Fully allowing a sense of a separate self
Any sense of a separate self comes from resistance to experience.
Through resistance to experience, we identify with an aspect of the content of awareness, and we split the content into I and Other, which in turns creates a sense of struggle, drama, and wanting something else than what is.
When we realize this, it is easy to start resist the sense of a separate self, of wanting that one to go away, of hoping for something better just on the other side of this. And this is just another way to identify with an aspect of content of awareness and pitting it against other aspects of the content. There is an identification with wanting the content to be different from what it is.
(In this case, an identification with wanting of this sense of a separate self to go away, an identification with the corresponding belief that it would be better if it wasn't there, and an identification as someone who wants it to go away - all of which places our identification firmly within one part of the content of awareness, pitted against other parts of the content.)
The trick here is to allow it all: the sense of a separate self, any resistance to it, any wanting of it to be different, any strategies to change it, and anything else. To allow it, embrace, see it, feel it, and then to love it, as it is. This shifts the identification out of content and into its ground of awake emptiness.
In this, there is indeed a release from being caught up in any sense of a separate self - even when it is there.
We find ourselves as the ground allowing it all, as it already does.
As long as there is identification with particular content of awareness, there is a split and we don't notice this ground, or ourselves as this ground. We find ourselves as a region of the content, pitted against other regions of the content, and in the ensuing drama the ground is not noticed. As soon as there is a being with what arises, a full allowing of it, identification goes out of content and we find this ground of awake emptiness allowing it all.
Labels: allowing, being with, ground, sense of I