Began as a Seeker — 2021

 

1. I Began as a Seeker — 2021

Who Am I? The Beginning of an Investigation

In October 2021, I started a small WhatsApp meditation group.

I did not know that I was beginning a record that would continue for years. I simply wanted a place to share observations, questions, teachings that interested me, and things that seemed important during meditation.

One of my earliest notes, on October 25, 2021, was:

“No guilty feeling... Just accept things as they are.”

Only two days later, the questions had already become much larger:

“Who am I? From where I came? Where to go? Why did I come?”

Looking back now, I can recognize the person asking those questions.

I was a seeker.

Searching for the Answer

I had spent much of my life using an analytical mind.

My education in mathematics, computer science and engineering had trained me to approach a problem by understanding it, breaking it into pieces and looking for an explanation.

Naturally, I brought the same mind to spiritual questions.

If there was something called enlightenment, what was it?

What is consciousness?

What is the Self?

Is there something beyond thought?

What happens when the mind becomes silent?

What did Buddha discover?

What were the Upanishads pointing toward?

What were Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Krishnamurti, Osho and others actually saying?

I explored widely.

At that stage I did not feel a strong need to separate Buddhism, Vedanta, yoga, Zen or other traditions. I was more interested in finding what might be common beneath their different languages.

Words such as Self, God, consciousness, awareness, awakening and absolute reality naturally entered my vocabulary.

I was trying to construct a map.

I did not yet realize that eventually I would have to investigate the map itself.

“Who Am I?”

The question that attracted me most strongly was:

Who am I?

At first this sounds almost trivial.

I know my name.

I know my history.

I know my body.

I know my profession, relationships, memories, likes and dislikes.

But all of those can be observed.

I can observe a thought.

I can notice an emotion.

I can remember an event.

I can feel my body.

So what exactly does the word “I” refer to?

This question became increasingly important.

At this stage, however, I was still strongly influenced by the answers offered by the traditions I was studying.

Perhaps there was a deeper Self.

Perhaps consciousness itself was fundamental.

Perhaps the ordinary personality was only a surface manifestation of something much larger.

These possibilities fascinated me.

I did not yet distinguish clearly between an experience, an interpretation of that experience, and a metaphysical conclusion about reality.

That distinction would come much later.

The Attraction of Awareness

Another idea became increasingly important: awareness.

Normally something happens and thought immediately begins operating.

I see something.

I recognize it.

I name it.

I compare it with memory.

I decide whether I like it.

I judge it.

I create a story about it.

And very quickly I am no longer simply experiencing what happened. I am experiencing what my mind says about what happened.

Could there be another way of looking?

This question led me toward Krishnamurti.

One image particularly stayed with me: the mind receiving experience like a sensitive photographic plate.

A photographic plate does not argue with what appears before it.

It receives the image.

Could the mind sometimes do something similar?

Could I see before judging?

Could I listen before interpreting?

Could I experience something without immediately turning it into a psychological story?

I could not have known in 2021 how important this question would eventually become.

Years later, after many changes in my understanding, I would return to almost exactly the same idea.

Teachers Were Still Important

During this early period, teachers and spiritual literature played a large role.

If someone described a profound state of consciousness, I wanted to understand it.

If two traditions appeared to describe the same thing differently, I wanted to connect them.

There was an excitement in discovering parallels.

Buddha.

The Upanishads.

Ramana Maharshi.

Nisargadatta.

Krishnamurti.

Osho.

Eckhart Tolle.

Yoga and meditation traditions.

I was collecting pieces of a very large puzzle.

There was nothing wrong with this stage. Reading opened possibilities I might never have considered independently.

But there was also a limitation that I would recognize only later.

I was often looking at my experience through concepts supplied by other people.

If an unusual state appeared during meditation, a teaching was already available to explain it.

If silence appeared, there was a spiritual vocabulary for silence.

If the ordinary sense of self weakened, there were already theories about what remained.

The explanation could arrive almost as quickly as the experience.

Eventually I would become much more suspicious of this.

But not yet.

Meditation Was Becoming an Experiment

Something else was happening alongside all this reading.

I was actually meditating.

That changed everything.

A philosophical idea can remain beautiful indefinitely if it is never tested.

Meditation began turning ideas into questions that could be observed directly.

Instead of merely asking:

What is awareness?

I could watch awareness.

Instead of asking:

Can thought become silent?

I could observe thought.

Instead of discussing:

Who am I?

I could search for the “I” appearing in immediate experience.

This gradually changed the nature of my inquiry.

The teacher could point.

The book could suggest.

The tradition could provide a method.

But eventually I had to look.

Something Was Already Changing

Looking back, I can see something in these early notes that I could not clearly see at the time.

I thought I was searching for answers.

But underneath that search, another process had already begun.

I was learning to observe.

That difference would eventually become enormous.

An answer says:

This is how reality is.

Observation asks:

Is that actually what is happening?

An answer can become belief.

Observation can always begin again.

At the beginning, I did not understand this distinction very deeply.

I wanted realization.

I wanted understanding.

I wanted to know what the great spiritual teachers had discovered.

I wanted to know who I was.

But slowly another possibility was appearing:

Perhaps the important thing was not immediately finding the correct answer.

Perhaps I first needed to learn how to look.

Where 2021 Left Me

By the end of this early stage, I certainly had not answered “Who am I?”

If anything, the question had become deeper.

But several seeds had been planted.

Direct observation mattered.

Awareness mattered.

The automatic movement of thought mattered.

Silence might matter.

And perhaps most importantly:

What I normally called “myself” might deserve much closer investigation.

I was still searching through teachers, traditions and concepts.

I was still trying to connect different spiritual maps.

I was still hoping that somewhere there might be an answer capable of bringing everything together.

The next stage would begin when I encountered a more uncomfortable possibility:

What if the analytical mind searching for the answer was itself incapable of reaching it?

That question would gradually move my investigation away from accumulating knowledge and toward silence.

Next: When Thinking Reached Its Limit — 2022

[← Back to The Unfinished Investigation]

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