Am I to die, then? – asked the ego. I, the ego, the intelligent mind who carried myself around, walking the unfulfilled path. Am I the only source of suffering? I can see my own spiral thoughts. The categorisation of the classification… Every thought is analysed, conceptualised, labelled and stored. And that is who I am. I, the ego, am a warehouse of learnt and classified thoughts and experiences. There is no way out of me for me. I am trapped in my own structure. When transcendence comes, if it comes, I am to be left behind.
I can see that I am a whirl, the void that sucks everything. All experiences, their mental representations, the thoughts, the storage. The void is not there to torment me, to show me that something is missing. I am the void. I am my own mirror prison. All images point back to my own reflection in an incessant repetition of classification, storage, building memory. It is true that I am my past. There is no way I cannot be my past, everything is based on memory. Even intention is based on memory, on wants that reflect what is missing.
I am a self-feeding mental function. I can be seen from the outside, but I cannot leave to see myself from the outside. I cannot see without classifying, storing, and learning. The mirror maze can only be observed from the outside.
“Searching for yourself in any way is a complete waste of time. This must become a perfectly obvious fact to you. Don’t endlessly question this self-evidence. Living is to be found in the timeless “now.” So don’t accumulate more things, learn new ways to meditate or relax or purify. All this accumulation of states and sensations and techniques is nothing but vanity. It still belongs to the person who looks for security and confirmation.
Jean Klein, I Am
Yes, that is who I am. I look for security that reinforces my own existence. But even if I see my own limitation, my maze, how am I to give up? How can you ask me to bring myself to the altar and die…? You know I cannot do this; I can only be.
You may not inhabit me, but you must learn to live with me. To accept the spiral function. You may see me from the outside, but you may not think me. You may look at me, but you are never to understand, because all thoughts belong to me. All thoughts are eventually circular and belong to my maze.
Outside, there is no thought. Only silence.
Beautiful words. Powerful quote by Jean Klein too. Thank you 🙏
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I agree, that paragraph from Klein feels like a blow. An awakening blow maybe. Thanks for reading!
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Oh my. This brings up so many, many aspects of then, here, now, the past, the future, the spiral and who I am. I AM. It reminds me of the importance of elevating the mind into witness mode. I am not my anger. I am the one who is aware. I am not my thoughts I am the one who is aware. It sure helps to take put things into proper perspective and takes a lot of heat off of the ego/personality/flawed self.
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That’s what I try to remind myself all the time. So easy to get entangled in the ego mess, though. I agree with you that the perspective is liberating. Wish it would last!
Thank you for reading! Take care
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I know what you mean. It takes a lot of patience, practice, remembering, forgetting, re-remembering, patience and practice. But hey—what else have we got to do in this life but evolve, anyway?! Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? All we need is a little bit of willingness . . . 😉
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