You Must Find Your Own Mind

Robert Saltzman

Q: My question relates to Non-duality-type teachers who state, unequivocally,

that there is nothing anyone can do. ie. That no practice or technique can be of
any benefit towards spiritual awakening. (And I don't think I've heard any Non-
duality teacher say the opposite.)

However, this idea or perspective is totally contrary to my own experience.

I could understand if someone was to say, 'I personally did not follow a path or
technique, but I cannot say that there isn't one'. But this total, almost stubborn
attitude that there cannot be one, confuses me slightly. And it is the origin of
this that I am seeking...

With it being so commonplace in Non-duality teaching, I wonder whether it is

now simply traditional? The established philosophy states there is no method,
and thus many believe there is nothing that can be done, so nothing is done;
and when some still 'wake up' it seems the belief is legitimised and a self-
fulfilling prophecy is born.

If it was only one or two people, then I may wonder whether it's a matter of
those who did not follow a path or technique taking their lack of a method as
proof that there isn't one. But as it is so widespread, I feel the reason may be
wider too.

The other half of this is that the belief so deep seated that even when a person
demonstrates a technique, it tends to be dismissed as nonsense out of hand
(by both the teachers I've spoken with as well as any seekers). People don't
seem to even want to hear of a technique or teaching that may help.

What do you think about this Robert? You seem more open-minded than most,
so I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
A: Well, I am not a teacher of nonduality, nor a believer in that either, but just an
awake human being who has no commitment at all to any spiritual ideas, so-
called “nondual” or otherwise. From my perspective, "spirituality," including
nonduality, is mostly frightened human beings making a big deal out of life and
death, as if talking about it endlessly would take the sting out of it.

Honestly, I see no division at all between what is “spiritual” and what isn’t. When
people ask me about spirituality, I feel like the 9th century Zen teacher who,
when asked, “What is Buddha?,” replied, “The shit stick in the latrine.”

Any “teaching” that I might appear to be offering comes down to one simple
point: No one can define for you who or what you are. No one. Not Buddha, not
Jesus, not Ramana Maharshi, not Tony Parsons, not Adyashanti, not yours
truly. No one. It does not matter in the least what those people believed. All of
them were–some of them still are–human beings just like you. You must find
your OWN mind, not theirs.

If you are interested in that question – “Who or what am I?” – it is necessary, I

say, to begin by discarding ALL beliefs that you may have acquired, no matter
what their source. Just wipe the slate clean, and then make your own inquiry,
starting from scratch without depending on anyone or anything at all. I go into
this in detail in my book, The Ten Thousand Things, and I encourage you to
read it.

My awakening took place over a ten year stretch more or less, from the time of
an initial kensho or satori, through a time of severe illness, and then a period
after recovering from that illness during which I was able to integrate my
ordinary personality with the understanding that “I” was not really doing anything
and never had except in fantasy. But I cannot teach that, and no one can imitate
it either.

As for technique, I had a mentor who urged me to make the same kind of
inquiry I mentioned above: “Who am I? What is this apparent ‘person’ who
seems to suffer and feels that he is constantly making choices and doing
things?” And I followed his urging. So that is a technique. I used it for a time,
and now never even think about it.

But even inquiry will not be helpful, and could even be counter-productive, if one
imagines that “inquiry” is a “path.” It is NOT a path. There IS no path, and even
if there were one, no one would have the power to choose to follow it or to avoid
following it. The so-called "path" is only what you find yourself thinking, feeling,
perceiving, etc. right now. When you see that—no chooser, no choice--that is
what I call “awake.”

But those are words, and words are not enough any more than you can eat the
menu for dinner. And that is the problem with the nonduality industry, and make
no mistake, it IS an industry. In that industry, words are the merchandise—
clever words, slogans really—but words are not enough, and quickly become an
impediment to those who fixate on them.

So if awakening is really what you desire, forget about so-called “nonduality.”

Just fuhgeddaboutit. Put it out of your mind entirely. Make an honest inquiry.
You must find your OWN mind. It won’t sell retreats and satsangs, but that is
the only real “technique” I know.

