You are free to be who you want to be. You do not have to follow the character description and script that has been written. The script that has been reinforced by family, friends, school, work, beliefs about who you are, preferences, aversions, learned neuroses, attitudes...every day in every way. Tear it up and throw it out. Release yourself from the bounds of a fixed and known 'self'. It's all a fiction.
The desire to define a self comes from fear. Fear of non-existence. If I say I am an artist, or a writer, a daughter, sister, lover, friend; these are all labels assigned that are readily accepted without question. We are not what we do or whatever socially constructed roles we fit into. It's all human-invented. These are all what you are not. New-Age labels; being an Aquarius or a Libra, a number 5, a tiger or dragon in Chinese astrology - all are further descriptions of what you are not.
Escape isn't achieved through taking a spiritual path either. The so-called 'spiritual path' is a furphy. There is no path and there is no one to walk it. You are that which you seek. You are already enlightened. Of course enlightenment is another invented concept that does not exist. It's dualistic and based on the assumption that there is a someone to reach a something.
Where is this 'self', this 'I'? Try to point to him or her. Go on. Where is the finger aimed? Chest, head? Then that's what's been pointed at: a chest or a head. Where does the 'I' reside? In the brain? The heart? The big toe? There is no little box inside the body that houses the 'I'. So there is a thought that says it's all 'me': the body, the brain. How can that be? What is it that makes that particular body/brain organism a 'you', and this one here a 'me'? Where is the 'I' that is housed in each of these beings? Surely it must be the same 'I'? Just suppose it is for a moment, the same 'I'. How could this be? What is it that is common in both humans? In all humans and all other species?
Consciousness.
This is prior to thought and emotion. The mind behind the mind. The objective essential awareness. This is the absolute. The non-dual existence that is consciousness. Objective seeing. It is all there is. Everything else has been assigned to each living human organism. Thoughts are not owned. The thought 'I' is just that: a thought. The 'I', the so-called 'personality', can not be located.
So what does this mean? How does this effect your life? If there is no self, then everything must be an invention right? Constructed identify would indicate that all meaning is subjectively given. It is changeable and fluid. No fixed self, no fixed meaning. Academics would call this a post-modernist agenda. Yet this too is an invention. Post-modernism is a form of literary criticism that posits all meaning as being polyvalent and fluid, so therefore there is no fixed meaning. It emerged from others: post-structuralism/deconstruction, structuralism/semiotics, formalism etc etc... The various ways of analysing a text - different movements of thought by people who set themselves up as experts and believe that what they posit as truth is the only truth. These are people who do not know who/what they are. Lost in the dream. Making sense of things employing literary strategies is a metaphor for the way we all try to make sense of the vagaries and vicissitudes of our lives, by deconstructing and inventing meaning for everything.
There is no meaning. The universe is empty. The house is haunted.
It's not something people want to know about: this bottomless nothingness, the void, the empty hole where no one exists and nothing has any meaning. My advice would be to ignore everything I am saying. Just get on with your life. Save yourself from the inevitable fall if you pursue this. The panicked grasping onto the slippery sides of the dark hole down which the conceptualised ego falls. To get to the place of truly seeing that you are essentially free and that the relative world is a well-constructed story in which you are merely a character, that has been written in to the movie of your life, in which you have the leading role, is an agonised letting go into meaningless nothingness.
But really nothing changes - you still live your life. The only difference is you see that there is no separate 'you'. You still love your spouse and children, still go to work and play. Still feel and think and do. All that is different is that seeing happens: seeing that it's all fiction and that meaning is made. It is felt it in your cells: this non-separation, this flow with all that exists.
When I paint a picture, there is no painter. There is hand-brush-paint-canvas-stroke-seeing-concentrating-touch-sight-movement : flow. That is all there is. Digging a garden there is no gardener. There are hands, shovel, breathing, feeling warmth of the sun, soil, weeds, sweat, aching muscles: sight, sound, touch, movement...
Consciousness is what lies behind, underneath, above and beyond the invention of ego-self. It is the flow, the essential eternal (eternal meaning 'no time', not endless time), being-ness. It is felt at a cellular level - this engine of survival is merged with everything - no separateness - it is all one.
You ARE essentially free. Yet the paradox is that there is no one to be free. The 'you' of which I speak is that which exists and always has existed, that which all members of all species share: consciousness. It is all you are and all you have always been. And always will be.
***
- Mountain Daughter
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Friday, August 26, 2016
Talking to No One About Nothing
In order to awaken, to be so-called 'enlightened', there are two questions that are useful to ask: What am I? and What am I not? To get to the answer of the former, it is necessary to unpack the answer to the latter. Who says? No one really... just thoughts gathering like clouds across a perfect, unchanging sky...
What you are not is everything you think you are. Everything aside from direct experience, is a story.
So what is left? What is underneath or behind the story? What is it that sees, hears, tastes, feels sensation? Without the editing, the back-story, the emotions linked to thoughts, thoughts linked to emotions, sadness about the 'past', anxiety about the 'future'.
There is no one who can be enlightened because the husk is empty. The self is a deeply ensconced work of fiction that has been imposed since birth. All that we hold to be true is story. 'I' is just a thought. Opinions about what is happening arise from the reinforced subjectivity of a false self - like a character in a play whose personality has been invented and whose lines have been written to fit that conceptualised persona.
