A little about me

From early childhood I felt that something wasn't quite right but I couldn't put my finger on it. No-one around me seemed to share the problem - everyone carried on as normal. There was a loneliness about those early years and I was compelled to find out where the difficulty was. I tried to think my way through it and even took up mental health nursing in an attempt to find what made people tick (me in particular).
When I was thirty three years of age and with a failed marriage behind me and once more lonely, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the new age group scene. My first group was an astounding experience. Importantly, I came to see that I was a seeker - an idea I would have resisted prior to that. It was at this group that I first heard of enlightenment - it struck a chord with me. Intuitively, there seemed to be a promise hidden there.
Over twenty years of seeking later and a much happier life but the feeling that something was wrong persisted and the 'ultimate goal' seemed as elusive as ever. Was it ever to happen? Then the next piece of good fortune - an old friend visited and introduced me to Advaita. The first influential author I read was Ramesh Balsekar. His book 'Consciousness Speaks' was wonderful but complex. I seemed to be onto something. Next was 'Sailor' Bob Adamson's book - 'What's Wrong With Right Now Unless You Think About It' - simple, to the point, focused. And one of my all time favorites, Leo Hartong's book 'Awakening To The Dream'. Many other books and CD's followed. Then one evening, a couple of years later, I had a sudden and desperate urge to surf the web for someone new so I could end this struggle. I found John Wheeler's site 'The Natural State'. Immediately there was a resonance. I read on until, as Ramesh calls it, an "intuitive apperception" occurred. I had realized my true self.
I am pure awareness (and not this human).
Of course! How simple. I immediately knew my seeking and suffering was finally over.
The understanding that followed revealed that there never had been a 'me' in charge, it was all illusion. I had grown up thinking that I was a person that was aware of the world outside of myself. That was the normal, learned way of seeing, that is enough for most people - but not for the seeker. That was where my feeling that something was wrong came from - a mistaken identity.

What is revealed, when the belief in a 'me' is finally seen through (by no-one), is that what I truly am is simply awareness. It is seen that awareness is and that everything else is an appearance in awareness. Yes, at a relative level, there is a body/mind uniquely programmed to function but there is no 'one' in charge of it. If there were a 'me' who could make choices of will those choices would conflict with the programming. So what would be the use of the programming in the first place? From a pure awareness point of view even the body/world/universe is an appearance and of course will one day cease to appear. And as Advaita says 'anything that appears and disappears, is dependant on something else for it's existence' is not real, it's an illusion. An illusion is 'a false perception with an external stimulous.
Of course the concept of enlightenment is a useful carrot in the beginning of the seeker's life but is a handicap in the end. It continues to support the belief in a future goal. This 'future goal' keeps the seeking going and hinders the seeing that I am the one that is sought, the seeker is the sought - I AM THAT. It keeps the seeker striving to reach some imagined illusive conceptual state, when all that is needed is to understand that you already are. Without awareness nothing would be known.
That's it.
There is nothing to seek.
You are presence/awareness right now.
If not, you wouldn't be able to recognize what's written here.
You are what you're seeking.
Follow the question 'who am I'?
This is disappointing to the ego that wants bigger, better, faster and stronger things - something special. Ego doesn't like ordinary. No ego wants to be ordinary, it wants to be special in some way. We spend our lives trying to be "special". But that special keeps us stuck and missing the point.
What is, is presence/awareness and all else is an appearance in it. Awareness remains completely unaffected by what appears in it and is never altered in any way by it. Everything else just comes and goes.
Our difficulty in seeing this, in continuing to believe in the 'me', was expressed thus:-

"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it".
George Bernard Shaw.

There is more in the following pages and in my blog listed on the links page.