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Book Reviews
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The Diamond in Your Pocket:
Discovering Your True Radiance
by Gangaji, www.gangaji.org
(Sounds True, Inc., 2005, 280 pp, $22.95)
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Gangaji, the daughter of an alcoholic, was a schoolteacher, wife and mother searching for life’s meaning. In 1990, near the Ganges River, she met her final teacher, Sri Poonjaji. This book is their profound message. Gangaji can be seen on Public Access Channel 2 every Saturday at noon [soon to be eliminated because it is an import show].
Gangaji says simply stop. Stop seeking enlightenment. Stop analyzing. Stop methods to defeat death. Final happiness is in your true nature, “to die to who you think you are before who you think you are dies.” Honor your conscious connection to all living things.
Peace is always with you. Suffering is caused by thinking the mind can “get it.” Stopping reveals that inner peace, “let all strategies go, to discover what is here, what cannot be revoked, and what cannot be awarded.” Sri Poonjaji said, “wait and see.”
Feel your emotions 100%. Feel deeply, hopelessly sad. See what feeling is underneath, deeper than the sadness, and then investigate what feeling is even deeper than that and so on. My personal digging goes: sad, blame, hurt, confusion, powerlessness, smallness, helplessness, relief, peace and then laughter realizing how meaningless my sadness was.
Gangaji says, “I am not my thoughts, emotions, what others teach me, my past stories or future fears, my cultural or societal beliefs. I am core truth.” “Freedom is the essential nature of consciousness, and consciousness is the source of individual awareness.” “We already are what we are striving to be.” The beauty of who I am is separate from my thoughts. What I focus attention on controls me.
Try on “I am free” versus “I am not free,” and see how it feels.
Gangaji’s message to us is to STOP. You already are conscious truth and infinite freedom, so start acting like it. You already have The Diamond in Your Pocket.
Deborah Hutchins, a retired nurse, lives in Los Osos and has stopped.
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