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Originally Posted by jimrich
I just came from a local meeting of seekers and experienced non-dualists and noticed a tendency to make speeches, quote major spiritual teachers BUT rarely ever use the 'I' word to speak of their own, direct experiences and/or understandings.
I come from a background of sharing meetings in support groups so, using the 'I' word is both easy and also way more significant to me than listening to pompous lectures, theories or disguised advice from self appointed authorities so some "spiritual" meetings are both irritating and uninformative.
If others could or would just talk about their own direct, personal and ACTUAL experiences with awakening, realizing, knowing, doing, feeling, understanding, I could learn a lot from that and take away a lot more from such simple HONESTY. The pompous though emotionally safer use of words like: we, you, they, them, us, others, all, everyone, etc. rather than the more honest and authoritative terms such as: I, me, my, mine, my self, for me, etc. work a lot better for me and gives the speaker some credibility.
I'd much rather hear or read of someone's own, personal awakening than have them tell me how it's going to be or feel for me, us, them, we or you.
"I am that" carries way more authority and meaning for me than to be told "YOU ARE THAT! ...or We are that, etc." by some self made authority figure. I know this is just about semantics but I personally prefer and can HONOR statements that come from someone's own, direct experiences rather than speeches and pompous quotes, etc.  |
What about "WE are That?" This is what "I" go with. lol
Seriously though the lack of personal pronoun use to indicate some kind of 'transcendence' of the personal is plain silly.
People should know it that "I" means the ego, or 'self' or 'little me" so to say "I am That' means the ego isn't the end of the person because there's 'That'...there's everything else
including the "I".
I was also an Advaita Vedantin for quite a while, but I never got into the "I am That" or "You are That" bit because those sayings, those
mahavakyas were contradictory in themselves. If they would have been "I am" or just simply "That" it would make a lot more sense because the relation between "I am" and "That" is what kicks off the whole duality game.
So when "I" speak, you know it can't be anything other than "I" because "I" don't know if the "not-I" as in "Brahman" even has a voice beyond OM!
Yes, it is all semantics and why I left the path of Advaita Vedanta and embraced the path of Tantra
fully after that. It was the next step in my spiritual evolution and the most logical route for me to take.