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.