Hi Ron,
Of course. I have no problem “picking up some more small rocks (or big ones)” or diving deeper.
Perhaps I can provide some more thoughts of how I have come to experience “all this” and some areas to investigate further. No doubt much of this will just create more confusion.
My experience of the self has been informed through years of meditation and many poignant moments through a lifetime. In awareness, whether on the cushion or in everyday life, the moment is empty of a narrative fed by a separate self-identity. The moment is as it is, without thoughts cascading endlessly. Yes, sensations and thoughts arise, but they are not grasped, and they fall into the background. There are gaps without anything. There is just an emptiness. It’s not even an emptiness. It’s a place of being, without knowing or not knowing. Even calling it an awareness is not a good description. Even trying to remember it is a problem.
Mind – this area is much harder to explain. One could say I have two minds (of course this is ludicrous, but let’s try anyway): 1) a mind of a body, a brain’s cognition of our senses and worldview and 2) a mind that is aware of an unknowable essence. Both experience thoughts. The cognitive thoughts make sense of our experiences through the body, sampling the world and analyzing it and reacting to perceived forms. The cognitive mind is prone to create a separate self, an identity. This identity is believed completely, protected and reinforced at all costs. The awareness mind can see that the cognitive mind worldview is fabricated. The “me” that is in it has been created by the cognitive mind. However, it’s important to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The total belief in the self-identity is a problem. The world-view constructs, though approximations and incomplete, allow us to engage in a world of forms. Such forms are a body, life and death, relationships and a general interaction with all that is. All in relationships to one another, without some absolute notion of right or wrong, or good or evil or separateness. The cognitive mind has created a worldview, but at some moment of insight/breakthrough/crisis/kensho the aware mind realizes it, there is a shift. Hence, Santa is seen through as a friction. It’s a moment of transcendence, yet many artifacts can still remain subconsciously and can take years to uncover. These artifacts are often scripts that automatically engage in relationship to the world and others. Until they are exposed, we keep engaging them.
External world – a world to me is both mind-created (subjective) and an unknowable universe that comes into being through forms in relation to each other. I am this universe, but there is only an “I” that was created by my thoughts. My mind creates an objective world to understand the forms. The universe can’t be known through mind-created constructs or even the senses. However, a mind creates a world-picture, often with approximations of something that can’t be understand or grasped. This world-picture is useful because we also exist relative to these forms. The denial of an objective mind-perceived world is nihilism, nothing but an intellectual ditch of all reasoning and experience.
In the awareness moment transcending our cognitive world and self, there is no self or other, no time, no space, no understanding, and no form.
What are you waiting for that is proof positive that the 'no self' is finally absent?
Not a thing. The proof is not in a logically reasoned argument, nor is it in an experience.
Put the palm of your hand facing up, and only curl (move) one finger each time (any finger), watch what is the difference of moving them with intention and then without intention, switch moving them with intention and without intention (but move them).
Do you find a real difference?
No. How does one remove intention from the “without intention” action? Do I breathe intentionally or unintentionally? If I try to control my breathing, then I notice labored breathing.
When you find yourself thinking about something else, and your fingers keep moving - does intention moves them, or they just move?
Has the intention to move them been removed? Mind can initiate an action and our body can function without having to think through each muscle or function.
How is this intention controlled? Notice even if you do it very slowly - does intention affect action, or is that just something thought claims "I'm moving the 3rd finger now" etc?
How is this intention manifested? What initiates control? Thoughts. We don’t really need to see into our body’s complexity to control it do we. A thought is enough to initiate a body response.
What kind of engagement is your doing?
Life unfolds, it is as it is. My engagement with my partner unfolds as it does. Without engaging with thoughts that may indicate there was conflict, “I” may create suffering for her. Yes, it’s her thoughts that create suffering. And yes, I can create suffering for myself by trying to project some solution from thoughts. By not engaging in some identity of “me” I can response more compassionately. And ultimately, there is no shaping of some conceptual path forward of right or wrong response. A willful engagement implies shaping an outcome. A compassionate engagement is a response without a willful identity.
To become humble still means you are holding on to a somebody who's now humble, I invite you to take another look, is there anyone here to feel humbled?
Humility here means more that an identity. To know, and to not know. Yes, there is something beyond this. No, there is no one to find.
No grounding speaks truth, isn't everything just the way it is - the only way it can be because it is?
Yes.
Forgive my long descriptions and narratives.
Much love and appreciation, my friend,
Camus
