As a first born there is full on life, feeling of body, movements, emotions. Absolutly no concepts of good or bad nor a self (which is also just a concept) which can be this or that, no holding back, totally without control. What is the only difference now? Thoughts that your this or that, also totally without control. Life is, full on now already with or without thought!

Laughing babies

The non-dual teaching is a very strange phenomenon, at first it sounds great ''you are the Self, the I am, Consciousness before everything else, find it, focus on it, become it.'' No doubt the ''teachers'' said this cause visitors demanded a teaching, a practise, something to do to reach the state of the teacher, but these teachers knew something beyond any state or practise.

What I want to say is that any practise implies a duality, someone who can do something to get from A to B, looks like duality to me ;) Not because doing it is wrong in any way, doing it feels great, when getting very good at it might even make you feel like your enlightened floating above the rest of humanity, very nice but before you know it your chasing this enlightened state which can only leave you eventually and then you are doing Self-inquiry for the rest of your life.

So whatever is done is what appears and is what is, but do not think you will ever reach what you think you are looking for. If you can reach it then it will certainly be lost, but still to know all this experientialy, really anything I say here will be too much when even effortless effort is too much effort :) Anyway if in the flow of life when normally meditation or self-inquiry occur you just sit there totally goalless, sensations, feelings and thoughts flowing freely, non-attachment to whatever comes up, to anything at all that is impermanent including body, [I-]thought then this might ''occur'' but can never be your doing, not even as a gradual or fast process, cause even a glimpse is not a lasting knowing of what is without any self, it might be seen but what is meant is that there is no seer left to see there is no self. Although even the terms lasting and knowing don't cut it cause both still imply there is someone to lastingly know...

A good analogy would be of the dream character, what can it do or not do to wake up?

Winter dream

Looking at this picture for now see the top of the iceberg as the separate individual, the iceberg below the surface as the world and the ocean as the consciousness, the observer/witness or the ''I am'' or what other word you like.

There is another way to look at this, one can be identified as the top of the iceberg, the whole iceberg or the ocean but... What is underlaying all of this? Isn't it all water?

One can identify but where is the identifier? Beyond the thought I, beyond the mind?

What this blogpost is to point out is that in essence there is no differentiation between the seeming separate ego/self, the universe/all form and consciousness, because of their equal underlaying element which everything contains or even is in essence. Like in the Heart Sutra they say: ''Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, and form does not differ from emptiness.

Self is there but only like a salt doll which will merge with the ocean inevitably. Trying to get rid of oneself is as ridiculous as a salt doll doing all kinds of things and trying all kinds of techniques to merge with the ocean while whether it does something or not soon enough the ocean and the doll are one without any possible difference whatsoever.

There is no salt doll, just salt formed like a doll. You are not that different are you? Just water, fire, earth, air, flesh and bones forming a body, what are you?
 Eventually it will have to merge with the earth.



So actually we are like salt dolls doing everything we can to matter, to create permanence from and as something  impermanent so that we keep existing. But do we exist as a separate individual in the first place?

Right now? What is for certain is that there is reading happening, but can you really find a reader? If your listening to music or are gonna watch TV where are the listener and watcher? Which are you? Do you keep changing? If your honest you can find all kinds of things you are impermanently but never something that is really lasting, or maybe you do but what is you, the permanent you?

What are you really? What is permanent? Non-dualists call it Self, Buddha said non-Self, both are true cause it has both nothing to do with the individual and what it does or doesn't do. Something which isn't a thing with any quality at all is there when all appearances of the mind and the mind itself disappear, when what you consider yourself to be is gone without a trace, one might call this the true Self beyond Self or non-Self, better to be totally silent about it...



Any description makes you try to find it and get to it while the you itself that tries to get there is left uninvestigated. Can tell you that there is no self or a Self but you have to find out for yourself in everyday ordinary life. Although it is never about doing anything different than what is already happening but only about observing if there is an individual there doing all that your doing, where is your permanent self? What is it? What is your original face? Before the belief in a self started... Look, when did it begin?



Salt doll pictures: Maia Walczak