Sittting on the summit of Arunachala back in 2005 it came to me that I, as Conscious Being, had not moved even so much as a fraction of a millimetre. Only my body had travelled thousands of miles from England to sit on India’s holy mountain.
And it came to me that the awakening I was blessed with could just as easily have happened without my body leaving home. In truth, in reality, there is no need for our bodies to go anywhere at all for the awakening to the truth of who and what we are to become the living reality of our lives.
This principle of our unmoving Beingness could have been why Ramana Maharshi never went anywhere after he arrived at what was to be his mountain home. As far as I’m aware, as a young man he travelled to Arunachala and never left it.
Travel, it seems, only broadens our experience of the world. It does not bring about enlightenment, ie knowing who and what we truly are as the silence of our mutual One Heart, no matter how exotic seeming the places we travel to may be.
Shopping in Waitrose supermarket this morning, that same awareness came to me. There was observing of the Leo body moving around, walking, talking, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling – while I, as Consciousness, remained completely unmoving, simply aware of all that was moving, including all the other human bodies doing their weekend shopping.
The only difference between my experience and that of the other shoppers would seem to be that pretty much everyone else appears to imagine themselves to be the bodies that are doing the shopping. They think their bodies are who and what they are.
And this imaginary identification with our bodies appears to be the root cause of human suffering.
Fortunately, Ramana blessed us with the gift of Self-inquiry, his legacy to humanity. Through inquiry into the truth of our experience, all the thought structures we have believed ourselves to be, and which caused us to feel limited and separate, will naturally release.
And when thoughts release, especially the thought “I am my body”, we become free to be the person we would most love to be and live the lives we would most love to live.
UNMOVING SILENT STILLNESS
From the unmoving silent stillness of Being emerges the endlessly changing worlds of form, which are never separate from, and always are, the oceanic Consciousness of Being Itself.
We could think of the world of forms – the animal, vegetable and mineral realms – as like the waves on an ocean. Although each wave has it’s own unique expression it is never separate from the ocean that gave birth to it; and therefore is never separate from the other waves.
This is equally true for humans. Next time you are in a supermarket, take a look around at your fellow shoppers and wonder … could it be that there is only one Being doing all the shopping …?
Namaste,
leosearle.wordpress.com 
Hi Leo – That’s really helpful as I find supermarkets quite stressful but I guess they can be just as enlightening as anywhere else! Do you think certain environments lend themselves to spiritual growth though or do you think all are equal in that respect?
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Hi Rob – thanks for your comment. I find Waitrose a most pleasant place to shop, same as the John Lewis stores. I believe there is something about their ethos, the partnership, that trickles down to most of the staff and ripples out to their customers.
That said, it is still just a supermarket … 🙂
When I went on the pilgrimage to Arunachala there was still some identification with the body remaining, despite the many “spiritual experiences” I had been graced to know through the years.
Hence the reason the ritual of this body travelling 5,000 miles to go on silent retreat in an ashram at the foot of a holy mountain was necessary … only to find that from the perspective of the revealed I AM Consciousness it wasn’t necessary at all. And certainly the integration of that awakening has taken place in very ordinary circumstances.
Arunachala is said to be the incarnation of Shiva and to have a power of its own. I don’t know the precise truth of that, although there certainly was a palpable feeling of peace in the air surrounding the Virupaksha cave that I had never felt before.
Many people visit the mountain daily but some, perhaps most, seemingly just enjoy the view … at least on a conscious level. So I tend to feel that it was my 100% devotional commitment to awakening with which I embarked on that journey that contained the real power.
Bring your Heart-felt devotion to truth, to freedom, to awakening to the reality of who and what you are and yes, I believe all physical environments – even prison cells – are equal in their potential.
May these words reach out and nourish the Consciousness within you from which they were written.
Namaste,
Leo
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