We claim to have done something or thought something when there are a billion reasons why we might have taken an action or said something. From the choices our ancestors made, through to the things that affected them that were out of their control, all the way down to the things that have affected you throughout your life and caused the thoughts to come into your mind.

Do you really know what your next thought is going to be when you honestly take a look?

A couple of my favourite quotes highlight the obviousness of the truth that there is no separate self and that being a person is an illusion:

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”

— David Foster Wallace

Losing the feeling of being unique is a humbling experience, and yet it’s closest to the truth. Really it is suffering that breaks down the hubris that we have control and that we can somehow become happy and safe, like an island with a castle, self-satisfied.

Individualism and individuality are false concepts. There is only awareness, there is nothing else at all.

Until you’re finally convinced that nothing in the world can make you lastingly happy, that there is no refuge in the world, you’ll continue to look for something, some kind of security and happiness within the world that is created out of ideas within consciousness.

And this is due to the idea that there is a self, and that somehow you can fulfil a sense of self through being unique or different. That somehow your private thoughts and emotions are being created by a unique individual, creating these thoughts and words and actions in a way that has never been done before.

“Our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

— Alan Watts

When you say it out loud, and when you read the quotes, it seems obvious. However this is a completely unquestioned belief. One of the ways it shows up is the spotlight effect, a cognitive bias where, for example, if you’re sitting at traffic lights, you believe that everybody is focused on you.

But how could everybody have a spotlight on themselves? How can everybody be unique? How can everybody have unique private thoughts and emotions? None of it stands up to any kind of logic or reason, and all of it is completely blown apart when you realise that a sense of self, being a separate “I” or “me”, is just an idea.

The fact that you can objectify the concept “me”, that “me” has no unique reference, points to the fact that everybody uses the same word to describe themselves. It is just a concept.

It bears repeating until the illusion snaps.

If this lands, you might also like “I and me have no unique reference”.

I also offer one-to-one sessions. The first session is free, and if you find them helpful, we can continue with paid sessions from there.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

One of my favourite Buddhist authors, Pema Chodron, talks about befriending yourself. And obviously with the non-dual lens, this comes with the understanding that the self is non-existent. And yet there is a kind of process, an illusion, your consciousness, inner body-mind, that appears to be animating this meat suit.

And so the integration and the love of this consciousness is important.

And the way to truly befriend and love this illusory divine puppet is not to seek comfort and avoid pain.

It is actually to sit and watch when your mind starts to say “what’s next?” when an uncomfortable feeling arises, whether it’s irritation, pain, anxiety, boredom, any negative state of mind or emotion. It is to understand that pure awareness, beingness, is what gives the greatest reward, the greatest freedom.

If you can watch these sensations and identify with the awareness behind them through self-enquiry, then you can start to free yourself from the endless cycle of distracting yourself from these feelings.

This is the greatest gift you can give yourself. You’re literally breaking free from the endless cycle.

You have to give yourself the gift of pausing throughout your day to watch this, to take time to reflect, to understand what you are: pure awareness before these thoughts and feelings.

It’s all extremely simple. There is only one substance. Anything conceptual, as a thought or feeling, is a wave in consciousness. It might take repeated reminders to point us back because of the forty years or more of conditioning that we’ve had.

And this must also be applied to pleasurable feelings too, which can sometimes be the hardest to try to separate ourselves from.

So if you notice, for example, you’re sitting somewhere and a strong negative or positive feeling arises. Instead of starting the storyline of thoughts, you quieten the mind, stop the chatter, and you realise that all of these are just self-created. All of the thoughts are theories about why this feeling is happening.

The true centre and home is the pure, unfiltered, still, silent awareness of any thought and feeling. To not get caught in the positive sensations or thoughts and not to try to escape so-called negative thoughts and feelings.

This is the spiritual practice on the pathless path. Eventually it is seen that you never moved from this space and that everything is all one substance. All the thoughts and feelings are only pure consciousness anyway. It’s all just an illusion.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

I also offer one-to-one sessions. The first session is free, and if you find them helpful, we can continue with paid sessions from there.

Share Only Awareness

This collective external, supposed reality is what we have agreed to call the world, or civilisation.

What is very interesting is that objectively speaking this world doesn’t really exist. Fifty thousand years ago we were all sitting around. There were far fewer of us, maybe only a few hundred thousand. When we banded together and formed civilisation, we agreed to call these bits of paper money. Cotton was used to make ties and suits. Sand and stone were used to build buildings. We took them seriously and forgot that we had agreed to give them meaning. In a real way the world is just make believe.

Setting that aside, the main point I’m making here is that the system is essentially unquestioned. It just goes on. It is self fulfilling.

You wake up.

You clean your teeth.

You go to work.

You eat some lunch.

You come back.

