Hi Rupert,
You say, ‘For consciousness there is no purpose or plan. For the apparent person there is a purpose or a plan. In fact, the apparent person doesn’t have a plan; it isa plan. The apparent person is the search for happiness. Presence is the happiness it is searching for.’
I seem to understand this and there is peace, but then it somehow slips away and I am again wondering. Is there anything I can do to stop this apparent self from arising, or to be aware of it more, to see it for what it is while it is occuring and not be swept along with it?
Best wishes,
Ronna
Dear Ronna,
The one who wants the apparent self to stop arising is the apparent self itself. In other words, the desire to get rid of the apparent self perpetuates the apparent self.
The apparent self could be described as ‘the resistance to what is’. This resistance takes two forms: one, I want or need such-and-such to take place in order to be happy, or two, I don’t want what is present and need it to disappear in order to be happy. These two, desire and fear, are in fact two sides of the same coin. The coin is the apparent self.
See clearly that in order to resist what is, there has to be a stance, a point of view, a located entity, an apparent self. This resistance depends upon the apparent self. If we then resist the apparent self and try to get rid of it, we are resisting our resistance. We fear our fear. We simply compound the problem.
So, first of all, see that we have an agenda with the apparent self and that as long as this agenda is present it is more of the same. Just look clearly until your looking naturally becomes disinterested, just as you would look at a passing car: no agenda for or against.
See clearly that the apparent self, which is simply the current thought and feeling, arises effortlessly within us but does not touch, harm, move, change or implicate us, consciousness, in any way. We do not need to makethis the case; it is already the case. It is from this position, or rather, from this open, welcoming, allowing space, that we are able to contemplate the apparent self.
This apparent self has two main residences, one in the mind as a belief and one in the body as a feeling. When we investigate the belief in separation, we find no evidence that whatever we are, that is, whatever it is that is seeing these words, is limited or located – for instance, behind the eyes. Once we have come to this understanding, we are open to the much deeper exploration of the sense of separation at the level of the body.
* * *
At the level of the mind we may, as you say, come again and again to the understanding that what we are is not limited and located, only to lose this understanding again. The mind arises again with an objection, and this objection seems to invalidate our previous understanding. As a result, peace is lost.
For instance, the mind may say (and often does!), ‘Well, if consciousness is unlocated, how come I cannot see what you are seeing?’ In this and numerous other ways the mind will present apparently valid reasons for the belief that consciousness is limited.
For those of us with enquiring and tenacious minds, each of these objections has to be fully explored until we come, from our own experience, to see that all our beliefs about consciousness are invalid.
It is, in many cases, the depth of this understanding at a intellectual level that precipitates the deeper enquiry at the level of feelings. I say ‘in most cases’ because some people are very open to the exploration at the level of the body without coming to this intellectual clarity, and that is just as legitimate. In this case, it just means that their minds do not present the same obstacles as do those of us who are more sceptical!
Sooner or later, for many of us, the intellectual understanding is seen to be insufficient and the willingness and openness to explore our experience at the deeper level of feelings arises. In this case we just follow our love and interest and start to explore the sense of ‘me-ness’ in the body and its corollary, the sense of ‘not-me-ness’ in the world.
I have written about this already in detail on this forum, so won’t elaborate here. Suffice it to say that for many, the stabilisation in peace that you refer to is a natural, effortless and spontaneous outcome of this exploration, just as this exploration itself is a natural, effortless and spontaneous – and enjoyable – outcome of our love of and interest in the nature of experience.
With love,
Rupert
