Distraction

Y’ever notice how sometimes you or someone else can’t sit still or stop talking, or has to have the television on as background noise?

The false self, because it is false, cannot stand on its own, so it needs constant upkeep. It has to be doing/talking/thinking 100% of the time (or until the body/mind is exhausted). As soon as this activity stops, the inactivity is felt as boredom, as though a drug has been taken away. This is because the false self is a mind process, and a process exists only as long as it keeps “processing”, so the cessation of activity is the equivalent of ego death.

The true self is not a process. It is a noun, not a verb. It does not need to “process” in order to be. It simply is, regardless of what it does. It enjoys being. It is a bundle of blissful energy.

The false self needs to experience external things in order to feel good, and indeed, to exist. Its default state is lack and unhappiness, so any form of enjoyment must come from somewhere else. This is why it desperately needs to involve itself with the world: it must accomplish, obtain possessions, and have particular types of experiences.

The true self can choose to involve itself with the world, but it does not need to because it exists without them. It enjoys doing things but does not need to impress anyone, enjoys possessions but feels fine if it does not get them, and enjoys certain experiences but also enjoys just sitting quietly.

This is not to say that living via the false self can never be enjoyable. Distractions can be fun. But underneath there will be a constant state of agitation, of concern that the next distraction won’t be obtained or enjoyed, and if it isn’t, anger or frustration. The true self remains at peace regardless of external situations. 

When we stop selfing, the need for distraction ceases, and we then become aware of the bliss that naturally accompanies being. We do not need to meditate on a mountaintop or give up all our possessions in order to achieve bliss. In fact, bliss cannot be “achieved”, for that would imply that we must do something in order to get it. The way to experience bliss is to not do something, and that something is selfing. When we drop that ignorant and destructive activity, we get out of our own way.
 

"Disaster"

Sometimes a calamitous event can be the best thing that ever happened to us.

When we live via the false self, life is a constant struggle to manipulate things and people in order to achieve our little goals. We have frequent pains such as stress, worry, anger, and regret, but the pain is not great enough to make us stop selfing because the “rewards” we get outweigh the pain. At least that’s what we believe.

Then something huge happens. A long-term relationship ends. We get cancer. Our house burns down. A loved one dies. We lose our job. Now we sit in a situation that we have always feared and maybe tried to prevent. There is no getting out of it. It has happened. We are helpless.

Now we see that the false self isn’t the provider and protector we thought it was. It has failed. Miserably.

This is a great opportunity to assess our outlook. Is jumping through all our daily hoops really the best way to live? Are we getting a good return on our investment? Has it prevented this calamity? Maybe our life will be just as good or better if we stop this silly game of trading our freedom and dignity for small desires. Maybe those little things we thought we wanted or needed aren’t important after all.

We won’t necessarily see things this way. We might cling to our old ways and be frustrated because this event “shouldn’t have happened”. If so then we will have learned nothing.

But we might see this event as a revelation. It might show us the folly of the false self. We might see that difficult situations are not obstacles on our path, but that they are the path – the path to self-discovery and growth – because losing something we used to cling to can release us from the burden of maintaining and worrying about losing it. If so then this “disaster” will have helped us wake up. Had it not happened, we would have continued believing that the best way to live is via selfishness and fear. We can now step out of the dream, drop the burden of ego, and live as the free spirits we are.

Online resources

Here are a few resources that can help you strip away what’s false.

Books:
Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life by Ezra Bayda
The Best Thing That Never Happened by Joey Lott
The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster
The Ease of Being by Jean Klein 
The Ecology of Consciousness by Jon Bernie
Gifts With No Giver by Nirmala 
I Am by Jean Klein
I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 
Liberation from the Lie  by Eric Gross
Living from the Heart by Nirmala
Living Realization: A Simple, Plain-English Guide to Non-Duality by Scott Kiloby
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Nothing Personal by Nirmala
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle 
Radiance by Gina Lake
Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditioned Awareness by Peter Fenner
Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within by Byron Brown
Take Me to Truth: Undoing the Ego by Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira
That is That by Nirmala

Writings:
Adyashanti 
Awake!
Scott Kiloby

Audio:
Paul Hedderman
Adyashanti 

Video:
Alan Watts
Eckhart Tolle
Paul Hedderman
Adyashanti
Conscious.TV

The Sense of Self

Our sense of self should not be confused with the false self (although the former can become the latter, as we’ll see later). Each of us is a separate entity with our own feelings, thoughts, needs, and bodies. We need to take care of our bodies. Unique thoughts come to us. We feel pleasure and pain; no one else feels them, nor do we feel theirs. Our awareness of all this is our sense of self.

It is only when we adopt an identity based on externals or try to make ourselves appear better than others that the false self arises. As long as we remain who we are (i.e., our true selves), a sense of self is not a bad thing.

