15/09/2025
DAVID GODMAN ON SELF-INQUIRY
It’s a kind of mental archaeology. The gold, the treasure, the inherent happiness of your own true state, is in there, waiting for you, but you don’t look for it. You are not even aware of it, because all you see, all you know, are the layers that have accumulated on top of it.
Your digging tool is this continuous awareness of ‘I’. It takes you away from the thoughts, and back to your real Self, which is peace and happiness. Sri Ramana once compared this process to a dog that holds onto the scent of its master in order to track him down. Following the unattached ‘I’ will take you home, back to the place where no individual ‘I’ has ever existed.
This is self-inquiry, and this is the method by which it should be practiced. Hold on to the sense of ‘I’, and whenever you get distracted by other things revert to it again. I should mention that this was not something that Sri Ramana said should be done only as a meditation practice. It is something that should be going on inside you all the time, irrespective of what the body is doing.
https://www.davidgodman.org/living-inspiration-sri-ramana-maharshi-2/
