No self is a rather challenging aspect of awakening to describe because it’s not really an aspect of awakening. It’s not even awakening. It’s an amazing surprise.
This is where all this is going … it's wild that from the moment the awakening impulse rises within the system … you are moving towards that which you dread the most. No self realization is the end of that which experiences apartness from wholeness and longs for it.
And then there is just this inconceivable brilliance that cannot be known or described … Just This without a capacity to distinguish … without memory, perception that there ever was or could be anything other … unbelievable, shocking, self-evident starkness.
Reality has always been Anatta.
What is I Am?
I don’t know where it goes, but at some point the dream of I Am vanishes without a trace. Spontaneous, nonreferential ease that sees no unenlightened state or enlightened state becomes the new normal. It's a kind of mindless, radiant equanimity that penetrates deep sleep, dreaming and wakefulness.
This basic clarity is not a relative experience of clear cognition, such as awareness reposing in itself, disidentified from the habitual thought stream. All that is experiential. If you are familiar with the nondual scene you may note this type of natural rest is at the core of most teachings.
When reflective consciousness rests in its own nature the I-sense recognizes itself as something boundless, timeless and pristine. When this recognition is effortlessly sustained this is what I call the first awakening. It is an astounding shift in perception, which brings about a profound sense of unification. The expansion of the primary awakening can very much feel like one has arrived at what the perennial teachings refer to as the original state.
However, it is just the same ‘I Am function’ identifying in an all-inclusive, non-substantial and liberating manner. It’s just another dream.
As the immediate leap to This — true meaning of no path — seems to be massive, I consider I Am teaching a beneficial approach. A gradual unfettering often serves most practitioners well. As Nisargadatta pointed out some decades ago, stabilizing in the pure sense of I Am is a foundational realization, accessible for most people, with the possibility to go eventually beyond itself.
Just note that as long as the sense of background awareness persists, there is still a subtle sense of duality. Pure awareness is a profound realization, so the fundamental illusion of I Am may easily hang on undetected. This type of lucidity is actually mental: it’s all happening within the dream.
Be prepared to be disillusioned
All the consciousness teachers and teachings have their perfect place in the dream. It really is absolute perfection. It’s a delusion of course, and took a moment to process in this experience. It’s the kind of illusion you may want to consider keeping.
The real price of severing the root of suffering is seldom discussed, and there is a good reason for that. It is said that when Siddhartha Gautama came into fruition he did not say ‘I am liberated’, but ‘It is liberated’. This makes a lot of sense. The ‘I Am experience’ — a mysterious condensation of nothingness — simply dissipates. Like smoke after a candle flame is blown out, it lingers for a while in the system … then evaporates.
And this dazzling darkness, which Nisargadatta called the deep dark blue state, engulfs everything with its silent absence. Neither active nor passive, neither engaged nor disengaged, beyond the capacity of language to describe … this samadhi-like stillness is always the same ... always in flux.
Paradoxically, the total absence of everything turns out to be the total presence of nothing. When the buffer is gone there is no apartness, no interior world to escape. Sensation is zero-distance unfiltered, vividly ‘in your face’. The fundamental illusion of control thoroughly breaks down. All coping strategies to avoid the totality of empty, fluid interbeing become null. It can take a moment for the system to get a hang of this bare exposure.
Make no mistake about this: the dissolution of the I-sense is a devastating heartbreak that shatters absolutely everything you ever have thought you knew about anything. Nothingness breaks through and devours itself. As the emotional body clears out, the roots of personal suffering dissolve. One could say that it becomes clear there was nothing personal about the suffering in the first place.
From the perspective of wholeness, the tendency to medicate our core wounds is ironic because it is exactly that raw primal energy that holds keys to completion. The experience of unfiltered suffering is actually just presence, kind of blazing intensity. The system has the capacity to process this. This is deep universal intimacy, but we often have to pass through a hell until profound equanimity settles in. At some point it all becomes rather ecstatic, luminous, and profoundly peaceful.
Irreversible discernment
In its expansive expression I Am is quite a sublime experience. The final layer of illusion is the very foundation of the dream, and it tends to be the most alluring. It’s deceptive because it feels liberating.
When I looked very closely, the subtle sense of I Am appeared a bit like a translucent, imperceptible lens. It does not really belong here. Only when it falls away can it be seen for what it is.