The fact that we’re separate entities doesn’t mean that we need to fight against one another. Separate does not mean adversarial. There is no need to feel alienated from others or from life. We can share and we can love. What gets in the way is that we live in a world where certain resources are limited, so we end up keeping our money, land, possessions, food, etc for ourselves and loved ones, because if we were to share them with everyone else, they might not return the favor and we would then have less. But we all could, in theory, share everything, as long as everyone agreed to give back what they got, for then no one would “lose”.

Let’s trace the sense of self throughout a human life. As an infant there is no sense of self. The world is a bewildering mix of sights, sounds, sensations, tastes and smells. There is a constant sense of wonder and interest.

As toddlers life is a playground. We have little concept of yesterday and tomorrow, so we don’t worry about or regret things. However, we start to want things, and we are prone to unhappiness when we don’t get them.

Throughout childhood we develop concepts such as time, work, and how we compare to others. We learn how to manipulate the world (either constructively or destructively) in order to get things we want.

As teens we are very concerned with our place among our peers: how we look, how we perform, and how “cool” we are. We might put up a façade in order to increase our social status.

As adults we continue to want possessions and social status. We might develop strong beliefs in order to feel righteous. We might want to procreate, either to perpetuate ourselves or to feel “complete”. We might seek safety and power via locked doors, weapons, or politics.

This sense of self that we have built over the course of decades becomes very strong and can help us become “successful”, with wealth, a family, friends, and accomplishments. But it can also become burdensome. The more we have, the more we must maintain, and the more we have to lose. We can have painful reactions to losses, or simply worry that we will suffer losses, because we have incorporated what we have into our sense of self, i.e., we have created a false self.

This is how our sense of self can morph into a false self. It goes unnoticed because it’s a slow process. We believe that we’re just doing what we need to do in order to get what we want in life, and before we know it we’re believing that our possessions/relationships/beliefs are actually part of us, or presenting a false image and believing we are that.

It is possible to recover our true sense of self. All we need to do is realize that we are not the act we put on, nor are we our job title, our money, or any of our other externals. This is not to say that we must “open up” to everyone. If there are certain financial or social benefits to withholding what we’re thinking, then we might continue to do that. We need only stop lying to ourselves.

Even better than finding ourselves is losing ourselves! If, while experiencing something, we think, “I am experiencing this,” pure experience will not be possible. Only by letting go – not thinking of ourselves – can we receive pure experience.  This is what the concept of “no self” is all about.

The Pursuit of Happiness

In the normal ego-driven, corrupt state, life is an exercise in trying to make things turn out a certain way. We are always looking for great experiences, wanting more than we get, and feeling only as good as externals can make us feel. We are needy and frightened, so our sense of happiness is dependent upon particular external circumstances. This guarantees random and unexpected unhappiness because there are so many factors that compose our worldly situation (money, possessions, health, love, career, security, relationships, freedom, accomplishment) that it is inevitable that at least one of them will occasionally go awry.

The “happiness” we feel when we acquire an object we desire (a possession, a relationship, money, an experience) is not caused by the object itself. If it were, then we would live happily ever after with it. But we don’t, do we? Our “happiness” is merely temporary. After a while, desire returns, causing us to once again feel a sense of lack, so we pursue something else. True happiness is inherent, but we mask it with desire and a sense of lack. We feel happy when we acquire something because desire and lack cease and we (temporarily) realize of our true self, which is naturally peaceful and happy. That is, happiness comes from our very being, not from any external object. This is why people who constantly pursue happiness are perpetually unhappy.

The only way to have lasting peace and happiness is to get over the ego. Then we will feel good from within, which will enable us to enjoy our experiences, no matter how mundane they might be. We will not be at the mercy of external circumstances. We will not need to have “all our ducks in a row”.

The Constitution promises us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness often prevents happiness. When we simply work, love, play, and relax, we get a sense of well-being (happiness) as an unintentional by-product because we are immersed in the moment. But when we think, “I want to be happier,” and do things specifically to become happy, rather than simply experience things with no expectations, we no longer enjoy the moment because we’re always looking toward the future, so our sense of well-being diminishes.

A pursuit of anything is an admission of the lack of it. When we live with the mindset that we must go out and get happiness, as though it’s a commodity, we thus tell ourselves constantly that we aren’t happy. This artificially creates the feeling of unhappiness. We might have all the basics for a good life, but we refuse to be content with them. We have this idea that we are not happy enough, that we must always be pursuing more happiness. This keeps us from enjoying what we already have.

This is not to say that we should just accept everything as it is. We do what needs to be done in order to obtain whatever increases the quality of our lives. But overdoing this can make us too tired and irritable to enjoy anything, leave us no time to enjoy the fruits of our labor, or get us into phony relationships. Will that promotion be worth all the time and struggle you buy it with? Do you really want to associate with people who would not like you if you did not put on an act?

