Dealing With The Beguilingly Pleasurable Feeling Of Being Located And Separate.
The problem is that identification with thoughts and sensations that give the feeling of being a separate self is not unpleasant in the first instance. It’s even comforting. As consciousness, we love thinking and sensing. The problem is that we become so used to these experiences that we identify ourselves as them, forgetting the experience of our true nature. Then the trouble starts.
When the natural defence mechanisms of the mind and body get triggered, our whole sense of self is disrupted along with them, as we now believe ourselves to be a material body and mind. The effects of this are a vicious spiral of self-limiting thoughts that trigger an explosion of unpleasant feelings. As children, our natural openness, vulnerability and oneness are often met with disappointment and hurt. Unable to draw back into an observing state, this psychological hurt defines us, and we seek the loving Oneness we have lost in ways that betray ourselves. We learn how to try and attract love by being attractive whilst masking our open-hearted vulnerability. We teach ourselves to win love, compete for it, measure it, demand it, deserve it, charm for it, and gain status for it. All these strategies of trying to get love are highly addictive because they seem to work for a short time but only leave us craving more. We build a whole life on this betrayal of what we are.
Whatever initial comfort we found in the experiences of thoughts and sensations is thus overshadowed by the cumulative negative effects of such self-betrayal. Nevertheless, the memory of the initial pleasure remains deeply buried as the embodied belief to be a separate self located in time and space. It shows up in the negative thoughts that arise, not as their content says, because there is something wrong with us, but because we have fallen into this deeply hidden belief in separateness. As we hopefully rediscover the experience of the consciousness we essentially are and that we cannot know is materially generated, we can discern this underlying story of all these thoughts of self-betrayal.
Such thoughts constitute the rational aspect of the deeply held belief be a separate material object. We learn we do not need to argue with thoughts of self-betrayal. We simply need to confront them with the true experience that, despite what they say, we cannot know the premise upon which they arise is true, thus collapsing in one go the whole inverted pyramid of self-deprecation in the mind.
This leaves possibly the harder and more subtle issue. That the sensations of the body, in some irrational way, say something about us and cause us to locate our sense of self in them. We refer to our body as “me” without even considering it. Without evidence, we impose the limited characteristics of mind and body experiences onto consciousness. Reframing our physical experience of being a located “me” is a further aspect of decommissioning the belief in separateness for good. This reframing of bodily sensations can take ongoing investigations. It's vital not to see this as a practice.
We (Awareness) are already free once we recognise we are this awareness that cannot be defined objectively, and we cannot lose this freedom. We approach this task of dissolving the ancient residues of “me” in the sensations of the body based on this freedom, not to attain it. Then we recognise we are not trying to eliminate the sensations (impossible and undesirable); just reframe them in the light of the experience of being Awareness so we can avoid mistaking them for ourselves.
It can help to share the experiences of dissolving separateness with other minds! This is something I do in my meditations and study sessions. Please feel free to be in touch.
Love
Freyja
