...you have to give up being a searcher. How is this done? By staying attentive to what’s happening here and now rather than imagining that you’re a searcher, or a human being, or a man, or a something “in here” looking at an external world “out there.” IOW, you have to dive into life fully, and stop imagining that there is a person. Who you THINK you are is an imaginary construct maintained by constant psychological reinforcement. Who you really are cannot be imagined.
Think about it. If the body/mind becomes intensely involved in some activity “you” disappear for a while. “You” only return when self-referential thoughts return. There are no actual boundaries between the body/mind reading these words and the farthest galaxy, but the mind projects imaginary boundaries everywhere. If attention is shifted away from imagination for a sufficient length of time, the imaginary boundaries will collapse. The process of how this happens goes something like this:
1. As a purposeful self-centered strategy, we shift attention away from imagination to THIS, to "what is." We look and listen, watch the breath, feel the feet walking on a sidewalk, taste food, or smell the new-mown grass. Maybe we formally meditate, or informally ATA, or just get fully involved in the activities of everyday life. The main thing is that we stop reflecting so much. We stop incessantly analyzing, thinking, judging, fantasizing, and trying to figure things out. We want to understand what’s going on, but we put our questioning on the back burner, so to speak, and put our focus on what’s here and now.
2. After we’ve done this for a while, we begin to see how our past thoughts were filled with shoulds, oughts, and various desires—ideas that kept us separated from the truth of “what is.”
3. Because we are now watching what’s happening, rather than thinking about it incessantly, we gradually discover that we are not in control of things in the way that we once thought. For example, we notice that no two meditations are ever the same no matter how hard we try to make them that way, and we notice that although we have various intentions, sometimes the body fulfills those intentions and other times it ignores them. This creates a sense of wonder and unknowingness.
4. As we proceed in the direction of more direct experience and less reflection, we find that we still keep "checking back" to see if our strategy of staying present and attending is helping us "make progress" in some way. This checking back is just a bad habit, and it reinforces the idea that there is someone who can make progress in some way. We don’t yet realize that this mental habit, among others, helps maintain the illusion of selfhood. Fortunately, as time goes by, this habit of checking back diminishes in intensity because a new habit of attentiveness continues to grow.
5. We keep expecting something big to happen, always subtly measuring what's happening against our ideas about what we IMAGINE should be happening. “When will it happen?” “How will it happen?” How soon will I be free, attain oneness, etc?”
6. Progress, which is still a dominant idea, seems slow, so we try various strategies for speeding up the process of self-eradication (ha ha), but nothing seems to work as hoped.
7. Sooner or later we give up the idea of a high-speed strategy and resign ourselves to staying present and attentive. We see no other choice.
8. We continue to shift from a reflective mode of life to direct action, present moment awareness, and sustained attentiveness. We continue to have insights about past attitudes and beliefs, and ideas of all kinds continue to fall away. The path is one of subtraction rather than addition. We gradually know less and less and become comfortably with not knowing. There is a growing sense that the world is empty of meaning and somewhat alien. (It’s not, but that’s the way it may seem)
9. At some point it becomes obvious, intellectually, that selfhood is a fiction and that whatever oneness we're looking for must already exist here and now. We realize that whatever we were hoping to find in the future must already be present (because we've realized that time and "the future" are illusions), but we can't yet fully accept the truth of this intellectual insight. The insight, however, focuses attention more strongly upon “what is." Nevertheless, we still have a felt sense of self and a felt sense of separation because it is so deeply ingrained in our psyche.
10. The "checking back" gradually becomes less and less important, and attention now stays primarily focused upon whatever is happening. The thought structure supporting a sense of selfhood is no longer being constantly reinforced, so the old thoughts, such as "I need to get enlightened," or “Am I making progress?” don’t occur nearly as often.
11. Maybe we spend time sitting alone on a park bench watching birds and squirrels. Maybe we go for long walks in the desert or the mountains while looking and listening. Maybe we sit in meditation and fall into long periods of absolute Samadhi. Maybe we find ourselves staring out the window for hours on end. It is as though the body/mind is being drawn to silently contemplate—drawn toward union-- while some unknown boundary steadily and gradually erodes.
12. Then, on a day like any other day, we suddenly see, clearly and without any doubt, in some unknown but embodied way, that who we once thought we were was only a figment of imagination. We see that our past identity was nothing more than a silly story, a set of absurd ideas, and the search instantly comes to an end. The seeker disappears like a puff of smoke because it is seen to be nothing more than a vaporous thought. Finally, after seeing through the idea of selfhood, it becomes immediately obvious that what we are is THIS, unbounded and beyond imagination. The felt sense of separation that existed in the past simply disappears.
13. We then laugh at the idea that there had ever been anything that needed to be found. We realize that from the very beginning we were the truth we had been searching so hard to find. We realize that what we are is the entire field of Being perceived through a particular body/mind.
14. In summary, THIS was the real searcher searching for Itself. It never finds itself, of course, but it finds what it is not, and when the false evaporates, it then becomes obvious that THIS is all that’s left.
15. When the sense of selfhood collapses, we/THIS discover that the thought-structure of selfhood subtly permeated every aspect of life, but because of incessant thinking the permeations went unrecognized. The world is then no longer seen as if by a little person looking out of eyesockets at the world; it is seen by an impersonal field of awareness that has no specific point of origination.
