Good Day,

In yesterdays post I began talking about the concept of no self, or as it it referred to selflessness or egolessness. So what’s the point? Let’s dive dive in.

As I said we can begin the process of ceasing to experience the world through our own thoughts,concepts and point of view by learning how the universe experiences us. It’s not that difficult and do it all the time. But how?

When I look at you and you look at me, I am experiencing you and being experienced by you at the same time. You don’t know what thoughts are in my head when I look at you, and I don’t know what you notice about me. Yet my experience of you is a real and vital part of your experience, and vice versa. We are always being experienced by everyone and everything we come in contact with. This view gives us all a great reason to be more respectful of the everything around us. At some level we each partake in the overall experience of the whole universe. A gust of wind comes along and everyone in the park feels it, the sun on the beach gives us all a tan or burns us to a crisp. We all share the experience of the world, but for most that experience is filtered through our own thoughts and views of the universe (or lack of thought at all). So we can say that “self” is kind of always sitting between the experience and you, tainting it in some way to fit within our reason. Have you ever know the joy of living life through someone else’s eyes? Or have you ever been so absorbed in a task that you really weren’t thinking about it or what you were going to do when finished that you just sort of disappear? Then you may have had a taste selflessness.

For most of us self is nothing more than a collection of experiences or memories. We feel we have a past, we are in a present and headed for a future. We tend to take these things and form a solid construct of “this is me”, but lets look at that another way. Say we have three cars following each other down a highway, a red car, a blue car, and a green car. Now the red car slams on it’s brakes causing the blue car to hit it in the rear. The green car who was close behind then slams into the rear in of the blue car and they now all sit crumpled together on the road. This is a series of events that has happened. We could consider the red car the past, the blue car the present, and the green car the future. Now would you give this series of events a name like George and say it has a self? Of course not! So why would you do the same with your “self”? You see a collection of events does not make “me” anymore that a series of car wrecks!

So again what’s my point about self? Well to start we can live a greater and more truthful life if we can transcend these views and throw away the false sense of self we have created over the years. It takes some work (it took a lifetime to build this false image of self) but the benefits of trying to transcend our self view are many. Thing about it when someone insults “you” what is really being insulted? What acts like it’s toes have been stepped? What is it that has been ripped off or disrespected? Who is tired? Who (or what) is excited? When we take the view of selflessness, we free ourselves from protecting something that never existed in the first place! We no longer have some great expectation to live up to, or particular way to feel. . .we can experience the world, no the universe in ways we never dreamed. And that’s what the universe wants. . .to be honestly experienced by us while it experiences us.

Rocks, trees, water, people are all here because the universe wants to experience itself through each of these things. So it’s up to us to fulfill that duty, to use our whole body and mind to sense the world directly and without the filters of “me”.

We often get so caught up in our concepts of “me” that we fail to live our lives, to experience and be experienced. Even those who claim to know reality, sit around and talk about it’s concepts, limits and possibilities. They end up just like everyone else. . .talking about reality, but never really living in it. We are all this way though – more interested in the explanations about reality than we are in reality itself. The solution is to take action – start from where you are and truly strive to transcend your own self limiting concepts and self focused views. The world, the universe will open up to you and you may just discover who and what you really are

Have a wonderful weekend and hold this thought – Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life’s deepest joy: true fulfillment.

Peace and Love, Jim