You have some thoughts and feelings.

You live a life.

You get married.

You get a job.

Some things happen.

Then the body dies.

Unless something comes from outside the system to wake you up, the system is like a standalone computer. It has no way of waking up to a different reality. It is a closed system.

To wake up a system that is not connected to anything else, you have to say something like, “I is just a thought.” You have to state the truth that there is no person and then become aware of that. When you become aware of your true nature as pure thoughtless awareness, you start to imagine what could be true. What was imagined but false begins to give way to something else. What starts out as imagined, that the person isn’t real, is eventually realised to be the truth. Only awareness is real. How can you be a person in a world that doesn’t really even exist?

But you could say that even without this external civilisation structure we exist as persons. However, when you look at the way we function, if you are just standing in the savannah looking out over the safari, it feels like you are seeing. It feels like there is a person thinking, “How stunning is this view? How lucky am I to be here?”

However, look closely and you notice that there is no I or me thinking I am doing this seeing. There is just seeing happening. The I comes in afterwards, as John Wheeler says.

This is a subtle but very crucial point that undercuts everything in our entire lives.

There is no person here hearing. The “I thought” belief that feels so solid and real isn’t doing the hearing. It isn’t doing the sitting. It isn’t doing anything. It is a label. It is a name for a body mind consciousness that seems like a real entity.

It is a subtle point, but the hole in the concept of being a person is real. It lets in enough light so that when it is questioned, when you actually look and notice yourself, you see that thoughts arise but there really is no thinker. There is only a belief and an assumption that there is some kind of control and agency in the thinking that is happening. The I comes in and says, “I thought this.” However, it is an unquestioned belief.

You can live your whole life with an unquestioned belief and it feels completely real. It just runs in the background like a computer programme. Just like people believed the world was flat, or that germ theory was crazy until the whole world adopted it.

In noticing this, you start to notice the truth and let more light in. You slowly chip away at this unquestioned belief that there is a person here who is doing all of these things, who is doing the hearing, the thinking, the feeling, and living this life.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

To get to this understanding it might be useful to entertain the opposite idea and look at what it would be like if we are a separate self.

But even in contemplating this there are challenges, because where do you start?

If you wake up in the morning, what part of your body-mind organism do you identify with?

Is it the forty-year-old man looking in the mirror? Where will that piece of flesh be in a hundred years’ time?

If some past thought drifts into the mind, as it does without any conscious free will, do we latch on to that? Do we identify with those storylines, whether they’re positive or negative? How many storylines are there?

The idea of becoming what you do for a living doesn’t really make any sense because all these things are created by humans anyway. To become a bank clerk, you must have banks, which were created as an idea originally.

What happened to the storylines from yesterday that we identified with, the problems that were resolved and the problems that were left unresolved?

If you notice, it is often a situation or a group of people who bring about a strong sense of identity.

As Virginia Woolf says, “we have as many selves as we do relationships”.

Someone says to you, a passing comment, and you start to identify with that. You begin to think of all the storylines that validate that, whether it’s positive or negative.

The truth is the holes in being a person are there all the time. The more we point and look at them, the more that we see through them. With quiet contemplation, the gaps get bigger and bigger until we understand that being this separate self doesn’t really add up at all.

Even if you say, “I’m not the same person I was at 75 compared to 25,” the concept of being a person is still a concept. It’s worth having a deep think about that.

What this all points to is the fact that the concept of being a person, of being a self, is an ever-changing identity that shifts all the time according to who we find ourselves with and where we are, often without us even noticing the shift. And consciousness gives it a feeling of reality, like a dream that seems so real.

If you go from work with your professional identity and way of speaking and go to a party where people expect you to be funny and silly, what is it really that holds that identity in place? It points to consciousness as the underlying thing that doesn’t change. If all of these identities and personalities are within consciousness, then they must be part of consciousness.

So take a look. Are you conscious of these passing thoughts and feelings of identities and stories, or are you a person in a human-made system?

If this lands, you might also like “You are not a person.”

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

This truth is incredibly useful to know, because without it, it seems and appears that things are outside of your consciousness. This is one of the pieces of ignorance that needs to be questioned.

One of the ways of examining how everything is in your head is when you are in a calm state and your mind is clear. Watch how thoughts creep in, questions arise, and then five minutes later there may be a state of worry and the feelings that go with it. Contrast this with the state you were in five minutes earlier.

So the truth is that this problem is completely mentally manufactured. It is created from the mind and it has no foundation. These things are created out of a sense of lack and a need somehow to change whatever it is that is in your experience.

So the question is: who is it that started thinking these thoughts? Where did these thoughts come from, and why did they arise to give you anxiety when you were in a perfectly calm state five minutes earlier?

