Self-Inquiry, contemplation of the self, or Neti-Neti, is a good practice of negation, transcending our outer awareness inwards to the truth of who we are as the Self. Still, one must also practice the indwelling presence of Being in all that is. We see what is illusory through Non-dual teachings, the body/mind organism, with the intellect, the most dominant feature of the mind, organizes our perceptions, sensations, emotions, and feelings to construct our personal reality; however, we also must have a sense of what is real with respect to fine feelings that illicit an emotion from the depths of a psychologically centered heart, we can rely on feelings as a guide to intuitive truth.
We don’t try to get away from the body’s appearance or the ego/mind structure; we let it be in its natural combination; it serves as a functional organism and is the gateway to a supreme reality. Look beyond the body/ego/mind, for truth; it may have been lost to memory, hidden, but is ever-present in everything we know as our present reality.
What is our true origin? Going beyond is an absolute value of what was before any remembrance, before your conscious awareness of existence. A philosophical question for the ages, theorized and promoted by countless religions and bright, independent thinkers. Unanswerable by scientific investigation, even though a presumed “God particle” has been discovered to fit into a theory, a mathematical construct of physical reality. A subtle point of manifest creation may explain principles governing physical reality, but it does not answer the origin, the source of all there is. It is a natural and logical but unsatisfying question about truth.
Consciousness is a shared experience; if you are aware, you are conscious, and without it, the knowing and any investigation into our existential reality would not be. Consciousness is who and what we are. To fully realize this statement requires letting go of the limited ego/mind, where pure being or consciousness is unveiled from the hidden, where a clear perspective is seen that consciousness is all there is, even in the fabric of the construct of the material dimension.
The notion that I am the body, have personal thoughts, and am the owner of my actions becomes problematic when one exclusively believes one is limited only to the body/mind organism. In Non-dual teachings, the body/mind organism exists as an illusion to the lasting quality of consciousness. And it only arises as a delusion or blinding ignorance if the apparent limitations of physicality, primarily separation and causality, are mistaken for actual reality. Separation and Causality are crucial, paramount in the disguise that promotes all suffering in human life.
The personal process of subjective investigation is what Non-duality teachings are all about, and brings the study of self-experience and how consciousness may influence the physical world. The spiritual realm is often described as encompassing existence beyond the physical body and its surroundings, touching upon the questions of meaning, purpose, and consciousness itself. Knowledge of spiritual reality is typically subjective and gained through internal examination, contemplation, or mystical experiences. It is a first-person, personal understanding rather than external observation. The feeling of deep connectedness during meditation, a sense of a transcendent self, or the conviction that there is something more vast, more magnificent, and greater than physical reality.
The body and ego/mind are not you; however, having a body/mind, even though seen as an illusion, is highly significant in the evolution of consciousness. The appearance of a body/mind, simultaneous with the immediate environment, continually appearing in awareness, is a direct pointer to the absolute quality of eternal consciousness. It is not only a lead into an unobstructed purity we could call Source, but it also shows the physical realm is an energetic, blissful representation of this fundamental nature of consciousness.