Description of now 1:
Through the windows I can see muted sunlight and the blandness of a suburban street. I see my fingers tapping on the keyboard and hear a sanitised pop song coming from a radio in another room. Two of the annoying dogs in the house start barking. Their owner is in the bathroom readying herself to go out. A noxious chemical smell wafts through the house. My right knee aches from a past injury and I'm feeling hungry.
Description of now 2:
What you are not is everything you think you are. Everything aside from direct experience, is a story.
So what is left? What is underneath or behind the story? What is it that sees, hears, tastes, feels sensation? Without the editing, the back-story, the emotions linked to thoughts, thoughts linked to emotions, sadness about the 'past', anxiety about the 'future'.
There is no one who can be enlightened because the husk is empty. The self is a deeply ensconced work of fiction that has been imposed since birth. All that we hold to be true is story. 'I' is just a thought. Opinions about what is happening arise from the reinforced subjectivity of a false self - like a character in a play whose personality has been invented and whose lines have been written to fit that conceptualised persona.
Description of now 1:
Through the windows I can see muted sunlight and the blandness of a suburban street. I see my fingers tapping on the keyboard and hear a sanitised pop song coming from a radio in another room. Two of the annoying dogs in the house start barking. Their owner is in the bathroom readying herself to go out. A noxious chemical smell wafts through the house. My right knee aches from a past injury and I'm feeling hungry.
Description of now 2:
There is light. There is a smell. There are movements, sensations and sounds.
Which of these descriptions is true?
For those who see, sustaining that seeing is the constant challenge of the ego self. Even 'ego' is a human-invented concept. Everything is. What gets us scurrying back into the illusion of self is when things go 'bad'. When everything is fine in our life, it is easier to sustain the seeing of no-self. Seeing that all there is is direct experience. That all there is is conscious awareness manifesting in bodies. Anything else is subjective posturing - thoughts being attached to a self. Opinions, feelings, fears, anxieties, aversions, desires, preferences: subjective positions that describe circumstances.
Thinking is a function of the organ known as the brain, just as filtering is a function of the kidneys. Thinking is necessary for the survival of the organism. There is no one to own the thoughts. They are just happening. There is no one reading this. Reading is happening. There is no one thinking 'what the heck is she talking about?' Questioning is happening. It is one of the mechanical tools the brain uses to navigate the world. The brain is an engine of survival. We are animals who seek to survive, just like all other animals. But unlike other species, humans complicate things with the idea of self and all the ownership and attendant drama that comes with that.
There's no escaping your subjectivity. All that can be done is that you see it for what it is. You'll still make meaning out of everything and see the world as it relates to you. The only difference is that you see that it is all invented; that who you have previously thought you are, is a construct.
Words are clumsy and inept, and can only be directed towards the intellect. Seeing does not happen with the brain. It is beyond and behind intellectual understanding.
Everyone is walking around in a state of somewhere else - believing the dramas of their life. Thinking about everything but what is happening right now.When the thoughts are seen for what they are; that they are not owned by anyone, what is also seen is what remains: and that is simply awareness. That feeling when you wake in the morning, and for a second you don't know who you are and where you are or any of the circumstances of your life or what you will be doing today. That second of absence, absence of the story - when 'you' comes back, it's quite a hard fall back into 'reality'. So what remains during that second or two of absence? The void, the emptiness of non-existence, death of the 'self' is felt as freedom by the returning 'ego'. It is in fact all we are, covered over as it is; all we are is that. Pure, conscious awareness.
***
-Mountain Daughter
For those who see, sustaining that seeing is the constant challenge of the ego self. Even 'ego' is a human-invented concept. Everything is. What gets us scurrying back into the illusion of self is when things go 'bad'. When everything is fine in our life, it is easier to sustain the seeing of no-self. Seeing that all there is is direct experience. That all there is is conscious awareness manifesting in bodies. Anything else is subjective posturing - thoughts being attached to a self. Opinions, feelings, fears, anxieties, aversions, desires, preferences: subjective positions that describe circumstances.
Thinking is a function of the organ known as the brain, just as filtering is a function of the kidneys. Thinking is necessary for the survival of the organism. There is no one to own the thoughts. They are just happening. There is no one reading this. Reading is happening. There is no one thinking 'what the heck is she talking about?' Questioning is happening. It is one of the mechanical tools the brain uses to navigate the world. The brain is an engine of survival. We are animals who seek to survive, just like all other animals. But unlike other species, humans complicate things with the idea of self and all the ownership and attendant drama that comes with that.
There's no escaping your subjectivity. All that can be done is that you see it for what it is. You'll still make meaning out of everything and see the world as it relates to you. The only difference is that you see that it is all invented; that who you have previously thought you are, is a construct.
Words are clumsy and inept, and can only be directed towards the intellect. Seeing does not happen with the brain. It is beyond and behind intellectual understanding.
Everyone is walking around in a state of somewhere else - believing the dramas of their life. Thinking about everything but what is happening right now.When the thoughts are seen for what they are; that they are not owned by anyone, what is also seen is what remains: and that is simply awareness. That feeling when you wake in the morning, and for a second you don't know who you are and where you are or any of the circumstances of your life or what you will be doing today. That second of absence, absence of the story - when 'you' comes back, it's quite a hard fall back into 'reality'. So what remains during that second or two of absence? The void, the emptiness of non-existence, death of the 'self' is felt as freedom by the returning 'ego'. It is in fact all we are, covered over as it is; all we are is that. Pure, conscious awareness.
***
-Mountain Daughter
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