Sunday, August 1, 2010

You Are Not The Mind

Are you the mind, or are you aware of the mind?  Are you a thought, are you that chattering intellect, or are you that which knows that chatter?  

It is a simple question and can be resolved beyond doubt right now.  It only requires looking and honesty with yourself.

So thoughts are going on, and you know it.  You can describe a past thought.  So it seems that you are that which is aware of thought.  Can this be said with confidence?  With certainty?  Can you realize that once and for all, you are something beyond thought, something to which or in which thoughts appear?  

WHAT that something IS, is more thought.  Thought is the only way to attempt to give that something a definition, yet we find that something, which is presently aware of thought, can't be found objectively, isn't some thing in our experience.  It's the subject TO the object-thought.  Is it not so?  

So you can recognize right now, that what you are is that purely subjective presence which knows thought.  And in the same way it knows the sensations called "body" - foot, leg, torso, chest, arms, neck, face, eyes, ears, etc. All these are sensations or perceptions - appearances or experiences - to YOU - to that presence of knowing.  

So notice that you are here and open - knowing - subjective - while the world, body and thoughts are experiences. What you are isn't appearing as another experience.  Can you be an experience to yourself?  Can you be objective?

Very clearly, you are here yet not findable in terms of experience.  In fact you are that which makes experience possible - that opening or capacity in which or through which or to which experience comes and goes.  Is this not so?  Is it not obvious?  

So the seer isn't seen.  The knower isn't known, presently, through objective experience.  The subjective self is always unknown yet the most real aspect of any experience.  It is like the screen upon which the play-called-world dances.  

Start with the most simple discovery - you are not the mind.  Notice this beyond doubt.

8 comments:

Scarfox said...

Ultimately the seer and the seen are the same, there is no duality, but in this context of witnessing consciousness it is correct. But if we go all the way, it is pure consciousness. What we call form is actually none other than seeing.

Anonymous said...

the question that's keep coming to mind is...what is left?Every thought,perception,idea,form is noticed/observed...its all within awareness and even the justification/explanation everything happens in and within awareness....so what is left..who i am i?

Randall Friend said...

Triza,

Great question. What is left? What remains for identification? Where does the life story reside, or the identity of Triza?

You know that you are always here - recognize that changelessness - that opening or capacity which is YOU.

Start with the fact that you know you exist - with the certainty of "I AM". Then notice that this "I AM" has nothing objective attached to it. It is a changeless, invariable presence, an opening, a capacity, a shining activity of knowing going on constantly.

It isn't hidden - it is always there yet there is always something objective tangled up with it.

We may say "I" is pure and unattached - "I am this" is always false.


love
randall

Anonymous said...

What is pointed at here is inconcievable.deep gratitude for pointing this out over and over again.Its becoming increasingly difficult to ask questions.

Randall Friend said...

Triza,

Simply remain as the observer of the world, the body sensation, the patterns called thought. Watch with interest and curiosity, without the need to change any of it. Just let it be as it is. Soon you find you are in fact already beyond it as the formless observer. There is nothing in experience which can describe you - you are that changelessness itself, like an opening or capacity for these appearances to express unconditionally.


love
randall

su said...

so very beautiful....

Unknown said...

What I am, what we are is quite a mystery. An emptiness that 'knows'. An inanimate screen does'nt know the movie that's playing on it. This empty mystery = no conditions, no desires, Knowing, being, Joy, Peace, Love. A very mysterious emptiness.
Agreed, randall?

Larry or really the mystery.

Randall Friend said...

Larry,

"an emptiness that knows" posits emptiness as another "thing", does it not? A thing requires it to be in opposition with other things - to be a thing is to be separate.

Is there something called "emptiness" which is knowing, or is there only that which we call "knowing"? The world, body and mind are apparently objective, yet that also posits more things to be opposed, to be separate.

The world, body and mind are truly only experience - experiences given names, given concepts, given reality through translation.

Is that "knowing" or experiencing and the experience something different, something separate? Is there a subjective experiencing and an objective experience?

Are you "feeling" a "feeling"?

Or is there only feeling? Only the hearing? Only the seeing?

Only THIS - this immediacy - this singular "happening" - this IS-ness. It is so before the first thought comes to translate, to assign thingness or duality, to assert separation.

Even thought is experience. Walk back from there.


love
randall