But what I've been doing off late when the rest of my team was holidaying, was to gorge on the mail archives
 Of a net of jewels and nisargadatta...

That probably explains "it":-)
Yours truly is a spiritual greenhorn btw.

Hi sandeep.

 That's an interesting question---
I presume I was being unnecessarily modest by claiming to be a
greenhorn----
And modesty already reeks of egotism...
 
Yes.
 
Modesty and pride/arrogance, whether couched with spiritual overtones,........assumes a discrete self  which is supposed to be "modest" or "pridey", isn't it?
 
Humility, is the flavour of the milieu of an existing,........ where there is a total absence of concern,.......a complete indifference, to the judgment/conclusion/indictment of  the observing audience/of the relating other,........judgment as  "humble" OR "not-humble".
 
Claim of humility, is no different to claim of greatness or sagacity, or Gurudom, or enlightened mastery.
 
 


what am i--greenhorn or purplesnout --

I don't know---

 
Yes,............this "don't know",...................is the availability,..............is the vacancy.
 
Bodhidharma, in front of Emperor Wu of China,.....Wu has listed all the tremendous acts of charities he has done, all the profoundly acts of kindness and succor and compassion, he has extended to the subjects of his vast empire.
Wu, after presenting his report card, then asks Bodhidharma, "Is my place in Heaven now ensured?"
 
Bodhidharma replies" You will burn in 7 Hells."
 
Shocked Wu, asks "May I know, to whom do I speak, right now?"
 
Bodhidharma replied" I don't know"
 
When there is a conceptualization,... (as an answer to the question  of "Who am I"), whether the conceptualization exists as mentation or articulated, and whether the conceptualization ranges from  "eternal infinite Consciousness"
or "Purplesnout-Guru of the Nisargadatta-tic lineage" or "a green-horn spiritual seeker" or "ace-software-developer", .......or whatever,.....
 
......it's all hoopla.
 
The intuitive apperception of the irrelevance of  the question, the intuitive grasping, (without a "grasper" thereof),.......that when I am
ALL,.........to whom, (who is not-I), can I pose that question,........thereby the utter irrelevance of the very need to seek an
answer to the question,.....and thus the cessation of the question (which is not through an answer)....
 
...it is the negation of the negator.
 
And to see that in the very stating as above,........another conceptualization has emerged.:-)
 
 

 Like ramna said, one does not know the state of one's spirit---
 And one need not...
Because any standard is false and unnecessary.
 

Any conceived standard is an arising conceptualization.
And the start of a hoopla.
 
 


 While ploughing through these lists---
 I found several people so "clued in"---
They were superspecialists of the spiritual realm...
They were tearing apart and piecing together concepts,experiences,
 Ideas, gurus---it seemed like there had been nothing left unsaid--
 Yet there was this non-mechanical and fresh and sincere aspect and some
 thing so nice
 About some....
 It was all so new to me--this entire way of functioning---
 And that is probably why,

 But expression is only one aspect of truth isn't it?
If one read ramana(who I feel so drawn to)..
 His words, in isolation, might seem so simple ...
 But what it adds up to, and what is left unsaid are phenomenal...
They are so interesting...these unsaid parts of life.
 They probably total up to the silence of the universe.
 

 Yes.