Postby Andreas18 » Thu May 14, 2020 5:11 pm
Thank you!
Haha, the first one is great. No, there never was one. I guess you could say it was always just an illusion. In one sense it seems like a challenge to convey. Nisargadatta put in one way, which was, "I was never born, so how could I die?" For example. Through Zen training you can see, experience, and live that very same realization or however one might put it. The same goes for Buddhism, "All things are empty of self," "all things are cause and effect." It seems to me people have been trying convey this for a very long time. Time and time again these sort of teachings pop up, even in religion. "All things are god" for example. It's funny to me how I never realized it before, but to me there is obviously no separate self, or otherwise.
I could go deeper and say that the word "I" is referring to consciousness, depending on who you ask though I guess, but there is no self in that either. There simply isn't one. Nowhere. Also saying "I" am pure consciousness is tied up in dualism, which makes it finicky. There is no "I" that is consciousness. On the other hand, the Buddha once said the closest thing you can call yourself is your body, but there is no self there either. Not in the body, senses, feelings, emotions, thoughts, etc... All things seem to arise in emptiness. Everything. Which is nice. And so naturally, all things are one, as they say.
2) Well, the way I see it, and I can only speak in relative terms here, the experience of a separate self seems to not be nothing other than identification with, well, material form, energy, movements of energy. Rupert Spira put it well. It's as if consciousness itself becomes "contracted," it almost seems like it gets "sucked" into movements of energy within the mind, emotions, the body and all our senses, and so on. Consciousness becomes identified with material forms, to put it that way. And so part of the process of waking up seems to be consciousness waking up out of form, and eventually we realize there is no self in consciousness either.
It seems this starts as early as infancy, we have a sense of self. All babies do. Once we are born we cry, we can feel, there is consciousness, and so there is already a sense of self. Relatively unconscious but still there is consciousness present. And so due to this "sense of self" and social conditioning, we eventually fall under the assumption there actually is one. It seems perfectly natural really. There is scientific evidence that shows very young children can't seem to distinguish the difference between themselves and others actually, it's quite interesting. There are videos of young children who can't make the distinction between themselves and their siblings, it's interesting, not to mention very cute. Eventually as we get older due to conditioning of society or our family, we realize what our name is, and we think "I am George." We have an age, "I am 4 years old." We are told by society that we are good or bad for doing what we do, how handsome we are with our new haircut, even though we don't agree. We are taught from early childhood that who we are is the body, along with all else that comes with it. And so we become identified with many, many things over time. People tell us who we are, and we ourselves believe in our thoughts about who we are, and our thoughts about others, and emotions can be strong, and so we easily become identified with our emotions and eventually the entirety of what we might call a human being. We are unaware that it is all arising within emptiness. We have a birthday, a past, future, life story. We are identified with our personalities, our thoughts and emotions, our beliefs, judgments, opinions. We become identified with what we know, we are identified with the experience of not knowing, our experiences. On and on it goes. It seems "we" become identified with practically every experience we have, and all things that have to do with this brain and body. "We" experienced it. Everything happened to this "me". "We" in this context I mean pure consciousness, which has become identified with material form. Almost as if it's been sucked into it. Or contracted. Consciousness again, being empty of self.
And so, identification leads to the experience of separation. "I am George," "You are Alice." "This is Mom," "This is Dad." "This is my sister." So on and so forth. We have become unconscious that all things are appearing within emptiness, and we do not know that all things are empty of self. A very natural result of being born in human society.
I think that's about as much as I can say for now about the illusion of a separate self. Simply put, we become identified which then leads to the illusion/experience of separation.
3) Well, when it comes to emptiness, it's not really an experience. It's more like it's simply clear to me that this is how it is, there is no self, and there never was one. Feeling this on the other hand, well, it's extraordinarily liberating. I really enjoy emptiness while I meditate. I find it's so much easier to forgive, love, and understand others. I can see it's all cause and effect. Things have been flowy, I've been at ease and I feel well and clear minded. But the last few days I had to break up with my friend due to his drug habits, and he threw a couple of nasty insults at me, which pulled me back into identification and separation now and then. I was able to speak to him with love and compassion, but I was of course a little angry afterwards at times. I kinda have to laugh at myself a little though, because it seems so childish really. It was very silly. So I'm not immune to what Adya calls "velcro thoughts," but in general I feel much more in harmony with the world, besides my downstairs neighbor's bass music blasting at 02:00 o'clock in the morning. I have love, compassion and understanding for her, even though I don't like her very much. But even when this happens I can still see there is love, and understanding for her within me, she likes drugs and she wants to party, so it's understandable, seeing where I live. My other neighbor is very loud and psychotic which is quite distracting, the poor guy. I can still feel negative emotions in other words, but things don't have so much of a tendency to throw me off balance anymore.
