The Self Help Book

I was recently in a bookstore visiting with a friend. There were two Lady's in an aisle containing hundreds of self help books. They were discussing which books were the latest craze and did they really help. One lady said, "that she had gone through maybe 20 or so of these type of books and none had any lasting effect." The other said, "yes I know what you mean they just don't seem to actually help you." The other went on, "they just talk improvement but somehow they don't deliver." Both Lady's then agreed that they were through with the self help genre. One said, "I get more out a good fiction novel than these books." They both laughed and left the aisle.

Without consciously being aware of it they had both had a realization about books. Books are really just entertainment, they are a distraction from ones perceived mundane existence. Can a book written or spoken convey truth. Can the truth of ones condition be explained and understood through a formulated concept? Can there be understanding of the self through the organization of another person(s) thoughts? A person cannot know what is in the mind of another. One can only listen and point out the fact of what is. It is up to the individual to realize the true self. The individual must disregard all theories about ones condition. Otherwise you may get caught in a transplanted ideal. The self becomes absorbed in a suggested problem and solution. This causes you to move away from the fact of your actual condition (which can only truly be known by the knower, the self). The self is the creator of all problems, and the solution is always in the problem. A person needs only to have the realization that problem and solution are one in the same, they are not separate. One defines the other. In seeking the remedy you create the disturbance and give it legitimacy.

When you seek the advice of "self-help" books you are moving outside the self, escaping the truth of moment. Reality is always in the moment. If you can attentively read and listen to what is being said without the motivation of the self absorbed then it is possible to realize the true self in every word that is written and in every word that is spoken. But this realization is not the result of a writers or speakers ideal. It is the outcome of the seeing of oneself in what is. It is the reality of the moment that mirrors the self. What is realized comes from within not from the designs of the speaker or the writer, they are meaningless. What is written or conveyed by a writer or a speaker is the projection of the one who instigates. They are what they write and speak, it is the conflict of that which is within.

Words have a definition, they provide an image for the mind to grasp. Intellectually you can reach an agreement on definition and from there formulate a concept. But that concept is the illusion of a mind that is caught in the movement of time. It is the movement of thought as the self. It is never reality, it is the image of self as projected in time. This is not a concept it is truth that can only be realized in the absolute moment. The fact is there for one to realize, but you must cease the activity of the projecting the self as a conceptual belief or ideal. The outcome is a dissipation of the self as the defined. Try as it may mind cannot wrap its self around that which is without self. One cannot conceptualize the unknown. The unknown is the only true reality, it is the moment that is not caught in the movement of thought. The unknown is clarity and intelligence. One cannot find it in a book and one cannot explain the reality of it.

The meditations that are on these pages are not actual reality. The writer can only attempt to point out what reality is not. One cannot say what it is, only that if a person has passion to want to find the truth of what is, it is a possibility. You can and should do it without a teacher or an organization and if one may say that is really the only way one will realize the illumination of the true self. One must have the courage to dispatch all that is the self in order to realize the truth of what is.

The writer includes himself in this description. One should not rely on the words of another, nor should you follow another as a guide or guru. There are no guides to truth. As has been said, a person can only point out the fact of what is. One must make the journey alone. It must be a total transformation, that "something" totally new that is ones own realization. It is a state in which a persons total being is shaken and moved in a direction that cannot be explained in terms of a comparative or defined ideal. Many have the words and intellectual capacity to talk about the illumination of the moment but very few have made the journey. You must have the passion to give up all of your attachments and identity, to be as nothing. To see truth in the reality of what is, not in the words of those who are conceptually clever. When a person seeks realization in the words of another, you only find the projection of self that is the accumulated illusion of the known.