The Nature of the Atman, Nature of the Self

I had a lovely chat with my friend today after class...one of those get to know each other a little better talks.  I am pretty open about sharing my past and the things that have happened to me, from all the joyous times to the heartbreaks and traumas.  They are all pieces that make me who I am.  So, she asked how I made it through some of the difficult trials.  


Well I often find my self stumbling along this path, I always come back to my spiritual views.  With the guidance of Shri Guruji, and the teaching of non-duality I have made it this far.  


One of the texts I come back to again and again is the Adhayatma Ramayana.  
This is one of my faviorite parts, Sundara Kandam: Hanuman's sermon to Ravana v.15-19

"The real 'You' or the Self has none of the miseries arising from body, intellect, and the sense, because the real 'you' is only the unperturbed and unaffected witness of all these changes.  The actual involvement in these changes belongs to the body-mind complex.  it is just like the experience of one sleeping.  The series of dream experiences which sleep brings about, end with the dream; they are the effects of the delusive ignorance characteristic of sleep.  As far as the real Self is concerned, the bodily experiences are unreal in the same way.  This unpertubedness and unaffectedness is the truth in regard to the nature of your real Self.  You are by nature changeless; for the Self being non-dual, there can be no cause to effect change in it.  Like the all-prevading Akasa which pervades objects but is not affected by it, your real Self, though pervading the body, is not affected by the bodily experiences because of it's subtlety.  All bondage arises from the sense of identification of the complex, body-mind-Prana- with the real Self.  And liberation consists in experiencing: I am Pure Consciousness, I am Unbound, I am Deathless, I am Pure Bliss."

Jay Shiv Shakti 

Aum Hum Hanumate Namaha

Jay Gurudev!