--Michael Markham
----------
"As long as you think it is somewhere out there......somewhere........that is where it will appear to be."
--Michael Markham
It seems to have become a semi-annual tradition, these questions turning up in my inbox.
People want to understand the not-I. They want to find the no-I. They want to find the awareness of it.
Where is that sucker? Folks are looking everywhere for it.
Which does raise the question, why? Why would anyone feel it’s necessary to understand no-self?
Clearly there’s an idea that some-thing can be gotten, if only one can see there’s no-thing.
Hmmm ok. Maybe it would help to ask, what wants to know? What gives a darn about this important question?
Well, I’m sorry to report, but that would be the self. It’s the self that wants to know.
Self wants to find not-I, by using I to do it.
So naturally, all it ever finds is itself. Over and over and over.
Which makes sense, really. After all, what are the odds that anything would ever truly want to discover its own non-existence?
Slim odds at best.
And then, whoo hoo! Some folks think they do finally get it.
But then they feel depressed, or low, or unmotivated to leave the couch.
Which is often when they start saying things like, “Well, what’s the point, if there is no I? Why bother?”
Oh the I feels blue. The I feels worthless, pointless, frustrated, confused.
Yes, it claims to earnestly want to lose itself, and then feels sad when it supposedly succeeds.
Good ol’ self, with its many feelings, feeling stuff.
The thing is, feelings come to the one who has, the one who owns, a body.
Making said body-owner the center of everything important.
Which sounds very self-like, not very not-I, to me.
But ok.
And then, even if we perhaps discover that what we are is consciousness experiencing itself through us,
then there’s consciousness and also the I doing the experiencing for consciousness.
Meaning there are two things. And surprise! One of those things is the self.
Seems nothing at all can be experienced, except through it.
Making the I very darned important.
As usual.
It seems there is no way to escape the hamster wheel of self. Because it’s what’s doing the looking.
Y’know, for its not-self. Supposedly.
So perhaps there’s nothing to lose by trying something off-wheel.
Such as, take the “er” out.
Take the "er" out of feel-er, think-er, own-er of bodies. Take the "er" out of know-er, and connect-er to awareness.
The “er” assumes a do-er, a self-er, a receiver.
Taking the "er" out, de-centers.
Try on the possibility that there is nothing doing the feeling and thinking and witnessing and connecting.
Why would this matter? Well, if there's no "er", then how can experience happen? What’s left, without self-ers?
Happenings. Lots and lots and lots of happenings.
Not knowers of happenings. Not awarenesses of happenings.
Just happenings.
Instead of experience-er of things, it’s simply all actual experience.
Thought, sensation, color, sound, understanding. All of it.
Being. Everything.
The I disappears.
And wouldn't it be something if being decentered-everything
more than makes up for any sense of loss some tiny pinpoint speck of the universe which thinks everything depends on its happy existence, might feel.
I mean, it’s just possible that being everything is pretty cool,
and that nothing at all misses
that limited, teeny-tiny,
self-important,
pretend-center,
full-of-nothing,
I.
"I've been searching for years for the ideal place. And I've come to the realization that the only way to find it is to be it."
--Alan Watts
----------
"Matter and consciousness exist only as attempts to describe and have no actual reality at all.
We are the sun seeking shadows."
--Michael Markham
Click here to get your Mind-Tickled via email every week.
Watch Judy and Shiv Sengupta discuss spiritual anarchy
Click here to watch Judy on Buddha at the Gas Pump
click to watch Judy and Walter have fun chatting about about nonduality, the self, consciousness, awareness, free willand other light and breezy stuff
watch Judy and Robert Saltzman talk nonduality
1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAa3UCEyROQ
2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fv_vsvaejshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DAn8Rqg3I0
