Turning attention back on itself — who or what is aware?
The practice of turning attention back on itself — 'Who is aware?' 'Who am I?' — attributed to Ramana Maharshi and central to many neo-Advaita teachers. Several accounts describe years of philosophical inquiry collapsing into direct recognition.
What distinguishes self-inquiry from ordinary philosophical questioning is the direction of attention: instead of looking outward at objects of experience, attention is turned back on the one who is experiencing. In several accounts, this leads to a moment where the seeker can't be found.
I suppose what I see more from people that have been doing self-inquiry is that because they're looking and there's a sort of questioning, there's something, you know, looking right at what they are and then taking off another layer and taking off another layer.
Yeah, I think when Ramana advocated self-inquiry, he wasn't encouraging people to engage in a new form of mental chit-chat, you know, or who am I, all kinds of mental agitation, he was advocating a much quieter, settling in to, you know, a much more experiential.
Both Shankara and Ramana said that you might need to do various other things before getting to the point at which self-inquiry became effective.
And then I got invited on the retreat which I will be speaking about and the essence of the retreat was working with the coan or this self inquiry question who am I?
Experience types that appear most often in accounts with this trigger.
Other triggers that co-occur most frequently in the same accounts.