Thirty years and more

I worked to nullify myself
Now I leap the leap of death.
The ground churns up
The skies spin round.
The death poem of Rankei Doryu.
Died, 1278, at the age of 66.

I replied to that question about techniques yesterday. Today, in thinking about

finding your own mind, I recalled the story of the sculptor who was exhibiting a
work of his carved from stone--the image of an elephant, perfect in every detail.
“How do you manage to do that?” he was asked.

“Very simple,” he replied. “I take a block of stone, and just chisel away
everything that does not look like an elephant.”

Well, that seems a useful approach to finding your own mind. Just chisel away
all the beliefs imposed upon you as a child, religious and otherwise, and chisel
away all the beliefs you have acquired subsequently from authorities such as
spiritual teachers, supposedly sacred texts, etc. Keep chiseling until there is no
acquired knowledge left. Keep chiseling until all that remains is what you
actually observe right now in this very moment. That is what I mean by your
own mind.
The Emptiness Teachings
Intro
Ilona asked me to write a little about the emptiness teachings for the L.U.
articles page.

The emptiness teachings are another nondual way to become happy and free
from suffering. Something being “empty” in this sense means that it “lacks true
existence while still being able to function.” This is a radical, powerful, flexible
and helpful realization. It is positionless and loving. It frees us from suffering,
dogmatism and nihilism. You don’t even have to call it emptiness!

I’ve been studying the emptiness teachings since 1996. Once I understood what
they entailed, I saw that I had had many “emptiness” insights over my entire life,
though not by that name. These insights were always very unsettling and
disorienting at first. They always resulted in less of a ground to stand on,
combined by a broader vision, more flexibility and freedom, a more open heart,
and a reduction in the sheltered dogmatism that I would often retreat into.

For many years, I didn’t say anything about emptiness, because most of the
people I knew were attracted to satsang, Advaita and similar paths. But in the
last several years, I began hearing from more and more people who simply did
not resonate with the Advaitic notion of global awareness, or with the idea of a
Oneness which is the nature of all things. They just didn’t feel it.

And then there were many people who had gotten stuck in some aspect of their
path. They found themselves hitting a glass ceiling, unable to get past a certain
point. Getting stuck happened to them almost invisibly, as various assumptions
began to take hold. Assumptions such as treating witnessing awareness as an
object of perception, or treating the personality of their teacher as an objective
characeristic of enlightenment. These things are easier to see as attachments
when seen from outside their path. The radical emptiness teachings are
excellent at providing a decentered place from which to investigate.

In cases like these, the emptiness teachings were helpful and liberating.

Who Realizes?
Coming from other nondual contexts, we may ask, “Who is it that realizes
emptiness?” This question is a show-stopping scandal for some teachings. It
removes their ability to even talk about what happens!

But this is no problem for the emptiness teachings. They draw a working
distinction between the inherent self, which is falsely thought to exist, and an
everyday conventional self, which depends on a label applied to pieces, parts
and functions. It is the everyday, conventional self that realizes its emptiness.
Of course, this is a casual way of speaking that can’t be taken 100% seriously.
If it were regarded as 100% seriously, it would not make sense. But it is enough
to work with.

It is very important to realize the emptiness of the self. But we can’t stop there.
We have to realize the emptiness of the components, relations and attributions
that go into the construction of the self. This is because we can’t give our
tendency to cling and exaggerate any place to hold onto. When we keep
meditating with great focus and intensity, we end up realizing the emptiness of
everything all at once. This is earth-shattering and lovingly freeing.

Emptiness and Suffering

In the classic Buddhist presentation of the emptiness teachings, the suffering of
beings is based on reification, that is, on taking things as existing in an
exaggerated, inherent, objective, independent way. Taking things in this way
makes us cling to the things we want, and be averse to the things we don’t
want. It’s almost as if we attribute the desirability or uselessness as an actual
property inherent to the things themselves. We feel that something is really
there. Or really not there.

