I am
The one thing we all share is ‘I am’. No form. It is the One Player Game. You are this everything, reflected in your personality and all other things in this world.
Everything then dissolves as innocence. Everything is ‘apparent’. As within, so without.
the world is in me
‘Being’ reflects your perspective
The only truth in which everything takes place, and of which you are a unique part: I AM.
A mystery, that I am not in the world, but the world takes place in me
On the one hand we are a mystery and on the other hand we are just a body with arms, legs and a head.
Reflections
The mirror reflects light that everyone sees something different in depending on your perspective. There is no such thing as an objective world. We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are: as they appear to us and as they are projected into consciousness. From our point of view, we give meaning to everything, and things have no meaning other than the meaning we give to them. Feelings of sadness and pain never come from a fact, but have everything to do with your interpretation of it.
Header: “Family” 2019, Michelle Doll
Act Normal
From an early age we are told that we have to ‘act normal’, but what is that ‘normal’…? Is there a world, out there, that is the same for everyone? Do we all see the same thing, at the same time?
Different people have different ‘worlds of experience’. It is in the mind that perception and thinking take place. From the point of view of the witness, everything is observed, your whole life, forms and psychological processes. As in a mirror, everything is reflected, one image after another. Every image, every thought, the world appears and disappears, only the mirror itself, the presence, ‘I am’, which remains. Nothing leaves a trace on the mirror. The mirror is passive, is not touched by what it reflects. It remains clear and pure, no matter what is reflected.
The dreamwalker
a new mind is a new body
“First believe,
then see”
The power of the mind is: first believe, then see. A great tit is and will remain invisible as long as no one has ever said to you: ‘Look, there’s a great tit’; more broadly speaking, everything that is not present in your consciousness is invisible.
We do not see first and then believe. First we believe and then we see, and our seeing is the result of our believing. That is an important difference with earthly things: first seeing, then believing. By focusing our attention on something you bring it into your world. And your emotion keeps it in that world.
Can you believe anything? Bodies and minds don’t have consiousness. Consiousness has bodies and minds. In other words I don’t think it is your personal choice what your believe.
“Fungi Fashion – High Heel” (2021) by STEPHANIE KILGAST
As a child
Being self- centered
The psychology of kids says we are very self centered as kids until we are socialised. What matters most to a child is its needs, wants and whims.
We, the adults, perceive kids as empty. They do not perceive themselves as empty, they are fascinated with themselves. They are the centre of their own universe. The most important thing to themselves. This is why they are notoriously difficult to raise.
Being empty, being Self- centered
A poem of a nine year old girl:
Do you know what it’s like to be nobody ?
Just a tiny speck of air
With all those people around you.
And you are just not there!
We are empty above the neck when we are born. Bright. And then people start coming, parents, nannies, boyfriends, girllfiends and they tell you what you look like, who you are as a person. That is also my own experience as a kid.
Does a new baby human has to learn to believe it’s a separate self? Our identity as an individual has to be created. We’re not born as separate selves. This is what Anil Seth, professor of neuroscience, says in his book Beyond Illusion
In my words:
Infants are not individual selves yet. Becoming a self that views itself as a unique individual requires lengthy and complex social interaction. Our survival hinges on our group, hence we not only learn from others and within the group, but we learn how to be an individual from them, too.
The group fosters the self in the child through interaction. Babies do not possess an innate self; instead, it’s socially constructed.
From the way I, Anna, see it, the separate self and the Self are two sides of one coin. Both should be present in a child for a good balance between ‘being endless’ and ‘knowing your boundaries’, between being Self-centered and self-centered.
Ego truth & 'the' Truth
Ego truth
We see what is not there. And don’t see what is there. We hear what is not being said. And don’t hear what is being said. Ask ten people to describe an observation or for a representation of what someone says, and you’ll get ten versions back. How is that possible? No one really sees or hears anything in truth. We only see our ego projected outwards. We only hear what the ego wants us to hear. Our seeing and hearing is hindered by our frame of mind: the set of beliefs and thoughts. From this point of view, everyone is right in their perception. Because what you see is the direct result of how you think. As a man thinks, so he perceives.
The truth…
is in the eye of the beholder.
We can give anything the meaning we want. Then we act on it and come to believe that it is reality. Most of the time, we are not aware that the world we “see” represents our beliefs and thoughts. On the contrary, we feel that our thoughts and emotions are a reaction to a world that exists independently outside of us. How you look at something determines what you will see. You are the one who sees the images and they derive their meaning from you. What we see is the judgment we first made about ourselves. Therefore, if you see yourself as a victim, you will experience yourself as a victim. If you see yourself as love, you will experience yourself as love. The world is a projection of the story we believe in. This is how we dream life into existence. That which you believe becomes the reality that you dream. We project what resides deep within us onto the screen of life. The world is the outward representation of an inner state. There is nothing outside of you.
