PANDERING TO THE FALSE SELF

. . .versus the openness and generosity of time and space in the Now always. What is our reference point, when what we reference, has profound implications for our perceptions and relationships with everyone and every thing?

The likes/dislikes, opinions, beliefs, and positions we have defining and limiting ourselves from spaciousness, are akin to self-programming. These ‘things’ are what we ‘think’ we know. When we ‘think’ we know these things deeply, we deep-six our consciousness. No one can then tell us anything different. Our position is staked out. All this ‘schtick’ is whom we have become. This is our idea of personhood. We are compelled to be this ‘stuff’. What else is there? Who would we be -nobody?

Coming from our ‘personal self’ as a sturdy reference point certainly appears harmless. Would ‘not’ coming from our ‘personal self’ be bogus?!

Is all ‘that’ really that solid? Do our opinions, our ideas, and positions ever change? Oh, they might, but we’re firmly and fiercely Independents, Democrats, Republicans, or some other idea that we are committed to in a hard way. The ‘idea’, whatever it is, does not matter. It is only an ‘idea’. This is always a far cry from reality. Is an idea that most stable thing in the universe?

How much space does all that ‘personhood’ take up? Or is the real question, how much space do we lose out on?

What are we fearing when we make a little box out of infinite space to pretend that this is us and our little thoughts? If spaciousness contains every ’thing’ how do we justify thinking we did better? Do we fear losing something so little that it’s insignificance would easily be ‘infinitesimal’ when compared to the ’seen and unseen’? But ‘fear’ is the nature of contraction. It is the pulling away and hunkering down in a little hole because exposure would diminish us outright. Our falseness and artificialness and pretense is the stuff that makes us uncomfortable and unfulfilled.

Our  personhood is a work of layers upon layers of conditioning that shows up in how we operate in this Reality/unreality. Conditioning and 24/7 believing, have a powerful trance-inducing numbing to the Reality “That Is”. We have worked hard on ourselves with just about everyone enjoining in our endeavor to succeed in this venture. It is an us against them separateness that the mass of humanity engages in non-stop.

Choosing the separateness of ‘personal self’ is choosing against the Oneness of humanity and universal consciousness. Choosing the ‘personal self’ is choosing the conditioning we have worked so hard on all of our lives. It seems so natural. ‘That’ is the conditioning.

Going against the mind directly is a losing proposition due to the constant pushing back so characteristic of the mind. The mind operates out of the conditioning. The conditioning can be changed although the effort is on the difficult side of reprogramming. To restructure all ‘that’, would be another Herculean task.

Rather than dealing with the garbage can we made out of our mind and sense of self, it would be more efficacious to ’see’ all ’that’ away by choosing “The Energy” we have always been and always will be. To date, the choice has been the daily grind of little self and it’s aggrandizing qualities.

In order to choose where there is no reality of choice, is to choose ‘not’ to aggrandize self at all, by seeing where and when we do this. What is left over, is “ What Is”. “What Is” is always there anyway. (And don’t we ‘know’ it!) The disassembly of the false self will be exposed causing an effortless replacement of ‘nothingness’.

The ‘choice’ into what channel we are attuning is similar to people we have known that make just about everything goldy-locks-clean and pretty as well as people we have known that find the negative in just about any given situation. They both are choosing the type of reality there is with a predisposition, regardless of the facts on the ground. There is a bias and lack of reality in both scenarios. Neither of these is the choice we can make skillfully. Nor is the lesser choice of some variant of the above polarities.

A skillful choice is not choosing but Being. Being is not making a choice for non-Being. When we tune into the channel of perennial Presence and stay on ‘The’ channel, the other ‘stuff’ and tedium associated with all that, abates. It is no longer given the resonance of validity vis-a-vis, our attention. And not having a ‘real’ existence anyway, it drops off like loose dust. The struggle goes on when we persist in staying tuned in for the temporariness of drama. The “Fullness” gives us the missing parts that we were looking for, filling and thrilling our hearts. Our ‘completion’ cements and displaces our former neediness to strive and jive.

“Simply notice that you’re aware. At any given moment, you can choose to follow the chain of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that reinforce a perception of yourself as vulnerable and limited, or to remember that your true nature is pure, unconditioned, and incapable of being harmed.”
Yoingey Mingyur Rinpoche

Allowing as much ‘space’ to abide in every single moment 24/7, will certainly shift the ‘personal’ to the profound of ‘no thing’. Ego, false self, mind, conditioning are not part of the schema of Being. They may still be there but it is not the stream that has meaningfulness and consequence for Us. At this point we will have stepped out of the trance of ego and into the mergence with Awareness and the potentiality of open space. Our personal vehicle continues to play the part and role of acting on the stage of life. We are now Life itself first without the encumbrances of believing the script to be real.

Iterating, we engender more space by being and letting more space, consciously. Instead of initially reacting with the false self, we source ’space’ first, opening up our sense of greater Self by using the ‘emptiness’ as our home and that ‘openness’ as the “ I Am” of who we really Are. There is even room for our actor’s personality as long as it is not confused for the Reality.
Starting with this ’Space’ actuates our connection to the very depth of our Being. There is room for everything. But the connection with “The Energy” first, is what makes the difference in what we are actuating every Moment.

In addition to sourcing Being from the Source on a constant basis, we can also be using our downtime while sleeping/dreaming to make the connection in that part of our program. The chronicity and often the lack of transparency of our own conditioning, makes it difficult to tap into some of our deeper ‘stuff’. Making the clear intention before falling into a REM state, we overtly can tell ourselves that we are not our thoughts nor are our dreams real. This loads us up for discrimination in not allowing the unreality and undesirability of dreams to impact us negatively, at the very least. When we can stop the dream on the spot and bail consciously from a distorted conclusion/reality, we have freed ourselves, in that Moment, from ’that’ rollercoaster of life. The material that is revealed in the dream state can assist in unloading conditioning we might not otherwise have access to in other venues. This practice is informed by waking practice and vice versa. Test it out.

Meditation has an interesting take as well, due to considerations of what prevalence we are courting. If the stream (or channel) we are on is ‘self’ then there is often a goal of being more spiritual and getting further down the path. As laudatory as that is on the face of it, the genesis is ‘me’ oriented i.e. separateness. Separateness will follow if we stay tuned to this channel, despite the ‘good programming’ of meditation. Meditation can assist in identifying the waking dream state we are engaged in compulsively. The noise in our head is not the Awareness in the conscious Silence. The perception of us experiencing ‘us’ as the backdrop of Silence, is Everything. The some ‘thing’ of Silence is Self in this Moment. This is the “I Am”. Nothing more, including explanation, is necessary.

When meditating to immerse ourselves in the empty space and empty silence, that conversation is not so much about ‘me’ as it is a rejoining of spirit with Spirit without the need to hold on to the ’stream of self’. There is a letting go of self and an un-choosing to Be.

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”
― Voltaire

Not knowing and accepting without controlling/pushing the mind, opens us to ’nothing more to do’ which is the end of ‘doing’. When we stop the compulsiveness of ‘doing’, Being is given space to show up. The false self stops struggling finally realizing the futility of the ‘push’, ergo creating Space.

The connection cannot be made through the unreality of distorted time and false pretenses. Pandering to whom we ’think’ we are is futile. See and hear the Space and Silence that is Us. ‘Doing’
is so last century. Be the Moment. See the Silence.

This Iz Daddy’O