But things aren’t like that. So it’s inevitable that we suffer, since things we feel
really should exist seem to fade away after a while (like our lives or other things
we like). Or things we really feel should not exist seem to appear on the scene
(like pain, affliction, poverty, disease, death and being criticized on the
internet!).

The clinging, grasping and aversion are very deep-seated. According to the
Buddhist teachings, they are based not understanding how things are. It’s like
we think that the things we like are really, truly there. Things we don’t like are
really truly not there. We are then repeatedly surprised by the flux of
experience.

The Fruition of Emptiness

When we deeply experience things as empty of true existence, we are freed
from this reification. The more deeply we understand and experience
emptiness, the less we experience these deep-seated afflictive states of mind.
We become freer and freer. Our selves and all things are experienced as self-
liberating at the very moment they arise. They are empty, which is the exact
reason they can seem to come and go as they do. They feel light, free,
luminous and kaleidoscopic. The heart breaks open towards other people and
things. It is a closer-than-close intimacy and a loving, non-referential joy.

This is the only purpose of “emptiness.” It is not a view to cling to as “true.”

Instead, it solves an urgent practical problem.

Emptiness and Compassion

In some nondual teachings, there is not very much emphasis on how we
interact with others. It is common to hear that “there are no others.” I have
heard many times that if we sincerely care about others, this is proof that our
understanding is not very deep. After all “there are no others.”

“No others.” “No self.” This is very old news to the emptiness teachings.
Somewhat paradoxically, the emptiness teachings acknowledge that there are
no others in just the same way that there is no self. This is exactly why the
conventionally-designated self and others can find happiness. The emptiness of
self and others is what permits me to feel compassion towards myself and
extend it out to others. If we were truly existent as we feel we are, we could not
change or interact with others.

So in the classical emptiness teachings, compassion is encouraged. It is even

taught in a person’s Buddhist education before one receives the emptiness
teachings. The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso once said,

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

Compassion in this sense is the wish that others become free of suffering, and
that they be well and happy. This kind of compassion not explained exactly like
it is in Western psychological terms as “feeling” (passion) “with” (com). It is
more holistic and integrated, and includes a deep wish that other beings
become free of suffering, along with a sense of intention to help them towards
this freedom, just as we would like help too. There is a deep motivation to
actively help others too.

The more deeply we have this motivation, the easier it is to see things as
empty. And the more we see things as empty, the more deeply we feel this
motivation.

What does it mean to practice compassion in this sense? In these teachings it is

a process of extending my insights, motivations and actions from myself to
others. I can extend the wish that I be happy to other beings. I can extend the
intent to help free myself from unhappiness to others. And I can include others
as recipients of the benefits of my actions.
One way to get into this is to do the “metta” meditations. You can do a google
search for “metta meditation” or “loving kindness meditation”. It is wonderful way
to feel yourself as empty and radiate this to others. This movement of the heart
is possible exactly because all this is empty.

It’s Global
It is not just the self that is empty. Everything is empty in the same way.

For something to be empty is for it to depend on other things (which are also
empty). My “self” doesn’t stand alone. It depends on a body, a mind, and on
being labeled as a “self.” Apart from all these things, there is simply no self to
be found.

And like turtles, it goes all the way.

Rocks, trees, bridges, planets, sentient beings, bodies, minds, thoughts,

emotions, memories, truths, standards, certainties, pain and suffering, joy and
happiness, afflictive and enlightened states of mind. None of it is truly there.
The more closely we look, the more we don’t find these things. And yet I can go
to the store, pay my bills, talk to others, and hug my wife!

Do I Have to Be Buddhist?
You do not have to follow Buddhism to benefit by the emptiness teachings. Of
course Buddhism has ready-made contexts for working with emptiness. But you
can combine the various insights and realizations with your own path. By
working with the emptiness teachings, you end up not taking things as solid,
fixed, and separate. Things are free to move and float.

