How can I stop identifying as the body?

How can I stop identifying as the body?

Hi Rupert,

How do I decide to ask you something about my real nature using this body? The fact I’m using the body says that I am the body. In my experience I am this body interacting with the impulses that appear. The apperance of the body being the only thing in my experience which moves with the thoughts and the continuous experience of it, pushes me to know myself as it. 

I am aware that there is a contradiction when I say I identify myself with this body, but I can’t help the contradiction although it is obvious that the body is an object. It seems like the hero of the story. On the other hand, when I listen to you or read your book I sense that what I call ‘me’ depends on the consciousness which knows the seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing, tasting, and so on, but still I know myself as Efe and act through him. I feel stuck.

Love from Istanbul,
Efe

 

Dear Efe,

Efe:How do I decide to ask you something about my real nature using this body?

Rupert: All decisions simply appear unsolicited, like the weather or the sound of traffic. Nobody – that is, no separate, inside entity – chooses them.

The fact I’m using the body says that I am the body.

On the contrary, the fact that you are using the body implies that you are not the body but rather the one who is using it, just as when you use your car, you are the one who uses it (relatively speaking), not the car that is used.

In my experience, I am this body interacting with the impulses that appear.

In my experience, I am the one who is aware of both the body (in the form of sensations and perceptions) and the impulses that dictate its movements (such as thoughts and feelings).

The appearance of the body being the only thing in my experience which moves with the thoughts and the continuous experience of it, pushes me to know myself as it. 

Your reasoning is good in that you see that only something that is continuously experienced can legitimately qualify as yourself. However, you believe that your body is continuously experienced. It is not! Only awareness is continuously present (in fact, it is not continuously present in time but rather ever-present now) and continuously experienced. It is ‘continuously’ aware of itself.

I am aware that there is a contradiction when I say I identify myself with this body but I can’t help the contradiction, although it is obvious that the body is an object.

Perfect – you are aware of a contradiction. Just remain knowingly that aware one. You say ‘I identify myself’, however, ‘I, awareness’ does no such thing. It is thought that identifies yourself, awareness, with a limitation (such as a body or a mind). In other words, it is thought, not awareness, that does the identifying, although, of course, that thought is itself made only of awareness. 

Simply see that what thought tells you about yourself is not true; it is based on imagination, not experience. Look at your experience clearly and simply, and live the implications of what you find there.

Yes, the mind cannot help the contradiction; it has been conditioned to believe all these ideas. Just let thought do what it has been conditioned to do and don’t allow yourself to be seemingly overcome by it. Remain gently but resolutely yourself – in fact, you have never been and could never be anything other than this unlimited presence of awareness, so to be that knowingly is the easiest thing in the world. In time the mind will follow suit.

[The body] seems like the hero of the story.

The hero of the story is the one that survives all the vicissitudes of life, the one that never fears death, the one that looks on all seeming things with equality, the one that is eternally anchored in love and truth – that one is yourself, awareness, never an individual entity.

On the other hand, when I listen to you or read your book I sense that what I call ‘me’ depends on the consciousness which knows the seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing, tasting, and so on, but still I know myself as Efe and act through him. I feel stuck.

Are the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ different? Do you know two different selves? ‘I listen’, ‘I sense’, ‘I call’, ‘I know myself’. Who is this ‘I’ and who is the ‘myself’ that is known? Efe is the name that is given to that one. Rupert is another of its names. Table, car, chair, house are all more of its names. One being, ten thousand names.

That one does not depend on consciousness. It isconsciousness! And that one is not stuck, although thought may be.

With love,
Rupert

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