Saturday, March 6, 2010

Lose yourself, gain nothing

I am not a thought - thoughts seem to come and go while I remain still.

I am not a body - sensations seem to come and go while I remain still.

I am not an image - images seem to be constructed, modified and deconstructed while I remain still.

Anything that I know cannot be what I am - as I am obviously always here, still, and aware.

That always-here-ness isn't another experience - it hasn't changed though a lifetime of experiences has come and gone.

I have never come and went.

Right now, I remain as the condition necessary for all experience. Right now, I remain as the light which illuminates experience.

But that light cannot objectify itself. It only knows itself by reflection - therefore all experiences are confirmation of my Self.

So there is no need to change any experience, no need to manipulate thought or feelings or situations. I cannot anyway. I can only realize that I was never any of those "things" at all but the condition necessary for their appearance.

Yet even to take any experience as some "thing" is to take it to be apart from my Self. What is the shadow made of? What is the reflection made of? A thought, a feeling, an image, a situation - all experience. What is experience itself made of?

Is experience and experiencing two separate things? Two independent "happenings"?

So to speak of a "body" - I cannot be that separate "thing". To speak of a "thought" - I cannot be that separate "thing". I remain simply as the knowing of those "things".

Yet notice that in calling them "things", in taking them to be independent things, the template of separation must be used. If that is so, then I must be the formless and still knowing.

Yet if this idea of thing-ness or separation is questioned, if it is recognized that the very idea or calling these "things" at all, of calling them "experiences" posits the very idea of separation, then there is the opportunity to notice that experience and experiencing was not ever, in fact, apart.

Then I "lose myself" as a separate, independent "thing", an isolated and limited being. That individual self isn't forcibly rejected, isn't intellectually analyzed away. It is recognized as a belief or assumption - and that belief falls away NATURALLY, because it just has no real basis. It was only ever a projected reality.

Yet I also gain nothing. I only remain as I already am, as I always was. The totality itself.

2 comments:

Tanya Priest said...

This sounds like the thoughts that formulate themselves in my mind. You expressed them beautifully. Thank you for sharing.
Namaste

Shamash said...

Great post. Thanks for sharing my friend! Beautiful.