are, because this will free us from all pain and suffering.
Why will it free us from all pain and suffering?
Because what we truly are transcends the body, vital energy, and mind on all levels (thoughts, emotions, desires, fantasies), where pain and suffering occur.
Our true nature (Consciousness) is always whole, free, peaceful, and blissful.
When we recognize within ourselves the silent presence of our true nature, realize that we are that presence, and our mind fully identifies with it, we are then freed from all pain and suffering.
The Veil of the Ego
What prevents us from realizing our true nature is a psychological program that has developed within us, centered around the ego. The ego is an energetic field within us that makes us identify with the body and perceive it as ourselves, meaning we think we are the body-ego-person. The ego also functions as a veil that covers our true nature (which is experienced as a silent, still, and unchanging void within us) and prevents us from recognizing and realizing that we are it.
What is required through practice is to become aware of all aspects of this program, centered around the ego, and to overcome and dissolve them from our psyche.
This process of self-inquiry is a deep exploration of ourselves through which we realize what we are not (all those things we think we are but we are not) and what we truly are, that is, the silent space of Consciousness.
Because our true nature (Consciousness) is immortal, eternal, whole, free, peaceful, and blissful by nature, the complete identification of the mind with it frees us from pain and suffering, from all illusions we had about ourselves and the world, and allows us to live with freedom, wholeness, peace, and bliss.
Comment:
The complete identification of the mind with it:
The complete identification of the mind with the silent space of Consciousness is achieved when the ego and all egoistic tendencies and desires are completely eradicated from our psyche.
This complete eradication happens with continuous meditation (steady absorption of the mind in the inner space of silence) and ultimately in deep Nirvikalpa Samadhi and the grace of God.
With the eradication of all these tendencies, a spontaneous abiding and identification of the mind with the silence takes place and an effortless experience in all conditions of the timeless, unlimited peace, freedom, wholeness, and bliss of our divine Being.
The ‘secret’ to a plentiful life, a life of harmony, happiness and contentment is to have a sattvic mind free from desires and ego and to live in every moment in conscious contact with our true Self (Consciousness).
🌺 Peace, Love, Harmony
atmannityanada 