Why Look Within?

You don't turn away from the world, the body or the mind, because you hate the world, the body and the mind. You don't reject these because they're bad or not valuable. You are not counseled to look within, because there is nothing of value without.

The rejection of these, by going within, is so that you might know and directly encounter the Source of without. If the body is the reference point, and in the beginning it is, then the Source of what is without, lies within. To encounter the Source alone, one has to look within.

And what will one find? Leaving the manifestation, one finds the Source of the manifestation. What does it look like? It looks like the absence of the outer world. It looks like Darkness, Emptiness, Nothing. What is the felt experience? The felt experience isn't so bereft. The felt experience is Wholeness, Peace, Being, and of course the death of limitation.

Once the inner Reality is discovered, the outer reality is known. Intuitively, it is grasped that all of this has come forth from That, and without "That," there wouldn't be "this." Thus, by knowing That, this is also known, not in appearances or according to the mind's synthesis, but in Truth.

In truth, the mind cannot understand wholeness, because already its perception of itself is as something separate. Because it stands apart, it can analyze and synthesize. This is no small feat in itself, but as a limited object, it can only objectify, name, set apart and place limits on what it perceives. Because consciousness, as mind, perceives from the reference point of a single body, occupying a single space, everything likewise becomes a separate object.

To end the separation, one is counseled to go within. To momentarily withdrawal from what is perceivable and conceivable to what is neither. Before the the desire to seek the Source arises, the mind, or ego, sees this as a big waste of time, as impractical, as naval gazing etc. When, in truth one is undoing the damage of original ignorance, and making the return to original innocence.

The criticism is that one is escaping, but one is not escaping. One is losing his life in order to save it. One is losing his limited existence that he or she might know unlimited Existence. Once this is known, the outer and inner are no longer two. By knowing the Source and by knowing the appearances, you know the Truth, and you know it as one.

Because of "sin," creation has gotten a bad reputation, and rather than understand sin as ignorance, it became associated with the "world," the "flesh" and the "devil." This, of course is a misunderstanding. It is this association that is the ignorance. The world is inherently perfect, because Perfection is all there is. Without knowing this, the ego, unaware of it's truth and feeling it's incompleteness, becomes restless. The invitation to go within is the invitation to lose this limited and incomplete identity which is the cause of the ego's ignorance and restlessness.

This is also the cause of a mistaken identity. The whole mistakes itself for a part and then becomes restless about the other parts. This battle of parts persists until finally the Source is sought and its significance is grasped. When the significance goes deep enough so as to cast off all prior limitations, this is called Realization.

Just as limitations are dropped in sleep, they are dropped in the waking state. Realization, unlike a glimpse, is when the ego really starts to see that it is not an ego at all. On the contrary, it is unlimited existence, and so is everything else. This is the "rebirth" that follows the death of the ego's ignorance.