And if you have been reading the posts I have been writing, it is clear that it is formed from a sense of self. The idea that there is a person here with a solid structure that can be damaged.

And then what usually happens, or what we are taught to do, is to look for external people and things to get rid of that feeling of anxiety that was not there five minutes ago.

However, if we can sit and question who it is that has had this feeling, who it is that has had this thought, and really look, we see that there was no one there in the first place. That it is all within consciousness. You are sitting there calmly, peacefully, and a memory arises, and then a question about how it could have been different. Then a feeling arises, and then the thoughts spiral into either something positive or negative, a desire or a fear. This is how the human body-mind functions. Anything external in the world is simply an object in consciousness that we have an idea about, an idea that will give us a feeling to either relieve a concern or fulfil a desire.

To know this is to understand what is actually happening in life, in the illusion, and to not be swayed by thoughts and feelings, to be able to sit and watch them objectively.

All of these things are in consciousness. And they arise out of nothing. Everything is one substance, and that whole substance is what you are.

To understand that what you are is consciousness, and that you are the consciousness that makes thoughts and feelings appear to be real, that you are the awareness behind thoughts and feelings. Then how can another thought or feeling about a supposed object in consciousness resolve that thought or feeling? Only discovering what you truly are will ever resolve it, because then you are free of the pull and push of trying to distract yourself from thoughts or feelings through more thoughts and feelings.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

To paraphrase Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, our self-image is the most changeable thing that we have about ourselves. It can be affected even by a stranger walking by saying something. However, this only happens because we take the sense of being a separate “me” as something solid that can be damaged. And that is something to be taken seriously.

However, if you knew that the character, the concept that you think you are, isn’t really solid and real, then past the initial body-mind reaction (which is organic and arises from surprise), the storyline and the emotional concern about what other people think about “me” or “I” is impossible to really believe even if the thoughts happen.

The secret of suffering, as Maharaj says again, is to break down mental pride. Things that are good or bad are only so because we label them that way. Sometimes or actually often not getting things that we want can be the most beneficial thing because basically pain wakes you up and pleasure puts you to sleep. In other words, the suffering happens because the universe wants to break down our own sense of agency and thinking that we’re a character. That happens through our expectations and things that we label as good not happening the way we expected. In Buddhism this is actually something that is taught—to strive to go towards things that give resistance. To do just that, to dissolve the sense of solid self.

Suffering helps you realise how impermanent everything is and that everything can be taken away in a moment. Not to take anything for granted and also not to look to things or people or external stuff for any kind of security.

Humility essentially says that it doesn’t matter whatever your mind is creating as a problem because there is no self here. We create the storyline because we lose sight of this, because we take the idea of being a self seriously.

Self-enquiry is like scraping the outside of a piece of wood to carve it down into what we want it to be, which is pure awareness. Humility is like digging inside a mine to get down to what we want, which is pure awareness.

If you really lean into humility, especially when it’s hardest, especially when you feel like somehow totally justified in your anger, you can actually view things from the perspective that there is no right or wrong answer. The other person feels like they might be right and in a way both are right and wrong because it’s all just one substance. Everything is one consciousness. There are thoughts and feelings and yet right now, a few seconds after the event has happened, it’s gone. It’s not here anymore.

Practising humility is almost like having death under control. You are literally taking away the sense of agency, of free will, of control, of the separate “I”. You’re disconnecting the character. This allows you to step back and realise that you are the pure awareness behind whatever experience, however intense, is happening.

Anxiety, boredom, depression, and more serious struggles too, can all seem to be relieved by activity. Sometimes benign activity like nature or reading. Sometimes more harmful things like serious addictions.

One of the core practices is simply to sit and be. Bring your attention to pure awareness without thoughts. Bring the mind back to the here and now without reaching for solutions. Have a quiet mind. As Maharaj said, silence is the main factor. It brings the greatest progress because it bypasses thought entirely, going directly to pure awareness, which is what you are.

It’s not that desires and cravings and aversions will stop appearing. These things naturally arise as part of a body-mind. But there is a subtle distinction here, and it is the distinction between being a prisoner and being free. You no longer look for ultimate happiness in the world of things.

A meal. A holiday. A raise. The end of the day. The weekend. A relationship. We crave all of these because we imagine some kind of lasting happiness in them. Some things have to be tasted to see this. It’s not just pain that teaches. Take a dessert for example, by the fifth or sixth mouthful, it isn’t the big deal we thought it was going to be. This is the same for everything in life. The craving was mostly mental. Mostly imagination.

The subtle, calm peacefulness that comes from sitting without attachment, without craving, is what is pointed at as desirelessness. Or bliss. It’s not some super pleasurable ecstasy. It’s quieter than that.

