A moving cardboard cutout and a sense of I
It seems that practices do themselves in me, more than the other way around. Both are of course important and there is an interplay between the two, but now, the practices that do themselves in me are definitely in the foreground.
One of the practices that do themselves is an exploration of what is taken as an "I". I notice sensations, thoughts, and so on, and then also the idea of "I" which is placed on a particular sensation, one that is more stable and typically in the neck/head area (which one seems to change over time.)
It is as if there is a cardboard cut-out there representing "I", a subject, the seer and doer, and it is anchored onto a relatively stable sensation. Most of the time it is in the background, just giving a reassuring sense of having an anchor for a point of view, a perspective, and giving a familiar sense of "I" here.
When attention is brought to it, it is clearly revealed as just this cardboard cut-out placed on a sensation. And then I notice how another cardboard cutout is placed further up and back in space, creating the sense of an observer of this. Pretty interesting.
It seems that there wants to be a sense of "I" here, and even when it is noticed, it recreates itself in a slightly different form, placing itself even a little further into the background, hidden among the stage props further back on the stage.
So even when it seems obvious that there is no "I" here, when it is seen that the idea of I is just as a cardboard cutout placed on top of sensations, and these sensations are finite in time and space, arising within wakeful emptiness, even then, there is a vague sense of I here floating around. Seen, then recreating itself somewhere else. Anything for a sense of an anchor, stability, a point of view, a perspective, I guess, even if it is not really there.
Labels: atma vichara, currently, inquiry, own inquiry