Hey Dan...
Good Work on finding that R.T. thread! So we finally cleared up the awareness vs. self issue, so it all boils down to seeing behind the "Vail" of thought, and realizing pure awareness...That's all!
I know that sometimes these things just take the right word, phrase, or inflection to get past the stuck-ness. The light-bulb moment was great!
1) Is there a 'me', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?
No, I don't see how there can be or ever could have been a self. It is not findable at all, and it is clear to me that it is a construct.
2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works.
The illusion of a separate self is the belief that there is a separate, identifiable, and independent entity called the self. The illusion is that this is actually me. I'm not sure when it starts. I think that it starts when the construct of the mind develops the ego. Maybe the mind does this so that there is the illusion of continuity, so that it can keep thinking.
3) How does it feel to see this?
Another good question. On one hand, it feels great - I know that the present is all there is. Awareness is and always was. It seems to strip back a layer of something that caused me anxiety in the past. On the other hand, it's a little disappointing - I've wasted a lot of time worrying about this self. It's something that I've carried my whole life. Now that I'm typing this and thinking about it, I don't really care that it's gone. :-) It removes a layer of complexity that is unnecessary.
4) How would you describe it to somebody who has never heard about this illusion.
I'd hardly be qualified to do that, but I'd take them down the path that I took. I would start by showing them that the present moment is everything. Past and future are constructs. That's pretty easy to grasp. I would then ask them to look for the self in the usual places, mind, body, heart, brain, etc. It takes some time at the sticky bits, but I think that most people couldn't point to a single bit that is the self. From there, I'd break the mind away and look at that as a problem solving and labeling machine. I'd then get to what remains - awareness. I'd point out that awareness isn't self because awareness is present and self is outside of present. (This is where I got stuck chasing my tail.) From there, you just have awareness and everything else is a construct. Since there is no self, there is nothing "doing" anything. It's just happening.
5) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look?
I'll give you the Reader's Digest version. ;-)
I wanted to find a therapist during my divorce. I called about 10 of them, and - to the last one - they all seemed like they needed more help than I did. I had a passing interest in Eastern philosophy, and I knew that Buddhists were masters at mastering their minds. (That is the phrase I used before I actually knew anything about meditation from an actual experience.) There is a Kadampa meditation center in Sarasota where I started learning Dharma. One of the people there led me to someone outside of that lineage who teaches meditation. I've been fortunate to have her as a guide. She taught me how to meditate and brought me through much of this path. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to un-stick me at my awareness/self point. I wasn't pushing too hard on that, until my mind started thrashing me with all of the "what-if's" when I started dating again. (I was married for 14 years, so it was a bit of a shock!) There were two girls that really seemed like great matches, and that caused the expected mind/time issues. Things like, "I blew that date, and I won't likely find another one who seems as compatible." or "We hit it off so well over the past week. Why haven't I heard from her?" These would cause the typical loops and end up with my mind chewing on the "problem" and ultimately causing suffering. I was soooo tired of these loops, I knew that I had to go back to self and start there if I wanted to try to break free from these loops. That caused me to search the web for anything I could find relative to self and awareness. Keyword searches in Google brought me here.
I don't know if this is going to ultimately break my loops. I think that I have a good conceptual understanding of it, but I need to make it my default level of being. (Any pointers on how to do that?) I hope that the awareness stops the loops before they start, but I won't know until the next time the mind tries to hook me.