You don’t need to adopt Buddhist imagery, role models and meditations, though
they are there in case they can be of service. There are plenty of analogous
Western teachings that critique the same targets that the Buddhist emptiness
teachings critique: skepticism, pragmatism, social construction, deconstruction,
epistemological holism and many others. The book I have written with Tomas
Sander, called “Emptiness and Joyful Freedom,” is like a tour guide to these
Western paths.
Emptiness in Context
The emptiness teachings say that nothing stands on its own. This includes the
emptiness teachings themselves. To realize emptiness most deeply requires a
compassionate heart, and a steady, intensely focused mind. The emptiness
teachings are powerful and effective even without these other aspects, but with
them, your realizations are taken from the conceptual to the non-conceptual.
This is altogether more earth-shattering and far-reaching.

So there is some work involved, but for those who resonate with this approach,
it pays off billions of times over.

Avoiding Eternalism and Nihilism

The classic Buddhist emptiness teachings do not affirm existence or non-
existence. To affirm existence would be to claim that things exist on their own,
without help from anything else. The self doesn’t have existence. It doesn’t have
non-existence. It doesn’t have both. And it doesn’t have neither.

To affirm existence is to fall to the extreme of eternalism. It would be to affirm

that the self (or other things) is really, truly, objectively there. To really be there,
it would never have been able to come into being. And it would never perish.
The self would have to exist without help from anything else. It would then be
unable to change or respond to conditions. It would be fixed and frozen in place.
I wouldn’t be able to go to the store. I would be right there, the way I exist,
unrelated to other things.

To deny existence is to fall to the extreme of nihilism. If the self utterly lacked
existence, then I also couldn’t go to the store. There would be absolutely no
“me” and no store.

The emptiness teachings go the “middle way,” without falling to either extreme.

Emptiness and Awareness

Emptiness is not a synonym for global awareness. There is not just one overall
emptiness. Things don’t arise from emptiness or subside back into emptiness.
Instead, emptiness is the mode of existence that things have. It means that
things cannot be found when looked for closely. Emptiness is not applied to
things. That is, things aren’t empty because of something big called
“emptiness.” Rather, to be in the first place is already to be empty.
Emptiness and awareness are separate teachings. There are cases, such as
Dzogchen and Scott Kiloby’s Living Realization teachings, where they are
combined. But this is not always done.

What I find interesting is that either one of these paths, awareness, and
emptiness, can function just fine without help from the other. Neither one needs
the other. Neither one can be reduced to the other. Neither one requires an
external standard that reconciles them. They don’t need to be reconciled any
more than French and German need to be reconciled.

Awareness paths tend to show how everything is awareness. They take sort of
a reductive route, showing how things that seem to be separate are just
awareness. Nothing is separate and objective. That which knows = that which is
known. In this knowledge there is no beginning or end, no fear or death.

Most awareness teachings do not treat awareness in a way that the emptiness
teachings would consider to be “empty.” In many awareness teachings,
phenomena depend on awareness, but awareness doesn’t depend on
phenomena. Whether phenomena are present or not, it is said that “Awareness
is.”

There is no notion like that in the emptiness teachings. There is nothing in the
emptiness teachings that is said to be able to stand on its own.

For example, in the emptiness teachings, awareness is empty because it

depends on other things. It depends on the object it is aware of. It depends on a
previous moment of awareness and its own temporal parts. It depends on a
sentient being who has the ability to be aware of things. So in the emptiness
teachings, one doesn’t reduce everything to awareness. Things depend on
awareness, and awareness depends on things. Speaking of awareness as the
seer, Nagarjuna says:

If it can abide
Without the seen, etc.,
Then, without a doubt,
They can abide without it.

– Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

(Mulamadhyamakakarika), IX:4, Jay Garfield translation

This verse was pivotal for me in coming to understand emptiness after being
more familiar with the awareness teachings. It illustrates how the seer and seen
depend on each other.

