Take A Good Look

You cannot have made the decision to look, because that would mean that reality was split between you and your decision. The present is the entirety of reality. You cannot have something that stands before it, making it happen, because the only time anything in the past existed, it existed as the present.

~ Cieran

“I” does not exist. It is a referential concept only. A way to put our collected memories of experience over time into a handy photo album we can pull out and display at whim. We think it is real. We “think” it into reality and then turn it into a narrative, a story about “me”. It is fiction. It is a fantasy, a fairy tale, no different then pulling a children’s book off a shelf and saying “Here’s the story of my life.”

Have you ever actually looked for this “I”? Where is it here and now, as you sit reading these words? Who is reading? What is reading? Is there an “I” present? If asked, does there appear a roster of qualities, a list of personal attributes, as if by magic? Is there a recitation occurring, is there a voice in your head?

Do you believe that voice is you? Does it speak with your voice, spell out your ideas and beliefs? Has it a point of view you call “yours”? Is it the way you present yourself to “others”? Do you seek validation through it? Is it true?

You probably have never really thought to look at the possibility that there is no self and never was. You might consider the idea preposterous. But there’s no harm in looking, is there, to scientifically examining the possibility that the idea of self is merely conceptual and has no reality? If there is no self, what would that mean? Would that change the way you actually function? Is a separate self necessary to operating in the real world or is it an obstruction, a detriment? Is having a separate self actually helpful, or does it cause arguments, dissatisfaction, and disappointment?

Does this separate self have real needs or are they imagined? Could it be that this separate self is just a thought, a symbol of an idea dressed up as a body? Could it be that this idea has parasitized the life in the body by encumbering it with myriad desires, plans, expectations, feelings, motivations, and more, all in order to perpetuate itself? Has this virus of mental/emotional selfhood so overcome humanity that it has completely forgotten its natural state of freedom and joy?

Have you ever stared into the eyes of a newborn? There is nobody there. Only emptiness. But there is tremendous life force. It silences you completely. It is the state we are born to, before words, labels, ideas, and beliefs become the predominant way we interact with the world. A child has no concept of separation from experience. A child is its experience.  It is fully immersed and one with life, right at the start. And then the parents begin injecting the generally-accepted version of reality into its vulnerable brain, starting with the labels of “boy” or “girl”. Before you know it, the child thinks it’s the label. Identification with labels, words, and beliefs leads to the formation of the fictional idea of “I”.

“I” relates to categorized experience, listed and filed under headings such as good/bad, right/wrong, like/hate, etc. The categories are arbitrary and are not necessarily connected to what happened, only to how it was perceived. This remembrance of experience is not a bad thing when applied to what is actually happening. No one wants to forget what “hot” means, or repeat an action that could cause bodily harm. But when a concept replaces an experience of actual knowing, then life is immediately corrupted, disconnected, and disjointed. It becomes a lie.

Living a lie leads to intense suffering. Living in a world based on this lie spreads the suffering to everyone. And this all begins with the erroneous and false belief in a separate, individualized self.

This lie can be seen through. Prove it to yourself. Look for yourself. There is no “I”. It is only a concept. Concepts are not real things. They can only point to real things. What does “I” represent? What is the sense of it? Take a good look. Take a real good look.  Look into the face of what you fear most, the demise of “you”. What is real cannot die, what is unreal never existed.

Take……….a………..look.