It Feels Like What It Is

How do you keep making the mistake that there is a separate “you” to suffer and have problems, when there is not? Why do you keep making that mistake?

Here’s why: You look in your experience, and you say it feels like there is an “I” there; it feels like you are separate; and the awareness that is pointed to feels personal. I say no, it doesn't. It doesn’t feel personal. It feels like what it is, we just call it “personal,” “separate,” and “mine,”  and then we say that's how it feels. That's not true. It doesn’t feel like anything other than what it is.

We do not have an experience of separateness. We can't possibly, because we are not separate. What we have is an experience of what is true and real - impersonal being and awareness - and at some point we start calling that experience "mine." And from then on, whenever we notice the experience of impersonal being – impersonal awareness – we have the label "mine" already in place, and then we insist: "I experience awareness as mine."

No, you don't. You experience awareness, and you started once calling it "mine," so now that's what you still call it. Does that make it so? Does your calling awareness "yours" actually make it yours? Because that is all that's happening. Check the experience right now and see. Is awareness personal? You right away jump to "It feels personal." I challenge that. I'm suggesting that it doesn't feel personal at all - you're just accustomed to calling this feeling "personal."

Try this - take the very same experience - that which you usually call "my awareness," and just give it another name, for now. Call it "impersonal awareness." So it's the same exact experience, but you're just going to call it "impersonal awareness." Has the experience changed? No. Only your label of it has changed. Call it Fred if you like. Does that change the experience? So here it is, your normal, everyday experience of being aware. And whatever you call it - personal, impersonal, or Fred - it is unmistakable and totally familiar.

So, now that it is what it is, with no label, what is the experience? Now remember, you are not trying to make it conform to any of your labels. It’s the stand-alone experience you’re interested in. When I try this, I definitely get the awareness. It's obvious there is awareness going on. But any more than that gets sketchy, because I have to rely on some thought or concept. Is there an "I" doing this seeing?

We want to jump back to, Well yes, of course it's me doing this seeing - how else could it happen? But that's just an idea, an assumption, that seeing has to have a separate "one" doing it. I am aware of this seeing right now, and although I call that experience "I see," the actual experience itself is simply of seeing.

I'm not trying to tell you to experience something other than what you are experiencing. I'm trying to point out that the label you have given your experience is arbitrary. It doesn't matter what you call this experience. Nothing you call it changes it. I can call it impersonal, you can call it personal - neither label changes what it is.

So don't build a whole world on the idea that it is one thing or another thing. Just return to it, whatever it is - this awareness - and remain unlabeled. Remain wordless about it. Don't bother to argue “There is a me! The awareness is mine!” Because I'll just counter with, "No, the awareness is chocolatey!" They’re all words, labels you put on what this is. What is it? Who cares what it is? It's all I know, it's all that exists, this awareness. Just stay with it wordlessly, and no world of problems appears. If an anxious feeling arises, or a distressing thought, and is held wordlessly, with no "personal" or "impersonal" or "me" - then what is it?

Who knows? It's nothing that needs to be followed around. Not a single thing that arises needs to be followed around. A world needs not be devised around one tiny feeling to make "sense" out of it, to make it mean something. What is a feeling? Without naming it, it just is. Our names of things - people, self, thoughts, feelings - do not make them become those things! All is energy, undifferentiated, and without words, we are noticing only that. All matter, all events, all people - the same. Equal. Level. Any difference is in the word "different" - not in reality.