Don't beat yourself up - it's natural

Don't be too hard on yourself.  There are no mistakes.  The frustration is normal.  In fact it is the very nature of the whole thing.

We might call the "whole" Life - One Life.  As the whole, Life does not know that it exists.  Imagine yourself as the whole, then try to notice that knowing yourself would be impossible.  There would be no measurement, no quantification, no comparison.  You would have no basis by which to know yourself.

So the initial expression of Life, the root desire is to know yourself.  To know yourself requires becoming a know-er.  To be a knower requires the known.  That urge to know of your own existence is the birth of imagination.  I AM!  I AM springs forth naturally, innocently, a simple expression of Joy.  We know many times when we have been faced with a situation that could have brought a seeming end to our existence, and after the dust settled, we had the feeling "I AM!"  The simple feeling of existence.

That I AM-ness is the initial urge or compulsion to split reality, to split up the whole, your Self or Life or whatever label you like.  It is almost impossible NOT to do this, therefore the frustration when we try to see through it, the frustration when it keeps happening.  We take this as bad but it is not.  It is the natural expression of Life.  Believed in, it comes with suffering and then the equal compulsion to go back, to get back to that wholeness - this is the uninvited pull of spirituality.

That urge to split up reality is natural.  It is the natural expression of coming to know yourself, coming to know your own existence.  There is no way to express without dividing.  We see it in our language.  To communicate requires that expression of duality.  Ironically seeing it for what it is, the game is up.  We can no longer be fooled by it.  The recognizing of reality as whole, recognizing yourself as the whole, is the recognition that that split was always conceptual, always only seemingly so.

But it is also clear that the incumbent suffering never actually applied.  That nothing was ever actually needed or missing.  You are the whole, and that whole, that Life comes to know itself through this natural expression. Seeing through it, it continues but there is no belief left in it.  It is the belief in it which we are ultimately trying to see through in spirituality.  That's all.

Therefore take no grief in this frustration, this confusion.  Enjoy this seeming separation, this seeming split while it lasts.  The full experience of Joy is only the opposite of the full experience of Suffering.  Ultimately even Joy and Suffering fall away when there is no belief in that split.

What remains is only ever what IS - now and now and now and now and only now.  The wholeness we call Life or Self or Reality - and that duality is free to express, that split can appear, that urge is the master, then seen through, then known as a perfect expression of the whole.

The world and "I" are not-two.

Only YOU

You must back yourself into a corner - eliminating all that is not obviously true.  Discarding all that is imaginary or assumption.

Entertain the impossible - the illogical.  Don't let anything be taken for granted.

Try to find yourself as another "thing" - see where you stop and start.  Find out what is your shape or size. 

Start with the only thing you know with absolute certainty - you exist.  Existence is certain.  You are here.  No one can convince you that you are not here.  You have always been here, no matter the circumstance, no matter the situation, no matter the quality of experience -  your presence has been the constant factor.

So what is that presence?  How do you know you exist?  Is it because you see a body?  Is it because thoughts are there?  No - it is because you KNOW.  Because you are aware.  Awareness is the proof of your existence or presence.

And the body and thoughts are objects of this awareness, are they not?  The body does not know you - thoughts do not know you.  You know the body and thoughts.  So it is a peculiar arrangement.  You are there, however you aren't anything perceivable or conceivable.  You aren't anything knowable.  Yet you know you are here.

Isn't this strange?  To know you ARE, yet not to be able to find yourself, know yourself?  So we spend decades trying everything we can to find ourselves.  It's quite a funny situation we are in.

The answer is that you will never find yourself in these terms, in terms of objectivity.  As some "thing".  AS some "thing " you would be absolutely limited, separate.  Your concept of bondage would be true, because AS a thing you are absolutely limited by all that you are not.  You are not a chair, not a dog, not a planet, not a cheeseburger.

But you cannot find yourself AS a thing anyway, because you AREN'T a thing.  So instead of spending another twenty years looking for yourself AS a thing, just notice that your presence isn't determined by thing-ness.  It isn't determined by objective attributes.  You are here.  Your presence is certain. 

But because it isn't objective, because that presence doesn't come with attributes like some "thing", the mind tries to place it somewhere - upon some "thing" - this is the nature of identification.  So this experience called "body-mind" is used - that presence is, right now, being placed upon something objective, falsely, because there is no other place to put it.  Where can you put silence, stillness, no-thing-ness, presence-awareness?

The fact is that you are simply here, always.  Your presence will never become something -  you will never find yourself as some particular experience.  You are simply here, without being some "thing" in particular.  Stay with that presence but don't try to objectify it.  Notice how the mind constantly tries to objectify it, and always fails. 

Just be as you are - just BE - Stop trying to make yourself into something you are not.  And once that unknowable presence is noticed as what you are, then notice that even these so-called "things" or "experiences" are not really split from what you are - they are not actually something different, something other, something opposite. 

In reality there is only YOU.

No subject in the mirror

Is there somewhere you can place yourself?

Is there anywhere you cannot find yourself?

Do the two sides of a coin mean two separate things?

Language betrays itself - "I am feeling a feeling".

It trips over itself in an attempt at defining the indefinable.

Is feeling subjective, objective, both, or neither?

Mind is nothing but thought.  Can a thought feel? 

Does thought know YOU?

The Self is not findable, yet it is perfectly obvious at all times.

No search is needed to be what you are.

To search is to miss it.

To grasp is to overlook.

To want is to deny it.

It is so close that it is discarded in the seeking of it.

It is so obvious that it is said to be too simple.

It is not an achievement by a special few.

When you look in the mirror, are you looking at the subject?

Perfectly Present

We can't seem to "know what we are" or "find our Self" without trying to find that "self" as some "thing".  What does this mean?

It means that we are forever trying to make the subject into an object, an experience.  Isn't this what identification is?  The body is objective to you - you know the body - the body does not know you.  Thoughts are objective to you - you know thoughts - thoughts do not know you.

So to be the subject means to be that which knows, that which is aware of.  But "that" isn't a thing - that "subjective self" isn't a thing which is found in any terms the mind can present.  Nowhere can you locate the actual subject.  You are the subject of this present experience - but the subject cannot be found AS another thing.  Therefore it isn't difficult because that subject is always perfectly present at all times.  It just isn't something the mind can turn into something, it cannot make a NOUN out of it.

So we might notice that almost all of the spiritual search is trying to make a NOUN or "thing" out of the subject - some bright light, some sublime feeling, some mystical experience.

The subject is perfectly present at all times - you are here.  That is undeniable.  But how to do you know you are here?  How do you know the subject?  You know it BECAUSE awareness is happening.  You know it BECAUSE experience is known.  For it to be known the subject must be present.

So instead of searching for a special experience as a manifestation of the subject or "knowing your Self", recognize that simply because experience is known, you know yourself.  Simply because any experience is present, YOU must be there.  You are that capacity BY WHICH the experience is known, whatever it is.

Therefore no experience is discarded - there are no conditions on experience.  ANY experience is evidence of your Self.  Or we might say, to know experience is to know your Self, automatically.

This is where the search goes down the rat hole, because we want to discard particular experience in preference for a special experience of our Self.  It will always be futile, because the "Self" is evident in all experience.  There is no validating experience.  THIS is IT.  You are HERE.  You are present.  And you are aware.

That presence of awareness is the evidence of your Self.  Coming to find what you are is simply giving up the need for some special experience and acknowledging your perfect presence as it is, right now.