There’s a term in Sanskrit called neti neti, meaning not this, not this.
It’s an approach used in a style of yoga called Jnana Yoga, as well as in meditation as a path to self-realization, a way to disidentify with our thoughts and labels to know the Supreme Reality.
If that bends your mind in more ways than The Matrix, I can relate.
But apart from what this means at the intersection of theology and spirituality (I’ll let the experts untangle that), I nevertheless found this concept intriguing as a mere mortal.
Not the least of which is because it relates to an idea I’ve reluctantly toyed with for a while: addition by subtraction.
Not this, not this.
Intellectually, it makes perfect sense. But it feels so counter-intuitive.
A way to find a better path, to improve your life not by adding more, but by taking away what’s not working. A challenge through and through because for so many of us, saying no and letting go is so incredibly hard.
But neti neti—applied more in religion as a way to understand God by what God is not, and in spirituality, an inquiry technique to negate labels to find your true Self—has probably helped you along the way, even if you didn’t realize it.
Letting go of a bad relationship, quitting smoking, ending a toxic friendship or being Neo (the ONE) are all situations fraught with uncertainty, uncomfortable questions and varying degrees of self-doubt.
And yet, taking away adds much to our lives, even if we don’t aim for it at first.
A shedding of false layers. Relief from carrying unnecessary burdens. Wiping the fog from the mirror.
This. So much THIS.
If there’s no clear answer to questions you might, at times, ask yourself, like what you should do, or what kind of person you are or want to be, you can gain understanding by starting where you are.
And who or where you are not.
Neti neti.
When what you seek or want to experience is something that you don’t quite have the ways to define or package in a convenient form of expression, you can start by expressing what it’s not.
So that when you eventually do find your truth, you’ll know.
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