nothing you read is going to help you.

no one you talk to can ever be held responsible for anything that happens to you.

don't come here anymore looking for anything.  i don't know why you have come here, anyway.

there's no answer to be found here.

there's only ever been one answer and being alive is it.  it is already the case.

the only truth
at all
is that being is.

this is.  this is it.

it doesn't matter if you realize that or not, it's already true.

existence doesn't depend on being noticed.

There is no metaphysical override for the biological functioning of the organism.

Is there something real that is separate from that organism?

No, not that can be found in this experience.

this is what i wrote to several people, upon the initial seeing of no separate self.


there was no 'me' who made the body form in the mother's womb.
there is no 'me' who beats the heart, inhales and exhales the air, or holds this body down to the floor.
there is no 'me' who chooses when to fall asleep or wake up.
there is no 'me' who chose when to learn to talk or walk.
there is no 'me' who chose to prefer sex with women over men.
there is no 'me' who was given a talent to draw.
there is no 'me' who can be blamed for the eventual breakdown of the physical health that will lead to body death.
there is no 'me' who feared this physical death.
there is no 'me' who will break down the components of the body into the earth.
there is no 'me' who will escape the body and fly off to exist in heaven or hell.
there is no 'me' who moves the attention from thing to thing, thought to thought, experience to experience.
there is no 'me' who felt a pull toward finding 'me'.

nothing can be found that lasts in the experience of being and there is no 'me' that lasts outside the experience of being.
there is no 'me' to shift from personal identification with experiences to identification with universal life.
there is only life, sometimes imagining itself to be 'me'.

identification still happens in the experiencing, but there is nothing real being referred to when that happens. there is only the pattern of identification - a thought pattern. there is no separate self.

.

every voice that points to the truth is unique.  some sound better than others to your conditioned thought patterns.  this blog is here to help.  it's not here to proclaim itself as the bible of truth.  it's here to share the notes of how one seeker found liberation.  it's also here to share notes on what it's like after one has passed through the gateless gate.

there is no shame or harm in asking for a buddy check.  when the truth is seen it will be undeniable, and the sharing of that between human minds is one of the top shelf experiences of all of life's experiences.

the truth is likely not going to descend like a dove from heaven and land on your head.  no booming voice of god is going to declare you a beloved son.  if you are out there, desperately yearning to know what this blog is about, and the linked blogs, and the arena, you should not be afraid to ask.  find the voice that feels right to you and reach out.

i felt a craving to check with someone.  humans are social animals.  it helps to have a friend to share with and i didn't find anyone that felt open and willing until i talked to ciaran.  it was a private conversation over chat.  it wasn't public or overly dramatic.  it was mainly just a very firm reassurance that the truth could be seen if it was looked at. 

most spiritual teachers have always felt very unapproachable and too expensive to me.  i never fell prey to the western idea that something is worth more if you have to pay for it.  i always wanted to know the truth that is available for anyone, anytime, anywhere.  i knew it had to be there, and i'm pretty sure most people know it too. 

so ask.  share.  open up.  don't be shy.  there's no reason to wait.  i love you.

..

problems of existence and nonexistence come and go as they please, without a self required to solve them.  there is just reality, which appears to consist of the movement from existence to nonexistence.

Everyone's heart is breaking.  Everyone's clothes are on fire, but very few notice.  (Scott Morrison)




You may be reading this because you have been searching and seeking and looking and not finding anything satisfactory to make the suffering from trying to maintain the existence of you go away. 

The feeling of being a living human ranges from misery to bliss.  The only way to escape the feeling of being alive is to physically die, and that will happen soon enough.  However, there is a way to see the truth of the situation and never have to carry the burden of suffering as your own again.

When it's seen that there's actually not a you anywhere, there is no longer an owner of the experiences that make up life.  Life simply is as it is, suffering or bliss.

This is all there is to see.  There are endless distractions from reality, and suffering takes countless forms in this world.  The one truth that removes the sting of suffering is the truth that there is no person to suffer. 

There are no selves anywhere.

There is only the impersonal force of life.

It's real right here, right now. 

Life feels like being alive, and that's all that's happening. 

Notice.

