Existence

The root idea that you have about yourself is that you are a separate existence, an existence which began, a differentiated existence, a "tube" of existence, an existence which is on its own, apart from the existence of everything else.  This idea is at the very root of your idea of yourself.

Now you are seeking enlightenment, which really is a fancy way of saying that all is one, wholeness, oneness...  you are seeking that wholeness - you are seeking a realization that reality isn't divided.  Yet the core idea that your existence is separate and standing alone remains.  And somehow that individual existence can find that reality is not individual existences.

The core idea you have about yourself presupposes the opposite of what is being searched for.  Your very existence as you take it eliminates wholeness as a possibility, before the search even began.

So push aside all the spiritual bullshit and just be one-pointed in the questioning and inquiry into that idea about existence itself.  Is it separate and definable?  Is existence's nature definable by these little tubes called "bodies"?  Did your existence begin at a certain date and time?  Will that existence end at some date and time?

Or is existence itself the whole?  What appears is that one existence, that singular reality.  No "thing" stands by itself in existence.  No "thing" possesses it's own existence.  Existence cannot begin.  Forms begin.  Expressions begin.  Existence itself expresses in infinite ways yet never becomes anything.  The form takes shape, stays for a while then breaks down, yet nothing happens to that existence which is the essence of the form.

If we are open enough to allow doubt about the very nature of existence itself, we may find that it is the very idea we have of ourself which binds.  Freedom is then not an individual finding freedom but freedom from the individual itself.