We can learn to live according to our immediate experience rather than according to the habits we’ve acquired. So, for example, we learn in school that the bright spots we see in the sky at night are stars that are huge fireballs of nuclear fusion. Our teachers and books tell us so, and we believe them to the point that we argue with anyone who says otherwise. We’ve never experienced the stars as fireballs; somebody told us that’s what they are. Now today you directly experience yourself as essence, as existing completely: “I am an indestructible sense of Being.” If someone talks to you tomorrow about this experience of essence, would you speak about it with as much certainty as you discuss stars? Why not? You had the actual life experience of essence, with direct evidence from your intelligence. But you more readily believe that stars are fireballs than that you are an indestructible essence. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch. 8
We have a longing to be that certain about ourselves. As long as you know yourself as a result of an insight, as a result of comparing yourself to something else, or even fitting your experience with someone else’s ideas or experiences, you have no certainty. The longing for this direct certainty, to be oneself, should be the true motivation for the work. You need to make your search as free and as personal as possible. If it is your search and your seeking, it is not according to what anybody says. You can use what any teacher says; learning about their experiences might open parts of you. But ultimately you need to be quite alone. Then your knowledge comes completely from within you, not from any outside pressure. There are always outside pressures and influences; you need to respond to those things from within you and not from a learned pattern. When Buddha says there is no self, you say, “Maybe. Who knows? Let me find out.” How can you be certain if you follow blindly? Until I know personally, another’s truth is not truth for me, it’s an idea or a guiding ideal. I’ll try to follow and investigate; I’m open. Since I don’t know, I’m open to all ideas, but I follow my own inner flame. Without it, I can’t be certain. Somebody could tell me, “You have the Buddha nature.” Even if it is validated in books, what difference does it make? It has to be a personal understanding by convincing yourself through your own immediate experience. – Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, ch.12