.

any woman aware of her biological functions can tell you that almost every month things go a little nuts in her head.

everyone loves to joke about it, but i tend to think of it as a regularly scheduled reminder that i don't exist.

if i did exist, i'd be able to override my pms and avoid feeling like the world is falling apart when it's not, right?  but truly, there is absolutely nothing running the show here that is separate from life. 

what's amazing to me is that while we poke fun at the whole pms thing, this joke could be considered evidence that we do believe, as a culture, that our biological functions are to blame for our emotional state and that this emotional state colors our experience of reality. 

every time someone refers to an emotional female they could actually be considered to be pointing out the fact that there's no person in that woman, affecting her reality and experience.

..

Look at your monitor.

Look at your hands.

Look at the thoughts coming up in your head right now.

Done that? Then you're ready. You have mastered the ancient and mystical art of looking.

Now look at the self.

-Velorien

..
"Enquiring `Who am I that is in bondage?' and knowing one's real nature alone is liberation."  -Ramana Maharshi

.

Check out these records:

Ten Successors

Zen pupils take a vow that even if they are killed by their teacher, they intend to learn Zen. Usually they cut a finger and seal their resolution with blood. In time the vow has become a mere formality, and for this reason the pupil who died by the hand of Ekido was made to appear a martyr.

Ekido had become a severe teacher. His pupils feared him. One of them on duty, striking the gong to tell the time of day, missed his beats when his eye was attracted by a beautiful girl passing the temple gate.

At that moment Ekido, who was directly behind him, hit him with a stick and the shock happened to kill him.

The pupil's guardian, hearing of the accident, went directly to Ekido. Knowing that he was not to blame, he praised the master for his severe teaching. Ekido's attitude was just the same as if the pupil were still alive.

After this took place, he was able to produce under his guidance more than ten enlightened successors, a very unusual number.

Hui-ke Offers His Arm

Bodhidharma sat in a cave for nine years gazing at the wall. Hui-ke arrived to inquire about the dharma, but Bodhidharma refused to teach him. Finally, taking a knife, Hui-ke cut off his own arm and presented it as an offering to Bodhidharma, who agreed to become his teacher.

Ryonen's Clear Realization

The Buddhist nun known as Ryonen was born in 1797. She was a granddaughter of the famous Japanese warrior Shingen. Her poetical genius and alluring beauty were such that at seventeen she was serving the empress as one of the ladies of the court. Even at such a youthful age fame awaited her.

The beloved empress died suddenly and Ryonen's hopeful dreams vanished. She became acutely aware of the impermanency of life in this world. It was then that she desired to study Zen.

Her relatives disagreed, however, and practically forced her into marriage. With a promise that she might become a nun after she had borne three children, Ryonen assented. Before she was twenty-five she had accomplished this condition. Then her husband and relatives could no longer dissuade her from her desire. She shaved her head, took the name of Ryonen, which means to realize clearly, and started on her pilgrimage.

She came to the city of Edo and asked Tetsugyu to accept her as a disciple. At one glance the master rejected her because she was too beautiful.

Ryonen then went to another master, Hakuo. Hakuo refused her for the same reason, saying that her beauty would only make trouble.

Ryonen obtained a hot iron and placed it against her face. In a few moments her beauty had vanished forever.

Hakuo then accepted her as a disciple.

Commemorating this occasion, Ryonen wrote a poem on the back of a little mirror:

    In the service of my Empress I burned incense to
        perfume my exquisite clothes
    Now as a homeless mendicant I burn my face to
        enter a Zen temple.

When Ryonen was about to pass from this world, she wrote another poem:

    Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing
        scene of autumn
    I have said enough about moonlight,
    Ask no more.
    Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no
        wind stirs.



It seems to me that a certain level of urgency is required for the thought pattern of identification to 'gather itself' and truly gaze at reality without preconceptions and beliefs.

I've been remembering how desperate i was to find the truth, just before liberation.

How does this level of urgency arise?  Where did my agonies of existence come from?  It built up for years from the seeds of countless generations of human hypocrisy. 

In school, history lessons on slavery made me embarrassed to have been born white.
In church the violence of the crucifixion of Jesus captivated my attention with horror and intrigue in equal parts.  What would cause a human to allow something like that to happen to himself?  This dramatic story was balanced against the hypocrisy of the christians at my church who would talk shit about each other after Sunday service.

