Cardboard Cutout
I tend to use "downtime" such as lying in my bed before sleeping and after waking up, to explore the sense of "I". I find whatever appears as a possible "I" - sensations, feelings, thoughts, sense of perceptual center, sense of awareness center and so on - and see how each one of these all are just a segment of what is. They all arise within space & awareness.
And in this, I also see how the sense of "I" is really (as they say) just an overlay of abstractions. It comes from a belief in a thought, it comes from a belief in the idea of "I" superimposed on something transitory happening in space.
A couple of nights ago, the image came up of (mentally) carrying around a cardboard cutout representing the idea of "I", and then putting it on now one thing arising in space and then another thing arising in space, in a futile race trying to keep up with all the changes. That is really how silly it all seems.
I see how much energy it takes to place this cardboard cutout on one phenomena after another, and trying to believe in it to create a sense of solidity and "I". And how fragile and unnecessary it really is.
We make a doer out of the doing. A seer out of the seeing. And through this, make ourselves appear as something transitory happening in space - with all the anxiety and struggles that brings with it. While what is really here, in our immediate experience even, is just the ground which everything happens within and as.
There is that which can be taken as an "I" - for instance our human self and awareness - but no "I" inherent in it. There is seeing, but no seer. Doing and no doer. Thinking and no thinker.
It is very simple, when the veil of the belief in "I" is seen through as just a veil.