But to really get hold of these, to see them and cut them by the root, then a for most people "radical" new perspective is needed. It's not that it is actually radical, it is only the truth, but it is seen as radical by most.
This "new" perspective originates in the truth about the self and who you really are. Now, because most people are identified with their individual self they are identified with everything contained in a self which includes among other things:
- Personal history
- Thoughts
- Emotions
- The physical body
I am coming back the addiction thing later on so bare with me. Now ,if you really look at it. Personal history; Let's say you are a newborn baby and nothing has happened to you yet. You exist, right? You still have no personal history at all, you are a blank sheet of paper. But you still exist. That is irrefutable. Jump ahead now in time until the present day. You realize you existed before any of your personal history. So any history written on your paper now is actually not who you are. You existed BEFORE that. Things that happen are things that happen. They are not who you ARE, they are just text on the paper.
Now, you can see that you are not the things written on that paper, you are the one who is reading it, you are the one watching it from the outside. Anything that happens, be it thoughts, emotions etc, You are the one who is AWARE of these things, which means you are not them. Like the physical body, you are aware of it, you are not it. Even when someone "dies" they go on living in the spirit world. So they don't have physical bodies in the sense we have here. Even the brain dies so you are not even a phenomenon created by the electrical activity in there.
So however you look at something that you think is YOU, it is still just being looked at. There is the AWARENESS of it. This awareness does not identify with anything. Right? Because awareness is simply being aware of whatever it is happening. That is all it does. there is no possibility to create a separate individual identity if it is seen that awareness cannot be located into one particular thing. You can not be identified with the body because there is awareness of the body. WHATEVER you look at, AWARENESS comes before it.
So what is all this nonsense about YOU being a separate individual located in a physical body, being the owner of your thoughts, your mind, and being separate from every other person and every other thing... That is simply an illusion.
One thing that is good at keeping this illusion in place, keeping it running, is the addiction we have to the outside world. We are dependent on extracting the emotions and the energy we are addicted to from the outside world to make us feel "good" and safe. We do this by throwing out different anchor points in life and then extracting energy from them. These anchors are things like:
- Girlfriend/Boyfriend
- Job
- Money
- Politics/Religion (or rather anything that gives a sense of belonging) etc.
- Parties
- Sex
And so on... I am not saying there is anything wrong with them. What I am saying is that we use these as a means of feeling "good" about ourselves. We identify with them so that they make the feeling of self stronger so that we can endure life. And should ANYTHING go wrong with some anchor point you have, then you get depressed. You fix this by adjusting this anchor point or throwing out a new one. * Life becomes a never ending rollercoaster between feeling good and bad.
Do you want this to continue? ALL of this has it's root cause in the false identification with a separate individual self.
The one you really are, awareness, is free from suffering. Because it is not identified with it. Suffering might happen. But it does not belong to anybody since there isn't anybody. It just happens and that?s it. We are all one and the same awareness/consciousness. This awareness is the ultimate freedom, bliss and peace.
Guest writer: Björn Knudsen
Comments
The questions then becomes who is it that doesn't have these things? Then the questions becomes "Who am I?", or What is this I? . At this point there is observation of the self from "outside" the self, meaning you are not to be found in what you thought to be you. However far you zoom out, there is allways awarenes, or conciousnes. The self (the I) starts to fade. Then ask the question again "does that mean I dont exist?", and there is only the question. No one who asks the question.
- Job
- Money
- Politics/Religion (or rather anything that gives a sense of belonging) etc.
- Parties
- Sex
I don't have a girlfriend.
I don't have a job (disability pensioner)
I have little money.
I rarely involve myself with politics or religion.
I neither have, nor attend parties.
I'm not even going to comment on sex, it's been so long I've forgotten what it is (personal choice after being hurt in a relationship).
Does that mean I don't exist???