The desperation doesn't come to a head without a lot of distracting whining from the illusory self.  This can go on for years.

So far, there's one key contemplation that for me, seems to cut through and awaken the urgency and desperation well.  This is the reality of death.  when the impermanence of all things, including every single item currently assumed to be part of one's self, is faced directly, it seems the momentum of the identification patterns can be shifted.  One must consider that everything one thinks one loves will die.  saying goodbye is a moment by moment reality.  Everything that has been, has gone.  Hoping or believing in an afterlife for a personal entity does not really mean a you gets to go on forever, does it?  Question these ideas.  Face them.  Awaken the urgency. 

What would you do to know the truth?

There’s been some chatter lately about the hesitancy of many speakers and sharers of enlightenment to point their followers toward a direct investigation into whether or not a self exists in real life, despite their talking around and about the concept of no self.  Each of the ‘professionally enlightened’ that I have explored over the years has, at one point or another, talked about the lack of separate selves in reality, and the concept of no self is all over the place in all the respected literature of Advaita and Buddhism.  Writings attributed to Jesus also contain this idea.  Taoist texts and Sufi poetry point this way, too.  Yet, this simple item is being surrounded and covered over with the flowers and perfume of ‘being present in the moment’, ‘dropping attachments’ and ‘learning to let go’. 

Let’s walk through the technical application of looking for the ‘me’ in my own experience and see how I got from endlessly and hysterically watching video after video; reading article after article and endlessly circling the world of spiritual reference material, looking for the central point of it all, to finally doing the one simple thing anyone needs to see this and be done.

I’ve been exposed to the full run of living spiritual teachers out there: Gangaji, Byron Katie, Tony Parsons, Mooji, John Sherman, Jeff Foster, Stephen Wingate, Sailor Bob, Francis Lucille, etc.  I’ve pored over all the interviews on the Conscioustv and Never Not Here websites.  I’ve read zen koans, ‘I am that’, all U. G. Krishnamurti’s books, the Tao Te Ching, Ramana Maharshi, the Bible, the Gospel of Thomas, Douglas Harding, etc.  What do they all have in common?  No clear directions.  I do not count being told to sit down and watch my thoughts as a clear direction.  All the directions about submitting or dropping the ego reinforce the idea of a ‘me’ who has to do something to get the Truth.  The headless experiments of Douglas Harding are fun, but do they really explain that what you are seeing is the totally verifiable absence of a YOU?  Not so much.

In my search, things had come to a head.  I was about to turn 35, and I told myself I would get this thing before my birthday.  I was frustrated in every avenue of my life, both in the spiritual search and outside it.

I watched four specific videos, that had a deep impact on me in my condition at the time.  Two were Mooji videos, and the dialogue between the seeker and Mooji really struck home for me.  I saw that there was a belief in a something at the center of my search, and this belief was prolonging the search. 
Key thoughts from the videos that were relevant: “all your life you’re trying to let go but, let go of what?  You’ve not looked.  But just this hum is there “I have to let go”  I do all these things to let go.  But is this not just an idea?  What is being let go of?”  The entire identity is this core feeling that I must let go, but of what?”

The other two were john Sherman videos.  John’s pretty good at asking people to drop all their notions and beliefs and just look, but sadly, he tells people to look at themselves.  This doesn’t help people to realize they don’t exist.  This just reinforces the idea that they do exist somewhere if they could just look directly at the right place.  See what I mean:
Key thoughts from the John Sherman videos:  “all I am suggesting is that if you want to know the truth about what you are, stop and look.  You are here, are you not?  How do you know that?  The reality of how you know you are here is here and needs no explanation.  Consciously feel and taste it.  The false belief that you are the story of you, will disappear.  The story won’t go, but the belief that it is you, will.”  “Ramana says the belief that I am this story, set of thoughts, conditioned behaviors, stimulus and response, character with hopes dreams and memories, is the problem.  What happens inside the story is not a problem.  The only problem is the belief that I am that person, mind, story, history, bundle of thought, reaction, and conditioned behavior.  Replacing the old beliefs with new ones is not the solution.  The sense of lack comes from the false belief that I am the story.  All of human suffering is caused by this false belief.  The solution?  The truth about what I am – the direct unmediated experience of what I am.  Knowing what I am is really easy.  I am, after all, here.  All that is needed is the direct unmediated uninterrupted un-storied experience of what I am and the certainty that it is me.  What is the raw naked experience of being me?”  You can see the confusing directions here.