Really all there is is awareness. There’s no difference between what you’re craving, what you’re trying to avoid, and what you are. It’s all one substance. All of the things that arise in awareness are simply awareness. Thoughts have no independent existence apart from awareness. The whole substance of everything, thoughts and feelings, is the same. Ultimately you’re just sitting in a giant illusion created by labelling things with names and forms.

To paraphrase Maharaj, one of the strongest things that gives confidence is desire. If you hold a strong desire to realise the truth and refuse to get distracted by anything else, you will reach freedom. Sounds paradoxical, but it’s a desire to escape the world, to exit the world and to be free of the illusion. The person tapping you on the shoulder when you’re having a nightmare to wake you up.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply. Whether it’s a doubt, a sticking point, or something you can’t quite put into words yet, I’m happy to explore it with you by email, one to one.

The truth is awareness doesn’t and cannot have attachments. It is always free.

Attachments stem from thoughts and feelings which are ingrained by identifying with storylines around the imaginary person.

By practising self-enquiry, the illusory attachments can be seen through.

Because whatever consciousness is focused on is given a sense of reality, it feels very real to have those attachments. The feelings are intense and strong, built up with years of reinforcement of meeting other body-minds.

And once it is noticed that these attachments arise and fall, it is easier to see through them. Just like with any pattern or behavioural change, awareness is the first step.

Notice as you go about your day that most of our concerns and desires stem from thinking that we need something in order to be whole or complete. To either fill a hole or to add something, to avoid pain or to go towards pleasure.

However, if you notice that awareness is always primary before those thoughts or feelings, then you notice that these attachments are only there when we focus on them, when the storyline is added in and we believe those stories.

If we stop listening to the storylines that tell us we need something, or that the feeling is to be listened to, that this craving for whatever it is is necessary, then they lose their meaning and power over us.

And the more that we recognise the peace that comes from that, the more we go towards that free, non-attached state.

It’s not to say that desires and concerns don’t arise and aren’t valid on the human level. Solving these on a practical level (getting to work on time, fulfilling your duties, looking after the body and mind) is completely valid.

However, it’s the over-emotional, repeated worry thoughts about outcomes, the illusory self that is emotionally loaded, that is completely unnecessary and causes suffering. As they say, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

99% of desires and concerns are not required to be free or happy or safe. Because how can you be happy or safe from an idea or a feeling that is temporary?

Once you understand that awareness is what you are, that it can never be changed and is always free, you can always switch your attention. Then whatever you’re attached to is something you have to remind yourself of. Then you realise it’s always going to cause pain, because it’s always going to eventually not be there.

“Who is it that is attached?” is the self-enquiry question to ask.

The answer might arise, “I am”, or “me”. Or there might be a space with no answer.

Then look at where this word “I am” is held. Is it separate from consciousness? Can it be anything more than a thought, a simple set of words that symbolise consciousness in a body-mind?

If you notice this repeatedly, the entire structure of the person starts to crumble and the storyline loses its meaning.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

When you experience here and now without thinking about the past or the future, you realise that what is here has no actual meaning of its own. It is just what is now.

To paraphrase Maharaj, reality lies in objectivity.

The mind gives meaning to things. We label everything around us. For example, you are sitting in a chair, looking at a phone, reading this Substack.

The truth is that all there is is a pure ocean of consciousness. One way John Wheeler described it is as a sun floating in space, and that sun is awareness. There is nothing around it. Anything that comes within the sunlight is just an object we have created in our imaginations.

Meaning doesn’t exist as an objective thing. We give meaning to everything, but ultimately all there is is thoughts and feelings, and what we really are is the awareness behind those thoughts and feelings.

Another way of saying this is there is no depth to experience, only what is here and now. There truly is no place in the world where you can become happy and safe.

The things we give meaning to and the things we hold dear, we hold through attachment. The only way to become free of them is to inquire. To question whether there really is a subject here, a person experiencing, who actually needs these things to feel a certain way.

Ultimately there is no person to give meaning. All meaning is purely subjective. Things aren’t good or bad. Thoughts arise about situations, and these bring up feelings which can be more or less intense. And yet the content of consciousness is entirely momentary, fleeting, and empty.

Here and now you are pure awareness, and everything else is pure awareness. Any labels are added on as a construct to give the illusion of a world, which is also just a concept.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

If we start with the basic facts to simplify everything, the first fact is that you are not a person. That’s just a belief.

The second fact is that you already are pure awareness. There’s nothing to really become. All there is to do is to look past the beliefs that make you think that you’re anything else.

The feeling of being a person is purely a feeling. It stems from a belief or an assumption. It’s not based on an actual entity or structure or anything solid. There isn’t really anything to get rid of, although it might feel like that.

To paraphrase Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, it is primarily the experience of being in a body with a mind that creates the strong illusion of being a person. And as he also says, we must spend as much time destroying the walls of ignorance as we have done building them up.

