This moment is now. Now does not mean in the present. Now is before past, present, and future. ~  Gangaji

past, present, future

This two-part series, previews You are Already Whole. Author and contemporary non-duality sage Gangaji explores questions about living, being and suffering, all within our innate wholeness. The text is taken from her e-book Freedom and Resolve: The Living Edge of Surrender… available as a free PDF download. Text from the book is italicized.

We struggle to simply know how to live our lives. Many times we feel like we are just existing. Gangaji’s clarity challenges the familiar notion… imagining that life can be known, that there is a “how to” manual you can follow.

Existing is not the problem. The problem is thinking that you do know how to live and then Struggling to make life match that thought. I read a wonderful quote recently: “You know how to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans!” Yes, it is a good joke.

Our identification with our body is disrupted when we have illness and confront the nature of birth and death. We struggle to figure it out and ultimately feel completely lost.

struggle, reflect, lost

Gangaji calls this “lost-ness” because we imagine ourselves to be body….when “the truth of who we are has never been born, is not even subject to birth. It is what gives rise to birth, what is before birth. That is who you are.….. I only imagine myself to be lost in a body, struggling to figure it out.”

She stresses that “You are here. However you imagine yourself to be, you are here… Imagine yourself worthless, superior, nothing at all, you are still here. My suggestion is that you stop all imagining, here.”

Confusion comes from trying to find ourselves within our thoughts. There is no “you” to find in the varieties of thinking.

You are before all thought. Simply return attention to what is before all thought. You don’t have to go anywhere for this return because that which is before all thought has never been born and is not subject to coming and going, appearing and disappearing.… Eternity itself is before confusion, in the midst of confusion, and after confusion.

Openness, awareness, now

At some point in your life, a maturity arises in which you cease imagining you can find yourself in any mental understanding or in any thought. Then regardless of thoughts, in whatever confusion arises, you will not be looking to your thoughts for release. This moment is now. Now does not mean in the present. Now is before past, present, and future.

Realization arrives through experience, through release. Who we are precedes the body and has nothing to do with mental understanding….

I am not speaking of a mental understanding. I am speaking of realization. Realization does not come through searching for it in thought. There is some idea that if you just think the right thought such as, I am God, or I am free, or I am enlightened, or I am realized, or I am That, then everything will be solved. But these statements come after the realization.

And here’s part 2.


Explore Gangaji’s Teacher Page and more of her books and videos in our library. The ebook Freedom and Resolve is sourced from Free Spiritual eBooks and is a free PDF download on this website.

Images (edited, text and logos added): Featured and 1) Yellowstone National Park 2) Reflection by strikers  3) Arctic.  All images are CC0 Public Domain.
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