Now, for a few days prior to watching these videos, I had been reading the Ruthless Truth blog and forum posts.  I was very excited by what I read there.  After reading what I did, I could put a name to the thing I was trying to liberate, the object that the entire search assumed existed, and what I was reading was helping me to see that there was nothing there.  There was no self.

I started interacting with the folks on Ruthless Truth, and as I expected I was encouraged to look and look deeply, clearly and honestly, for this self within the direct experience of the current moment.  As this was accomplished, the missing piece fell into place, or out of place, as the case may be.

When John Sherman says to look for the raw naked experience of being me, he should be telling people to look in the raw naked experience and see that there IS NO ME.  When Mooji talks about how the core identification of the search hasn’t been examined, he should be telling people to see how there’s nothing there; no center at all!

So why, why, why, is this delusion of self being perpetuated by those who claim to have the answer?  I don't know, but I do not intend to join them.

There’s a bit of Faust in us all, believing as we do that the more we learn about something the closer we are to it. Not so. Any event, fully attended, uproots all our knowing at the source and carries inexhaustible surprises.
True attention is rare and totally sacrificial. It demands that we throw away everything we have been or hope to be, to face each moment naked of identity, open to whatever comes and bereft of human guidance.
Nor is the potential for pain to be underestimated. Now we come face to face with the radical fact that there is nothing, however dear, that cannot be taken from us from one moment to the next; nothing, however sinister or horrifying, from which we will be permitted to recoil or separate ourselves. All the dreadful, mute suffering from which inattention shielded us will now be seen and heard.

““You’re really just an ongoing set of events: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, one after the other. The awareness is keeping up with those events, seeing your life unfolding as it is, not your ideas of it, not your pictures of it. See what I mean?””

- Charlotte Joko Beck

now take that idea, and consider this one: the 'you' you think you are, the 'self' you assume exists, is just one of those ideas; one of those pictures. 

this can be physically seen and felt within the presently unfolding event. 

look at what's happening right now.  look at the direct experience; don't think about it.  just feel around and find that 'you'.  is it really there?

a modernization of a quote from 'whoso knoweth himself" by ibn el'arabi:

you are not a you.
this is life, without any you.

this is not life inside you,
nor is it you in the world.
you don't cause events,
and life is not forcing you into certain actions.

you are not all that exists,
nor are personal traits proof of a you.

you never were,
and you never will be.
not by your own volition,
not by life's movement,
and not with life's movement, does a you exist.

you can't cease to be and you can't continue to exist.

there is only life
without separation.


original:

"And for this the Prophet (upon whom be peace) said:  "Whoso knoweth himself knoweth his Lord." And he said (upon him be peace): "I know my Lord by my Lord."  The Prophet (upon whom be peace) points out by that, that thou art not thou: thou art He, without thou; not He entering into thee, nor thou entering into Him, nor He proceeding forth from thee, nor thou proceeding forth from Him. And it is not meant by that, that thou art aught that exists or thine attributes aught that exists, but it is meant by it that thou never wast nor wilt be, whether by thyself or through Him or in Him or along with Him. Thou art neither ceasing to be nor still existing. Thou art He, without one of these limitations. Then if thou know thine existence thus, then thou knowest God; and if not, then not."

-- from a translation of an Arabic manuscript in the Hunterian Collection, Glasgow University. Translation by T.H. Wier.

Becky
it's hard to argue with how things are, even if i want to tell someone how i think they could have a better experience
its like how sages don't go around telling people 'look you will just die and be gone so chill'
the program runs too deep and there's just rejection
so we are left just having to love unconditionally
everyone gets 'liberated' eventually

Viv
Yeah, one way or another!
that's a dead certainty!

