We See What We Are By Seeing What We Aren't

We need to learn to get out of our own way. In other words. Observe dispassionately the small self with all its desires, aversions, identifications and nonidentifications (duality) until we truly percieve the filmy transparency that is our "self-concept". Once we get ourselves out of the way we can observe our inner process in much more detail. Once we’ve stopped defending ourselves each time we discover an unflattering wart in our make up we can sit still long enough to see the seams of pure consciousness shining in between the thoughts. We see that the thoughts themselves are not those bolts from the True Blue that is our essense.

The thoughts that make up our self-concept are merely electro-chemical discharges in our brain that project an image of the world. It's shaped by input from outside stimuli, our particular nervous systems, biochemistry, and previous habits of thought. That’s it. That’s “us” the terrestrial self…those ephemeral sparks between the dendrites and there attendant sensual/emotional thought events. Once we've gotten that, it becomes easier to acknowledge that there’s really nothing and no one to defend, nor anyone there that should be feeling superior, inferior, guilty or innocent. Then we can more fully devote our attention to the prime directive— the most sacred of acts: the watching…the deep witnessing of Creation (and of the content of our consciousnesses that make up a vital part of that creation). Watching your own reaction to an insult or innuendo, to praise or intimidation gives vital insight into the make up of the processes and reactions of the surface self. And insight is power.

Much of our watching will be of our own little ego world because by seeing how its perceptions and manipulations construct its universe, we begin to separate ourselves from that entity that separates us from everything. Soon the almighty thought construction called “self” with all its distracted need-charged agendas, loses its credibility and its once-powerful ability to seduce us into paying homage to its drama queen self-absorbtion.

We have to watch it as it builds its little house of notions, emotions, grudges, nostalgias, hurts and dreams. We need to notice how wispy and translucent the structure looks when the light shines through it. Then we don’t have this urge to avert our eyes when we look at “ourselves” because we’ve finally realized that the small self is no more “us” than the flora a botonist observes in the field.

But, then again, we are the “lilies of the fields” and we are the self. We are everything… and everything is in flux. We can nurture or poison ourselves depending on what we include within our own "skin". The wise person knows that what is in the skin is merely a subset of the systems that comprise one's existence. We are also the sky. Don't think so? I’d like to see how long you’d last without the air that makes up the sky or how compromised your life would be if you filled your oxygen supply with sulfuric oxide from unregulated industry. We are the river that supplies the water project that supplies our cells with the H2O of which they are mostly composed. Our circulatory system encompasses the entire planet. We are the sky. We are the river. Just because you can’t feel it at the moment, doesn’t mean it’s not a vital part of you. You can't feel your liver and you consider it a part of you. The nutrients that make up the cells of that liver are just as much a part of you as the filtering system we call a liver. What isn't you? ...the notion of "you" as opposed to everything else. What is you? Everything else.

Ah, yes! when the light shines in, what a picture it is. Miracle heaped upon miracle until it boggles the senses. A million koans per square inch. The body, a spacesuit fit for a god with its immune systems, nervous systems, skeletal systems, digestive systems converting plant pulp into energy, flesh and bone, muscles, movement, perceptions, dreams, eros, entire universes of sensation and thought.

We are the world and we are the world-wide witness watching the small self trying to convince us that it alone is the only world that has any true relevance to us. The small self is a part of us but no more a part than the rest of the world. Just watch closely and it will lose its hypnotic sway over your life, Let its gauzy curtains lift like a moody haze and evaporate into the growing warmth of an ever-clearing sky-blue-mind.

And that’s just inside our skins . What about our extended body, our biosphere. What about the system of marketing and distribution that determines what foods are available to you? And the system of values that determine which foods you will choose to build you body from? Think about it, your local food store is pulsing through your blood stream at this very instant. “Daddy? What are little girls made of? Well, Li’l Missy, after that second Oscar Meyer Wiener you had for lunch, I don’t think you really want to know.”

But she does want to know. I like the phrase, “healthy curiousity.” We need to be more curious if we’re going to survive at all (let alone be healthy). May the enlivening elixir of wonder warm us from the inside out, healing us and freeing us from any delusion that we have anything here but a full-throttle, smack-you-in- the face, explosion of a universe! If only.

If only we’d open up to it, let it in, and let it do it’s stuff, If only we wouldn’t keep forgetting to listen to our own miraculous life-giving breath. Feel the pavement under our feet, if only we could find ourselves once and for all, reflected in the eyes of every being we‘ve ever encountered.

We’d count our blessings then. We’d dance in the streets, laughing loudly at nothing in particular, spout poetry to the moon, hug ourselves like we were the whole of creation stopping for one small moment (or millinia) to give itself a very heartfelt, humongous caress.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t fight the feeling. Love is in the air. Let the tingle of being, bubble away your blues. Sense that faint fizz of blissful existence that overlays every sound you’ll ever hear. Listen. Watch. And count your countless blissings.