Which is why, to answer the question “How do I get rid of that feeling of being a person?”, the answer is to continually come back to the practice of questioning and looking to see that that person is not real.

Self-enquiry begins by questioning whether there is even a person there at all, and seeing empirically that there really isn’t. There is only awareness behind thoughts and feelings, and that’s what you really are.

You don’t need to get rid of all of the beliefs, feelings and thoughts. You just need to take away the one single thing that makes the whole house of cards fall away, which is the belief in a separate self. Once that is removed and the hooks are straightened, there’s nothing to hang on to. There’s nothing to tie the storyline to.

Being present and mindful and meditation and everything else is just like a dream solution to a dream problem. The ultimate medicine is to wake up from the dream, which might mean repeatedly being shaken or a very loud alarm going off. You need the knowledge from outside the dream, that’s not based on dream language, to wake you up.

Often this comes in the form of painful lessons and missed expectations. These lessons also provide a very useful way of not feeling like a person, because you’re left realising how there is really no control or free will and everything is just happening anyway.

So to summarise, through self-enquiry and through being woken up to the reality that there is no refuge, you steadily realise more and more that there is only consciousness here and that being a person is just an idea. The storyline is entirely random, and finding the solutions and remedies never brings ultimate happiness.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

However, there are things in life that need to be learned, things that help with deconstructing the myth of being a person.

Things which are generally tough, and against the expectations and desires of the self, help to break down mental pride. To paraphrase Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, this is the most useful way for the self to become disillusioned with seeking happiness in the world.

The other way is to experience the desires and the things you think are going to make you feel positive, so that you really realise they are empty, and that there is no lasting happiness.

It has been noticed by this character that there is an immense amount of love and harmony flowing since dissolving the belief in being a separate self. There are synchronistic signs full of meaning, carrying solutions and remedies to problems.

It might sound woo-woo, but it has been noticed by other people too, including the neuroscientist Gary Weber. In Evolving Beyond Thought, he describes how, with total surrender, there was total support.

It seems to be an uncommon topic in the non-dual space, talking about what could be called manifestation or co-creation. However, as we are all standing on the shoulders of giants, and everything is evolving, the topics evolve too.

I think these things happen when you fully understand that there is no refuge, that the world has no lasting happiness, and so the universe steps in and fulfils your basic needs and other needs, because there is no intention to use it to fulfil a sense of self.

Non-duality isn’t lived in isolation. It is not about sitting around all day in pure awareness.

It is about facing things in life: relationships, breakups, make-ups, job losses, finding jobs, running a business, getting married, having kids. All of these things happen with non-duality. It is not an escape from them, and all of them feed into lessons that help you to surrender.

And in surrendering more and more, and realising there is no agency or free will or self here, the universe steps in more and more with miraculous solutions and remedies. Even if they are things you might say you don’t want, they always have a perfect lesson in them, which almost always boils down to being humble and decent, because the storyline is unfounded.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

As many spiritual teachers have said, forgiveness dissolves the illusion of separation and is therefore a path to awakening.

If you think of things that have happened to you that have caused negative feelings and emotions and what could be described as trauma, most of these things have come from missed expectations of how people should behave.

These missed expectations are held in thought and run through our minds repeatedly. The injustice and the hurt are stored in the body and the mind. You were the one holding on to these thoughts and feelings. Sometimes the other person is not even aware of it.

One of the ways to release from these feelings or strong emotions that arise and fall is to question who is it that is having this experience, who is feeling this strong emotion.

Another way is to forgive.

Through forgiveness, that localised bundle of energy, the memory, the feeling, the thought is released.

The infinite is all one, so dissolving any barriers releases that separate energy.

Of course, the “I” structure and the person are only a concept and have no reality; however, the experience is given reality through consciousness. Like a piece of dirt on a lens.

This process of forgiveness becomes much easier when it is understood that there are no others, there are no people, there is no real storyline, and that all of these things are largely or completely actually causeless. There is no free will. There is no other way people could have behaved. There are innumerable causes that lead to people’s behaviours.

And that, if a cause can be traced back, it ultimately doesn’t make any difference, because we are all one consciousness. It’s one wave crashing into another wave in the ocean, and we are the ocean.

From the level of the individual “I” consciousness, it means giving up and taking the stance of pure consciousness.

To understand that there truly is no person here makes the humility that is required to forgive easier. We are merely releasing a missed expectation from two or more assumed misidentifications within a unified field of intelligent love. One wave lets go of the other wave crashing into it and returns to the ocean.

It’s a logical question. From the perspective of never really questioning, the person seems to be paradoxical.

However, if you look at and understand that the person is merely an assumption, a belief, it isn’t anything solid whatsoever.

