Do You Do the Inquiry as a Practice? - 15th November 2016

So is it like one spends the time actively doing that and learning some time every day doing the inquiry as a practice?

Yes, I think inquiry, it's just a simple looking. The inquiry, it could become so natural that you won't even need to use the question 'Who am I?' Just inquiring, just like this. It's just a register. This is simple looking without even the concept of 'Who am I?' Sometimes just 'Who?' is enough. Sometimes just 'Where?' is enough. You see, by the time you go to work, you don't have to be, you don't have to be 'Who am I?' Just you still intend to look at what is here, who is here. That is what we are talking about, you see. So we don't have to make a practice/cell out of it, but if it helps, if you feel like an inquiry... and you know this in our heart, we know whether a concept is light and easy in this moment to release and believe into it, or we know when something is really sticky. As Adyashanti calls it, the 'velcro thoughts.' So we keep... you are usually good at identifying them, you see. So we must look at our ego ones and maybe if it helps, we take some time and really say, 'Okay, next 20 minutes I'm just going to look at this one which seems to get me over and over.' When this deal comes from the mind, when this offer comes from the mind, I always end up giving it my money, you see. My belief. So maybe I can take a few minutes and just look at this. There is nothing wrong with that.

So I'm not prescribing something that you have to sit for this much time every day, because you know in your heart which are the sticky ones, which are really light and they just come and go. Take the sticky ones into your inquiry and if they keep coming over and over and seem to get our beliefs every time they come, you think you can just look at them and they will become lighter in that way. Then given these sticky identities, they start losing their 'velcroness,' their magnetism, their pull. Many of us, and many of us here, I know most of you are younger than me, but many of us grew up watching these Tom and Jerry cartoons. So we used to have these cartoons and then what would happen is that what would Tom do when he wanted to catch Jerry? Mostly he would take some cheddar cheese or some cheese, what do they call it, Swiss cheese? Something. So he would take some cheese and then in the cartoon they would show that the aroma is calling Jerry, isn't it? A hand comes out from the cheese and it goes to Jerry's house, goes flying. These are our favorite concepts. This case of Swiss cheese, our favorite concepts, and they become the way. 'Come, so much joy waiting for you, so much, it's so good to me, so good. I know last time it wasn't so much fun, but this time I'm telling you.' And you will inevitably... what happened there is Tom cat waiting. The ego is waiting with that chasing. 'Okay, I got you.' So as we recognize this more and more, you see, 'Okay, this aroma, this got to me last time.' You see, once it was Brie, once it was Swiss, once it was cheddar, once it was whatever. You see all these different types of cheeses. Then we are able to inquire into them and drop them and we see that all of them are leading me to this Tomcat of ego.

There's actually this story of somebody—I am not taking the name because I'm not sure it was about this one, so I don't want to use the name—but somebody who lived with Bhagavan for many years and he after some time got very frustrated because he was seeing people coming who were fresh and apparently getting what Bhagavan was pointing to, but he had been with Bhagavan for many years but he was just not getting the point, you see. And in the wisdom of the Sage, they are able to tell what is the medicine that is needed for this particular resonance of this particular frequency of energy or whatever is functioning through that seeming body-mind. So for that one he said, 'Whatever you do for the rest of your life, you will not leave the inquiry. You will keep asking yourself "Who am I?" till I tell you to stop.' So for some it could be, yes, nothing at all, just drop everything, there is nothing to do because there is no doer. For some it can be a very strong instruction saying, 'You must constantly, day and night, just ask yourself "Who am I?"' So there is no set formula for what is prescribed.

Thank you, Father, so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.