Becky
heheheh
dead
i am feeling something coming on, from that angle
not sure i should go there tho

Viv
why?

Becky
for the same reason no one else goes there. it's too direct. people turn away.
even after realizing no-self, i was not able to really see it that way. not until life arranged for experiences to show me, you know?

Viv
Yes. But not facing up to death as a reality may be the whole reason for a belief in a self. Or perhaps belief in a separate self comes out of the fear of death.... hmmm.

Becky
yeah it's a powerful koan
for me, the most powerful so far
i'm actually planning to go do some 11th hour vigil hospice work as a result
it's literally outside verbal expression

Viv
Fantastic. We do try to hide death away don't we. We don't realise that we're already dead in the sense that what we believe we are never existed.

Becky
yes
yes, exactly
walking dead

Viv
So there are zombies!

Becky
there are only zombies

Viv
That's where it comes from doesn't it? Zombies and vampires - but we've made that into a horror story!
Fear of the truth.

Becky
yes
the lie of self has made it into a horror story

Viv
Wow. Fuck.

Becky
yeah.
zing, right?

Viv
Totally.
Wow.
I've never been able to understand this fascination with the whole zombie/vampire thing, but now it makes sense ... in a twisted kind of way!
It really is a morbid fascination.

Becky
yeah
its like looking for home from a different angle is all
its made me take lovecraft from a whole new angle
embracing this awe-striking void from a sense of fascination in a way
if you read lovecraft you can feel his passion for those ancient evil gods he invented

Viv
I've never read lovecraft... but Yes, what you say is true. Yeah, zombies, frankenstein, vampires, ghosts, angels - all created as a form of undead. Immortal, but never human.
Because humans can't face being undead. Such a strange thing, because it's all undead. Dead and undead at the same time.

Becky
yep
paradox and mystery

Viv
I mean there is only life (or whatever label), Death is life. I mean, when the animating 'whatever' seems to leave something, the form carries on changing. Death is a continuation of changing form.

Becky
yep
and it happens without 'us'
it's hard to face, but that's it

Viv
Yes. And that's what we think death is. The end of me. But it was never there in the first place. Oh, what a strange, strange thing.

Becky
i'm always amazed
tonight we ate outside and watched a spider build a web on the table on the patio...
i could have torn the web apart so easily... the spider didn't know we were watching...
something animates it...
same thing that animates me watching it...
it's just insane

Viv
it's inexplicable. That great quote (Francis of Assisi, I think) What you're looking for is what's looking. Boom!

Is not truth, if that word means anything at all, an ongoing process of careful observation and uncompromising, undefended honesty?

If you stop using your transient body or your thoughts or feelings as points of reference,
it will be obvious that there is no 'someone' and there are no 'others.'

What doesn't exist doesn't need to be defended.  It never did.

Suspend all opinion and debate, and find out for yourself.


..

A quiet mind is all you need.
All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.

(H.W.L. Poonja)


..

“Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, ‘my life’ is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don’t possess life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life.”

- Ilchi Lee

...

there is no you.

what if it's true?

what would the experience happening right now be like, without you?

look at all the parts of the experience happening right now.

which one of these parts are you?

it's not that when you die, life will go on without you.
it's that life is always going on without you.

thoughts about 'your self' do not mean a 'you' exists.

the noticing of this is available right now, in ever-present experience.

just look.

"my true nature"

this phrase assumes there is an entity to own nature.

where is this entity? where is the dividing line between this entity and 'it's' nature? if this entity does not know it's true nature, where is this nature hiding?

please question your assumptions. please make a commitment to looking at this.

the search for 'your true nature' implies a you.

please find this 'you', before continuing to look for 'your' true nature.

mightn't it be liberating to see that this assumed foundation of the search is not real?

if you look for the computer, it is there in front of you.
if you close your eyes it disappears.
in this way it is transient, and this is what i find 'the world is illusory means'.
'the world' is never the same.
nothing manifesting as the world is present forever. change is the nature of life.

this is the prism effect or hologram or fractal aspect of life.
parts appear and disappear. each part of life requires all of life to appear.

there is one thing that has never appeared, despite being believed in by humans for a very very long time, and this thing is the self.

this self can never be found.
it does not appear and then disappear.

