In this article, I’ll share with you the spiritual practice called “staying in the I Am,” suggested by the great non-dual mystic Nisargadatta Maharaj. This spiritual practice appears extremely simple on the surface but has the potential to revolutionize your life. I recommend starting your practice in your room. Once you truly understand what it means to stay in the I Am, you’ll be free to practice it in everyday life.
Staying in the I Am may seem like a simple practice, but it is extremely powerful, especially when combined with Kriya Yoga or any other serious spiritual practice. I practice staying in the I Am at the end of my Kriya Yoga routine, and often reach a state of unity with reality.
If you start practicing staying in the I Am for at least 20 minutes every day, you will begin to see the beauty and intelligence of existence all around you, and you will carry the sense of stillness with you throughout your day. Don’t underestimate this practice just because you found it for free online. If you actually do it, this simple spiritual practice could revolutionize your spiritual life.
The Essence of “Staying in the I Am”
In the classic spiritual book “I Am That,” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj talks about staying in the I Am, but he doesn’t clearly explain how to practice it. Staying in the I Am means loving everything that arises in consciousness, no matter what form it takes in the present moment, and letting go of any need to mechanically explain the mysteries of existence and perception. This spiritual practice will free you from the belief that you need something outside of yourself to be happy and at peace.
During your practice, let go of all beliefs about who you are and what reality is. Abandon the idea that you are a body, that you were born, and that you will die. Forget about the past and the future. Do not try to explain, understand, or analyze Being. Your only goal during this practice is to simply be what you are and to embrace the simplicity of Being.
Staying in the I Am means realizing the absence of separation between the perceiver, perception, and the process of perception by merging your senses one by one. Your perceptions provide access to the I Am. By focusing your awareness on your perceptions, you will see that your senses are not separate from each other. There is no sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing – your senses are pure consciousness. In reality, you don’t have to force your senses to merge, because they are already one. You just have to let go of the belief that they are separate.
What you consider to be your room – an external material reality separate from you – is actually your own Mind. Loving your room will help you realize that you don’t need anything separate from you to feel fulfilled, because you are already You.
I simply ask you to stop imagining that you were born, that you have parents, that you are a body, that you will die, and so on. At least try, take the first step: it’s not as difficult as you think.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
By loving everything that arises in the present moment, you open a channel of communication with the divine. God is nothing other than your own Mind. If you become one with your room, you will finally find within you the love that you have been seeking outside of yourself, because you are Existence itself.
The Profound Effects of Loving Your Surroundings
Staying in the I Am consists simply in loving whatever form the present moment may take. This act of remaining in the present moment uproots the belief that to be happy or at peace, you need something outside of yourself.
In fact, all that each of us wants is nothing but love. We want to experience love, but we believe that this love, this peace we so desperately need, can be found outside of what we are. Your consciousness is nothing but love, and yet you’ve lost yourself searching for this love outside of yourself. To understand and experience love, you need to stop seeking the love you need outside of yourself.
Staying in the I Am aims precisely at eradicating the belief that you can find satisfaction, peace, and love outside of yourself. Remaining in the I Am consists simply of loving your surroundings. I know it might sound a bit strange, but what I’m asking you to do is simply love whatever you’re aware of. You can love the wall in front of you, you can love the bed you might be lying on, you can love the chair you might be sitting on, you can love anything present within your room.
Loving the present moment reunites you with your own Mind. In fact, your room isn’t really your room. Your room is nothing but your Mind. When you’re in your room meditating, the totality of reality is present within your room. Wherever you may be, the entirety of eternity is always present. Therefore, loving your room will help you understand that you don’t need to achieve anything outside of yourself to experience the love you need and so desperately seek in the world outside of yourself.
The Interconnectedness of All Things
Eternity is present within your room because there is no separate event in reality. No event is divided from any other event. For you to be in your room, the evolution of the solar system had to happen, the evolution of planet Earth had to happen, the entire animal evolution had to happen.
Everything I’ve listed and infinitely more is present within your Mind. For example, as I write this article, I have near me a book about the life of Siddhartha the Buddha, and this book literally contains the life of Buddha: if you could raise your state of consciousness enough, you could see the Buddha meditating and reaching enlightenment.
The Eternal Nature of Consciousness
Your consciousness has no beginning and no end. Your consciousness is infinite. Consciousness, which is what you are, has never had a beginning and will never have an end. When you’re inside your room, you think your consciousness has a beginning and an end. You are within your room from eternity and will remain within your room for eternity. Obviously, by the term “your room” I’m referring to the Mind of God.
Overcoming the Ego’s Resistance: Challenges in this Spiritual Practice
What I’m telling you is that God is nothing but your room, nothing but the four walls you’re in while practicing staying in the I Am. And so by becoming one with your room, becoming one with the present moment, you’ll begin to experience God’s love, the love you seek in infinite ways and unfortunately can’t find.
When you’re in your room, you protect yourself from realizing that the only thing that exists is your Mind, through the beliefs that tell you that there is actually something outside of your conscious experience of the present moment.
And you protect yourself from realizing what I’m saying because if you were to really experience it, your conceptual mind would have to face its death, would have to completely dissolve and realize that the entirety of reality is contained in your room, that is, in your Mind.
Experiencing Metaphysical Love Through Staying in the I Am
If you practice staying in the I Am long enough, the separation between the self you believe to be and the external world will begin to disappear. You will begin to become more and more one with your Mind until you will become a singularity of Love. This union with your Mind is nothing but Love, metaphysical Love. It is for this reason that this meditation, which apparently is extremely simple, works so effectively: over time it will lead you to experience Love.
Staying in the I Am in Everyday Life
Staying in the I Am within your room is relatively simple. The real challenge, the real test of your love is staying in the I Am in everyday life. The key to stay in the I Am in everyday life is to stop labeling others as people. Others are not people, others are your own Mind. In the same way that when you’re in your room everything you perceive is nothing but your own Mind, when you interact with others in everyday life, they are nothing but your own Mind.
Through inquiry, you discover that you are neither the body nor the mind, and that the love for the Self within you is love for the Self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me are apparently two, but in reality they are one and seek unity. This is love.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
An Invitation to Experience the Benefits of Staying in the I Am
What each of us wants is nothing but to experience love, nothing but to become one with God. Staying in the I Am, will work even if you believe that everything I’ve told you is a huge load of nonsense.
What you’ve read goes against everything you’ve learned since you were born. There’s no need for you to consider true or really understand the metaphysical reasons why this spiritual practice works. All that is necessary for you to do to allow this meditation to positively influence your life is nothing but to put it into action. If you start practicing staying in the I Am for 20 minutes a day, it will create within you the love you seek outside.
Sometimes I practice while lying in bed, before going to sleep, and the feeling that you get when you realize you are one with your bed, the pillows and the blanket is out of this world. You basically fall asleep being cuddled by the Love of God. If the practice doesn’t seem effective, you can try to modulate your breath or do some exercise of breath retention, but be careful because holding your breath while staying in the I Am is extremely powerful.
My working theory is that if this practice is done consistently and for long enough, it can rewire the functioning of the brain and the organism, and even help release endogenous psychedelic substances, because it harmonizes the body perfectly. After I finish my practice, I feel more symmetrical and fractal – the same feeling I get from practicing Kriya Yoga. I can’t explain it any other way – just start practicing and you might understand what I’m talking about.