It is such a strong illusion because we’ve put consciousness into it and given it a sense of reality through decades of experience, strong emotions, feelings, and interactions.

In a way, asking who for self-inquiry is inaccurate, because there is no who. There is no one person or being asking any questions. It might be more accurate to ask, “What is asking the questions?”

From a pure perspective, it is the nameless, formless, cognising nothingness. I have found it useful to call it consciousness or pure awareness, as it helps to unravel the understanding.

The belief in being a person is within consciousness. It is a concept within the mind, held in place by the words “I” and “me” so tightly that it is like trying to open a door that you’re standing on, to see that you are the awareness behind those words.

But slowly but surely, if you keep questioning and keep looking, you start to notice the holes.

Until it is seen that really it was just consciousness caught in a belief and imagination that there is a person.

At that point, you could say that it is consciousness asking the questions.

Consciousness has the power to believe it is anything. You can go into a form and create the solid feeling and belief that you are a person, that you are a divine dancer in this form, a wave, and forget that you are the ocean.

Are you really a person eating breakfast? Are you really a person going to work? Or are these all just concepts in the mind ultimately? Doesn’t that show that the person you think is asking these questions is really just another concept?

You cannot find a person or a who, because there isn’t any entity. You are not a who. You are pure awareness.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me. I read every reply.

Being a person is simply an idea that we are told, in our culture, is something that happens.

Because it is so unquestioned and so reinforced by everything, it appears to be a real phenomenon.

The identification is primarily reinforced by believing that we are this body-mind.

From the age of around three or four, when we are taught the words “I” and “me” and start to look in the mirror and recognise a self, all the way to adulthood, there are numerous ways that becoming a person in various forms is reinforced.

We are told that we are good or bad for certain behaviours, and the self-referential narrative starts to create more and more storylines. We crave more experience as a self, to reinforce these storylines.

A lot of the actions that are taken come from a sense of lack of being a solid person, of not having become someone or achieved something, or some variation of these.

So generally what can happen is some form of dark night of the soul, which cracks open this illusion and makes you surrender and become open to any solution. It also makes it impossible to go back to sleep and be contented with the physical and mental hamster wheel.

To become somebody who is permanently happy through some form of material achievement pales in comparison to the stillness and peace of being free of chasing these feelings, and the anxiety of trying to escape something in the material world.

All of this puts a certain intensity into the search for finding meaning and a solution to the suffering. As Sri Nisargadatta said, it is the secret of suffering to break down mental pride.

It is only when we are cracked open that we have the opportunity to sense the subtle levels of being pure awareness.

If a question is sitting with you, write to me, and we can try and work through things.

Sit quietly enough to notice that your awareness can switch from reading these words to the sound of the birds outside, to what the weather is doing, to your breathing.

And if there’s something on your mind that you think is important or urgent, notice that you can switch away from that. You can take a break. You can do something else.

Even if there is something apparently important or urgent, there can always be a switch of your attention. You can stop and focus on something else.

As Salvador Poe says, you can take a holiday.

Become aware of the fact that your awareness is always free and that it’s only the storyline that gives it importance. It’s the fact that you’ve listened to your thought long enough to have a feeling about it, whether positive or negative.

Notice that you can drop this entirely. There was a time before, when you weren’t thinking or feeling that there was a need to change something.

Become aware of the way awareness operates, switching from one thing to the next, primarily to the concept of being a person with things that need to be accomplished or resolved somehow, often in ways that can never change.

So once it’s understood, by the awareness behind the concept of being a self, that there is no self, it takes the wind out of the sails of that story. It is then easier to sit and be free, to bring your awareness back into the here and now. Bring your awareness that is always free into what is here and now without labelling.

So combine the understanding that it’s pointless to try and rectify a storyline around a false person.

Repeatedly do this without going into the storyline until the understanding builds and ultimately the perpetual belief in a person dissolves.

It’s more like a download of inspiration.

It’s based on having a quiet mind and listening to the still small voice of intuition, the voice of wisdom.

The foundation of these thoughts is a quiet mind and not forcing an answer. And trusting that, even though there is uncertainty, that is the way the world works. Only the mind craves certainty. All of this stems from the understanding that there is no self here to defend. You stop wondering why you said something, because you understand there is no free will. You stop trying to think too much about what you’re going to say or how you’re going to act, because whatever’s going to happen is going to happen anyway.

To get to this level of quiet mind generally requires a peaceful environment and having your house in order. This is why traditionally people who dedicate their lives to spiritual pursuits, rather than to worldly concerns, go to a monastery or an ashram, where all their basic needs of food and shelter are catered for. They can meditate for eight hours a day without any distractions. However, we are what is called householders in the Indian tradition, which means that we have bills to pay.

