Nothing Personal: Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self

by Nirmala

Nothing Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self by Nirmala. “The beauty of this collection of Nirmala’s talks and dialogues is that it covers much of the spectrum of spiritual awakening, from the initial experience of one’s true nature to the practical challenges, which always call for a deeper seeing and deeper understanding of how spirit manifests as all of life and beyond.…Nirmala welcomes whatever arises within the field of experience. In the midst of this welcoming is always an invitation to inquire deeply within, to the core of who and what you are. Again and again, Nirmala points the questions back to the questioner and beyond to the very source of existence itself—to the faceless awareness that holds both the question and the questioner in a timeless embrace.” –From the foreword by Adyashanti.

Genres: Spirituality

253 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 30, 2008

About the author

Who are you really? Are you your body. mind and personality? Or are you the spacious awareness in which they appear? Questions like these point us to the infinite Presence that is the true source of peace, happiness and fulfillment. Nirmala is a spiritual teacher in the Advaita tradition of nondual wisdom, and is the author of several engaging and practical books about our spiritual nature.

**Nirmala's book, Living from the Heart, is available for FREE here:
http://endless-satsang.com/free

**Nirmala's website: http://endless-satsang.com

**Nirmala's blog: http://endless-satsang.com/nonduality...

**Nirmala's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nirmal...

Nirmala offers a unique vision and a gentle, compassionate approach, which adds to this rich tradition of inquiry into the truth of Being. He also offers Nondual Spiritual Mentoring, or spiritual guidance, in one-on-one sessions either in person or over the phone. More information about mentoring sessions is here: http://endless-satsang.com/spiritual-...

"The beauty of this collection of Nirmala's talks and dialogues is that it covers much of the spectrum of spiritual awakening, from the initial experience of one's true nature to the practical challenges, which always call for a deeper seeing and deeper understanding of how spirit manifests as all of life and beyond. Within these talks and dialogues you, the reader, will find Nirmala to be a living invitation to look within. Nirmala welcomes whatever arises within the field of experience. In the midst of this welcoming is always an invitation to inquire deeply within, to the core of who and what you are. Again and again, Nirmala points the questions back to the questioner and beyond to the very source of existence itself--to the faceless awareness that holds both the question and the questioner in a timeless embrace." -from the Foreword by Adyashanti to Nirmala's book, Nothing Personal.

Reviews

[Skye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been sitting with nondual teachers and reading extensively for three years. "Nothing Personal," which I own both in hard copy and ebook formats, has touched me more deeply than writings from Longchenpa to Jean Klein. I experience it as reminding nourishment. The PDF version lives at work, where I can read a few pages on my breaks. The hard copy version is always on the table near my reading chair. If nondual teachings call to you, this is a must-own book.

[Dwight Zavitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

NIRMALA’S BOOKS A TREASURE TROVE
OF ADVAITA WISDOM

I came to Nirmala’s books as a lifelong mystic and spiritual explorer who served as an ordained minister for 22 years. The mystics of the East and the West have inspired me for decades. After reading the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Shankara, many Buddhist teachers, and the Yoga Vasistha, I wanted to explore the Advaita tradition in more depth. I stumbled onto Nirmala’s books after an on-line search. I only planned to read his book Nothing Personal: Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Personal Self as a way of answering some questions about the Buddhist concept of No-Self. But after reading this book I was so delighted with what I found in its pages that I went on to read three more of his books, Meeting the Mystery: Exploring the Aware Presence at the Heart of All life; Living from the Heart; and That is That: Essays About True Nature.

What Nirmala (AKA Daniel Erway of Sedona, Arizona) does in these books is nothing short of remarkable. T.S. Eliot once wrote that the job of the poet is to make the most difficult truths of philosophy and religion as immanent as the fragrance of a rose. Nirmala has taken some of the most difficult truths of Eastern religion and philosophy, distilled them, and expressed them in clear, concise form. What might be called the metaphysics and ethics of Advaita non-dual thought have been clearly and simply expressed in Nirmala’s books in ways that make them applicable to everyday life.
As he does this, Nirmala injects wry humor and amusing examples with which we can easily identify. He also shares a few snapshots of his own life and struggles, which bring these ideas to life for us. His approach is wonderfully refreshing especially after wading through the hundreds of repetitious pages of the Yoga Vasistha!

