Just a thought, am I?

I try to remember that I must forget myself, that I, the ego, am only a thought, a perceived object floating in a conscience. That I was but am no more. So, it is true that I have no soul, after all… That everything is perceived in conscience, and I am an object in the conscientious space. My dreams of grandeur, my pains, follies, joys… were not mine. To be stripped of one’s emotions, memories, beliefs. They are still all there. But they no longer belong to me. I was not their creator; they just came to me spontaneously. They were seen, felt, ignored, bore, but I was not its owner.

It is strange to be just a thought. No umbilical cord to attach me to some master. Just a floating object in conscience, with no destination or time or purpose. Just existence. I am contemplated like emotions are felt and sounds are heard. I am an appearance. I would say it saddens me a little, after all this time, but sadness is parallel to me now, not generated by me, not felt by me.

I can see how I impregnate everything in this head, like a sticky web in every corner. Why was I born? To what purpose would this idea of a driver appear? Our whole culture is oriented towards a subject – ‘me’ – but that cannot be a coincidence. What caused the ego to appear during individual development and then societal development? Societies are collections of egos, organised in complex ways so that they can live with each other. Maybe the main purpose of a society is to provide a space in which each person can thrive individually. Except, of course, that each ego is just a though, not only me.

So we go about our lives like the ghosts in the shell, thinking we are drivers instead of mere passengers, thinking we are the subject in every sentence, the centres, the kings and queens of these lives… and we now have to accept that not only are we not kings, but that there is no king. At first, it’s a relief. But then… this existence without a subject to carry out each action… how can everything ‘work’? A collection of happenstances.

You are the fabric and substance of existence itself

Alan Watts

I am perceived. I am the object of perception of a consciousness. Who then is this consciousness who now seems to be what I thought I was? Except that it is not a subject. It looks more like a mirror in which I can see myself reflected. A space. A silence. From where I stand, it is not possible to know if there’s anyone behind the mirror, a subject of some kind. It is still difficult to accept that subjects are to be erased from sentences, that verbs will become the centre, with no one to guide them. Who is raining? Indeed, who is…

So, this is not about me doing anything any more… is it? It is true what they say: “you don’t exist”. There is an ego, but it is not the true you, it is just a thought, a concept. The true ‘you’ is the consciousness in which the ego is recognised as a thought, but the consciousness is no subject, so the pronoun ‘you’ cannot be applied. The true ‘you’ is a space, a silence, not a subject, and therefore the pronoun does not exist. There is something that exists, but you cannot call it ‘you’. I guess the sentence would be more precise enunciated as “you doesn’t exist”. I doesn’t exist. I wonder if a language without pronouns or indeed subjects would declutter our minds and shed some light onto (‘our’) existence.

And now this ego must go and be witness to how some duties take care of themselves, I presume… I may not be the doer of actions, but still, someone has to carry out the work. I wonder who that is…