Whereas the awareness teachings show how everything is awareness, the

emptiness teachings show how things are empty by depending on each other.
The emptiness teachings don’t reduce things to any one basic phenomenon.
Instead, they demonstrate that nothing stands objectively on its own, because
everything depends on other things. In logical terms,

X depends on not-X

And “not-X” includes a vast array of factors. It includes the parts of X, the
relations that X has to other things, the history leading up to X, and the fact of
being designated as an X. Because X depends on all these things, it cannot
exist in the exaggerated way we think it does. Because of these dependencies,
X can never be frozen, solid or fixed. It becomes light and flexible. Everything
becomes luminous and self-liberating.

Each of these paths is able to end suffering without requiring you to do the other
path as well. Most people are naturally more inclined towards one of these
paths more than the other. And it’s not always a matter of high-sounding
philosophical statements. Most often, it’s a matter of heart, resonance, and
poetic magic.

Styles of Realization, or “I AM,” “I am consciousness,” “I am everything”

Ilona asked me to say a few things about these realizations.

It is no surprise that different paths have different realization styles. Because

things are empty, there is the flexibility of the realization to depend on the path,
just like the path depends on the realization. The emptiness teachings don’t
posit inherently existent realizations or states of mind that are the same for
everyone in all paths. Emptiness is at peace with mutual dependencies. That is,
dependencies where paths, states and realizations depend on each other.

For example, I have scores of Buddhist texts on emptiness, and I don’t find
realizations that are articulated in these terms: “I AM,” “I am consciousness,” “I
am everything.” The “I” is not spoken about like that in the emptiness teachings.
The “I” in the emptiness teachings is not treated as fundamental, basic or
essential. The “I” is very important, since that’s where the problems are
experienced. And one must realize its emptiness. But in emptiness realization,
the “I” does not spread out and become everything. The “I” is not so grand. Not
so … serious.

When we work with the self, the “I”, we realize its emptiness. But the “I” is not
the onlything we realize the emptiness of. If we stopped inquiring when we
reached “the ‘I’ is empty,” then there is the distinct possibility that the “I” could
reconstitute itself, coming back in a stronger way, more difficult to detect. This
would be possible because we haven’t realized the emptiness of everything,
and our tendency to reify things is still there.

So from the perspective of the emptiness teachings, the realization “I am

everything” would not be considered a realization of emptiness. Neither would “I
AM,” or “I am awareness.” Depending on the details of the realizations, the
emptiness teachings may very well consider these realizations to indicate the
extreme of essentialism and eternalism.

But that is OK. The other paths don’t have the obligation to articulate their
realizations so that the emptiness teachings approve of them! Other paths don’t
need to see everything as “empty.” That is the job of the emptiness teachings.

If we took the opposite case, we may see a mismatch as well. That is, from the
perspective of an awareness-style nondual teaching, the emptiness-style
realization “The self is empty because it depends on other things” would not be
considered to be very impressive. It may be considered very weak tea indeed.
From the awareness-style perspective, one would think that “realizer” has
missed out on the most important thing of all, seamless global presence-
awareness.

When we see our path as empty, we don’t feel the necessity that everyone
should become free in the same way. We won’t expect our path to serve as the
global template for other paths. We won’t expect other paths to be reduced to
our path. We won’t expect 100% inter-translatability.

This is OK too. The only thing that paths need to do is help free us from
confusion, affliction and suffering, and help us treat ourselves and others better.
Paths don’t need their realizations to literally translate to other paths. There
might be lots and lots of common ground and shared vocabulary. But to
demand 100% inter-translatability across paths in states and stages would be to
fall into eternalism. It would be saying, “Things are the SAME everywhere.” This
demand would be coming from a reification of some mind-state, evaluative
standard, or aspect of reality that is being taken as a standard for all views. The
emptiness teachings would reply, “Neither the same, nor different, nor neither,
nor both.”

The question may arise, “I have realized that I am everything. Do I need to

study emptiness?”

If someone were to ask me that question, I would say, “Are you happy and
content? Are you kinder than you were ten years ago? Do you love more?”
If they answer “Yes,” then I would say, “No, you don’t need to study emptiness.”

If they answer “No” to all these questions, then I might ask, “What happens
when you hear the word emptiness?”