The practical side is that a quiet mind actually helps the most with living an effective life and paying those bills. It means that you remain calm, and that your words and actions are most aligned with the harmonious nature of the universe. Who is paying the bills anyway?

This all appears to be a paradox when set against the traditional idea of focus, concentration, and hard work through logic.

The other type of thinking, which is worry, is completely pointless and loaded with emotion and the storyline of being a person.

One of the benefits of seeing through the illusion of being a separate self is that you no longer worry about this concept, because it is seen that it doesn’t exist. So hours and hours of life are saved, and there’s a deep knowing that everything is as it should be.

It basically shows that in your day-to-day life, whatever the character does, thoughts are spoken, actions are taken. These things happen automatically and without free will. The concept of a doer is built around the language of the pronoun “I” and creates the illusion that you are actually doing these things.

If you notice carefully, you really have no idea what thoughts are going to arise next. You also start to notice that you don’t really know what you’re going to say next, or what you’re going to do.

This can be seen most clearly through the self-referential narrative that questions why you said something, or why you did something that felt so far from what you have been telling yourself. This happens all the time in day-to-day life.

Obviously there are patterns with thoughts held in mind, and there can be apparently fictional decisions and choices being made. However, all of this is just an illusion of agency.

These have been well documented in scientific experiments that have been repeated for decades, showing the illusion of free will. It is very well known in neuroscience that there is no self. This can be seen through multiple repeated experiments with brain scans.

It’s interesting how many neuroscientists actually turn towards non-duality because of this exact experience of looking at the data.

Another way to look at this is: does the language actually represent what it’s saying that it does?

I’m speaking to you about non-duality. It is actually just the map, pointing to a representation of what’s happening as a description of consciousness animating the human body with words coming out.

In other words, is the “I” actually doing anything? Is it actually speaking? Is it actually walking? Is it actually writing? Or is it just a description of something arising in consciousness?

Another example is when you hear something like a train go by. Hearing is happening. It’s not the thought “I hear a train go by” that is doing anything. The sound enters your ears and you hear it, and afterwards you say, “I heard a train go by.”

All of this might sound like semantics, subtle and complicated. However, all it takes is a few moments of a quiet mind. Take a look repeatedly until you see it, and then the understanding blossoms.

If this lands, you might also like my other posts:

Only Awareness

You are not a person

Non-duality may seem complicated to start with; however, it is inevitable because, to paraphrase Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, it is the nature of an illusion to be seen through when questioned…

Read more

4 months ago · 8 likes · Only Awareness

Consciousness has been tied into the belief of being a separate self, when in actuality it is always free.

The belief in being a separate self continues and can be strengthened with strong emotions and feelings, situations and people that arise in life.

The work of the imagined person, just like a character in a film that’s waking up to the fact that it’s in a movie, is to question the illusion. Using self-enquiry; who is it that is experiencing this thought or belief or feeling?

The answer often arises: “It’s me.” Or “I am.” Then the questioning continues: “Who is saying me? Where is this me held?”

If you really look, pause and stop and have a quiet mind long enough to sense the awareness behind these words, you start to experience the fact that these words and the concept of being a person are held within consciousness, and therefore must be part of consciousness. In other words, they don’t truly exist as anything other than a thought or an idea, a concept that feels very real.

The other way see this is through meditating on the statement that you are awareness. Hold it in mind as truth, and trust that’s what you are, and the truth will reveal itself to you because you’re living from the truth. You’re no longer living from the idea of being a self.

Both of these methods basically point to actually stopping your mind and taking a look rather than relying on thoughts themselves.

The underlying ideas and concepts in non-duality are really quite simple. You are not a separate person. You are awareness. To understand this you’ve got to just take a look.

Do you want to know the secret to suffering?

It’s that it wakes you up. The silver lining is that it makes you search for something deeper. You’re no longer content with the small pleasures of life.

Do they wake you up, or do you look for something else? There’s a book called “We Are the Luckiest” which goes into that point. The people who have reached rock bottom are actually the luckiest because they are no longer happy with mediocrity. This is absolutely true when it comes to non-duality and not being happy with being asleep.

Why am I telling you this? Because if you’re going through a dark night of the Soul, it’s okay; there’s a reason why and it all ends with the best thing that could ever happen to you. Realising that there is no you and that you are the entire Universe.

If you form attachments to people or things, you think that you need them to exist. But in actuality, depending on anything is not required, and this belief causes suffering.

As Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “Whatever pleases you holds you back.”

It seems negative, and that’s okay. As the Buddhists say, “Disenchantment with the world is the first step to being free.”

Everything is consciousness, and so any attachment to something or someone in this pure field is really just an idea. The feeling that we need something or someone to be happy or to exist or to relieve ourselves is false.