When it really hit me, not so long ago. My first response was kinda just, "really?" And so I looked at everything I could find to see if it truly was empty of self. And I saw, yea, it's all empty of self. Cars, people walking by, music, all the rest. It's wonderful, and very liberating. It feels like freedom. Feeling at one with all things, well, it's wonderful. Really quite wonderful. Liberation is the best word I could use to describe the feeling. Funnily enough things seem pretty much the same as before, nothing has changed, yet simultaneously there is this inexplicable change. It's strange, and a bit puzzling, but very nice. Life is a lot more enjoyable knowing this, it's a lot easier to live now. It feels normal.
4) Well, it kinda just struck me. I don't know how it happened, it kinda just happened spontaneously. I was sitting in meditation at the time and for some reason, I don't know how or why, it became clear to me. Like being struck by lightning or slipping on a banana peel. I've been asking "Who am I?" quite often these past months. I became very interested in what this self really was, maybe that has something to do with it, I'm not quite sure. But yea, I think that's probably it, I became very curious as to what this "self" is, and did a lot of inquiry.
5) Oof, this is a tough one. Well, to me, I like to think of everything as simply, "Nature unfolding." Totally impersonal. It seems to me when we are conscious enough we are actually able to make conscious decisions, choices, and exercise self control and discipline without it simply being an unconscious thing that kinda just seems to happen without us being entirely aware of it. There is this freedom from compulsion when we are conscious enough, and so this "free will" we speak of seems to come from being conscious. We are able to choose. Whether there is actually a self there to choose or not, or exercise free will or not seems to be a ridiculous debate that never ends, but to me, free will seems to be a natural thing/experience, arising from being conscious. That is if I got the definition of free will right. To me, even free will is empty of self, and always has been. It seems to me that free will is an illusion, but there is choice and intention and so on. As I said earlier, to me, all things are simply nature unfolding. Others may prefer the term reality or the universe unfolding. Just to be clear I don't believe in determinism either.
As for intention, well, I mean I don't really know what else to say other than this is also empty of self. There is determination for example, but there is no self in it. Kinda like a movement of energy. Totally impersonal.
This one is tough really, I'm actually not entirely sure that what I'm saying here is entirely true to be honest. I've never really thought so much about these things.
As to what makes things happen? Well, again, I like to think of it as reality unfolding. Or rather nature unfolding. Like a tree. It's all natural, even the creation of a synthetic drug is a completely natural event it seems to me, there's no self there. As to how things work. Well, it seems like things simply happen, to put it simply. All things seem to be nothing other than cause and effect.
As to what I'm responsible for? Quizzically it seems like everything that has to do with this life form and it's relationship with the world, yet simultaneously nothing whatsoever. All things are conditioned. Everything was forgiven from the very beginning. Everything is cause and effect. There doesn't actually seem like there is a me here that is responsible for anything, yet paradoxically there is definitely this sense of responsibility for myself and how I effect this world.
In another sense, I'm responsible for everything? Honestly I'm a bit confused with this 5th point, I'm having a tough time here... I would love some help with all this.
Speaking from experience though. When it comes to decisions, I tend to listen to my gut. Often I've experienced that decisions are made for me, not by me, to put it that way. Like when it comes to relapsing on drugs due to drug cravings. But if I'm conscious, I am able to make decisions, well, consciously. Haha. It's strange. As for my intentions. Well, it's there, but in personal experience there is no self behind it. I intend to stay off the drugs, but it's very much like just, well, energy really. As to free will, that seems to simply be something that is experienced when there is enough consciousness. Whether there actually is such a thing as free will or not, I don't really believe in it, but neither do I believe in determinism. But I have experienced free will a couple of times, but it turned out I was not as free as I liked to think. As to choice, again, there is seemingly freedom to choose when one is conscious enough, often choices seem to be made for us unconsciously, like when I crave drugs and go back to addiction. Eventually I wake up out of it though and I become aware of my situation and choose to leave the drugs behind. Control is an illusion, but that doesn't mean we can't exercise self control or discipline. There may be no self, but we can still exercise self control. Simply being able to say "no" to my drug cravings is an application of self control. Control over others or the world seems to be nothing other than conditioning at play really. Like learning to play the guitar, we may put effort into it, especially at first, but eventually it becomes natural to us. Same goes for lying, for example.
Please correct me if I'm off here.
That's about it for now, but there's one last thing. I've asking myself, "how do i know I would actually be able to guide well?" If I am to become a guide then I would really like some sort of training or "education" or something, tips or something. I saw you had a program about this some time ago I believe. I feel little nervous about it really, and also I really need and want to know that what I'm saying to others is really true, or of benefit, though I guess that may not always be possible, knowing whether something is beneficial or not. In other words I kinda doubt myself a bit, my ability to guide that is.
Other than that, that's what I'm gonna roll with for now, please correct me if something seems off.
I have to go call the emergency number now for mental health here in Norway, my neighbor is throwing a psychotic fit and is going totally bananas right now. Talk to you later.