If they said, “I feel an eerie chill of excitement and a sense of unstoppable

curiosity,” then I would say, “Give it a try!”
Before and After Realization
In some nondual paths, there is not a whole lot to say about “after the fact.” The
teachings may very well stop at that point. They have no words for what comes
after. If you tell someone that you realized the Truth of nonduality, and that you
are now meditating on something, they will think, “Greg is deluded. If he had
realized, then he knows there is no one to meditate. This means he has not
realized.”

But the emptiness teachings are much different. You can realize emptiness
conceptually, which lightens your life and your sense of self tremendously. If
you cultivate calm abiding, it can come together in a union with the emptiness
teachings, and you can also realize emptiness directly in a non-conceptual way.
This kind of realization is global. It is a nondual experience, and includes the
realization of the emptiness of all things simultaneously. It eradicates your
conceptual confusion forever. You won’t ever believe again that things exist on
their own, or that they utterly lack existence.

And even after that, you can still meditate on emptiness! Things just get better.
It can be part of a fascinating, thrilling, heart-opening way of life, even though
your own suffering has been left behind a long time ago. At that point, you are
primarily motivated by your wish that others become free of suffering. So you
keep on going.

How can it work like that?

It is because of what emptiness is. It is non-findability of stuff that functions in

an everyday way. When we realize that something is empty, we are realizing
how it is related to other things. There are infinite ways to realize this. And the
more you do it, the richer, sweeter and more flavorful it gets. It’s not a chore or
an obligation, but one of the most fascinating and delightful things in life.

In fact, in the orthodox Buddhist emptiness teachings, it is said that we continue

to meditate on emptiness (with our other practices) until we reach fully
enlightened, omniscient, post-human Buddhahood. It takes many lifetimes,
even periods of being reborn as transcendent bodhisattvas.

One practical take-away lesson I get from that narrative is this — there is no
reason to stop, and no reason to become conceited and superior about our own
“attainments.”

Emptiness, Thought and Language

One of my favorite things about the emptiness teachings, Buddhist and
Western, is their non-literalist, non-referential understanding of thought and
language. Thought and language are not understood as referring to fixed
objects that pre-exist in a world outside language. This is because those things
can simply not be found. (Neither can language!)

So the meaning of a word, sentence, or a spiritual teaching is not a literal

correspondence between word::world. That very word::world distinction stops
carrying weight, stops making sense. Meanings arise from the interactions
among speakers.

When this is deeply realized, I call it joyful irony. The irony is in the realization
that “literal” meaning is nothing more than a literary style. The joy consists in the
emancipation from “the myth of given”, where we used to think that words must
correctly represent things outside words. We are freed from thinking that even
our own dearest spiritual teaching is “true to the facts that already exist.”
Existence, non-existence, things, words — none of these things can be found to
be truly there in an objective way.

This makes it impossible to cling to a teaching or to haggle over other people’s

ideas or interpretations.

Emptiness is Empty Too

Whatever is dependently co-arisen

That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way.

– Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

(Mulamadhyamakakarika), XXIV:18

This verse from Nagarjuna cleverly shows how emptiness is empty. In line 2, we
see that dependent co-arising is explained to be emptiness. Emptiness, like
other things, is dependent upon being explained, designated, or defined. It is
not taken as something independent from its explanation. Emptiness is
dependent upon its function, which is to help free us from suffering. Emptiness
is also dependent upon its “basis of designation.” That is, the emptiness of the
cup depends on the cup. The emptiness of my self depends on my self,
conventionally speaking.

It is of course humanly possible to treat emptiness as an absolute, and make it

a new God-term. But if we do, we will not have gotten rid of our tendency to
reify and exaggerate things.

The victorious ones have said

That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.
 For whomever emptiness is a view,
That one will accomplish nothing.

– Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

(Mulamadhyamakakarika), XIII:8

Sometimes you will read that last line as “That one will be incurable.” Realizing
that emptiness too is dependent, we find it harder to cling to emptiness as if it
were an absolute. We won’t be like the naïve customer who went to buy
something:

 Shopkeeper: “I have nothing to sell you.”