Fundamentally, what we mainly think that we need boils down to basic survival of the body and the mind: food and shelter in some form. And beneath that, primarily to survive and not die. What is interesting is that being born and being a person is just an idea, so to die is an impossibility. Only ideas die. The idea of being a person; no one ever really dies because no one was ever really born. In essence, the idea of suffering because of death and the anxiety that it creates is false. Viewing this helps to dissolve suffering.

We are always consciousness. We never become people. There is a belief held in consciousness of being a person, but that can be seen through, which is what we’re attempting to do here.

When we look at what motivates people, all people are moving away from something or towards something that they think is going to give them some form of ultimate freedom or happiness, whether they’re conscious of it or not. When you really understand through quiet contemplation that there simply isn’t a refuge in the world, in anything or anyone, only then do you start to look elsewhere.

When you see that this is impossible through years and years of trying, you start to look at an alternative. And the alternative is to understand that you are the awareness behind those thoughts and feelings, and resting as that awareness, which is what you truly are, is the only ultimate resting place and the place of lasting happiness.

What are you aware of right now? What can you become aware of as you ask that question?

You might become aware of the voice in your head reading these words. You might become aware of the feeling of the device in your hand that you’re reading this with, or the time of day, whether it’s the morning or the evening, or what you can see with your eyes open.

Now ask yourself, “What is it that is aware of these thoughts and feelings? Can you sense or feel that there is a slight gap between all of these things and the awareness?”

That is the practice of finding out what you really are. If you can just keep doing that instead of moving into what’s next and distracting yourself from the feeling of lack or needing to achieve something, then you can make progress.

Essentially, you’re breaking the cycle of trying to chase something external to fulfil something internal, whether it’s away from something you don’t want (i.e. pain) or towards something you do want, or a pleasure that you think is going to help lastingly resolve something. On its own level it may do this, for example, learning a new skill or becoming better at something like cycling.

However, the key is subtle but it’s night and day. You’re no longer seeking ultimate happiness or freedom in that. Which seems funny to say, but it’s actually what most people in the world are doing, unconsciously or sometimes consciously.

As the Buddhists say, “no self, no problem.”

So to improve the quality of thoughts and feelings and behaviours of this divine character is perfectly okay, as long as you don’t identify with that character, which happens naturally when you understand that it isn’t real.

For example, you come into a situation where your behaviour is less than desirable. You notice the trigger point, you notice the past trauma, you deal with the past trauma, and you meditate on correcting that behaviour. Generally, that correction is always to be more accepting, more tolerant, more fair-minded and more optimistic. Being able to simply stop and quiet the mind becomes much easier when it is noticed that there really is no person here. There is a natural lightness and a natural freedom in understanding that 99% of what we would call problems are simply self-created.

This is what could be called mental housekeeping, programming good qualities into the body-mind. A lot like loading a script or software onto an operating system.

This doesn’t take away from the fact that there is an understanding that the person isn’t real and that you are just awareness. In fact, it adds to the whole experience, because the lessons learnt in life help the journey. This is what integration is: the marriage of consciousness and life, as Maharaj said so eloquently.

This is just what the character is doing now. There’s a feeling that maybe you could have been calmer. You could have said something that would have helped the situation, rather than acting from a previous energy that was coming from a focalised point around “me” that could be described as past trauma. And so there’s an impulse, when these situations inevitably arise again, to be more accepting and tolerant, to work on this self. In other words, you put into practise the lessons learnt in life.

Without this, life can be chaotic. Self-awareness as a character is a highly valuable skill. It means that the assumed person, the body-mind, the consciousness running through it, interacting with different people, can move through life in a way that is smoother and easier, which has a win-win, net positive influence on many different levels and ripples out into the world.

Understanding that there is no central character helps immensely, because if a strong feeling arises or an emotional reaction is triggered, there is a level of mindfulness where there’s a gap, which is called equanimity in Buddhism. There is no longer the searching for the reason why, because it is understood that there are thousands upon thousands of reasons that have led up to this moment in time. In other words, there is no free will whatsoever. Any feeling of agency or control is an illusion. Fictional choices and decisions are made. Reactions happen.

And yet, you remain as pure consciousness. You are the awareness behind the thoughts and feelings. Everything is consciousness, so feeling guilty for this imaginary concept doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely blown away by the logic that it simply has no depth.

There is no reason to get caught up in the storyline of guilt or any other emotion. Even positive emotions are seen through, because this is just an arising feeling in consciousness. Any storyline ultimately doesn’t matter.

It could be said that it matters up to the point that you correct your behaviours and act from a point of love. When asked if there was anything of any value in the world, Maharaj said, “Yes, the power of love.”

So it certainly doesn’t mean there’s no responsibility. If anything, you have more compassion, because you view us all as one humanity, one consciousness with a shared responsibility.