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#3797 - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
NO SELF Hello Everyone,
I wanted to send out one more post before I go.
This question was posed to me recently and I think it is very
relevant to some of what we've been talking about here in the
forum:
From the questioner:
"How can you talk about no self and also give relative
descriptions from within a story in your answers?"
From Scott
Great question! .....because this is all we
have....stories. All descriptions are relative. No
one has ever expressed the truth or non-duality. All that
we can do is point.
The moment we begin speaking, we are speaking within a dualistic
language. No self has no meaning except in relation to
self. So one has to know and experience "self"
for the words "no self" to resonate as an
insight. In that way, the words "no self" are
just as dualistic as any other words. They appear to point
to an absolute truth, but do they really?
No self is basically a story that goes like this: "I
once thought of myself as a separate self, but through a
particular recognition, I now know that there is no separate
self."
That's fine. A very important insight actually!!
But do you see how each word refers to other words? How do
we know anything called non-duality without reference to duality,
for example?
All words exist in a pair of opposites. And language is
this finite web of symbols. No matter how we rearrange
them, and no matter whether our arrangement is labeled
traditional advaita, neo-advaita, zen, taoism, direct path,
indirect path, christian mysticism or fuddy duddy, the arrangment
still falls within dualistic language. In seeing this, we
can stop pretending.
We can stop pretending that non-duality is like a big club and
once you have a powerful experience, you are in the club.
As a member of the club, suddenly you are speaking "the
truth."
Is anyone speaking as awareness? Is awareness some
detached, transcendental cloud of nothingness, and once you
recognize the nothingness, all words you speak are truth?
No, that's just another story. If nothingness is anything
at all, it is everything. It is every voice--from the
uncompromising nondualist to the unclear, compromising
dualist. All equal appearances of nothing. This isn't
bad news. It's great news, because we can stop
pretending. Stop fighting. Stop believing that language is
delivering truth and "my truth is better than your
truth." It's like a child saying, "na na na na
na, my dad can beat up your dad."
You see, I once thought that I didn't exist. And I walked
around believing that. It was the best story ever.
And I met others who claimed they didn't exist. And so we
picked at each other, often pointing the finger at each other,
deciding who existed less...who was less of a self...who was more
absent. But this was just another ego game. The
game of who can be more humble, more non-dual, is just another
aspect of the ego game. But because one can walk around
saying "I'm a member of the non-dual club," somehow I
thought I had a free pass to act arrogant, to think of myself as
special, to think that I was expressing truth.
And in the fog of that ego crap, I missed the fact that my
brother, the Christian, was also the truth. I missed the
fact that the guy whose non-dual expression I hated the most was
also the truth. I missed the fact that scientists,
philosophers, and atheiests were the truth, that the guy down the
road who has no interest whatsoever in seeing that he doesn't
exist is the truth, that the quaker, the baker, and the
candlestick maker are also truth. Every story is
truth. What else do we have on earth but our stories?
In trying to claim the truth by believing that I didn't exist and
therefore that I was the truth, or that I stood for or spoke from
pure awareness, I created a point of reference against those
pesky others who "still believed in separation" or
"who weren't speaking the truth as I was speaking
it." It was the biggest ego trip of all. The
story that tried to one-up all other stories.
And something clicked in seeing that. I began to be able to
talk about my personal experience again. I began to talk
about Scott. I began to be able to share more about my own
messups, my own boxing of shadows, my own silly little feelings
of jealousy, frustration, and self-centeredness. I didn't
do this as a part of a game of trying to be the most humble,
which is another ego trip. I did it because I wanted out of
the club of the truth. The truth began to feel like the
dogness of Oneness, like a little room that felt very small with
no room to move, to breathe, to be human, to enjoy stories again.
So now I enjoy stories. And everything is a story to
me. The greatest non-dual pointers are seen as just more
stories. But I love them all. It's just that I don't
consider them truth. They are helpful, yes, but not the
truth. And none of these words are the truth either.
So there is no one who transcends being "no self" or
transcends "non-duality" either, which would just be
another ego trip.
In this freedom, I no longer feel like I'm betraying the club to
speak in relative terms. All terms are relative. Is
truth real? Yes, but I don't own it. I can't have it to the
exclusion of others. And so truth is everywhere I turn, in
every question and answer, in every self and no self, every
choice and no choice, in every person, group, nation, political
view. They are all me. I am them. And that is a
view that just has more room. It feels freer with nothing
to defend and nothing to own. No conflict. Just love.
So it is very easy, as you can see, to use relative dualistic
terms to point. All the insights that I've had along the
way are empty. They feel just like any other thought.
Yet, they are all relevant in their own right. They are
relevant because the word relevant points to the word
RELAtive. They all have their place, but none of them sits
on top of the mountain of truth as the last and final word on
truth. In this view, everything is allowed and loved.
Some words are clearer than others, but only relatively
speaking. What is clear to me might feel like total mud to
you.
You see, my friend Bruce has no interest in non-duality, so the
words "no self" are not clear to him. They are
meaningless. And my other friend who just experienced an
awakening this week finds the word "no self" to be
irrelevant also. He sees it as a great insight, but in the
end...just more words. And there is a guy I met from my
website recently who believes that "no self" is the
last and final truth. But it's just the truth for him,
right now, at this moment. I know a dear friend and teacher who
experiences what he calls "Unique Self." It's not
ego. It's the sense that no matter how clearly we
recognized our real identity as timeless awareness, and it truly
IS, there is still an individual expression with individual
talents and skills. No one ever transcends these individual
talents and skills. So for my friend, "no self" is true
in that ego can be seen through, but so is "Unique
Self." There is nothing final about any thought
or insight. There is no final club that we join.
This mess I've written here may seem like a bunch of
contradictions. To someone it may appear that way. To
someone else, all of this may be really clear. It's all
relative in that sense. What is clear depends on where you
sit in your perspective, and every perspective is relative, even
the guy who claims that he is looking from the ultimate
perspective. There is really is no such thing. There
is no special club. If I had to put words to it, I would
say there is only love and we either embrace that or we turn away
from it in each moment.
Much love
Scott
posted to OAStudyGroup