Who are you? Re-blogged from Graham Ellis's blog at grahamellis.net

August 18, 2014

HOMEward Bound

Here’s the dude Joe Kenny – currently chilling in a wooden beach house in Japan with a bottle of fine wine – with HOMEward Bound. As always, enjoy . . .

    Dear Reader,

    So, we have Rene Descartes to thank for the notion – apparently accepted wholesale among the population of planet earth – that an I must exist to be the thinker of thoughts. “I think, therefore I am.” Tosh!

    Clearly, old Rene decided where he wanted to end up – defending and maintaining his ego-centric view of the world – and then described at great length how he arrived there. Little did he know, his famous adage does not resonate with the actuality of the “awakened” state.

    One who considers herself to be an individual is reinforced in that belief by adopting the assumption that nothing but the individual could possibly be the thinker of thoughts. According to this reasoning, it must follow that the individual is doing the thinking; generating thoughts and making observations and decisions mentally. The one who makes this assumption and accepts this conclusion as valid  is what I call the assumed individual.

    So, dear non-seekers,  your most fundamental notions of who you are condemn you to the basic error of identifying yourself with the assumed individual. Based on this apparently reasonable but fatally flawed conclusion about yourself, your every perception and experience is personalized as “your” thoughts; your perception; your experience; your fame and fortune; your this and your that.

    As such, the individual is the epicentre of her own cosmos and the mistaken identification with the assumed individual deepens constantly and ever distracts you from suspecting the reality of what you are. Accustomed to this world view, it appears to be madness to question its validity. After all, you might say, is it not self-evident?

    To which one might answer: yes, it certainly seems to be so. Doesn’t everyone accept this? Surely, it is a given in every human’s life?

    Well, not quite everyone. Those who have apperceived the holographic nature of the assumed individual, those who have come to rest in their identification with the Absolute, know the ego-centric view of the world to be false. These abide in their non-individuality and know themselves to be none other than ALL THAT IS. In other words, those who have found themselves at HOME know with extreme clarity that the assumed individual is a fiction.

    Many know from experience that it can be frustrating to reach a mental understanding of the falsity of the assumed individual, only to find that the fictional individual can never awake because what it really is has never been asleep. So, what’s all this talk about awakening? This is merely word play. Words intended to point to the reality – let us not speak of “truth” – can be misinterpreted when taken more literally than was intended. Therefore, be like a child attending a pantomime; suspend your disbelief and just go along with the notion for a while. Your worries and your life will be waiting for you when you return.

    Yes, of course there is – or seems to be – a human living in the world. We may say that person is real enough, relatively speaking, as we know too well its suffering the pains and enjoyments of life as we know it. However, it is the one that you think you are that is no more real than a pool of water in a mirage. No amount of thinking will enable you to see this and no amount of effort will enable the assumed individual to see that it is not in actuality the water in the mirage that it has always believed itself to be.

    Some non-seekers – such as once I supposed myself to be – feel helpless and cheated to be led to the threshold of the pathless path only to find that there is nothing they can do to travel the path to the destination on the far side of the gateless gate: HOME. They are told repeatedly that any striving, any action and any practices would merely reinforce the falisty of the assumed individual which would be futile, at best, if not counter-productive. In short, there is now way to get themselves HOME.

    But is this necessarily the case? It most emphatically is not the case! Take heart.

    You may have read on this blog and in the potent mini-books of Graham Ellis, that there is something that anyone can do to reveal that the assumed individual is not who and what they really are. That is: to deepen one’s awareness of being to the point where one’s apparent point of perception slips back, as it were, to a state in which there is a silent knowing of beingness and of what it is in reality.

    There is a seeing that the assumed individual is observed and hence one cannot be that. Thoughts are merely observed and hence one can neither be the thoughts nor the mind. It is only when the habit of claiming thoughts as “your” thoughts is discarded that one opens to experiencing that one is not the thinker; one is not in reality the originator of thoughts. Thoughts merely arise.

    The apperception of the Reality seems to be facilitated by stepping back through this shift of awareness from involvement in everything that is happening inside yourself to a state of  beingness which is devoid of personality. At some point, the awareness seems to step behind the mind (agh, words!) and in an instant there is only knowing.

    As this state is not experienced by or with the mind, it cannot be reached by thoughts and cannot be comprehended in relative terms. Equally, as this state exposes the assumed individual as merely the water in the mirage, this knowing cannot be known by the assumed individual in its ego-centric centre of perception. For this reason, you are told in various texts that the you that you think you are can never be “enlightened”. The dreamer cannot be awake whilst lost in a dream, so to speak.

    The old cliche may serve our understanding once more: when the light appears the darkness is dispelled. Darkness is merely the absence of light just as the assumed individual is merely the absence of the certain knowing that one is not the fictitious person one had always assumed oneself to be. There is no water on the road ahead; it is merely the appearance of water where there is none. The illusion of the mirage stands exposed for what it is; the notion that one was the assumed individual fractures and falls away.

    If, metaphorically speaking, what you are in reality is like a lamp that shines with extraordinary clarity and brightness, then one’s accustomed – ego-centric – perspective of perception is misled by the darkness prevailing as a result of the concealment of the lamp by an impenetrable covering.

    The lamp, as it were, is not something to attain. It is what you have always been in reality. Metaphorically speaking, all that needs to happen is for the impenetrable covering of the lamp to be chipped away until it becomes more transparent and fractures. Openness to the concept that one is not the thinker and therefore not the assumed individual seems to set in motion a mechanism that brings about the catastrophic failure of the lamp covering. This is not “your” doing, though “you” may facilitate the process by switching your awareness in the manner described above (and elsewhere on this website).

    Thoughts arise and you may allow them to pass by without taking delivery of them. The more often you do this, the easier it seems to get. Knowing this, switch your awareness away from the thoughts to your fundamental beingness and abide in the space between thoughts. It is not easy at first as it is an exercise to which you are not accustomed. Persevere until you get the hang of it and don’t beat yourself up if you are distracted time and time again. At some point, you may find that it is obvious that you are not the assumed individual; thus begins the process of dis-identification.

    Experiencing dis-identification with the assumed individual may be an unsettling process. Suddenly, the familiar context of being who you think you are is displaced – as if you have stepped into a vacuum. You might feel like an astronaut cut loose from the space ship whilst on a space walk; tumbling through space. Your habitual frame of reference disappears and in the word-free silence that ensues your awareness may come to rest on breaths not thoughts; not memories; not hopes or fears. None of that head noise!

    Do not be troubled; when this happens you are HOMEward bound. Settle into the peace and enjoy the ride. Bon voyage!