Hi Matt,
Long time since I wrote last. I've been intensely busy setting up a new business, and also probably needed time to let this process unfold in its own time. Perhaps also some fear about really accepting the truth- and also a story of 'who do you think you are to say you've realised you're nobody'!!! (Gosh isn't it funny). But those things are - as everything else, just what they are, emotion and thought.
I like this: "...like 'being hoodwinked' to believe the thought that 'I haven't got it yet'." Yes, how would life be lived if this thought was not believed? :o)
How would life be lived . . . as if a mill stone had been dropped. And I guess this is just what it keeps coming down to: the belief that tehre is something to have and if 'I' don't have it then someone out there somewhere must have it to give it to me!!! What a waste of time!
Ok here are my answers to the questions you gave. Would be interested in feedback and happy for any delusion to be rooted out. I've answered question two at length. Hope that's ok.
1: Is there, and has there ever been, a you/self in any shape or form?
Not as anything other than a cluster of thoughts and habitual responses and emotions that tend to arise together.
2: Explain what the illusion of separate self is, when it begins in life, and how it works.
OK . . .
This is what is:
There is sense impression. There are thoughts. There are emotions.
There are thoughts and emotions that arise in dependence on sense impressions.
There are thoughts which compare unpleasant sense impressions with an image or idea of ‘utopian harmony’.
There is a dissonance between this fantasy of utopian harmony (solid enduring pleasurable experience) and actual direct experience (which is unstable, changing and in some degree unpleasant).
The thought arises (repeatedly ‘second by second’) that this dissonance needs to be removed - which would require CONTROL over life i.e., that control over experience must be attained so that harmony can be restored/established. Equally the thought arises that the absence of harmony/utopia is due to a failure to effectively control experience, and that there must be an ‘I’ that is responsible for this failure.
In a child growing up, this takes the form of the belief that there is an ‘I’ which is deficient in some way and that needs to be perfected in order for harmony to be re-established. To add insult to injury, actions which are the result of the thought that self improvement is needed, are often met with praise, which in itself is pleasant but which nevertheless reinforces the delusion that there is ‘someone’ heading towards perfection.
No one is to blame- there is no one to be at fault.
Another way of putting this is to say that the fiction is that there is a broken self that needs fixing.
The belief that there is a broken self that needs fixing is insidious and infects ‘spiritual practice’ very easily.
The great irony is that harmony and completeness are available always when this is met as it is without comparison to something better. Pain may be excruciatingly painful but metaphorically speaking it is all still ‘God’ (however painful). Reaction to pain is also ‘God’. And harmony and completeness is also available when comparison happens, and is itself seen just for what it is- just innocent conditions unfolding (‘God’).
This experience here now. . . as it is, is pure innocence. For it to be recognised as pure innocence is the return to wholeness. It requires no ‘self improvement’ no bettering of oneself.
What is required therefore is for the myth of ‘completeness through improvement’ to be seen as a myth. Then a ‘union’ which was there all along is revealed – and poetically speaking there is a feeling of ‘coming home to oneself’ – being ‘undivided’. The internal Berlin wall falls.
The trap with ‘spiritual practice’ (and life in general) is this: life inherently involves great intensity of experience – often extremely unpleasant. And the belief that self-improvement is required, is insidious, far reaching, and ‘tricksy’!. It is very, very easy for the thought "just more effort is required in order to make things better" to be reinforced.
3: How does it feel, in the mind and body, to see this illusion for what it is?
Unnerving. Resistance and fear arises– because the old story that “there is a self that just needs to be improved enough for utopia to berestored” is very addictive, though intensely frustrating and stressful (because it can’t work).
It’s a bit like working really hard on building a house and then someone pointing out that it’s been built on quicksand. And then thinking “but no I’ve put so much work into this, and if I can only just get it finished all will be OK”.
On another level to see this is a profound relief, because the story of a broken me that needs fixing somehow has always been known to be an impossible nightmare that is very neurotic and unreal- like the feeling a kid might have when trying not to ever have ‘bad thoughts’. They know deep down its impossible.
It’s also comical because the old habit it keeps coming back again and again - it’s here too: if I can only explain this well enough then someone will affirm that ‘I’ve got it’ and harmony will be restored! It’s funny when it’s seen.
In a way it’s also a bit like realizing that there is no boundary between a ‘you’ and the world – like you’re made of glass and that you’ve always been made of glass, with no real inside or outside- just open space. And then the heart is open both to the innocence of what’s been ‘inside’ (emotions and thoughts) and also to what’s ‘other’. But the furrowed brow (identity view) has insisted prior to this that the inside and outside are separate.
4: How would you describe this to somebody who has never heard about the illusion of self, much less the ability to see through it.
Have a look and see if there are any new thoughts. Look closely and see whether there are any thoughts that you can truly say are just ‘yours’. Particularly look for any thought that says that you or your life is broken and needs fixing. Do these thoughts feel familiar/habitual?
Stop and try to make a decision to think about something. Did a ‘you’ really chose the topic? Or did it just pop into your head? Do it again several times. Does a ‘you’ have any control over what goes through your mind?
The seeing that is being pointed to is the seeing that everything taken to be a ‘me’ is just happening: intelligently but nevertheless automatically. Onto this an illusion is added that there is a ‘me’. This would be fine but it is always the story of a ‘me’ that is incomplete and needs fixing.
5: What exactly was it that allowed this 'seeing' to be recognized?
Can’t put that into words- lots of pointers over many years and the dialogue with Matt last year. Perhaps particularly the pointer that all of the layers of reaction (which are the ‘evidence’ for a broken self) are still just ‘not-self’.