With What?

Is the ego self just too much of an obstacle for you? Does it seem to loom large, crowding out all possibility of you seeing your “true” nature?

It’s true that the idea of the separate self can occupy the largest space in awareness at times. The idea of separate self is wall-to-wall demands about enlightenment and happiness, and it never shuts up. And so what are we supposed to do about it? The answer is simple, but easy to miss. We turn the question around:

With what are you aware of the demands of the separate self? With what are you aware of a question about what to do? With what do you notice a sense of something crowding out something else?

With what? What is this?

This is your true nature. When we look at what is already here, already aware, before the idea of self arises, we see the true nature. And this pointing is telling you that THIS is it. This, that you already know, is it. It is not an object, and yet, you know it. So this communication is only trying to point to the fact this is it, and the searching can stop.

But the mind, which is looking for an object, can’t see anything there, and so it wants to keep looking. The mind says, “This is not ‘something,’ and I’m looking for something.” And so it continues. 

Stop and ask: With what is “something” being looked for?

The purpose of these writings is to try to point you in the opposite direction. If you needed to keep going farther on the course you’re on, you wouldn’t need pointing; you’re already going that way. The pointing is to turn you around.

Turn around, away from objects being seen, and ask, With what are these being seen? The “With What” is your true nature.

It is nothing you can name, nothing you can know with the mind. But does that mean you don’t know it? No. You do know it, intimately. It is that by which every thought is thought; it is that by which every feeling is felt, it is that by which every sensation is sensed. You can’t claim to not know this, or there would be nothing in your experience at all. You know this because it is the source of all you’ve ever known.

Can we ignore it? Yes. We can keep focusing on the things, as opposed to the “with what” by which the things are noticed. And so there is a feeling of the true nature being crowded out. But there is no way the idea of the separate self can crowd out the true nature, when we ask the question “With what am I noticing the feeling of being a separate body, with what am I noticing a crowding out of my true nature?”

The “What” is it. This that you know as the basis for all experience, the ground of all thought and feeling. This is what is being talked about. Turn right now and look at it. Look at how unknowable it is! Look how impossible to define it is! Look at how thoroughly familiar it is!

Notice this now, and the separate self ceases to exist.