If a person did nothing more than become internally silent, the known universe would sooner or later collapse, and the truth would become obvious. This is why Psalms 46:10 says, “Be still and know....”
To put this another way, shift attention to "what is," and keep it there. Nothing else is required. Cheers.
Think about it. If the body/mind becomes intensely involved in some activity “you” disappear for a while. “You” only return when self-referential thoughts return. There are no actual boundaries between the body/mind reading these words and the farthest galaxy, but the mind projects imaginary boundaries everywhere. If attention is shifted away from imagination for a sufficient length of time, the imaginary boundaries will collapse. The process of how this happens goes something like this:
1. As a purposeful self-centered strategy, we shift attention away from imagination to THIS, to "what is." We look and listen, watch the breath, feel the feet walking on a sidewalk, taste food, or smell the new-mown grass. Maybe we formally meditate, or informally ATA, or just get fully involved in the activities of everyday life. The main thing is that we stop reflecting so much. We stop incessantly analyzing, thinking, judging, fantasizing, and trying to figure things out. We want to understand what’s going on, but we put our questioning on the back burner, so to speak, and put our focus on what’s here and now.
2. After we’ve done this for a while, we begin to see how our past thoughts were filled with shoulds, oughts, and various desires—ideas that kept us separated from the truth of “what is.”
3. Because we are now watching what’s happening, rather than thinking about it incessantly, we gradually discover that we are not in control of things in the way that we once thought. For example, we notice that no two meditations are ever the same no matter how hard we try to make them that way, and we notice that although we have various intentions, sometimes the body fulfills those intentions and other times it ignores them. This creates a sense of wonder and unknowingness.
4. As we proceed in the direction of more direct experience and less reflection, we find that we still keep "checking back" to see if our strategy of staying present and attending is helping us "make progress" in some way. This checking back is just a bad habit, and it reinforces the idea that there is someone who can make progress in some way. We don’t yet realize that this mental habit, among others, helps maintain the illusion of selfhood. Fortunately, as time goes by, this habit of checking back diminishes in intensity because a new habit of attentiveness continues to grow.
5. We keep expecting something big to happen, always subtly measuring what's happening against our ideas about what we IMAGINE should be happening. “When will it happen?” “How will it happen?” How soon will I be free, attain oneness, etc?”
6. Progress, which is still a dominant idea, seems slow, so we try various strategies for speeding up the process of self-eradication (ha ha), but nothing seems to work as hoped.
7. Sooner or later we give up the idea of a high-speed strategy and resign ourselves to staying present and attentive. We see no other choice.
8. We continue to shift from a reflective mode of life to direct action, present moment awareness, and sustained attentiveness. We continue to have insights about past attitudes and beliefs, and ideas of all kinds continue to fall away. The path is one of subtraction rather than addition. We gradually know less and less and become comfortably with not knowing. There is a growing sense that the world is empty of meaning and somewhat alien. (It’s not, but that’s the way it may seem)
9. At some point it becomes obvious, intellectually, that selfhood is a fiction and that whatever oneness we're looking for must already exist here and now. We realize that whatever we were hoping to find in the future must already be present (because we've realized that time and "the future" are illusions), but we can't yet fully accept the truth of this intellectual insight. The insight, however, focuses attention more strongly upon “what is." Nevertheless, we still have a felt sense of self and a felt sense of separation because it is so deeply ingrained in our psyche.
10. The "checking back" gradually becomes less and less important, and attention now stays primarily focused upon whatever is happening. The thought structure supporting a sense of selfhood is no longer being constantly reinforced, so the old thoughts, such as "I need to get enlightened," or “Am I making progress?” don’t occur nearly as often.
11. Maybe we spend time sitting alone on a park bench watching birds and squirrels. Maybe we go for long walks in the desert or the mountains while looking and listening. Maybe we sit in meditation and fall into long periods of absolute Samadhi. Maybe we find ourselves staring out the window for hours on end. It is as though the body/mind is being drawn to silently contemplate—drawn toward union-- while some unknown boundary steadily and gradually erodes.
12. Then, on a day like any other day, we suddenly see, clearly and without any doubt, in some unknown but embodied way, that who we once thought we were was only a figment of imagination. We see that our past identity was nothing more than a silly story, a set of absurd ideas, and the search instantly comes to an end. The seeker disappears like a puff of smoke because it is seen to be nothing more than a vaporous thought. Finally, after seeing through the idea of selfhood, it becomes immediately obvious that what we are is THIS, unbounded and beyond imagination. The felt sense of separation that existed in the past simply disappears.
13. We then laugh at the idea that there had ever been anything that needed to be found. We realize that from the very beginning we were the truth we had been searching so hard to find. We realize that what we are is the entire field of Being perceived through a particular body/mind.
14. In summary, THIS was the real searcher searching for Itself. It never finds itself, of course, but it finds what it is not, and when the false evaporates, it then becomes obvious that THIS is all that’s left.
15. When the sense of selfhood collapses, we/THIS discover that the thought-structure of selfhood subtly permeated every aspect of life, but because of incessant thinking the permeations went unrecognized. The world is then no longer seen as if by a little person looking out of eyesockets at the world; it is seen by an impersonal field of awareness that has no specific point of origination.
If a person did nothing more than become internally silent, the known universe would sooner or later collapse, and the truth would become obvious. This is why Psalms 46:10 says, “Be still and know....”
To put this another way, shift attention to "what is," and keep it there. Nothing else is required. Cheers.