We can continue to live in the ego’s self-centered dream of constant want, worry, toil, frustration, anger, and regret. Or we can see that we are more than the personal drama of a temporary identity, that we are not mere action figures that must have things be a particular way and then suffer when they aren’t. We can stop dreading, judging, clinging, avoiding, and blaming. We can rest in who and where we are.

Enlightenment

The term “enlightenment” gets thrown around a lot.  It might seem rather vague and esoteric.  We might picture a monk wearing a robe and meditating in a cave or on a mountaintop and imagine that he has reached a state of nirvana (whatever that is) or received some cosmic information that the rest of us will never know.

Enlightenment simply means to see things as they are.  That’s it.  Nothing magical or other-worldly.  Just the clarity of awareness to perceive reality.

We might think, “But I already perceive reality.”  Yes, we perceive reality.  However, our minds don’t.  “But aren’t we our minds?” we might ask.  No.  That is the universal mistake.  We are not our minds!

So, what are we?  Conscious beings.  Everything else about us – our bodies, our brains, our possessions – is stuff we have, not stuff we are.  Our minds are tools.  They think and feel.  They are aspects of us, but they are not us.  This is why we remain who we are even though thoughts and feelings change all the time.  If we were our minds, then we would keep changing.

One of the things that our minds do is collect information.  For example, we (not our minds) perceive a tree.  Then the mind learns about the tree: its colors, its species, its preferred latitudes, and so on.  The mind does not perceive the tree – it only knows information about the tree.  You see the difference?

The mind uses the information it gathers to develop beliefs.  Then it filters reality through those beliefs.  For example, a politician does something questionable.  If he represents our political party, we might view it as okay and excuse or even support it; but if he’s from an opposing party, we might view it as bad and criticize it.  As long as we look at things through the filter of our preconceived notions, we will not see them as they are.  We might believe that we see things as they are, but that is only because we don’t even know the filter is there.

Our filter system pervades almost every aspect of our lives: who we associate with, how much money we hoard or spend, our body image, who we vote for, our opinion on whether abortion/prostitution/marijuana should be legal, what we worry about, etc.  We might believe that we are “right”, that we see things as they are, and that all the people who disagree with us are just too blind or stupid to see how right we are.  Meanwhile they think the same thing about us.

You ever notice how little children and animals are care-free most of the time? It's because they aren't thinking.  They are just being.  We are born enlightened, then as our minds/thoughts/beliefs/desires develop, we unenlighten ourselves.

So, given that we don’t perceive things as they really are, we have two options: keep living with our illusions, or wake up.  Illusions are comfortable, which is why so many people prefer to keep them.  They might believe that they are smarter or nicer than others, that their particular country or ethnic group is better than all the others, that their children are smarter or cuter than all others, or whatever, and they are comfortable with that.  But illusions can also get us into trouble.  For example, the belief that we need lots of money or social status in order to be happy can make us miserable when we lose them.

As long as we are comfortable, we will continue to live with our illusions, because why jeopardize a good thing?  Only after our filter causes us a certain amount of suffering will we have incentive to remove that filter.  We will, or will attempt to, put aside our old, erroneous, destructive notions that have kept us miserable, wanting, worried, angry, and frustrated.  This process of removing our filter, of waking up from our dream of illusions, and seeing things directly, is enlightenment.  It can be a gradual process wherein we experience it with increasing frequency, or it can occur all at once (usually due to some sort of disaster).

We might get occasional glimpses of enlightenment even before we become aware of our filter.  Sometimes our minds stop spinning when we are involved in an engrossing activity or just waking up from a nap.  These are times of relaxation and clarity.  But later our minds start spinning again and we are back to illusion and agitation.

Even when we learn that our filter has been ruining our life, it can still be difficult to put it aside.  This is because the mind can’t stand to not be in control, to not think, because this is what it is made to do.  It is a necessary tool that enables us to invent things and keep appointments and remember not to touch a hot stove.  But some of the beliefs it develops are wrong and damaging, and we need to dispel them if we are to experience lasting peace.

Why Do We Suffer?

Why do we suffer?  Because it steers us toward enlightenment. Everything we think or do that is part of the unreality of ego will cause pain. If it weren’t for suffering, we would keep living in illusion. We have to suffer in order to wake up.

As we wake up, we think and do fewer egoic things, so we suffer less. This is why we tend to have less anger and worry as we get older. Of course, some people remain in illusion their entire lives so their negative emotions and suffering don’t diminish.

Why should anything cause us to suffer?  Sure, notions of materialism and superiority might be wrong, but why should they cause us pain? Because our purpose is to find out who we are. All illusions get in the way of that, and suffering teaches us which things are illusions.

But why should we find ourselves?  Why can’t we exist in comfortable illusions? What benefit does truth bring us? Truth brings peace. Illusions don’t because trying to exist in something unreal is an attempt at self-annihilation, and anything that opposes our very existence cannot be comfortable. We, being real, can exist only in what is real, i.e., truth. When we do this, we experience the natural bliss of being.