Does the self exist? This is a big question in nonduality. People can argue this till the cows come home, right? Do cows exist?
Does the self exist? Well, of course it does or we wouldn’t be arguing about it.
Why are we arguing about it? We have a word, SELF. You define it one way, I define it another way, we try to make it mean something and then we argue about it.
Does it exist? Well, of course it does. Otherwise, how could we argue about it?
There is a sense human beings have of this separate self. It’s composed of so many different things. It’s composed of all of our illusions about things, my unhappiness, my sadness, who did what to me, my money.
In one way it doesn’t exist, it’s our imagination. When you look directly at this thing that you think is your self, it will disappear.
Does that mean it doesn’t exist? You could say, of course it does. You could also say, of course it doesn’t, because the arguments about it don’t make sense, or they’re not valid.
The only thing that matters is who is looking at the self now.
Even when you’re awake, you still have this self. You’ve been taught to react negatively to certain things, you’ve been taught to react positively to certain things. A lot of these are very, very valid. If somebody’s lying to you, you need to have this sense that something’s not right. This creates this sense of self.
But this separate imaginary thing? That’s not who you are. The instant you’re actually you, then this sense of self is now a tool. It’s like your clothes.
Clothes are a perfect example. We wear clothes to give ourselves a sense of self. That’s why there are so many different outfits. You can wear a different thing that gives you this different sense of self. So it’s a sense. Does a sense exist? Yes, it does.
Then we can look at it a totally different way. Does the self exist? No, absolutely not. The second you can get rid of your addiction to this false feeling of self, then you become free and you’re enlightened. So we can also say that as well.
As we’re using it as a tool of self-understanding, we can define it any way we want to define it. So much of self-awareness is getting in touch with your issues, right? Are you your issues? No, you’re not. Do they exist? Yes, yes, they do. They certainly seem to be a driving force in everybody’s lives.
Can they be overcome? Yes, and then they float away into nothing. But does that mean that they didn’t exist at all? You could say yes, you could say no.
This is the beauty of nonduality. It gives us this place where we can go either way as we are opening ourselves up to finding out who is the true human being down underneath all these conceptions that we have.
Most important: How do we, as these awake human beings, learn to live with each other and how do we open up new ways of being humans?
Does the self exist? No.
Does the self exist? Yes.
Back and forth and back and forth. Who is experiencing the self? That’s what I’m always pointing towards.