In addition to restating clearly the main ideas of Advaita non-dual thought, Nirmala adds many practical suggestions for applying these ideas to our lives. I found Nirmala’s books treasure troves of wonderful insights and suggestions. Following are a few of his ideas that I found most helpful:
1. The real me is not this body or my ego but Awareness. This basic conscious awareness was never born and will never die. Knowing this gives one a cosmic perspective on everyday problems. When you know that you are Awareness you don’t need to be a seeker anymore. You know that you already are what you wished to become. So just Be! (Here he echoes one of his sources Ramana Maharshi.)
2. When everyday problems besiege us it is wise to give them space and blast off from them up into the cosmic Awareness that we really are.
3. Wisdom and Truth expand the heart and quiet the mind. We can actually feel our hearts expand in the presence of truth and contract in the presence of lesser truth. If we put our hands over our heart and open our heart we can actually feel the flow of Being. This provides a powerful guide for living.
4. Judgment cuts us off from the flow of being as we close our hearts to what is. Accepting what is rather then engaging in denial or attack leads to insight and growth.
5. We learn and grow from all of our choices in life, both the bad ones and the good ones. Being just enjoys watching us explore and learn -- so you might say it’s all good.
6. Everything is alive and aware, even a stone. It’s all the dream of the one primal Awareness Being that we all are at different levels of awareness.
7. Hold all ideas lightly knowing that change is the norm.
8. Surrender to what is and explore it knowing that desire for what is not is what brings about suffering. Be grateful for whatever is, knowing that in the cosmic perspective all is well.
9. Be aware that Being is always working for our highest good, but also knowing that it gives us the freedom to choose lesser goods until we learn (the hard way!) to flow with the highest will of Being. The Wise man or woman aligns his or her will with the highest good of Being.

Well, I could go on and on listing the powerful insights in these books. But one last observation about Nirmala’s work – something I found most refreshing. He’s humble about this work. He does not claim to be the divine revealer and he does not want us to accept him as our savior or guru -- or write him a check! He shares his ideas, but tells us to find our own way to our own truth. The only truth he seems to find non-negotiable is the Advaita truth that there is only the One Thing and we are all It. I am not exaggerating when I say that Nirmala’s books have been enlightening and life changing for me. I hope they find wide readership. This is the kind of thought that our fragmented world needs desperately at this point in history.

Gratefully, Dwight L Zavitz, Jr.

[Constantino Casasbuenas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing Personal - Seeing beyond the illusion of a separate self
Nirmala (Daniel Erway)
1999 – 2004

I read this book because of an advice written in Frank Cote’s Insight Timer page, where he considers this text as “thought provoking insight”. Well, I went into the index from the e-version, it looked interesting and I read it. I recommend it as a very good text to read.

It is not another set of instructions on yourself or on how to meditate. From the subtitle, it shows the reader about the illusion of the self. The truth appears when you do not know. The source of everything is also who you are. How did we get the feeling of continuity thru life? Thoughts and sensory experience create an important part of it. Thought and memories are past reality. How to get the feeling of reality of the “I”? or simply thoughts about the “I”? The Mystery (Emptiness), Awareness, the Divine, Oneness, Love, Presence, Curiosity, are there, and we can embrace the moment! Awareness has the capacity of narrowing attention. Thoughts, fantasies and mind games hide the beauty of the moment. It is not a moment for knowing, but for open-eye discovery.

“The best service you can give to the Mystery is to dive in even deeper”.75 Being present to the source.

Looking deeper into the True indicates what is to be done! Be present to life, going deeper, in order to find the source of the feelings. Knowing is about the past. You are knowing by The Heart (place of deeper knowledge), not by your heart. Getting the truth implies to deconstruct “me”. Our own self-image (you are never done with sculpting wet clay!), desire are the causes of suffering. “Me” means non-transparency and resistance. Peace = not selling our lies. “The true satisfaction is in seeing the truth, which simply means seeing things the way they really are—without boundaries.”55 .”The Oneness expresses itself in many different ways, but it is all Oneness”.58

“Everything just flows easily from and through your being with nothing in the way, as if you were transparent.”49
“There is nothing wrong with ideals, but they are empty. They don’t contain anything of real value.”51

“Embracing the death of every moment wipes the slate clean, making room for what is appearing now in life. What is it that is alive? What is alive is what is coming into being in this moment. When you finally embrace the going, there is also room to embrace the coming— and so much aliveness is revealed! Then, it becomes obvious what an illusion it is to identify with any of it and make that who you are. Why wait until physical death to go beyond acceptance? Right now, go beyond acceptance to loving the absolute death and amazing creation in every moment. When that happens in the context of physical death, it can be very profound—when someone starts loving the fact that they are dying. In being in love with their own death, they fall in love with life—with the moments they do have. So, why wait until it’s too late or your hand is forced by a doctor’s diagnosis? Why wait to fall in love with what is—with constant death and fresh new life—when this place beyond denial, resistance, grief, and acceptance is available right now? I should mention that even when we are completely loving the coming and going of everything, denial, resistance, grief, and acceptance still show up—possibly just as often—but they are included in this place of loving, which is big enough even for them. When they appear, you just love them and get fascinated by them and how it all works. Who or what is denying or resisting or grieving or accepting?”87

An important part of the text is about living in duality. The nature of this world is that it shows up in the form of duality. We are simultaneously oscillating between both extremes. The problem we face is (with our ego) grasping. Our ego has been a creation that we made. Ego and God come from the same place. I don’t know what is true. Pain is a sensation and the story you tell to yourself about it.