“You use your beliefs like searchlights in the dream state, looking for other events that fit in with your ideas about reality.”
Seth
‘the’ Truth – Emptiness
Emptiness, or clarity, is attention to what is always here. Attention to what is here … not for the ever-changing climate of thoughts, feelings, opinions, pains, problems… But attention to what is the background, the unbroken background, the mirror, in which these things appear.
There are no stairs, no stages, no degrees of insight here. When it is seen, it is seen exactly as the Buddha saw it, and as Jesus saw it. This is great reassurance and encouragement: there are no levels of understanding here. No gurus up there, high up, and poor disciples down here. This is very sincerely about something so simple that it cannot be done wrong.
Third person
To you I am third person (or second, if you are using – you) You can say to me; Anna, there you sit with your gray hair, and you are a thing in the world. If you look at my outward appearance you can see where Anna ends and the world begins. That’s what I am…. at least from your point of view. And as you can see, this is extremely simple. You see I am a person, a woman, a thing, a body, limited in every conceivable way. You see that.
First person, presence
Now you know what I look like on the outside. But… what does it look like here, on the inside? On the inside is god(dess), your own deepest nature. This is to see from where you’re looking, instead of what you’re looking at. I’m looking from nothing. I am nobody who looks from nothing. I am essentially emptiness, with room for your faces and the blue sky and the twinkling stars… and I have always been that emptiness. Here I am potentiality, possibility, in which the world can take place. That space is not born and does not die. She is.
First and third person
So as a third Person I am a thing, while as first person I am not a thing in the world, but the world turns out to be a lot of things in me, and you are not a thing. If you’re a thing, and I’m a thing, then there are countless walls between us and it is much more difficult to really communicate. And this is the biggest fear-monger of all, because it’s only half the truth. The reality of our emptiness is quite different.
Who am I? Unity between both truths
What you can see (third person, etc.) is not you, says non-duality. These are projections of your ‘I’/ego/personality. What you see is you, says a material concept of who I am, only the physical is I
It’s fun to investigate that for yourself.
Can I be something that comes and goes or am I just the space, the presence, the attention in which all these projections and the world appear? Can I be a picture in my head? Can I be the thing that fills that space?
Non-dual perspective
Most of the time when we feel for example fear is part of us, we don’t say, “Oh, a feeling of fear appears in me from time to time,” but we say, “Sometimes I’m afraid.” The first way expresses that a phenomenon comes, makes itself known and of course disappears again after a while, like any phenomenon. But in the second way of expressing “I am afraid”, we have made an “I” out of that phenomenon, that object, that thing that comes and goes, that is known by us (otherwise we would not be able to describe it). We have then intertwined ourselves with that feeling – I now call it fear, but it also applies to desires or any other pleasant feeling. Non duality says all these things, which we call “my personality,” or “ego” we take for ourselves, because we do not see that it is a series of phenomena with which we interweave ourselves again and again for a moment, and that we then experience such a phenomenon – which sometimes lasts only a beat or two or three – at that moment as “myself.” If there is a movement, we also believe that there must be an ‘I’, an actor, a ‘doer’. So from non-duality perspective if I were that picture in my head, then if that picture disappeared, I would disappear – then we would already be smothered in the cradle, so to speak. The fact is, thousands of these shows come and go, but look… I’m still here. When I talk about myself: about my children’s suffering, my difficulties, my wife or husband who is so troublesome, and so on, these are all things that are perceived by us. Activities of the body are perceived by us; thoughts and feelings are also perceived by us. And you can never be something that can be objectively perceived by yourself.
The relation between what I am and this body is not a relation of unity, ‘I am this body’ – but a relation of knower and known, of observer and observed. So I am not any phenomenon, any invention, any objective phenomenon. And that is very important, because 99% of all people in the world spend their lives with blood, sweat and tears to find safety, warmth and love for such a personality. And that’s like emptying the ocean with a cup: it doesn’t work, it never ends. Because new personalities are constantly emerging in our imagination. One day I feel bad and the next I feel great – that image is constantly changing. That which is perceived is constantly changing; No two perceptions in our lives are exactly the same.
Apparent opposites
What you call your life is a download. And that film takes place “before your eyes”, from the brain.
There seems to be malevolence, but all that lives in your head and therefore in your life.
There seems to be injustice, but that is also a concept in your head.
It may seem that someone treated you badly, but that IS the truth and experience of your ego – the thinker- . It is not THE truth.
