How can I transcend self-sabotage, fear, doubt or pessimistic thinking?

How can I transcend self-sabotage, fear, doubt or pessimistic thinking?

Questioner: In my contemplation during daily life I get pulled out of self-identification by self-sabotage or fear, doubt and pessimistic thinking. I was wondering how you would recommend transcending this obstacle.

Rupert: The true self does not need to identify with itself in order to be itself. Identification is always the identification of the true self (knowing presence or consciousness) with an object, that is, with the body.

Identification means ‘to be one with’ or ‘the same as’. Self-identification means ‘that with which the self (presence or consciousness) is identical’.

In reality the self is only identical with itself, only one with itself. There is nothing else present with which it could be identical. There are not ‘two things’. It is only a thought that seems to identify the true self, knowing presence or consciousness, with a fragment, a body, thereby seeming to become a separate entity.

Knowing presence or consciousness is the primary fact of our experience. It is that in which all experience takes place and, ultimately, that out of which all experience is made.

Within this knowing presence or consciousness (and made out of nothing other than this knowing presence or consciousness) a bodily sensation appears. This sensation is followed by a thought (which also appears in and is made out of nothing other than this presence) and the thought goes, ‘I, knowing presence, am this bodily sensation’.

With this thought, knowing presence or consciousness becomes identified with a bodily sensation and, as a result, the ‘I am’ that is inherent in it becomes ‘I am the body’. However, this identification with a body only seems to take place. Knowing presence or consciousness only seems to become identified with the body.

After all, this ‘body’ with which knowing presence seems to have become exclusively identified is nothing other than a thought, an image and a sensation, appearing within knowing presence and made out of nothing other than knowing presence. Therefore, there is nothing else present in the apparent experience of the body, other than knowing presence, with which knowing presence could identify itself.

 

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With this apparent identification of presence or consciousness with the body, a new entity is created. This new entity seems to be both conscious (because consciousness is part of the ‘consciousness-body’ compound) and limited (because the body, also part of this new compound entity, is limited).

As a result of this exclusive association of consciousness with a limited sensation, consciousness seems to become limited. In other words, consciousness seems to take on the properties of the bodily sensation (limited) and the body seems to take on the properties of consciousness (knowing, experiencing, presence, I-ness, am-ness).

In this way consciousness, the true ‘I’, gets exclusively mixed up with a body and seems, as a result, to become a personal entity that is endowed with consciousness and being. It becomes the personal knower, feeler, thinker, doer – the ‘me’. 

In short, the unlimited, impersonal qualities of knowing presence or consciousness are appropriated by the imaginary separate entity and become what we conventionally call ‘myself’, that is, the personal ‘I’.

This personal ‘I’ seems to be endowed with all the qualities that consciousness possesses, that is, consciousness and being or presence. In other words the personal ‘I’ thinks and feels that it is conscious and present. However, the personal ‘I’ is nothing other than the thought that thinks it.

 

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Having said that, let us look again at the feeling of being ‘pulled out of self-identification by self-sabotage or fear, doubt, and pessimistic thinking’.

Who is the one who gets pulled out of self-identification? Knowing presence, consciousness, you, we, ‘I’, never gets pulled out of anything. It is always only itself. It always only knows itself.

Knowing presence seems to become a personal entity when it veils its true nature from itself with its exclusive identification with the body. This apparent identification is brought about by thinking and is substantiated by sensations in the body that seem to verify the belief that it, presence, is a personal entity. 

However, this apparent entity is only a belief, an interpretation that is added to a bodily sensation. Presence itself is never truly identified or dis-identified with anything. So all that is necessary is understanding or seeing clearly.

The individual ‘I’ never gets pulled out of self-identification, because the individual ‘I’ is non-existent as such. There is only the true ‘I’, the true self, knowing presence or consciousness, and it is always only itself. There is nothing other than itself. It is ‘One without a second’.

See clearly that there is nothing to be transcended and no obstacle to be overcome. If fear, doubt and pessimistic thinking arise, see clearly that they are based on the presumption that what ‘I’, we, consciousness, is this limited entity.

It is the separate entity that is fearful, doubtful and pessimistic. However, once it is seen clearly that we are not this separate, limited entity, that this separate, limited entity is non-existent as such, that it is simply an idea that arises in the real ‘I’, what happens to its fear, doubt and pessimism?

Fear, doubt and pessimism thrive on inadvertence. They cannot stand being clearly seen. 

The fictitious entity dissolves in the clear light of understanding.

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