Gangaji - Self-Inquiry: Falling into Yourself

A clip from Gangaji's New Video Compilation, Self-Inquiry: Falling Into Yourself.

"To consciously rest is to be at home. To be at home is to be naked to yourself. Self-inquiry is always an invitation home, an invitation to yourself."

The invitation to Self-Inquiry is the very core of Gangaji’s teachings, the living truth that was shared by her teacher and her teacher’s teacher. In this powerful selection of monologues and interactions we are reminded of the capacity we have as human beings to self reflect, to put aside assumptions and elaborations and taste reality directly. Self-Inquiry, Gangaji tells us, is about interrupting our natural instinct to follow the outward flow of thinking and shift that attention back toward the source. This requires the ruthless surrender to face what we have been avoiding, but the result is radical good news. The realizable good news of the Truth of who you are.

The full video is available in The Oasis, Gangaji's Video Streaming Library. https://gangaji.org/oasis

The result of inquiry can’t be spoken, but
we speak toward it when we have discovered

it, we have to as human animals, as social
animals we have to go to one another and say,

“Whoa, let me invite you here. Try this.
Stop, be still. No, no don’t do anything.

Give up hope, give up hopelessness.” And
in there the question is, “What will I experience?

What’s there? What’s on the other side?
Is it good? Will I like it? Will I be happy?”

Forget that, just stop. Give up hope. Meet
yourself. And that’s what our meetings are

about. Those conversations. And deeper than
that, these meetings are about inviting one

another deeper into inquiry. So that the whole
life is inquiry. So that every relationship,

every catastrophe, every victory, every state
of bliss, every state of terror, despair,

is a beginning point of inquiry. Not to be
denied, or discarded, or judged, but the beginning

point of going deeper, deeper into, under,
closer, and the only way this is possible,

in a moment, is to stop telling the story
that generated the emotion. The point of the

arising of the emotion, the story has served
its purpose. And if I have a purpose, it has

generated an emotion of bliss or horror or
terror, beautiful. That’s the point of storytelling.

But if you meet that with another story, that
story doesn’t, isn’t quite as alive, it’s

a deadening agent. So you go back to the original
story and for most people the original story

is, “It is possible that I am not.” “I
am” is an awakening that occurs developmentally

in the human mind. And in the astounding revelation
of “I am” when you are two, or three,

or six-years-old, closing following that is,
somehow the intimation, “It’s possible

that that will end. It’s possible that I
cannot be. It’s possible that I will die.”

So these meetings and this teaching is to
bring you back to that original arising, “I

am.” But before you get to that original
arising, there is a block, and that is, “It’s

possible that I cannot be.” And it’s that
block that is feared and hated and run from

by everyone. When you read the stories of
catastrophe you think, “Oh my god, it could

have been me.” Or you hear the story of
someone’s body suffering, it’s like, “My

god, I hope that doesn’t happen to me.”
But in a life of inquiry the invitation is

to stop and experience it happening to you
right now. To experience what is avoided is

the way in to who you are.