Looking into 'me'
Question: Is there any direction to looking into me? Sometimes I get confused.
- It is the self that gets confused, but I understand the question, is there any direction in looking into me? No, it is a place at which I am in the center. So there's no direction. The self, though, stands outside of me and tries to take a position, looking into me, looking for direction, where the truth is that I am in the black, I the intelligence in that body am in the black. Therefore there is no direction where I am in the center of it, and it is 360 degrees around me, but then I am right through it. So there is no direction. But in the beginning, as I look from my self above with my attention, it seems as though I have a direction looking down or looking into me. Gradually as I descend into that I leave my self behind, I will find it - just is.
What direction do you have as you look in there?
Well, I experience if I look into the black sometimes I feel that I'm looking straight ahead, and then I may feel that I'm looking down into me and going down.
-That's all right. But eventually you will be the black. The self, which governs our attention, because we're always concerned with objects outside, is always looking from a direction, in a direction, and so it's a matter of changing or transforming our way of looking so that we become where we're looking at, which is the black - that'll happen. You don't have to try.
Is there any effort involved in looking down into me, or should I just look into the blackness, wherever that is?
-There is no effort in looking into me. I should just look into the blackness, not down. Just look into the blackness, and then I disappear. And that is the extraordinary state that cannot be described because it cannot be known, but I can be it. But because it can't be known, the mind or monitor then comes in and says, I don't get it, because the mind lives off knowing things. But this will become clearer to you in your own experience.
Do we replace right meditation when we leave here? Do we replace meditation by looking into me?
- Yes. What is meditation? Meditation is okay. You know what meditation is, this looking into me. You walking down to the tube, you look at the sky, and you're looking into me at the same time. It's not meditation, is it? It's a state of being. You're fully aware of the birds, the trees, and you're looking into me at the same time. That's how you practice it. That's not meditation.
Barry and Eckhart