 Customer: “Please sell me the nothing.”

But when we deeply experience that all things are empty, including emptiness,
we have no place to land. Especially, we don’t land on having no place to land.
Sometimes this is called “positionless.”

For More Information

Besides our book (“Emptiness and Joyful Freedom”) due in June, here are
some links that you can follow for more information about the emptiness
teachings:

Emptiness teachings
http://heartofnow.com/files/emptiness.html

Emptiness Website
http://www.emptiness.co/

Special pointers for those coming from the Advaitic/Awareness Teachings

http://www.emptiness.co/adv_to_empt

Some Buddhist books to start with

http://www.emptiness.co/5buddhistbooks

Some Western books to start with

http://www.emptiness.co/bestwesternbooks

Facebook Groups
https://www.facebook.com/groups/394880153935447/

Susan Kahn’s blog

http://emptinesscafe.wordpress.com/
The Five Principles of Realization
and Liberation
Jackson Peterson

The first principle is becoming aware of our thoughts and the nature of thought.
By taking the position of just being an observer of the thoughts and images that
come and go we discover all thoughts are the same: they are temporary
appearances that come and go like clouds in the sky. Give no importance to
one thought over another. If we pay no attention to any thought but remain in
the “observer” role, it seems the space of awareness becomes more open and
thoughts less demanding of attention. We discover all thoughts are without
substance and importance. We could say our thoughts are “empty”, like clouds:
appearances without any core or entity.

The second principle is recognizing our stories and emotional dramas are
structured only from thought, our “empty” thoughts. In continuing to observe our
thoughts we should notice how they tend to link together in chains of meaning
and particular significance. It is this linking together of thoughts that creates our
stories, beliefs and emotional drama in a convincing and powerful way. As a
result we may spend most of our time going from one mini-daydream to
another. It is this trance-like state of mind that we need to break up again and
again as often as possible. We do that by shifting our attention from thought to
the presence of the five senses in immediate now-ness. Just notice your
physical environment and the direct sensory experience free of analysis.
Practice this shifting away from mental engagement in thought to noticing your
physical environs as often as possible. Hopefully the trance-like habit of living in
your thoughts constantly will be broken. In this way we can free ourselves from
anxiety and emotional suffering as both are caused by the mind’s stories that
are rarely challenged. It is possible to discover that our stories and emotional
dramas are as empty as last night’s dreams. In fact our daydreams and stories
are no more real than our dreams at night. We discover our stories are also just
as empty as the clouds that group together in the sky in various formations that
disperse and disappear in the next moment leaving no trace.

The third principle is recognizing that one’s sense of self is also only an empty
story made of thought; a mental construction without an actual identity as an
entity that exists independently and with self-determinism. Studies have
determined that our coherent sense of personal identity doesn’t appear until
about the ages between 18 and 24 months. That means previous to that time
there was no personal “me” story or self-image. That also means the newly
appearing sense of “me” is totally the result of thought-stories that the mind
constructs about identity. There is no personal self present other than this
make-believe “me” story. Even science makes clear there is just one unified
field of energy as the universe without separate parts. The entire field is inter-
dependent without any breaks or splits in the unity. The sense of being an
independent entity like a “personal self”, is just an illusion and has never existed
in fact. By observing the “me” thoughts that arise from moment to moment we
can notice the “personal me” is nothing more than a chain of linked thoughts
about identity that are supported by memories and imagination. Seeing this
directly and clearly, not just intellectually, the emptiness of personal identity
becomes obvious to the mind at which point the illusion ceases. But that
cessation will only occur according to the degree of the depth of this self inquiry.
If it doesn’t occur the understanding is too shallow and not convincing enough
to the deeper levels of mind grounded in conditioning and habitual “selfing”. In
such a case one should revisit the first and second principles again and
establish a deeper state of observation regarding the experience of the “me”
thought arising and dissolving until it becomes clear that no personal self exists
outside of the mind’s belief otherwise. When recognition arises it becomes clear
that the notion of there being a personal self is as empty as a single huge cloud
that dominates the sky yet disappears in the next moment without a trace.

