Look Within
You are the teacher you seek.
All the wisdom you are looking for is inside you.
This is great news! If you can really hear this, it is the end of searching, seeking and looking outside of yourself. There is a saying I love:
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When the student is really ready, both disappear.”
Papaji used to say - no teacher, no teaching, no student.
Katie often says - just be the student! Be the listener. I love this. Isn’t it so simple, effortless and humbling?
I’ve come to unterstand that my “teacher” is that which triggers me in the moment whether that be a person, situation or life itself! It is always kind and alerting me to a belief I haven’t questioned yet and a place where I am not free. This is true for everyone.
Listen
The Work is a way to help you access your own wisdom by listening to yourself! How can we ever listen to others if we’ve never stopped to listen to what’s inside of us?
By being still and listening patiently to the voice inside you, it reveals precisely what you need to see or hear, just in this moment.
Remember that this moment is all we ever have. Forget the past. Don’t dream into an imagined future. Just be Here and Now fully with a humble willingness to know the Truth. The person or situation in front of you is exactly what you need. It’s perfectly obvious like that!
The Truth sets us free. Every time.
As you listen deeply, The Work also reveals very clearly where you have motives, may be distorting the Truth, jumping to pre-conceived conclusions or intent on a preferred, ideal outcome.
The Work reveals and shows you everything you need to see about yourself and life.
Notice
The Work is really about noticing. Awareness. Stillness.
You can’t “work The Work” or make it fit a preconceived agenda or motive you may be holding, however subtle or tricky the ego may be! When this happens, know that you’ve moved away from Self Inquiry and into something else (therapy, discussion and talking about your story, defending/justifying, strategising, coaching techniques, intellectualising or conceptualising the Truth, control, manipulation and so on). Usually, this form of resistance has the flavour of wanting to be right rather than wanting to be free/true. It’s not right or wrong; it’s just not the Truth.
As soon as you have an agenda or motive, The Work stops working, only every time!!
The Work liberales you from all of your illusions, false ideas, precious concepts, tactics, strategies and motives.
“Do you want to be right or do you want to be free?”