Self-Awareness Removes Ignorance

Sri Annamalai Swami

Self-enquiry must be done continuously. It doesn't work if you regard it as a part-time activity. You may be doing something that doesn't hold your interest or attention, so you think, 'I will do some self-enquiry instead'. This is never going to work. You may go two steps forward when you practise, but you go five steps backward when you stop your practice and go back to your worldly affairs. You must have a lifelong commitment to establish yourself in the Self. Your determination to succeed must be strong and firm, and it should manifest as continuous, not part-time, effort.

For many lifetimes you have been immersed in ignorance. You are habituated to it. All your deeply rooted beliefs, all your patterns of behavior reinforce ignorance and strengthen the hold it has over you. This ignorance is so strong, so deeply enmeshed in all your psychological structures, it takes a massive effort over a long period of time to break free from it. The habits and beliefs that sustain it have to be challenged again and again. 

Ignorance is ignorance of the Self, and to remove it Self-awareness is required. When you come to an awareness of the Self, ignorance vanishes. If you don't lose contact with the Self, ignorance can never arise.

If there is darkness, you remove it by bringing light. Darkness is not something real and substantial that you have to dig out and throw away. It is just an absence of light, nothing more. When light is let into a dark room, the darkness is suddenly no longer there. It did not vanish gradually or go away piece by piece; it simply ceased to exist when the room became filled with light.

This is just an analogy because the Self is not like the other lights. It is not an object that you either see or don't see. It is there all the time, shining as your own reality. If you refuse to acknowledge its existence, if you refuse to believe that it is there, you put yourself in an imaginary darkness. It is not a real darkness. It is just your own wilful refusal to acknowledge that you are light itself. This self-inflicted ignorance is the darkness that has to be banished by the light of Self-awareness. we have repeatedly to turn to the light of the Self within until we become one with it.

(To be continued)