Q: How do I ‘turn within’ or ‘turn towards the Self’?
Tom: There is no turning within. Turning within is just a turn of phrase! Everywhere you turn is outside. You may think you are turning within, but wherever you focus is outside. Everything you focus on is actually a subtle object, and all objects are ‘outside’, meaning non-self. All objects are seen.
How can you turn towards the seer? The seer can never be seen. By that I mean the seer can never be seen as an object. The seer is the Subject. The Subject is you.
Self knowledge simple means knowing that you exist, knowing that you are.
Ignorance is identifying as this or as that, meaning identifying as one of the myriad objects that are seen.
So, how to turn within? Just don’t chase objects, and don’t identify as objects.
You could say ignorance has 2 steps:
Step 1: identifying as this or that. This creates a false notion of self, also known as ego or the jiva
Step 2: that ego/jiva then seeks pleasure and security in the world of objects.
In Step 1 we create the structure or form of the ego. Step 2 represents the movement or function of the ego. So we have described the ego’s form and function, its structure and movement. Step 1 is rectified by insight teachings, step 2 is resolved by purification teachings.
Most teachings attack either the ego-function or the ego-form, and ‘Turning within’ can attack either function, form or both.
So, be free and easy, be as you are
❤
See this video for more on this:
Tom Das 
Hm. You say ‘don’t identify as objects,’ but, isn’t identifying as the subject also to go astray? – from objects? This segregation is a duality. Do you avow duality? And, if not, why do you speak in its demarcations, so often separating off objects and words, deriding them as if they were invalid and the subject not them? How does not not constitute a duality? Or is duality the way? Or is alienation a necessary first stage or something? Or is it only seeing objects as objects that is problematic – and when you talk of seeing objects, you mean seeing things as objects instead of what they are, that is the problem? If objects are not separate from the self, how are we to get in touch with them?
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Hi idqinternational, in this article, I don’t think I mentioned anything about identifying as the subject…but essentially yes, all talk of object and subject is essentially dualistic conceptual talk, one that is sometimes provisionally made in order to help the ego disidentify with objects, especially disidentify with the body and mind, before eventually also letting go of distinctions such as subject and object.
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