Essays About True Nature
by Nirmala
That Is That is an intriguing and enlightening look at life’s biggest question: Who am I? This book is a collection of the free essays and articles by Advaita spiritual teacher, Nirmala, found here on this website. It is intended to be an easy way to sample all of his teachings. There is no particular order and you are invited to wander through the essays as you please. Nirmala offers a unique vision and a gentle, compassionate approach, which adds to the rich tradition of spiritual inquiry into our true nature. He is the author of several books, including Nothing Personal: Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self. Free downloads of several of his other books are also available here.
(Please note: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License)
Here are two sample essays from the book:
Filling the Emptiness
We are taught at a very young age that emptiness is filled from outside. Our hunger and thirst are provided for by others. Our discomforts are relieved by mom and dad or whoever is raising us. Even before we have language, we have a conditioned response to inner sensations of emptiness or lack. It seems so natural and obvious to assume that if there is a feeling of emptiness or lack that we need to look outside for something to fill us up. It is this fundamental part of our conditioning that leads us so far astray from the true source of our soul’s nourishment and love.
More simply, it means that we develop very little familiarity with the experience of emptiness or lack. We are too busy trying to resolve or reduce the sensations of emptiness or lack to explore them in greater depth. And yet, what is the sensation of emptiness like? How does nothingness feel when it appears inside of us? How big is the empty space? Can the emptiness inside actually feel bigger than our body? How is that possible?
And what is the texture or quality of the space that seems to be lacking something? Is it completely clear and lacking all qualities, or is the emptiness dark or bright, heavy or light, dry or moist? Even if the open space inside of us feels lacking in something we want like love or a sense of our own worth, is there anything else present in the space? And finally, does the emptiness itself actually hurt or cause us any harm? Or is it our resistance to the feelings of lack and the effort to change our experience that cause us to suffer?
Questions like these can inspire some curiosity about the emptiness itself. We might even discover that emptiness itself is a freeing experience, not necessarily a problem. Empty space is the softest thing in the universe, and it is very low maintenance. There is nothing it can do to harm you, and nothing you can do to harm it. Perhaps the most surprising discovery of all is that nothingness is the true source of everything that really matters in life. All of the peace, joy, and love we experience in life comes directly from the still, silent, pure emptiness of our true nature. It turns out the biggest problem in our life, our sense of lack or incompleteness, is actually our greatest blessing. What a surprise to find so much richness coming from such an unpromising source.
Gratitude
Gratitude is usually suggested as a well meaning prescription. We are told to be grateful for what we have, or to show some gratitude. And yet it is difficult to feel something you are told to feel, even if it would feel better than what you are feeling. But what if gratitude is a description of your deeper nature? What if deep within you already feel gratitude?
Awareness is full of gratitude. It loves the sensations, experiences and thought forms that it touches in each moment. There is a natural appreciation for all that exists in awareness itself. It can’t help itself, because on the deepest level awareness recognizes everything it touches as its own self. There is only awareness and so that is what it experiences in every moment, and that is what it is grateful for.
And yet that is not our conscious experience in many if not most moments. It seems like much of what awareness touches is not something we appreciate or are grateful for. What about our problems and our painful experiences? It can seem ridiculous to suggest that we are full of gratitude for those, when we are rejecting them.
The key to finding this deeper level where gratitude flows so freely is very simple. It only requires that you notice the gratitude you do feel in this very moment. And when you are rejecting or resisting a problem or painful experience, what you are grateful for is the capacity to reject or resist. Even in a moment of active opposition to some aspect of our experience, we are not usually also in active opposition to our own opposition. We are actually happy to be so upset about our situation, as we have been taught to believe that this upset will help us feel motivated to deal with or change the problem.
For example let’s say you have just rear-ended a parked car. Even if you are not physically harmed, immediately you feel a big “Oh no!” arise inside of you, followed by thoughts of being late for work, higher insurance rates, and other complications. And to a large extent in the moment when you are saying “Oh no!”, you are not really experiencing the actual reality in front of you of twisted bumpers. That is what you want to go away! You want to take that moment back and do it again only this time stopping just in time!
And it is this inner defense against the painful reality that your awareness is grateful for, in part because it is serving you in that moment to reduce the impact of the experience on you. By being upset, you get to take in less of the reality of the problem. Your awareness is distracted by all of the stories you mind starts to spin about the situation, so much so that you may not even notice some aspects of the experience, say for example if the cars are actually not so seriously damaged. It may take a while to really become aware of what has actually happened while you wait for your upset to settle down.
Awareness is grateful for the upset because it is either serving you in that moment to be upset, or a similar upset has served you in the past in similar situations. And even more fundamentally awareness just loves experience of all sorts. So even if you are unable to get past your upset to the actual reality of the circumstances, then awareness just enjoys the upset. Every emotion and sensation is richly unique and awareness at its core is deeply grateful for every experience that comes.
Again the key to recognizing this inner gratitude is simply to notice what awareness is actually touching in this very moment, as that is where the gratitude is rising to the surface of awareness.
