The essence of Ramana Maharshi’s method is to transfer your attention from mental activity to yourself.<\/p>\n
Stop paying attention to thoughts, emotions, images, sensations, memories, wishes, awareness of awareness, etc.<\/p>\n
Instead pay attention to yourself. By “yourself” I mean you who experience all those mental activities. You<\/b><\/i> who know<\/b><\/i> them.<\/p>\n
To make this work you must let go of mental activity. Willingness is required, a willingness to ignore your attraction to mental activity and a willingness to be aware only of yourself.<\/p>\n
You can tell when you’ve succeeded in doing this because the distinction between subject and object vanishes. There is only an integral self-knowing. This self-knowing is very different from our usual experience of mental activity.<\/p>\n
In the beginning it may feel disorienting to stop paying attention to mental activity. You may feel like you’re letting go of your anchor, of your reference point, but soon you’ll recognize that you yourself are a firmer anchor.<\/p>\n
Look for — be<\/b><\/i> — the magnetic center at the heart of you. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Attention can be paid only to one or the other. Either you’re aware of mental activity or you’re aware of yourself. If you’re trying to do both simultaneously you’re not practicing Ramana’s method. You’re doing something else. <\/p>\n
It’s the total<\/i> transfer of attention that makes Ramana’s method work. Total<\/i> attention to yourself. Awareness only<\/i> of yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The essence of Ramana Maharshi’s method is to transfer your attention from mental activity to yourself. Stop paying attention to thoughts, emotions, images, sensations, memories, wishes, awareness of awareness, etc. Instead pay attention to yourself. By “yourself” I mean you who experience all those mental activities. You who know them. To make this work you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,8,22],"class_list":["post-5948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ramana","tag-sadhana","tag-self-enquiry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1xW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5948"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5985,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions\/5985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}