OK – some questions. Take your time – there is no rush. Just answer as thoroughly as needed. I’ll have a look and see if there is anything I have missed. I’ll then ask other guides to also check and see if there is anything I have missed. OK?
I cant find a separate objective self anywhere in experience except when thought seemingly creates one. If a separate ‘I’ cant be found in this moment then there has never been and can’t have been a separate individual at any time and that includes everyone one and everything as well.1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?
2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now.
For as long as I can remember there has been a sense of being a separate individual making decisions, struggling to make life work. The culture I have grown up in has seemingly reinforced this.
Living and struggling through this life has never felt quite right – why life was such a struggle didn’t make sense and my further attempts to understand the struggle only made the struggle seem worse. This further reinforced a sense of separation because I thought I was alone in sensing how wrong it all felt. For as long as I can remember I thought the only tool I had to work out what was ‘wrong’ with ‘my’ life and this world was the mind which I assumed was what I am. It never occurred to me that believing ‘I’ was a thought was the problem all along.
When thoughts are followed and believed in, the mind cooks up story upon story about how experience is somehow personal. The mind creates a virtual self by telling stories about how experience could be better that it currently is. Soon an imagined self is the central, personal focal point of all experience. This imagined self then starts trying to change its experience and resisting what already is and suffering is inevitable.
Life just is. Decisions aren’t made by a separate individual. The mind makes it seem like they are by telling more stories. The body and mind are seemingly separate but are just part of one great big unfolding of whatever is going on. I am not separate from everything else going on. Its one big whole.
Its like a complete reversal of experience. I used to feel like an insignificant individual inside everything else. Now I feel like everything else is in me and this includes thoughts, sensations and the entire world.3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before you started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days.
Thought still has a huge pull, but the difference is that thought is now seen as just another object inside whatever THIS is. There’s more ‘space’. Thoughts, feelings, sensations are all experienced exactly as they always were but I know the individual is only an imagined one.
It was the direct experience exercises. It didn’t matter how many books I’d read – this would never be seen unless an investigation is carried out and you see it for yourself. There were 2 particular things that did it for me. The first was seeing in my own direct experience that an individual doesn’t actually make any decisions about what the body does. The second was seeing that the thoughts the mind generates are also under no individuals control. I had previously assumed that even though the body did what it wanted at least the mind was under control When it was clearly seen that neither the mind or body were under any individual control that was it.4) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look?
Everything gets done without a controller. Everything that happens and is experienced here is due to an effect of something else. What happens from that effect is based on prior experiences and other factors. The mind creates an imagined individual and the imagined individual gets tricked into thinking decisions are made and things are done/chosen by that imagined individual. Stuff happens but there is no individual making anything happen anywhere.5) Do you decide, intend, choose, control events in Life? Do you make anything happen? Give examples from your experience.
I just got if I want a coffee. A decision process started and thoughts popped up that includes factors such as does the body like coffee, how many coffees have already been drunk today etc. a decision is made and there’s a yes or no answer produced. A subtle thought may arise that claims owner of the decision making it seem like a decision had been by an individual but it’s simply a decision made based on the factors at hand.
Let me know if you want more examples Sarah!
Don’t think so!6) Anything to add?
