The problem is that they are all illusory. It's ALL illusory. I'm not trying to bring people down. After all, it IS a season of associated with a huge increase in love, giving, celebrating, and sharing. But both Christmas and New Years are based on fallacies. Pretty much everyone knows by now that Jesus was not born in December - that Christmas was stuck in December based on more ancient Pagan holidays. Late December was when the Roman holidays of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, and the Germanic/Norse Yule took place. Saturnalia especially was a time of feasting, celebrating, and giving of gifts. Yule was big on decorating trees.
And the new year in January?? Really? Come on. If there are 12 months in a year, why are the last three literally called the Octo month, the nova month, and the deca month - 8th month, 9th month, and 10th month? January and February are the 11th and 12th, and March is the 13th. HUH? 365 days in a year, divided by 28 days, equals 13 months, making April 1st (April Fools Day) the first of the year - SPRING - New beginings. But in 1582, the Gregorian calendar shifted the new year from April 1st to January 1st, and as usual, anyone who wanted to follow the older, traditional system, recognizing the new year in April, was considered a Fool. (It's a little turnaround, sort of like how the word for a fake doctor was a Quack - originated with the natural healers calling the new form of doctors, who tossed out the traditional natural medicines and, instead, liked to use poisons like Mercury (Quacksalber) as Quacks. Eventually, it too got turned around by the establishment, and the mercury and arsenic users began calling the traditional herbalists and nature cure givers as Quacks.
But what does ANY of this have to do with spirituality and Self/God Realization? It's a little like Woke and Awake. Woke is an external focus - awareness of political problems, political idealogies, while Awake is more of an internal focus - personal and spiritual awareness and transformation. And even beyond that, Awakening is the purely subjective recognition of the Transcendent Self.
You see, there are basically two spheres of consciousness - The subjective and the objective. You, the Self, are the purely subjective Reality - that which is the Awareness itself. EVERYTHING you are aware OF, is the objective reality, which includes your own body, your mind, its thoughts, your feelings, perceptions, concepts....all of it. All these things appear IN your awareness...and as your awareness.
So the critical question here is Who/What am I? What is on the subjective end of the inquiry. This can't really be answered in words, because words are in the objective realm. Ideas don't really do it, as ideas, too, are in the objective realm. This is why there is an old saying that the map isn't it. It only points you in the direction. Or the finger pointing at the moon isn't it - it's what its pointing toward! So, in the same way, the question Who am I?, is not an intellectual question, but rather a pointing to the Presence. The "I" not looking, but just being I-ness. The eyeball not looking, but being eyeball-ness.
But let's back up a bit. The reason I called this Question Yourself, is that besides the direct question of who or what I am, there can be lots of preliminary inquiries that can substantially help and remove the burdensome concepts that hold the false self in place. For instance, as mentioned above, why do we follow Christmas and New Years? I'm not saying you should toss them out, but why do you follow them? It's cultural. Everyone does it. ( I know, I hear my mother too - "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" And yes, my mother actually asked me that! )
But the reality - this reality - is that there are a million things that we do every day, which we have probably never questioned. And a gazillion things we believe! Like, is the earth round like a ball, or flat like a pancake? Honestly, I don't know, and it's possible it's neither. Nearly every ancient culture showed it as flat or flatish. Just because they're ancient, does it mean they're wrong? Indian scriptures called it flat, but then they also knew planetary movements centuries before the West did. And the Pythagorean theory was actually said to be discovered by Baudayana - an Indian mathemetician around 800 BCE!
How about Government? I know this one may be a bit touchy, but why do we assume that these people are enabled to create "laws" and "crimes". Back in the 1700s, the American Forefathers just created out of thin air, a new government. At the time, they were considered criminals by their British rulers, but the criminals won and created a new nation. And what percentage of countries were created by overthrowing some other country. (People speak of the millions of deaths caused by religion, but it's nothing compared to the millions upon millions of deaths caused by governments!) And yet, we just assume that it's all legit because they say so, and if we don't agree, we can be imprisoned for breaking their "laws". BUT, they've got us believing it, in part, by creating an apparent two sides who battle each other, rather than recognizing that the real culprit is the make-believe rulers in the first place. Sure, there are "good laws" that keep everybody driving on the same side of the road. But how many people lost jobs because they maintained 'my body my choice' and refused to accept an untested medical procedure that later turned out to be potentially very dangerous?
So Question Yourself means to look at who you are - NOT as pure consciousness - but you, the person. What do you believe? Why do you do the things you do? What do you stand for? Are they all based on TRUTH? Are there ANY objective truths? What are the concepts that underpin your thoughts and actions?
Often, to help in recognizing Who you are, I've used an analogy of empty space. Within a given space, say a room, there are a millions things. It's filled with tables and chairs, and rugs and decorations galore. When you try to see the space itself, you primarily focus on all those things IN the room. In reality, the room itself is ALSO in space - a larger space, which is in an infinite space. If, we can begin to let go of the things in the way, we may begin to recognize the space itself - that pure open presence.
Similarly, when we ask ourselves questions about our own values and concepts and beliefs, we begin to empty our own space of the illusions that seem to prohibit our recognition. It's not a necessity - one CAN recognize space even with everything in it. But consider when you have gone into a huge cathedral, or looked upon the open sky and ocean at the beach - and, for a moment, been overwhelmed by the vastness of it all. The more we can empty ourselves of the habits and concepts that occlude that space in our own lives, the easier it becomes to recognize our own Infinite Presence.
So, question everything! Where do you end and the world begin? Where does your perception of 'Herel end, and 'There' begin? What is you and not you? When did YOU begin? Do you remember your birth and childhood in the present, or are they just memories, thoughts? What about your name? Are you really that name? And what about your sense of Self - that you are a man or woman, tall or short, good or bad, American or Indian, old or young? All of these are concepts within the objective reality. Question everything you think or do. And when you begin to go crazy, and feel like NOTHING is real anymore, THEN you're getting good and close and can ask - Who is aware of all this? WHO AM I?
Have fun.
love
Aja
_____________________________
हरे कृष्ण हरे कृष्ण कृष्ण कृष्ण हरे हरे
हरे राम हरे राम राम राम हरे हरे
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