Hi Chris,
Hope you're well. No hurry in replying to this if you're on the road. Notes in response to questions below!
Yeshe
1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?
No. There is no separate self. There never has been. Just thoughts that use the word I, me, my over and over. And memory compiling them. But memory also just more thoughts. There is no substance behind the thoughts, nothing they are pointing to other than themselves. Just habit. The “I” is a thought, no more.
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.
In a nutshell it’s learned conditioning that starts in early childhood, is reinforced by everyone around and is perpetuated by absolutely everything in our culture from then on in.
At birth there is clearly no separate self, no sense of an I separate from the world. In fact I doubt there is even any distinction between the baby and the world at all or identification with a body or mind. All the baby knows is being, awareness. That feeling is synonymous with the entirety of experience, not with just a small part of it, the body and the thoughts.
At some point as the baby begins to get used to its environment it becomes aware that it is being referred to by a certain sound, and that some of the other colours and shapes seem to have other sounds associated with them, like mama and dada. It learns that when it mimics these sounds things happen. And when it uses the sound that is being said to it, stuff happens to it.
I don’t understand the mechanism, but it seems that at some point during this process, after birth, the sense of pure knowing, being, awareness becomes entangled with the mind whose job it is to map and make sense of this flow of information. In that process self and other is a useful distinction for getting by. And in that process as it deepens and becomes habit it is taken to be reality. The map is taken for the territory. And the world reinforces the map as reality everywhere we turn.
And that is how we live. This development of a self seems quite important in a sense of individuation, but when it is mistaken for reality it causes suffering. Awakening or liberation seems to me to involve seeing this for what it is and letting go of it, but still being able to operate as a personality as needed. So, there is a difference between the baby or animal which is just pure being or awareness or experiencing and the knowing that comes from awakening from the belief in the ego as a real entity.
Looking directly into actual experience it is possible to see that there is no I that is being referred to, that it was only ever a convention, that became mistaken for reality itself.
Seeing this is very freeing, but personally speaking (!) it has been in tentative steps rather than a big aha!
The mind isn’t quite sure of this new insight, and keeps trying to re-evaluate the evidence to see if it really matches experience as well as its current map, or as a better replacement. It is struggling with the idea that it could have been living a lie all these years. And yet, it has been seen in dialogue that the mind desires nothing more than the freedom and peace that is inherent in seeing through this illusion. As a result it is very wary of “empty promises”. It keeps going back in to experience to investigate and it keeps come back empty handed. No self. But it feels like it needs to do this process until it is exhausted and can throw in the glove. It has a new map of experience and it is going into experience to test whether it accurately fits the territory. In fact is has no map; we are showing that the territory doesn’t fit its existing map very well, nor that its map serves its needs well.
The mind still has the habit of using I, me, my statements just as always. These can be persuasive. It has not stopped these and it makes for awkward language to use third person and passive voice. It is easy to for awareness to become entangled with the language. On looking it is immediately obvious it is just language. But mental activity is just as it always was - busy, hectic and full of personal references, full of friction, resistance, stress, anger, joy… the whole gamut of human emotion.
Certain experiences feel more exclusive and personal than others - focussed work, conversation, multi-tasking, attending to the needs of young children. Life! It can be easy to mistake this attention to mental activity for “a sense of self”, but if there is no self there can be no sense of self.
What seems to be happening is that in this attentive, exclusive mental activity, the same feelings are present that were previously labelled “me” so the feeling is similar. But when looking it can be seen that it is just a feeling of focus/ attention/ stress/ etc, not an actual “self”. But the experience at the time is the same. It’s just the deconstruction of the labelling afterwards that is different. And the knowing. This is key.
There are more regular periods of aware of being aware naturally throughout the day.
It is easy to mistake being aware of being aware for just being aware as whatever activity is happening. even when stressed I don’t black out so awareness is present; awareness is always present, always just aware. It is just at some moments there is awareness of being aware. It is easy to get fixated on this as being “better” than simply being aware as whatever activity is happening. Life flows.
There are spontaneous “check-ins” throughout the day (of the kind Scott Kiloby was talking about), e.g. walking down a corridor, in the bathroom, walking the dog, watering the plants… moments when it is very clear that i am just the awareness that everything arises in, not the content itself.
There are moments when it is is very clear that life is just happening; life as life. People no different from trees.
Things are shifting in relation to each other; at their own pace.
It feels as though it will take a little while for the mind to readjust to the new territory and to let go of old habits of labelling and association.
That’s ok. It doesn’t change reality, nor perception of reality. There never was a self, there is only this. The self that seems to arise here and there is simply a thought labelled I/ me/ my or a feeling of attention/ focus/ stress/ anger/ etc.
3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before you started this dialogue?
It feels like a process that is unfolding. It is not an event and there have been expectations of an event, a parting of the clouds, a big Aha… something! Instead there have been several smaller aha moments and a deepening of the surety in this new perception of reality as it matches direct experience. It is still ongoing.
So, honestly in day to day life it doesn’t feel much different. It is more a “knowing” that permeates life, sometimes more obviously, sometimes barely at all! There are times when everything is like a movie, clearly no doer/ thinker/ walker; life just happening. In which it is clear that this body and mind is as impersonal as the seagulls and my children, all known or unknown and witnessed equally. There are times when life is intensely focussed and personal and feels very restrictive and even the knowing that there is no personal self doesn't seem to fit. So knowing there is no separate self in this, but needing to look consciously, still experiencing the sense of separation and exclusivity, not feeling part of the flow of life, nor of life being effortlessly lived through this body/ mind.
Experience fluctuates then between more open “knowing of knowing” experience to more closed and personal experience, of attention, whether to a specific activity such as work, or to dominant thought patterns or emotions.
And in this a keeping opening and trusting of the shift in perception, adjusting to a new reality. Reassuring old mental habits there is no-one to defend, no plates that need to keep spinning. Asking the mind what it wants. It wants peace and freedom. And letting the mind get used to this at its own pace, without feeling threatened.
It feels as though there have been several aha moments in this unfolding process.
1. Being unable to find a self; seeing that it is just a label, a convention, on a whole bunch of things (this was prior to our starting to chat)
2. Still associating exclusive/ attentive activity with “a sense of self”; then seeing that if there is no self there can be no sense of one any more than there can be a “sense of feeling like a unicorn” - it’s just a label, a thought! This was during our early dialogues.
3. Still feeling resistance to “what is” through heavy mental activity and personal feelings e.g. stress, anger, resentment, worry, etc. - then seeing that resistance itself is just a label about a thought, or series of thoughts. A thought labelling another thought. That was a relief. A
4. Testing the ground: seeing that there is no self and the mind, that the self only ever existed and exists as a thought, an object among countless other objects in awareness.
It all feels so very simple and very obvious. “Oh right, of course there's no separate I. Of course.” And life as usual with all its stresses and strains and wonderment and the mind chatting away as it always does with its repertoire of phrases.
And letting it all unfold as it will. And trusting the process.
