A friend messaged me, “I have a long way to go”, referring to her ongoing spiritual journey.
I replied:
How long is the distance between pot and clay?
One thinks one has “a long way to go” because one is so totally identified with the body-mind complex, especially with the mind, that one takes its inadequacies and deficiencies in terms of knowledge, desires and attachments for one’s own inadequacies and deficiencies.
The point is to not bother about the mind, though it takes a certain maturity of mind to understand this.
The way not to bother about the mind is to be silent (summa iru) as far as possible for as long as possible during the day as permitted by one’s daily schedule of whatever duties one has an obligation to do.
Because to be silent is to not think, or not pay attention to or take an interest in thoughts, and the mind is nothing but the flow of thoughts, feelings, and a bundle of memories that shows up as thoughts and feelings.
In that silence, one discovers one’s true nature as Consciousness.
A bit like when one withdraws one’s attention from or ceases to be fascinated by the form of pot, then the clay gets noticed or is understood.
What is the pot in our case? The body-mind, and through it the various objects and people in the world, all of which are so many forms appearing to the five senses.
When one withdraws one’s attention from them, Consciousness reveals itself.
That is why Papaji, the most famous direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi, advocated silence as the only path to Truth.
Know Thyself 