Identification

It is now even clearer how identification alone can be used as a way of describing the awakening process. (There are of course many other ways to describe it, equally valid, and equally much just a made up story with only a distant relationship with what really is.)

First, I awaken as a human being. I receive information through my human self, and then naturally learn to identify as this human self. I look through the eyes out on the world, and become an object in a world of innumerable objects. Through this, I create a good deal of drama and suffering for myself (and enjoyment as well).

Then, I awaken as the Absolute - however I describe this: as capacity for the world, as pure awareness, as void, as the Formless Unborn, the Original Face, the Ground of Being. I may find myself as that in which the world arises, to my human self, in the present. I am the experiencer, unchanging, stainless, with no trace from that which is experienced. The world of phenomena - internal and external to the small self - arises within me.

Then, I awaken as Big Mind - as that which is beyond and embracing the absolute (experiencer) and the relative (experienced). There is still a sense of "I" as the experiencer, and as that which embraces the experiencer and experienced. Again, the world of phenomena - internal and external to the small self - arises within me, in the present.

And I can also awaken as what is, with no "I" to be found anywhere. There is only what is, arising in the present. There is awareness and phenomena, experiencing and experienced, but no "I" anywhere here. Trying to describe it, in words that only split it up: The "experiencer" is revealed as just experiencing. And the experiencing and experienced are revealed as the whole of experiencing/experienced. As just what is in the present.

And I see how there is a fluidity in this: I am my human self. I am the Absolute. I am Big Mind. I am what is with no "I" to be found anywhere. And there is a fluidity among these, each here variously in the background and foreground, weaving into each other in various ways.

There are many footnotes possible here: When I see myself as my human self only, my view functions dualistically. When I see myself as Big Mind, it becomes more transdual. And when there is no "I" to be found anywhere, even more transdual.

When I find myself as Big Mind, there is "no self" in the sense of no separate or fixed human self. Myself as a human is just an aspect of this seamless fluid whole of phenomena. When I find myself as what is, arising in the present, there is not even any "I" anywhere.