The Irony of Trusting Your Self

 

 

I sit with each of your emails, each forum post, or message, and wait for a response to come, knowing that anything that ends up written out won't be something "I" determined or decided.  Because of this lack of a controller or doer, the words will just flow.  And if you hear and understand the message, that's not your doing either. 

Anything written here in this blog or in my responses to your inquires is a concept, an idea which will, due to causes and conditions, trigger thoughts in the your experience.  Given the right time and circumstance a message might hit home.  But it will still only be a thought.

As we work through the inquiries and exercises, the only reality you can use as a reference point  is what is gleaned from sensory input.  As you sit there, the senses tell you that the feel of the chair underneath your rear is 'real' when compared to the self.  That chair can be touched or seen.  As you read, background sounds can be heard.  Those things are real to the senses.  Detectable.

There is no sense which detects a self.


At this level of our inquiry, my entire task is to get you to understand the difference between this sensory reality and what exists only within thought and imagination.  Doesn't that seem a simple notion?   It is.  So why does it so often take weeks, months, and sometimes years to see this? 

The answer to that is indeed a paradox. 

Truthfully, you need to trust yourself.  You need to trust your current, immediate exprience and findings above all else, above all the teachings and conditioning that's been introduced from childhood.  You need to defy collective common sense that says there's a You in that body and brain, and see the truth of reality without all of the concepts accumulated through an entire lifetime.  And then you need to trust that this finding is the absolute truth of the state of things, and you need to hold the conviction that your direct experience of reality is more true than the imaginary stories you've been innundated with for years.

But.

"Trust Yourself" doesn't mean there's a self to trust, it means that the sense of self that is currently held going into the inquiry, is the very sense of self which needs to surrender to the simplest of findings.  Finally, it's seen that there was never anyone to surrender.

Trust yourself to get you to see through yourself.



photo credit:  Trust Life a Little Bit by norynn on deviantart