The True Self

Abstract

A well looks at a donkey, not vice versa [#33] Self-image and infinity somehow fell into one.[#3024] One of the many things that make a more genuinely philosophical meditation practice so in ter est ing is that some of its aspects can be taught, while others can't.Some things you simply have to find out for yourself.Before we start, let us do a little demo.Be assured that you do not have to be a regular meditator to do this-all it really involves is noticing something that is already there.See whether you can verify this simple phenomenological truth in your own experience: Whenever you, the organism, move from one unit of identification to the next, your feeling of being, your sense of existence moves into the new unit too.This applies to getting lost in a daydream, but also to the experience of pure consciousness.Can you be the silence; can you be the knowingness?Whenever, in your conscious model of real ity, you shift from a global mode of "I am the knowing self" to another mode, say to the experience of "I am a self-knowing field of awareness," then the "amness" comes along as well.Can you find this in your own experience?It cannot be taught because you cannot know it-you have to be it.For some of the most in ter est ing kinds of conscious experience, this seems to be a general princi ple: You cannot know it; you can only be it.1 It certainly doesn't work every time.More often, you remain the attentive, knowing self looking at awareness.But if you unhook from the knowing self (i.e., from the entity that wants to find out more, tries to understand, and perhaps sometimes even meditates) by simply letting yourself fall back into the open space of wakeful awareness that already exists, then the "selfiness" dis appears, but the "amness" perhaps remains part of that awareness.Can you find this?Again, it is one example of something that cannot really be taught.Later, when the knowing self has returned, it may even say: "I was uncontracted, awake 29 The True Self