The Person-ality is a Phantom

It’s not that a person has a phantom personality or not - it’s the fact that indeed the personality actually is a phantom, period, for anyone – it’s like constantly changing vapor or cloud, with no solidity - you either see it or not. 

Just as thought is unreal, a passing ghost. 

It sounds like a bad thing – like insecurity – but it feels like freedom and the opposite of self-centeredness  More like flexibility, meeting the moment, spontaneity, adaptability, presence...

It would only be "bad" if there were an underlying insecurity which inu fact would be an object, a persistent or unconscious one.

 

There may be patterns of preferences of a biological sort, but that’s not what is being pointed to. I am talking about the stuckness, the self-centeredness that is artificial, a learned constraint or pattern of limitations that can be shed for a more flexible, fluid arrangement … 

Lao Tzu hinted at this 

 

7

Heaven and Earth last forever.
Why do heaven and Earth last forever?
They are unborn,
So ever living.
The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.
He is detached, thus at one with all. Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.

 

8

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

 

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.

In action, be aware of the time and the season.

No fight: No blame.

 

––––/*/––––

Side Note: I have been working on a dialogue about Free Will (and that touched on doership) and a couple other articles, that the writer-editore action figure has been chipping away ot for weeks or months. I have a hard time tracking time.  The piece got too long, and needs to be split up, organized, and edited.  If it emerges in some publishable form before this hosting ends, I'll post it. Otherwise, maybe it will go on ericplatt.com.

Speaking of editing, I never finished re-posting all the article for this site (http://52.27.9.107/) – something like 300 of them, going back to 2016, if I remember right – after I took them all down (put in Draft mode). As I looked at each one before seeing if it was worth of re-posting, I saw many things that sorely needed editing and clarification, and so each one ate up a whole morning. Thus that project never got finished either. And life goes on. Things come up... And here we are.

The Causeless

“Because (real, living, non-local*) intelligence is found in silence, in ignorance the assumption is made that a quiet body or special posture is needed.” – The author, yesterday.

And meditation is an activity – an attempt to quiet or still the mind – and one cannot produce stillness through activity. A seeming conundrum.

Rather than “is found in silence” it would be more accurate to say … is an expression of silence. But that is not quite satisfactory either. It sounds like there is this thing called Silence – like a big blank state, or Being, or essence – and there’s a me, getting the message. Is that really true?

It has to do with openness, non-interference, and the fact that the mental noise is a filter or distraction. All mere clues, my friends - bread crumbs along a path, or seeming path.

One can experience a profound stillness, peace – that meditative state we strive for – whilst driving on the freeway in commuter traffic after having drunk a triple espresso mocha. (I have had that experience). One can also experience stress under the same external circumstances (had that too...). The variable that makes a difference is not what one does with the body or the external circumstances. I visited the ocean and stood looking out on it for a while before the drive, but I’ve done that before and did not experience this. It was not the cause.

What is the variable? What is the cause?

Some say it’s from a certain practice. Some say it’s from an understanding. Some claim there are prerequisites, requirements, and/or a spiritual maturity needed.

It would seem to be a state. And it cannot be produced, or reproduced at will.

All states change, just as all bodyminds come and go. Everything phenomenal – anything that can be experienced as a perception, sensation or thought, the contents of consciousness – is in constant change and flux. And yet there is (a) awareness, witnessing or experiencing (of) it.

Given that it – the stillness or peace – is seemingly a state of mind – that is passing and perhaps produced – many ways of doing things with the mind have been tried over the years, decades and centuries (by the author and countless others). For example, meditative tricks, such as focusing on a body part, to take the thoughts out of the mind stream (“mindfulness”) ... and they can help some, but are only temporary. They are not essential to what we are.

They are a dualistic movement, since (apparently) one part of the mind is trying to control another part: who is doing it? Or what is doing this focusing or trick of attention? “How many minds have you?” as Ramana Maharshi put it to one questioner, seeking to control his unruly thoughts.

Seeing that, one may have an insight. You may laugh, feel joy, and more free. But that is temporary too. A state.

One can do service – do things for others, be of service in the world, helping or answering questions or doing satsangs or whatever – and this can be joyful, revelatory, freeing – a way of “getting out of oneself”. That is temporary too. A state.