The fourth principle is recognizing what exactly is the nature of that which is
observing and experiencing the empty nature of thoughts, stories and personal
selfhood. What is doing the “recognizing”? What is this impersonal aware
consciousness that perceives and knows? In these recognitions there seems to
be an ever increasing evolution or revelation of wisdom. As a result one’s
cognitive space seems expansive, open and vividly transparent without a
center. What exactly is this state of impersonal consciousness? It clearly has a
sense of being aware; empty and knowing. Can we be aware of being aware?
Is this aware consciousness present in all experience, inseparably so?

Let’s look directly at this impersonal aware knowingness: In a well lighted room
close your eyes. Notice at your eyelids that the light of the room shining on your
eye lids creates an inner glow upon your closed translucent eyelids. You will
see an orangey-red color at your eyes lids. What is it that is observing this
color? It will seem as though your aware consciousness occupies a place a few
inches behind the eyes and its attention is directed at the eyelids in front. Notice
your aware presence as being the place from where you are looking forward
from at the orangey color. Are you “aware” of the color? Now be aware of your
awareness just as it is. Does this awareness have any color, shape, substance
or dimension of its own? Or is it simply an empty presence of aware knowing?
Review these last two questions again and again until it becomes clear that
“you” are actually this empty, clear and aware knowing. When this is seen
clearly instead of recognizing the emptiness of thoughts and self as the empty
nature of the clouds that appear in the sky, the empty nature of the sky itself is
recognized; the empty cognitive space in which all appearances appear and
disappear.

The fifth principle is recognizing the inseparable relationship between one’s

empty, aware “seeing” and the five senses. One can’t find awareness separate
from one’s sensory perceptions. There isn’t first a sensory perception and then
an awareness of it. The five senses are this “knowing awareness” seeming to
be split up into five separate sensory components. These sensory capacities
are not limited to the physical five senses. “Knowing awareness” can perceive
independently of the five physical senses with no limitations regarding time and
space. Merging our attention fully with the five senses instead of with the mental
phenomena of thoughts, stories and beliefs in personal identity, reveals a state
of total “nowness” beyond thought and mind. A limitless vista of knowing
transparency and Clear Light reveals itself to be be our true nature beyond any
descriptions or assumptions of mind. In merging our attention totally with the
five senses, the luminous nature of appearances is revealed to be the vivid
character of our own awareness.
Our “Vivid Alertness”
Jackson Peterson

Our “vivid alertness”, is completely unfindable and has no trace of being a

personal self. It has no personal qualities about it at all. Here is the problem and
the solution for a mind in imagined separation: The subconscious mind is
projecting a character made up of the history of the organism’s experiences.
Everything thought is part of this projection. Its identical in substance to the self
you think you are in a dream at night. Both are 100% projections of the
subconscious projector. The key is to get the projector to stop projecting this
“self identity”. How do we do this? As the dreamed character, our imagined
personal identity, we simply “observe” nakedly without judgment or analysis all
that appears in our inner and outer worlds of experience. Just quietly observe,
observe, observe. You move from being “on stage” lost in your role, to being in
the audience as an observer. That shift changes the dynamic of the entire
subjective experience; it has to. The mind has dis-empowered the “self” in the
role and has empowered the naked observing. A new type of self identity begins
to arise… the observer. Then as one continues to observe, one observes this
sense of being an “observer”. By that observation, the “observer” has been dis-
empowered and a more naked and non-personal, non-directed observing
remains. At this point the subconscious mind, the projector, will cease projecting
the self and its stories. Continue the naked observingness for weeks, months,
years… Eventually it will be realized the only “observingness” present from the
beginning was the naked Observingness. There has only ever been one
perceivingness. It then becomes known that experience and the experiencer,
observed and the observer are identical and always have been… We continue
in our lives but without a “personal self”… completely at one with our world, like
young children running free in a meadow of flowers…