what appears and disappears is an assumption or belief that the self exists.

seeing this is the root of liberation or awakening or enlightenment, as it has been spoken of.
seeing this is a return to simply life, as it is, without the agenda of self.

there is a totality of life which is always present, in the endless forms in which it appears.
within this totality of life, there is never a self. there is no me and there is no you.

it is possible for this to be realized, but no one can do it for you.

trying to identify something that does not exist with things that do exist, or the totality of what exists, will not work.

trying to identify with an absence will not work.

there is nothing there which could be doing the identifying. there is no self.

check it out! in every and any way experience arises, look for the self. consider experience from the aspect of 'there is no me. is it true?'

a concept from all the big religions and spiritual belief systems

but does it make sense once the distorting lens of self is no longer believed in?

without a me, who is going to surrender?

without an other, who or what could this me surrender to?

the hidden premise beneath the concepts of surrender, is the assumption that there is a separate self.

trying to surrender is an endless, pointless struggle, because there isn't really an entity that needs to surrender.

there is simply life, as it is, in this moment.

find the one who must surrender, if it can be found.

it can't be found, but do not take these words as a proof or belief. it's absolutely possible, in the reality of right-here-and-now, to look and to see.

ego = self = me = you

each of these words only exists within thought. they are all assumed to refer to something real. something that exists as the thinker of the thoughts "ego" "self" "me" "you".

in the immediate experience of right now, what is referred to by these words DOES NOT EXIST.

it's unavoidable that the body will die.
brain function ceased.
no more thoughts.
no more perceptions.
it's unknowable when this will occur.

in the face of these facts, how can you continue to put off looking at what is being pointed at any longer?

there is no you.

when the body dies, there's not going to be a special essence that wafts heavenward.

there is no you.

there is nothing to save. there is nothing to protect.

why not look at the truth now?

the core of the delusion (or dream) is not the perception of differences, but the assumption that those differences are owned by selves.

the delusion involves constant effort on the part of these imagined selves to somehow change their perceptions in order to obtain some state of perfection or happiness or meaning and thereby validate, once and for all, the belief in this existence in the self.

instead of trying to change perceptions, investigate the assumption that there is a self to own perception.

there is no self. there is nothing at the center of this need to change perception. there is nothing at the center of the belief that you are rooted in delusion or dream. there is no person at the center of experience.

the dream IS the delusion that this me exists at all.

if I AM
then all else must be
and thus
the division and separation begins

if there is no me
there is no separation
there is no division
all simply IS

..

from where you stand atop the pile of collected items you are struggling to keep sorted out and attached as proof you exist,
(your preferences sometimes get mixed up with your inherited genetic traits, don't they)
it seems impossible to dive beneath the ever-cascading mass of your identity,
but by dropping the cognitive effort (don't try to ponder your way inside),
just stop THINKING about your self and LOOK at whether there IS that self

something that's so TRUE
so un-blindingly TRUE
that it shakes the assumed foundations of reality to their core
should be known.

a story:
there were two trees in the garden.
one was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - this tree's fruit was the lie of self.
the other tree was the tree of eternal life.
this tree is the tree whose fruit is offered now.

you do not exist.

is it true? the offering is this -
to look at a truth
deeply within the experience there,
that you call your own.

you do not exist.
does all that's assumed to be yours
truly point to the existence
of a 'you'?

consider the ways it is assumed you exist. list them, test them, and look for 'you'
in each of them.

this calls for great courage and honesty.
it calls for staring into the depths of non-existence and verifying that what does not exist is not true.

you do not exist.

there is a body.
there is a mind.
the universe and that body mind are inseparable.
change is the nature of that universe.
change is the nature of life.
within the totality of life, can this 'you' be found?

the feelings of response to this message -
do THEY lead to a locatable you?

...

i have nothing to offer anyone
because i don't exist.

what DOES exist and can be offered
is a pointing toward this truth;
this truth of no me and no you.

when you see that the single source of suffering in life
is the false belief in your self,
the chains can be broken.

it can be seen that this self is an illusion.

self is in no way required for life to be,
and when looked for, can never be found.


"You'll never find your real self because it doesn't exist."
-stepVhen