One may study arcane or esoteric spiritual philosophies, reading about consciousness. And get in insight. Perhaps a life-changing one. A conversion experience. That can and will be lost too. Things change...

One can do Self Inquiry, asking questions, such as the ones above, until one breaks free, breaks through, and sees that the questioner is not what you thought it was. But again what is permanent, and not a state?

The dilemma with non-duality – both for a seeming individual and for marketing purposes – is that unless a path or method or set of practice(s) is given, or a certain well-defined philosophy, and/or a purpose or goal like in spirituality and religion – something to do and somewhere to go – then the individual has nothing to do and nowhere to go. Especially since they don't even exist! No local doer or location.

One can do self-inquiry, and go to or give satsangs, and point out things such as “The one that seeks is the one that is sought” (you are what you are looking for), and
“We give everything all the meaning it has.” or
“Actions are taken, deeds are done but there is no individual doer thereof”, and
“You are the Unborn”, and
“Self * can’t get out of self. This is the dilemma.”
* Meaning small self, or “ego”, or “mind”.

… but at the end of the day, the “Seeing” can’t be given away or produced at will. It is causeless in other words.

In fact, I am quite certain that Causality itself is seen to be an illusion, at least with respect to consciousness, This awareness. It simply Is. The uncaused cause, the "prime mover." How can you give that insight away?

One of things that may be seen (if you’re lucky) is the failure of all the paths to produce a final answer or state or freedom – these forms one tries or clings to – don’t work in the long run, as any final penultimate transformation of the bodymind.

The old saying, attributes to Jesus – "Be in the the world but not of it" points to the same fact: this body, bodymind, will always be just what it is - a functioning or expression, quite ordinary, or the same as other bodyminds, more or less – no one is special or more spiritual or anointed by God – and not something divine or of the gods. Rather, it’s more like the letter, or the letterbox, or the mailman, and the “message” is not of this functioning. Will the supposed anointed or great Master still be seen as that when he has dementia and is jabbering nonsense? Or will followers, who themselves see themselves as bodies (on a path), then see the master as a fake, not ever really a master?

It’s also not separate, this all This that appears in That. Thus the metaphors of the ocean and the wave, the screen and the movie.

One wants to put the horse in front of the cart – pray if you have to, or do some practice or Self inquiry – until it’s seen you are not the driver, but rather “being lived” so to speak. Not an easy thing to see or express. What is “seen” is claimed by the mailman, the vehicle, the vessel for creativity, the messenger, the apparent body or person - “I” had the great insight, “I” experienced the peace… the sage even: there is a projection onto a sage, a bodymind appearing, as the doer or wise one, as the assumed origin of the message. It may even go to their head, who knows. An authority in their own right, by their own efforts, or as part of the path, the great tradition.

Yet all this appears in That too.

This is also the (esoteric) meaning of the all the talk about effortlessness, doership and such, by writers such as Wei Wu Wei, and countless Zen, Advaita, and other “masters”, “sages”, Eastern philosophers, etc. Who is doing what? Examined closely, clearly, how could there be a local doer? It (absurdly) require something like a special agent, like a little homunculus in the brain – a sub-brain or sub-mind where the “will” is, the doer machine? If it’s a machine, a brain, then for certain there is no (local) free will – it’s all just nature naturing, doing it’s thing. Nature and nurture (conditioning, training), in the moment, ticking away. And yet we feel a freedom, and an awareness exists. It does not seem possible…

Surrender? Who surrenders and to what? It’s not even surrender, there is just a “surrendering”, labeled as such after the fact. A self can’t surrender (itself), since the will itself that is being used to surrender that one needs to give up, as it were. It would be like voluntary non-existence, which is a contradiction, a conundrum.

It is all pointing back to the fact that the Source can’t be seen, is behind “you” or everything.
It can’t be given away (partly because it already Is, is “you”) by a teacher or writer, and can’t be received from the outside as it were, yet countless paths are given.

From this it also follows there is no authority, and no pre-given or rigid answers, nor a way to force or cause things to happen as we want them.

And everyone has their own path, their own ways of seeking or methods that work for them – what gives one release or freedom or greater happiness, peace. All expressions of the One.

So really, all I can share is what “works” for me, or what looks true here.