The ‘other’ is a mirror for your unconscious self. The ego projects what is unconscious ‘outward’ onto the ‘other’. This ‘other’ is not another but an unconscious part of yourself. For example, in a war the other is the enemy, but that is your own shadow, your unconscious self-part. What is still unconscious in ourselves, we first see in ‘others’.
The world of words, language, thoughts, concepts, is a dualistic world of apparent opposites. But, in reality, do opposites exist? Oneness is all there is and we – and the opposites we experience – are included.
My perspective
The relationship between ‘who I am’ and ‘the body’ is a relationship of unity. I experience every phenomenon, every invention, every thought and feeling as an expression of ‘I am’. There is no separate self. Otherwise ‘being’ is not ‘feeling’ and the wound of separatedness arises. God(dess) is space, presence. And god(dess) is the experience and expression of whatever phenomenon, personality, body we fill that space with. In every moment they are one.
If we are only aware of that personality, we are willing to make the greatest investments to maintain that personality, to strengthen it, to improve it, to sublimate it, to make it happy, to tinker with it in any way, because we do not realize that we do not are that personality at all. That we only experience it. As long as I seek happiness and freedom for something that I am not, it is like the bucket with a hole in it: you keep filling it but it never becomes full.
And vice versa. If we are only aware of our space, our attention and all those projected selves, our personality, are out the door, we are not aware of and connected with our body, with the world, with the earth, with our feelings, our longings, our preferences.
We are the common factor in our entire life: we have been present in every situation of that long film we call our life. We are always present as attention in the background and in the forefront as a projected ‘I’, that comes and goes.
So that is one point: I am an observer of all situations. Love, freedom is therefore a – let me say – a state in which you are there, but only as love, as freedom. That is an experience of immensity; an open heart. Freedom is always something immeasurable. The second point is: every moment I as God(dess) experience an projected I – the body, the thinker, the feeler – . Absence of the personality is not necessary, is not even possible. You are an absoultely unique expression of the God(dess), one soul, one literal piece, a character and personality, which is your color and is part of the full spectrum of light, visible thanks to ‘contrast’ (other humans).
The third point: the sacred union is transcending the opposites. A feeling of wholeness arises within yourself between being present as love (cause) and in fully embracing you (third person) as a consequence (effect). Your shadow or false ego helps to show in others what is still unconscious in yourself.
Our sexuality flows from ‘our being’ when the influence of our dark and painful thoughts become less and less. You are continuously the light in all your experiences. The dark only has power over you if you direct your thoughts, your attention and your energy towards it. The darkness only comes through thinking. When we start feeling what our thinking rejects and our stories reflect us, we receive images of our light, our beauty, magic and unicity instead of our pain. You can call this unique and effortless expression through our body-minds of the understanding of wholeness “selfless service”.
Stories – illusions?
Stories are illusions in the sense that they are only true for our ego, from our perspective, not for everyone. After the sacred union our perspective is changed to innocence and joy, then our ego becomes an expression of our true self. The way to feel ourselves and live our potential. In that way, the stories we live are not illusions. It is our connection with the world, with our desires, feelings and our purpose, that which gives us meaning. Instead of living the stories as memories in the past, after the sacred union we live and feel them in the now.
Feminism
I consider myself a feminist, looking at the world through glasses that zoom in on the unequal position of women. Feminists are right when they say that it is the conditionings in our culture and our upbringing, the circumstances, that have caused this unequal position. At the same time, we end up in a vicious circle because we don’t have to look at ourselves and we remain victims of the situation. What if we start to see the women’s struggle without the additions, colourings and interpretations that we have started to give to it? If the idea of subordination of women, of women as victims of their sex, is my world, I function from there and this is the ‘prison’ in which I have locked myself up.
But this is only real from my ego perception, not for the emptiness I am. And I can change a perception. We are all part of the one soul. A demonstrable piece of are you. Truly unique.
You Are another I.
Try to see the eyes of someone and then realize that this being is equal to you, but is also a universe of its own. Just like you. With an assumption of the same world, but in which completely different things are heard and seen.
What if we try to take confidence in life and in the vitality of women (and men) as a starting point. Wouldn’t that make us feel happier? Wouldn’t a YES for life be much more beneficial to us? Enjoying the game of life in your own current experience without involving our memory. Substituting memories for real experiences of this moment. The same conditionings that put us in the role of victim have also made us unaware of our inner space, our deep peace, joy and freedom.
It Was The Sound Of Their Feet (2014) by American artist, Aleah Chapin (born in 1986)
When you wake up each morning, tell yourself:
“I cannot control the world without,
but I can control the world within
and transform it into the most beautiful place possible,
by controlling what I allow to enter my heart,
and by choosing what I make of it,
and then through my example and perspective,
the outside world will begin to change.”
Words by Tahlia Hunter
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