
Photo by Dev Gogoi
So many books, traditions and teachers speak about specific paths, but, to me, they don’t seem to reach the heart of the question. We love to copy, we love to follow other people’s ideas and many times they are good ideas. It’s not that this is wrong, it’s just that this is not born from our own belly. For 15 years I have been going every winter to Arunachala, the sacred mountain in South India where Ramana Maharshi spent 22 years in a cave inquiring about the Self. He lived in silence and solitude, meditating, making friends with the monkeys, and becoming the mountain itself, becoming love. Out of his belly the question came: Who am I? And this became his mantra, his question to be asked when entering the inner realm, and through this question, born from his own belly, silence came, wisdom came. Now thousands of devotees from every part of the planet go to his ashram and adopt that same question: Who am I? And keep repeating it as if an answer will come. We have missed the point! This question was born out of his own belly in a specific time in his own process and we cannot just adopt it as if it were ours. I’d like to ask again: What is your own unique question? Your own child that no one else can give birth to?
Extract from the book There is Light and only Light: Teachings to illuminate your inner wisdom by Gemma Polo Pujol. Watkins publishing.
www.thereislightandonlylight.com