“Once you have experienced fully zooming out, then zooming in is also no problem”.117 Let’s see “what is left when you let go of knowing everything you think you know. You are it”.90 “Who am I? and How do I live my life?”123, “by subtracting all of the illusions about yourself”.125 “Surrendering to Truth means being willing to step into and take on the perspective of Emptiness”.125 “The practices of this path—singing, dancing, poetry, and prayer—create a doorway into the Heart.” 139

Go to your own experience. It’s already there. I liked a lot this Sufi teaching story.

“The Treasure

I’d like to begin by sharing with you, in my own words, a Sufi teaching story: Once upon a time there was a farmer who was very successful and known for his generosity. He had five sons, and as is not uncommon when someone is born into wealth, all of his sons were lazy. When the father was on his deathbed, he called his sons to him and told them that their inheritance was buried in the fields, but then he died before they could get him to tell them where it was. After he was buried, they grabbed shovels and began digging the fields systematically so as not to miss even a single square inch. Finally, they got down to the last corner and still there was no treasure. Once they got over their frustration and disappointment, they decided to plant something since the fields were already dug up. It turned out to be a good year, and they had a successful crop and were able to live very comfortably for that year. The following spring, one of the brothers suggested they might have missed the treasure: perhaps they didn’t dig deeply enough. So, they got out their shovels and carefully dug the fields again. When they got to the last bit of dirt, the result was the same—nothing. So, once again, they planted the fields, harvested another crop, and lived comfortably another year. This went on for a few more years until at a certain point they kept digging every spring even though they had given up on the buried inheritance. They had gotten into the rhythm of life of farming, of the life they were born to, and lived very successful lives as farmers. Spiritual seekers are like the sons in this story: they think that spiritual techniques—everything from meditation to inquiry to loving kindness—will get them to some buried treasure called enlightenment, freedom, liberation. And yet, if they stick with a practice long enough, they discover that the practice, itself, is the true treasure.”146

“You are in a continuous free-fall into not knowing, where there is no suffering and many wonderful things happen”.169 “Something else that doesn’t change after awakening is the amount of unhealthy conditioning you have”.170

Living life is a question:
- “Let go of all formulas”. Do we need to plan? Let’s try to do it without one!
- What to do, how to do with your own excess weight?
- My mind always wants to tell stories.

“I find the origins of my illusions,
only the dreamer is gone
the dream never ends”96
- “There’s a book out there with a great title: The Life We Are Given by George Leonard and Michael Murphy. So much of the time we don’t show up for the life we’re given but for the life we think we should have been given.”208

Argos
- It’s a story
- Ancient history
- The reason self-consciousness causes suffering is that it refers back to something that doesn’t exist
- “Devotion to a Guru : I spent the last 22 years in India at the feet of a master, and that is changing. (tears)”141
- “Telling the whole truth is admitting that this hollowness is here”.173
- “This is a nice metaphor because, after that, you have a whole range of experiences together that aren’t at all like that first night on the patio when you fell in love.”180
- “The opportunity is to intimately experience the expansions and contractions, the openings and the closings, the freedom and the stuckness, the wonder and the confusion, the understanding and the lack of understanding.”.188
- “When you look, you discover that your me is more like a flow than a static object.”197
- “One of the ways this illusion gets maintained is through memory.”199
- Fantasy?
- “Those who’ve experienced something like cancer often speak about the advantages, the tremendous blessings in their life, from having cancer, even when they may be dying from it.”216

[Harry Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book surprised me a bit. I've read quite a few works on neo-Advita and Zen. This one was simpler than most, and very direct. But I felt it got to the center of the subject: the nature of the separate self. It did it, in fact, much more simply and directly than most of the books I've read. I was sufficiently impressed to be willing to consider this one work that I will re-read in the future, and also I may pursue other works by the same author.

[Frans Baars · Rating 5 out of 5]

very direct and - most importantly to me - comes with actual directions on how to surrender to what is. Highly recommended.

[Nima Sharifi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

This is a great book. It kind of reminds me of "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle but this one is even more involved and detailed about how to implement awakening in one's daily life. "Nothing Personal" was an essential read for me and helped me much along my spiritual path. I highly recommend it.

[Omer Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

great master

this book is a master peace
one of the brilliant unique spiritual book written
a unique precious jewel
salutation to you great master

[Zoran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely top of the tops.... I keep rereading chapters for few years now. Talk about true wisdom.

[Gina Lake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great nondual book.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on non duality. I wish I'd found it YEARS ago!

[BN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, sensitive book on noticing the essence that you are.

[Chris Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book! Makes nonduality easier to grasp.