on self-knowledge and self-change

When it comes to self-change, we already have more information than we need. Our inability to change is not because we don't know what we should do, but because we have not yet found the muscle we need to use in order to do it. For example, some people can wiggle their ears. Most people can't. If you are one of those who can't and you were to try to wiggle your ears, you would immediately be confronted with a sense of utter blankness. You would know the objective--wiggling your ears. But when you go to do it, there is just a wall, a nothing.

More information about ear wiggling won't help. And meeting someone who can actually wiggle their ears doesn't help you either, because their ears aren't your ears. And if some expert wiggler were to carry on about how wonderful, empowered and liberated you are going to feel when you too can wiggle your ears--you would wonder why they are giving you all this information since it is of no help whatsoever, and in fact only serves to let you know how special they must be and how inadequate you are.

Self-change is somewhat similar. It requires the exercising of a certain, but at first indistinguishable, muscle. This muscle seems indistinguishable because it is neither physical, intellectual, nor psychic--which is why formulas and exercises that strengthen us in these areas still don't necessarily bring us closer to Spirit.

The way each of us comes to self-change is utterly personal and individual. Furthermore, all the descriptions by realized people of how glorious life will be "once you too have found this muscle" (i.e. find the light) do not actually help us to find it. Self-change can not be effected by getting more information about what it is like, or how to do it, or how good you will feel once you have done it. If information about the "event" could do it, then in this age of hi-tech communication we would all be there. There is only one essential issue: finding that muscle which is our genuine spirituality and using it. an inward research we must do utterly alone.