Self Inquiry Journal

Photo is of Spider devlopement, I'm afraid of spiders, that's why it fascinates me how similar my body is to one.

For the past year and a half I've been practicing Self-Inquiry, after reading Ramana Maharshi's essay Who am I? (many translations easily found on Internet for free) Now I even have a spiritual teacher I correspond with, who corrects, and guides me in it. Yesterday, and today, I've been having success with when there starts to be some kind of worried thoughts, imagination, or sad, desirous thoughts, imagination, all of these thoughts, experiences, imaginations, the object of the problem exists in relation, is created by the definitions of the one with the problem, the problemee, the ego. There is this false sense of Who I am, and the recurring, and repetitive problems, one solved, another follows in it's wake often similar, are based on that false sense of who I think I am, part of which is the tendency to suffer certain kinds of negative thoughts, imaginations. This is, in my own understanding duality. So dissolving that constraining self-definition, the one who the problem is a part of, the problem dissapears, as well as the duality of subject and object, I and world. There are other tacts I take with Self-Inquiry, for instance what is the source of happiness? In one of the dialogue transcripts with my teacher in Santa Cruz, when people get the object of their desires, and are temporarily blissful, this is a pale reflection of the bliss of the impersonal Self, it's as if the faucet is turned down, but when that "object" of desire is attained, the self-created condition met, there is permission to turn the happiness faucet on more. Using that analogy, I decided to turn the faucet on more, without having met a condition of desire fulfillment. The source of happiness is taught in these teachings to be within, to be the very nature of the Self. Not myself. The I, the ego, the sense of being an individual is just a bunch of different habitual thoughts. Self-Inquiry has been tricky, for instance, some of the ways I get off track, is when it becomes too overly strained, or repressive of thought or negative emotion, Inquiry is always subtler then I think it is, it the subtlest, so elusive. That is why the happiness being within seems key, because otherwise it becomes just an intellectual process (and is less successful), when that source of happiness is seen, felt to be within, and that circumstances, situations, objects, people, relations are absolutely, entirely irrelevent to happiness, that seems the key, and this is where all forms of spirituality really meet Self-Inquiry, if through devotion to Nature, or God (goddess), that devotion is also the transcendent happiness of the Self. Since I'm a beginner, and not at all qualified to teach, maybe that's enough for now.