Everything is empty of permanence, seeing this is the only so called end destination of the spiritual path or investigation into reality. Both the emptyness and impermanence of phenomena or everyday life needs to be focussed on in the direct experience of right now to be able to see this clearly.

So wherever this is read, whatever is going on around you right now, focus on the senses one by one, are you involved in the process of seeing and hearing or was seeing and hearing already going on if the focus was there or not?

Can you control exactly what is seen or heard? Besides the movement or closing of eyes and ears of course, although is this really controlled by you, can you point out the decider?
Notice if when ears or eyes are closed hearing or seeing continues or not.

Now focus on touch, the but touching where you sit or the feet touching where you stand, the feeling of cold or heat or breeze on the skin, can you decide what is exactly felt? Are you involved in the process of feeling? Smelling? Tasting?

Emotions, do you have any control when anger, irritation, sadness or laughter comes up and disappears again? If your honest the answer would be no, something happens or something is said that triggers it followed by a thought labeling it your emotion and as good or bad. But are these thoughts true? Are it your emotions or just emotions? Are you involved in the process of emotions at all?

Then thinking, are you in control of this or can it be seen that this are only thoughts floating by as involuntarily as clouds in a clear sky? Look, where is the last thought that appeared? Thoughts are real but its content is like dreams, seems totally real but did it ever really take place? Is the thought I really justified or just a label? Like the mind is conditioned to do from birth. Can you tell me the next exact thought that is going to appear? When thoughts are there or have just disappeared can you pinpoint where they are other than a vague ''somewhere in the head or brain''?

When your having negative or depressive thoughts is this your choice? Can you choose not to have them? If the answer is no then consider if you are the thinker, wouldn't you have possitive, happy or briljant thoughts all the time if you were? Again are you really involved in the process of thinking?



Now is all of the above ever really permanent or stable? Is it happening every second 24/7? Really?
Isn't it so that every night when falling asleep thought slows down and eventually stops? That senses all stop till there is no consciousness of anything at all?

Then the mostly used non-dual approach would be to state ''what is left is what you are'', must have heard and read that sentence hundreds of times, but actually this is only clinging to having an identity, an identity beyond and outside and transcending existence, mostly called Self or Consciousness or Awareness. Sounds nice, and maybe even helpful as a beginning stage but despite very few this either leads to some sort of super ego and/or nihilism, ''I am the watcher'' so only watching and survival are left.

Is there really a consciousness apart from eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, skin-consciousness, tongue-consciousness and nose-consciousness? Or is it just a label for the assumption of something there combining the processes of the senses? Like weather being the term for all the different environmental conditions and processes?



Aren't senses also impermanent and empty and non-self? In other words investigate, is there a you anywhere at all? Anything to cling to or to manipulate into peace or non-suffering if mind and body are just terms for different processes and conditions?

Anyway if there cannot be found any permanent solid identity and nothing is permanent, do you exist at all? Isn't everything empty and impermanent and non-self as it is and always already was? Coming in existence and disappearing every instance, what is left to manipulate or achieve? Life goes on without the need to look for an identity anywhere. Nothing to improve, nothing to crave or avoid, nothing existing permanently not even beyond or prior to existence, all just as empty. Nothing there to get out of duality into non-duality and keep there...

It's not up to you if there are thoughts and not up to me to now finally start with writing this post. So now you expect me to write something special to make you see there is no self? Well hope you can see how hilarious that is :)

Anyway on to the original idea, wanting to see no self, truth, liberation, Self and all that almost always comes to be from the notion that the way things are is not good. Nothing wrong with that either don't get me wrong here.

This seeing can occur or not but strange as this may seem because of all the pointers on this blog, it's not up to you. Just like its not up to you if there are thoughts and what the exact content is going to be. Or if your going to sneeze or scratch your face in a second. Or if your going to keep reading or switch off the computer and do something else.

Of course choices are made, things get done with a milisecond after the thought ''I decided this'' or ''I did that''. These thoughts are essentially all self or I really is, clearly seeing this mechanism at work only once is all seeing there is no self, truth, liberation, Self and all that is all about.

The mind and a lot of so called guru's will revolt against this, even after seeing it there will probably be all kinds of thoughts like: ''but this guru/person said so and so'' or ''this is too easy'', ''this or that is not right.'' When you buy into these thoughts the story of me continous, the mind will try everything to keep a me and doing going to keep on trying to get rid of a seeming me or transcent it, destroy it or sink it into a higher Self or Enlighten the concept of me it created itself.

So its actually a misconception you need to use the mind to see the illusion of a seeming self. Eventually one needs to see that it's nonsense to try to do or to undo anything with the mind. There needs to be looked beyond the mind and seen that in the end nothing has to be changed, that the whole idea of a me, all questions and problems, the need to improve or be good was put there by conditioning. That there never really was a me in the first place.

Just go as far back in memory as you possibly can, did the very young child have all these concepts? Dit you? Did you then worry about future or past? Did you not just experience life just the way it was, possitive or negative, yes laughter and enjoyment when playing, crying when something is wrong?

Now go even further back, if no memory comes just imagine, when just born or a few weeks old was there any sense of self or separation? Or did everything just suddenly appear? The form of the baby, (all form) without any knowledge of a name [f]or a me? No thoughts at all? Meaning selfing me-ing is something learned later, not originally there. That it takes (unconscious) efford/practise to keep the me intact? Can you see there was no self there then? That now it is only seemingly here as a concept?
That its nonsense to try and get rid of change or improve something that is only seemingly here? So what is there to do you ask? Nothing at all and anything you want ;)



That the whole concept of me, no self, liberation, enlightenment, self-improvement, Self-realisation was acquired later and adopted as real (real me) goals to achieve? That really really in the end all of the above are all conceptual? Not that they are bad, certainly a me concept is great for crossing the street or driving a car but not for seeing if there is a self or not or for being happy, you cannot become happy at some future time when all outer conditions are finally perfect, they probably won't be and when they are it won't be for long and the struggle to keep it perfect begins and that is futile cause things and circumstances are inevitably always changing if you accept it or not... One can only be unconditionally happy right now!