Therefore there's a movement towards spirituality where the promise is that the body and mind can be transcended. No longer will I be subject to the death and decay of the body! No longer will I be a slave to the crazy ramblings of the mind! What is offered is a new truth; that what you are is not the body and mind but God, or Love, or Awareness. These alternatives are so easy to accept because they are big, vast concepts that offer a warm and inviting alternative to an identity that we're all too ready to discard.
What happens, though, is that one identity - as the body and mind - is simply swapped for another - as God, or Love, or Awareness. These vague notions are also so appealling because they are absolutely non-falsifiable! How to prove that what you are isn't God, or Love, or Awareness? People already at a vulnerable stage in their life are given a spiritual bait-and-switch; promised the freedom from suffering of the body and mind but given just another concept to hang their identification on.
As long as there is an idea of an "I," whether this "I" is a bag of bones that's getting old and dying and/or a mind filled with crazy thoughts, or whether this "I" is Love, God, Awareness, Emptiness, then there's an idea that there's something that's outside of Life and which Life is happening TO.
Swapping out the identification of the self with the body and mind for some big, all-embracing idea such as God, Love, or Awareness means that this sense of self is still embraced. "I am God, I am Love, or I am Awareness" instead of just "God, Love, Awareness." The sense of a self is still believed to point to something. It is a point of reference for all that happens in life. Therefore, when life is seen as undesirable suffering continues.
When this need to indentify with something, anything at all, is examined and understood, and when the belief in a self that's separate from life is investigated and seen to be just a belief and nothing more, only then can the freedom that life itself offers - which includes the pains of the body and mind - be enjoyed.
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Well this is going to be interesting! I have a big grin going anticipating the great jokes!! :)
ReplyDeleteShhhh! Nothing but serious stuff here! Enlightenment is serious, Goddammit!
ReplyDeleteBut feel free to fuck around in the comments...
ReplyDeleteHa, ha it's like ruthless truth only way funnier!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. It was enjoyed (I enjoyed it?). Alas, the article doesn't indicate how the cessation of identification with with something ceases. The belief in a self (albeit an indescribable/unlimited Self) that's separate from the experience seems very real. "I" (some call it Self, Love or Awareness) is experiencing an appearance and experiencing a judgment and making comment about it. Doesn't that mean something (a something called "I" or Love or Awareness) exists apart in order to have that experiencing? It can be said that "I" is not separate from the experience, but not sure how FEEL that ...and not sure if it's entirely true. It seems that it'd be a paradox - both apart and the same - but today I just feel like a "no-thing" observing things. This article suggests I am still in delusion! :-)
ReplyDeleteJordan, I would suggest looking at my post "What Direct Seeing Means."
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to feel a "no self" or see a "no self" because you can't see or feel something that isn't there. Can you see and feel the purple unicorn that's not in your room right now?
But if you investigate and see that this controller and experiencer of life is just a thought and not real at all, then you can see that it has never been there and will never be there. You experience won't change because all you experience has always been without a self! You're not losing something, you're realizing what has never been there.