I am not the I Am. In fact, I am not at all. There is no ‘I’. There never was or could be. The ‘I’ is just a thought!
The energetic contraction that dissolves with it is very real though. In that sense, it is a death, a release in true boundlessness.
Pure nothingness.
Home, home, home
In a timeless flash she cuts through the dream of existence, and unveils the unborn immensity in its nakedness.
Completely headless, it keeps on pouring —
It is unmediated; stark immediacy
It is undivided; seamless totality
It is unimaginable; utterly beyond
It is unconstrained; unimpeded penetration
It is untainted; immaculate brilliance
It is uncontrived; there is no fabrication
Consider these koan-like paradoxes:
Empty fullness
Empty radiance
Stateless state
Resounding silence
My own inquiry that culminated in this was somewhat desperate, instinctual and single-minded. I just knew I needed to get clear on this, no matter the price. My way with this may be different from yours, I don’t claim this to be the right view or any kind of view, I just found it amusing to try to find words for something that cannot be talked about.
Self transforming, primal void
All there is is timeless, luminous spontaneity — dynamic no-action. This is sensed and explored as nothingness that is overflowing with infinite potential.
When you realize this, the insight is viscerally inseparable from subtler than subtle pulsation — they are not-two. It’s a paradox of absolute immovability that is utterly unfixed, an ocean of radiant flux ... I find the phrase ‘molecular consciousness’ quite descriptive. Its dynamic is universal joy; its flavor is subtler than subtle, sheer orgasmic. One could say this is the nature of selfless aliveness.
The insight arises as spontaneously functioning totality ... dance of pure potentiality. For a common person this appears as the illusion of solidity, weight and individual agency. The illusion is woven from pure belief, yet it generates a very immersive experience of existential contraction.
Through human consciousness there is a possibility for Life to consciously awaken to itself. This is liberation process … a thorough dissolution of the seductive and tight grip of virtual immersion into natural openness.
This impulse is pure desire. It does not belong to the person. For the person, the impulse is like a virus. Like a moth attracted by flame, he or she feels now drawn towards what appears as enlightenment. There is nothing for the person in this game. In this transmogrification he or she is gradually overridden and assimilated from within. It’s a thoroughly embodied ripening.
This impulse I call kundalini. She longs to unite in the primal void — consummate immersion in pure-potential where all realities are extinguished. When you have a taste of this you know nothing else can really fulfill, even if this will kill you (take this expression lightly please).
Enigmatic equanimity
Dying before you die is an exhalation of grace ... but there really is no specialness about this. In my opinion, enlightenment is a myth. I doubt that most people into spirituality would want this, as this is the death of everything they hold dear ... the end of their spiritual life, the end of God and that which experiences God, the end of the dream of awakening.
All life is nothing but grace. All life is governed by fluid, primal intelligence that becomes tangible in the absence of mental rigidity. Spiritual conditioning is greasy, its roots go deep. The strongest light is embedded in the murkiest shadow.
There comes a point when spirituality itself is put aside. You become just like any other force of nature, unadorned and transparent, like wind in a tree. You disappear into the environment ... what true no self looks like is rather ordinary, invisible to the dreaming mind.
Everything is grounded on a mysterious cessation and silence. Instead of mindless entanglement, there is mindless union — original primal innocence. Everything is fully savored here, but the capacity to be fundamentally invested in the dream seems to come to an end. This cessation I call no self, but what is it that has ceased and what exactly is going on, I have no idea.
What I have come to discover is that the cessation is inseparable from empty unconditional love — enigmatic equanimity in which pleasure and pain are of one taste.
Sober physical presence is how this process truly begins and where it lands, although the physical turns out to be not actually ‘physical’ — as in, something solid, substantial, locatable or actually existing. This turns out to be the most revered wonderment. In that sense spirituality is quite misleading with the idealistic emphasis on consciousness. I could never say what this is, all I can say is that no words can capture her.
Originally pure, the true status of all things, she is the interpenetrative matrix of all beings. Everything is possible, but not knowable. The end of the ‘I Am experience’ reveals the ungraspable actuality of always-already-This. Deep quiet appreciation, wholehearted presence, ecstatic awe — in which everything is being naturally consumed as it is — is perhaps the essence of this ineffable world of suchness.
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