The Vedic Approach To Self-discovery
“A man can close his eyes and realise he exists.”
What is the true nature of the self?
What goes on beneath the surface of my mind?
What is the nature of consciousness?
Questions such as these, often phrased “the hard question” in scientific communities, have been asked by those of all ages, ethnicities, gender identities, spiritual and religious beliefs throughout the ages.
Those of us with a desire to grow and evolve often spend years, decades and lifetimes searching for the answers to these questions in places they can’t be found. As a little girl and young woman, I knew there was more to who I was than I could consciously appreciate, but I didn’t yet have the language to articulate what I was missing. I searched for the deeper truth about myself and the world around me in people, experiences and books, and yet it continued to hover out of my grasp.
To add to these big questions, it’s commonplace in self development spaces to hear phrases like “all the answers are inside” and “you are your own teacher”. All of this is true - but what does it actually mean, and how do we go about accessing this inner truth?
From the perspective of the Vedic worldview, your true nature is Being. The field of Being exists beyond our body and our thoughts. Being can also be thought of as pure consciousness, pure awareness or bliss. It’s you, minus all the thoughts. The field of Being is our baseline state, it’s the place where the truth is held.
What makes the Vedic approach to self discovery different? It’s simple, it’s enjoyable and it’s natural.
The Vedic tradition offers us timeless techniques and wisdom that allow us to come home to our true nature, by having continued direct experience of it. Having direct experience means there’s no requirement to have faith, to trust or to believe. We use a tried and tested effortless mental technique, designed to take us beyond the thinking mind and rest the body deeply in order to trigger the healing response of the body.
Why is healing the body important when it comes to knowing the truth of who we are? Because stress is a state of abnormality. In order to return to a state of balance and stabilise the state of Being in our eyes open state, we need to peel back the layers of accumulated stress, fatigue, and overloads of experience that keep us from accessing our baseline state.
When we experience the state of Being regularly through the practice of Vedic meditation, we find ourselves spontaneously in the right place at the right time, knowing the right thing to say and to whom. This is the lived experience of someone who finds the answers to their questions inside. As we dissolve stress from our physiology, it becomes easier and easier to detect the most evolutionary thing to be doing (or being), moment by moment. Our intuition, or fine level of feeling as it’s called in the Vedic tradition, is always speaking to us. The question is, can you hear it?
We dive into these concepts and practices in much more depth during the beginners 4-day course in Vedic meditation and beyond. An important part of signing up for a course in Vedic meditation is the lifetime of ongoing support you receive in order to keep you meditating consistently and to deepen your understanding of what’s happening when you close your eyes, should you choose to. Your lifetime support includes weekly group meditations and knowledge meetings, private conversations with your teacher and much more. If you’re interested in learning to meditate or know someone who might be, please see the details of upcoming courses below.